Saturday 11-3: Plan C
We all woke fairly early, had enough time to make a nice breakfast and get on the road with plenty of time. We managed to make it our plan C location right at legal shooting light.
As an aside, for whatever reason, this day I finally felt like I didn't really care if we found animals or not, where the previous two days not finding anything definitely was getting to me. It wasn't a defeated kind of attitude by any means, but more of accepting (again!) that hunting can be hard, but that doesn't mean its not fun even not seeing anything. Going into this hunt, that very attitude of not enjoying a hunt when not having success was something I experienced during my cow hunt, and that I was very consciously trying to change for this hunt. Obviously that didn't happen until day 3, and to be honest I have NO idea what was different from Friday to Saturday that caused the change but I was sure glad for it. Anyway, back to it!
We had about a mile hike over a flat plateau like ridge before we broke out and had some country to glass:
We managed to turn up some moo-cows on a distant ridge, but nothing else. There were a couple large benches below the main ridge that would let us see further into the drainage and so we worked our way down glassing as we went.
We worked over to a bit of a rocky knife ridge that gave us a great vantage point down the drainage:
And back up toward the main plateau ridge we eventually needed to head back up to:
It was amazing country, the weather was fairly calm, but we just could not turn up any critters...
After lunch we started working our way back up to the main ridge, but at least a mile or so further south than where we had come down from. This meant we now had some two sets of rocky bluffs to negotiate between each of the benches we needed to climb up. Not a big deal but it did force us to wander around a bit.
My dad found a good gentle spot where we could get up past the first band. Right at the top of that little climb was a lone bleached out elk rib... I personally didn't think much of it, having tried finding carcasses in the past based on a few bones and rarely finding the rest.
We had about 2-300 yards of bench before our the next and final bluff we needed to get over, and a decent batch of brush (aspen, bitter brush and juniper) to work through to get there. We all wandered in, each taking a slightly different line. I headed left compared to my Dad and uncle and not 10 steps into the brush I notice a pile of elk bones and then a REALLY nice set of antlers! "Dead Head!!" I called out (they were only 15 yards away...).
Now, the irony of this was just two nights before (after I found the elk shed) when were discussing my dad and uncles plans to go look for sheds my uncle was saying he'd just really like to find a decent dead head.
My uncle and Dad walk over and my uncle is laughing, (and slightly disgusted in a good way) saying "and WHY didn't I go left and YOU go right!?" He wasn't at all mad at me obviously, to be clear. So, now, not having seen any animals, but a nice elk rack to haul out, we had a new plan, lets get back to the truck (and back to camp where we had steak dinner plans)! My uncle offered to carry the dead head and Dad and I would find clear paths for him to get through.
I have to say I was slightly bummed that my uncle wasn't the one to actually find the dead head, especially given our conversation from two nights before. On the other hand, at the same time I was super jacked. I've only found one or two really old elk dead-heads that were not worth hauling out of the woods. While this one was bleached out, it was in great shape otherwise.
As we were strapping up the dead head my dad says, "Now you're not going to shoot a deer while we're down off the ridge are you??"
).
