11-17-2016, 05:52 AM
Thursday Night - Driving to the Tenmile Knoll seen quite a few deer on the Paved Road down low, including one huge 4 x 4 getting sweet on a harem of does. Another buck was a tall 2 x 3. I didn't take photos, because I was driving trying to get to camp.
Friday Morning - I hit Steer Ridge Road and right after the fork with Moon Ridge rd I spotted a group of elk on a distant ridge about 25 cows, 3 spikes, and a decent 5x5. I continue around Steer Ridge and peak into the roadless without seeing anything other than Wildhorses.
Friday Afternoon - I hit Moon Ridge to look down low. I settled on a landing strip overlooking ten mile canyon. I spotted a big black bear in the cedars and a little while later I spotted another black bear that was a lot smaller about a 1/2 mile from the first one. No elk.
Opening Morning - I hike into the area where I saw the 5x5 and spot nothing, but a group of wild horses. There was a lot of sign in the area, so I figured there wear just nomadically working the area.
Opening Afternoon - I went back down Moon Ridge and got to a spot wear I could glass and glassed the rest of the night turning up 0 elk.
Without seeing any elk on opening morning, I was eye balling the map at night trying to decide were to find the elk. I kind of wished that I also had a tag for wildhorses for some camp meat.
Sunday Morning - The alarm clock goes off and as I am getting dressed I hear a cow call, then another cow call, then a bugle. I think some joker is just blowing his calls, just to blow them. Then it keeps going on and on, then I hear a bugle farther away. I come to the realization that there are elk in camp. I set next to the tent waiting for it to get light. Every minute seemed like an hour. A cow appears in the binoculars, then another, then another. 15 total cow elk within 200 yards of camp. I hear two bugles down in the canyon from camp. I have to figure out how to get down the ridge without spooking the 15 cows in the direction that I want to go. Trying to back out, I was busted. The cows looked at me without knowing what I was and then decided that I wasn't important and went back to doing elk things. As I was walking down the ridge, they popped over the top. I was still hearing bugles down the ridge mingled with a lot of cow calls. I would pop up over the ridge to glass and spot elk, but no bulls. Elk were from the bottom to just short of the top, which made it tough to look down into the bottom without getting busted. The sun was coming up and I worried that my shadow would spook elk as well as my movement. I keep hearing bugles further down the ridge and have to plan on how to not get busted with all of the cows around. I spend the next hour slowly stalking moving from dead tree to juniper/cedar. I finally get to a point and spot a solid 5x5. I range him at 300 yards and where I am situated there is a branch between me and the bull, I need to bull to take 10 steps to the right. The bull is slowly feeding that way. As I am waiting a bigger 6 x 6 appears out of the trees. I instantly put the crosshairs on the bull. The bull stops broadside and bugles. I squeeze the trigger, the bull jets into the timber. The rest of the cows, spikes, a 4x4 and the 5x5 bunch up, but the big bull doesn't come out of the trees. I assumed the shot was good and was delighted that there was a road to the bottom. I wait a half hour and the elk move off without the 6x6. I decide to go back and get the truck. I am excited and I am fist pumping back to the truck. I thought I just killed an amazing bull. I drive down the road and get to the spot. I climb out and head into the trees where the bull would have went down. I find nothing. I go back up to see if I can find blood or hair from where the bull was shot. I spend the next two hours looking for sign of the bull and do not find anything. I return to the shot point and find that my bullet had smacked a tree. I believe that I shot right over the bull. I am sick to my stomach. I can't believe that I missed. 300 yards is a shot that I practiced and could put it in the kill zone any day of the week. I go over and over again the shot. I believe the angle may have been the cause or I might have had bull fever or I might have jerked the trigger. In other words, I am just sick about missing the bull. I believe the bull ran down the mountain into the cedars.
