Wyoming General Elk Wilderness Hunt

SCliving Outdoors · 2024-10-01T09:23:51-0600

This year I decided it was time to cash in my elk points and try my hand in Wyoming chasing elk. I applied for a west general tag and WY gladly took my 5 points after the completely typical 5 month wait for the draw results. My friend Trent and I have been hunting together for 3-4 years primarily in the spring in Idaho for bears, however, Trent recently move over to Alpine, WY and he offered to get the resident “guide license” and take me into the wilderness. I quickly accepted this offer and he headed over to the G&F office to sign on the dotted line agreeing to hold my hand and share a sleeping bag with me in the wilderness areas to insure my well being during the hunt.

The summer quickly faded and I was boarding a plane to fly to Idaho Falls where Trent picked me up at the airport and we headed across the boarder. Upon arrival Trent asked me exactly where I wanted to go. The wilderness area we were headed into was a spot neither of us had ever been. I had 2 main areas I’d e-scouted. I’d sent him a bunch of pins, but somehow only one of the areas had come through which had been my secondary choice, but I think being flexible is necessary on any hunt so we just adjusted our plans and headed to that area. We arrived after dark and just picked a random area along a creek to camp for the night. We awoke the next morning with plans to shoot my rifle and to checkout different trails looking at pressure and adjusting our plan as needed. The rifle shot well only needing a small adjustment because of elevation. Next we looked at trailheads. We looked at 3. One had a group of 4-6 hunters and guides heading in on horses, another had 3 local trucks (1 with a horse trailer and one trail had no one. The trail with no one on it had a clear reason why. The trail began with a 700’ climb in the first .65 a mile. I have something in common with elk… I don’t like seeing hunters either. We adjusted our plan and took the steep trail. We arrived to our camping spot about 6pm and set up camp. It was a beautiful ridge surrounded by burn area, deadfall and beautiful aspens that were all gold. We had a stream down below us so we gathered water and checked out 2 different glassing spots within 400yds of camp. While checking one of them out we saw a nice pile of grizzly scat (not fresh) which was fun. One of the spots was significantly superior so we glassed for about 45 minutes that night only seeing a few deer. Trent threw out some location bugles right at dark and we heard a few distant bugles which was encouraging. We tucked into our tents looking forward to an opening morning full of bugling bulls.

undercover · 2024-10-01T09:31:56-0600

What beautiful color, looks your in a good spot! Following

jvanhoy · 2024-10-01T10:13:31-0600

I already know this is going to be good!

elkhuntinfool78 · 2024-10-01T10:24:03-0600

Following

SCliving Outdoors · 2024-10-01T12:20:26-0600

We awoke before the sun. As soon as I opened my eyes I heard a weird sound down below us in the thick bottom. When you’re in grizzly country every sound immediately makes you hyper focused then your brain kicks in and you can try to deduce what your actual hearing.
“Waaaaaaaaaaaa Waaaaaaaaaaa”.
The heck is that?
“Umph Umph”
Brain kicks in… I realized there was a cow moose down in the valley doing her very best to let every bull within a 5 mile range know where she was located and there was a bull on our ridge about 300 yds away letting her know he was coming. We ended up seeing 6 moose that day. Trent informed me that she’d been bellowing all night but I must’ve been dead to the world because I never heard her.

I didn’t have any elk size expectations for this hunt. I wanted to have fun in a new area and hunt bugling bulls. My goal on every hunt is to put my tag on a mature animal. I in no way will judge what other people choose to shoot as long as it’s a legal animal by my personal goal is every tag on a mature animal. I’m not always successful, but that’s the goal.

As we began to work our way up the ridge that morning to our glassing location we heard a bull bugle. He was below us in the valley… in range. We got to the first place we could see and I immediately saw a bull about 500yds away staring up at up at us. We dropped down and I got my spotter on him. He was a 5x6. Not a big bull but he fit the bill and I started to get set up. He was solo and he began to meander his away through the timber and deadfall. We watched him do this for 30 minutes. He never gave me a clean shot. Eventually he disappeared over the ridge. From time to time we would hear a shot. Trent kept calling and occasionally we would get a weak response.

Around 10 we saw a group of 7 cows work across the far ridge trying to escape something they didn’t like very much. Around 1030 Trent got a bull worked up that we never saw. As we were moving into position to look for him we heard a gun shot below. We did see 2 other groups of hunters that’s day. We never saw a hunter packing meat from that area and we never saw a dead elk. I don’t know if that hunter missed or he just shot to scare off the bull that we were working.

We headed down the hill about 11:15 to go grab some food. We didn’t eat that morning because we didn’t want to mess with our food in the dark in grizz country so we hadn’t eaten. About 1/2 way down towards camp Trent dropped down quickly pointing up the hill the way we’d come. Out of the aspens ran a cow and a calf under 200yds away. I quickly pulled my rifle off my pack to look at them. They dropped down into the valley and behind them out of the aspens came a 5x5 raghorn. He stopped broadside for about 30 seconds. I was on him, but he didn’t fit the bill. We watched him run down into the valley calling to the cows.

We had 2 guys on horses ride by our camp around 3pm and we talked to a group of three local guys in their 20s that were packing out a 6pt that they killed a couple miles behind our camp in an area we couldn’t see but we’d heard the shots. They also told us they had a run in with a bear in the dark that morning that “woofed” at them. They also told us a forest ranger had let them know there was a sow grizz with 3 cubs in the area. Those were the only folks we saw on the trip.

Around 5pm we headed back up the ridge for the evening. Otw up I spotted 3 moose that we watched for a bit (cow, calf and a bull). Overall, It was a slow night unfortunately. We saw one cow elk a long long ways off high on a ridge but no bulls. We picked out mule deer all evening and right at dark picked up the bull moose one more time. Right as we were packing up to head down a bull began to bugle behind us in the thick timber on the adjacent ridge. This gave us some hope for the next morning.