Sunday Evening - I head to wear I believe the big herd of elk went. The wind was blowing up canyon, so I started high. I started hiking still feeling sick after missing. I hike up and down a few ridges and then hear a bugle and put my binos up in the direction and spot a couple cow elk feeding. I move down the ridge on the opposite side and then stop, because something black is moving towards me. I pull up the binos and it is a black angus. The bovine looked lost and was making a v-line towards me. I looked further up the ridge and there was a wild horse on the opposite ridge. I keep going down the ridge, because if the horse spooks it will spook up the hill. I start to wrap around the ridge and can see and hear elk. While looking in the binos at elk, I hit the hoochie mama cow call to see how the elk would react. They could care less about the call. I figure that I can't get to the bull without spooking the cows, so I back out. When I get to the top of the next ridge I am greeted with multiple cow elk. There are elk all over the place. I can't walk anywhere without kicking out more elk. I wait until dark and start hiking back to the truck.
Monday Morning - After hearing cow calls throughout the night until sleep fell upon me. In the morning there were no calls to be heard from camp. I started to drive down moon ridge. I spot a group of cow elk right off the road. I glass the group, but there are no bulls. I cannot see all of the elk, so I drive up the road park and hike back in to get a better look. They run down the canyon and come up the other side, no bulls. I get back to the truck and look at the ridges on the other side of the road. I spot a 4 x 4 right off the bat. I watch him for a bit and then he goes down off the ridge. I spot a couple cows feeding in a canyon on the other side. Then I hear a bugle and then find a group of elk. These elk are higher on the ridge than I have seen elk. I study the bull and he looked like a bull I would be tickled with taking. I decide to go for it. I have to go down a canyon, which was a steep sob and then get to the bottom and work my way over and around to try and meet the elk at an ambush point. I get to the ambush point and there are no elk. I decide to hike up the hill to see if they passed me by or were bedded up top. After hiking to the top, I realize that I am running low on water. By running low, I mean I am almost out of water. I decide to press on. I am walking along, when I spot of a cow in the buck brush at 50 yards. I stop and remove the solo hunter gun cover and rack a shell, because I know that this will happen quick. As expected the hill erupts with elk. The elk do not know what I am, so they spook like Mule Deer and stop and look back. I find the bull in the scope, but there is a cow right behind him. The bull looks at me for seems like ages and then takes a couple steps forward. I squeeze the trigger and then rack another shell. I squeeze the trigger again and the elk drops. I get up to the elk and drop to a knee. The moment was surreal. I took a good elk with a tag that I may never draw again, in a place where I may never hunt again. This was really a once in a lifetime hunt. Reality sets in and I am out of water. I decide to pull off two quarters, rib meat, back strap, tenderloin, and the guts out of the elk - then put the game bags over the elk to give it shade as I venture back to the truck. I have to make a decision in how to get back to the truck. Do I hike to the road and take the loop of around 4 miles and risk dehydration, because there is no water on top. I think maybe I can flag down another hunter to get a bottle of water or a ride. The other option I was considering was to take mile and a half route back down the canyon where there is water at the bottom, but I would have to hike up the steep sob to get to the truck. I think that I have iodine tablets in my pack. I search my pack and they are no where to be found, then I remember that I took them out to wash my pack after packing out my deer from earlier in the year. Now, the decision is potential dehydration or potential beaver fever (Giardia). I decide that Beaver Fever is curable, but dehydration is not. I hike down and try to find a spot where the water is filtered by the dirt, but there was no such spot. I spend 30 minutes slowly drinking water and then fill the bladder half full to venture up the mountain. I make it back to the truck.
Monday Evening - After fiddling with the GPS, I find the road that is closest to the way point I set for the elk. I find the elk and finish cutting the elk up and notice that my shots were less than 3 inches apart one in one lung and the other in the heart. No idea which was first, but I like the think the first shot killed the elk and the second shot stopped the elk. There is enough light for one trip. I take the loins, liver, and all the scraps. It was the heaviest load. I made a scarecrow with a jacket around the meat cache and also urinated around the cache to keep the critters away.
Tuesday Morning - I get up at light and drive around to go pack out the elk. Upon getting to the location there is 15 elk in the same area as the downed bull. One spike and 14 or so cows. They move away toward the downed bull and then flipped a circle and ran back towards me and over the hill. Around the 3rd trip as I am heading up the hill, I turn around see something moving through the brush. I stop and see a bobcat, it stopped looked at me and decided he wanted no part of me.
Lots of lessons learned from this trip and I am grateful to take a great bull.
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Friday Morning - I hit Steer Ridge Road and right after the fork with Moon Ridge rd I spotted a group of elk on a distant ridge about 25 cows, 3 spikes, and a decent 5x5. I continue around Steer Ridge and peak into the roadless without seeing anything other than Wildhorses.
Friday Afternoon - I hit Moon Ridge to look down low. I settled on a landing strip overlooking ten mile canyon. I spotted a big black bear in the cedars and a little while later I spotted another black bear that was a lot smaller about a 1/2 mile from the first one. No elk.
Opening Morning - I hike into the area where I saw the 5x5 and spot nothing, but a group of wild horses. There was a lot of sign in the area, so I figured there wear just nomadically working the area.
Opening Afternoon - I went back down Moon Ridge and got to a spot wear I could glass and glassed the rest of the night turning up 0 elk.
Without seeing any elk on opening morning, I was eye balling the map at night trying to decide were to find the elk. I kind of wished that I also had a tag for wildhorses for some camp meat.
Sunday Morning - The alarm clock goes off and as I am getting dressed I hear a cow call, then another cow call, then a bugle. I think some joker is just blowing his calls, just to blow them. Then it keeps going on and on, then I hear a bugle farther away. I come to the realization that there are elk in camp. I set next to the tent waiting for it to get light. Every minute seemed like an hour. A cow appears in the binoculars, then another, then another. 15 total cow elk within 200 yards of camp. I hear two bugles down in the canyon from camp. I have to figure out how to get down the ridge without spooking the 15 cows in the direction that I want to go. Trying to back out, I was busted. The cows looked at me without knowing what I was and then decided that I wasn't important and went back to doing elk things. As I was walking down the ridge, they popped over the top. I was still hearing bugles down the ridge mingled with a lot of cow calls. I would pop up over the ridge to glass and spot elk, but no bulls. Elk were from the bottom to just short of the top, which made it tough to look down into the bottom without getting busted. The sun was coming up and I worried that my shadow would spook elk as well as my movement. I keep hearing bugles further down the ridge and have to plan on how to not get busted with all of the cows around. I spend the next hour slowly stalking moving from dead tree to juniper/cedar. I finally get to a point and spot a solid 5x5. I range him at 300 yards and where I am situated there is a branch between me and the bull, I need to bull to take 10 steps to the right. The bull is slowly feeding that way. As I am waiting a bigger 6 x 6 appears out of the trees. I instantly put the crosshairs on the bull. The bull stops broadside and bugles. I squeeze the trigger, the bull jets into the timber. The rest of the cows, spikes, a 4x4 and the 5x5 bunch up, but the big bull doesn't come out of the trees. I assumed the shot was good and was delighted that there was a road to the bottom. I wait a half hour and the elk move off without the 6x6. I decide to go back and get the truck. I am excited and I am fist pumping back to the truck. I thought I just killed an amazing bull. I drive down the road and get to the spot. I climb out and head into the trees where the bull would have went down. I find nothing. I go back up to see if I can find blood or hair from where the bull was shot. I spend the next two hours looking for sign of the bull and do not find anything. I return to the shot point and find that my bullet had smacked a tree. I believe that I shot right over the bull. I am sick to my stomach. I can't believe that I missed. 300 yards is a shot that I practiced and could put it in the kill zone any day of the week. I go over and over again the shot. I believe the angle may have been the cause or I might have had bull fever or I might have jerked the trigger. In other words, I am just sick about missing the bull. I believe the bull ran down the mountain into the cedars.
Sunday Evening - I head to wear I believe the big herd of elk went. The wind was blowing up canyon, so I started high. I started hiking still feeling sick after missing. I hike up and down a few ridges and then hear a bugle and put my binos up in the direction and spot a couple cow elk feeding. I move down the ridge on the opposite side and then stop, because something black is moving towards me. I pull up the binos and it is a black angus. The bovine looked lost and was making a v-line towards me. I looked further up the ridge and there was a wild horse on the opposite ridge. I keep going down the ridge, because if the horse spooks it will spook up the hill. I start to wrap around the ridge and can see and hear elk. While looking in the binos at elk, I hit the hoochie mama cow call to see how the elk would react. They could care less about the call. I figure that I can't get to the bull without spooking the cows, so I back out. When I get to the top of the next ridge I am greeted with multiple cow elk. There are elk all over the place. I can't walk anywhere without kicking out more elk. I wait until dark and start hiking back to the truck.
Monday Morning - After hearing cow calls throughout the night until sleep fell upon me. In the morning there were no calls to be heard from camp. I started to drive down moon ridge. I spot a group of cow elk right off the road. I glass the group, but there are no bulls. I cannot see all of the elk, so I drive up the road park and hike back in to get a better look. They run down the canyon and come up the other side, no bulls. I get back to the truck and look at the ridges on the other side of the road. I spot a 4 x 4 right off the bat. I watch him for a bit and then he goes down off the ridge. I spot a couple cows feeding in a canyon on the other side. Then I hear a bugle and then find a group of elk. These elk are higher on the ridge than I have seen elk. I study the bull and he looked like a bull I would be tickled with taking. I decide to go for it. I have to go down a canyon, which was a steep sob and then get to the bottom and work my way over and around to try and meet the elk at an ambush point. I get to the ambush point and there are no elk. I decide to hike up the hill to see if they passed me by or were bedded up top. After hiking to the top, I realize that I am running low on water. By running low, I mean I am almost out of water. I decide to press on. I am walking along, when I spot of a cow in the buck brush at 50 yards. I stop and remove the solo hunter gun cover and rack a shell, because I know that this will happen quick. As expected the hill erupts with elk. The elk do not know what I am, so they spook like Mule Deer and stop and look back. I find the bull in the scope, but there is a cow right behind him. The bull looks at me for seems like ages and then takes a couple steps forward. I squeeze the trigger and then rack another shell. I squeeze the trigger again and the elk drops. I get up to the elk and drop to a knee. The moment was surreal. I took a good elk with a tag that I may never draw again, in a place where I may never hunt again. This was really a once in a lifetime hunt. Reality sets in and I am out of water. I decide to pull off two quarters, rib meat, back strap, tenderloin, and the guts out of the elk - then put the game bags over the elk to give it shade as I venture back to the truck. I have to make a decision in how to get back to the truck. Do I hike to the road and take the loop of around 4 miles and risk dehydration, because there is no water on top. I think maybe I can flag down another hunter to get a bottle of water or a ride. The other option I was considering was to take mile and a half route back down the canyon where there is water at the bottom, but I would have to hike up the steep sob to get to the truck. I think that I have iodine tablets in my pack. I search my pack and they are no where to be found, then I remember that I took them out to wash my pack after packing out my deer from earlier in the year. Now, the decision is potential dehydration or potential beaver fever (Giardia). I decide that Beaver Fever is curable, but dehydration is not. I hike down and try to find a spot where the water is filtered by the dirt, but there was no such spot. I spend 30 minutes slowly drinking water and then fill the bladder half full to venture up the mountain. I make it back to the truck.
Monday Evening - After fiddling with the GPS, I find the road that is closest to the way point I set for the elk. I find the elk and finish cutting the elk up and notice that my shots were less than 3 inches apart one in one lung and the other in the heart. No idea which was first, but I like the think the first shot killed the elk and the second shot stopped the elk. There is enough light for one trip. I take the loins, liver, and all the scraps. It was the heaviest load. I made a scarecrow with a jacket around the meat cache and also urinated around the cache to keep the critters away.
Tuesday Morning - I get up at light and drive around to go pack out the elk. Upon getting to the location there is 15 elk in the same area as the downed bull. One spike and 14 or so cows. They move away toward the downed bull and then flipped a circle and ran back towards me and over the hill. Around the 3rd trip as I am heading up the hill, I turn around see something moving through the brush. I stop and see a bobcat, it stopped looked at me and decided he wanted no part of me.
Lots of lessons learned from this trip and I am grateful to take a great bull.
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