Alright, here is the AAR.
We drove to Laramie on Friday. Living at 3-400 feet above sea level, I figured a night taking it easy at 7000 feet would be a good idea before going higher.
Opening morning we drove down to our hunting unit in Colorado. When we pulled into the little parking area at the trail head I knew we had problems. This is the fifth time I've hunted this area and have never had more than one other car at the trail head, this time there were a dozen vehicles already there.
There was one hunter camped there who's truck wouldn't start. We gave him a jump and he said he was going to get a new battery and find a new place to hunt.
We loaded our gear and hiked in around three miles. The trail we usually set up camp along had a lot of tracks on it so I took a chance on a trail south of where we usually hunt and it paid off. We only saw one camp along that trail and ran into an outfitter on horseback with a couple of hunters. We saw no elk sign but plenty of moose sign.
After setting up camp in a basin around 9300' we hunted the afternoon with no fresh sign of elk seen. Traditional wallows were clean, no bugles, no fresh droppings...nothing.
The breakfast of champions.
Day two we headed to a basin downhill from camp and listened to moose calling until shooting light when I could here something rubbing a tree. We crept in in time to see a bull moose ducking into the woods. It was still dark enough that all my daughter could really see was a black blob.
We dropped into the valley where we would have ended up yesterday if we'd stayed on the intended trail. We immediately ran into a few guys from Virginia. They hadn't seen any sign of elk either. My daughter and I hiked up a draw I knew pretty well. When we were getting near the top I looked across the valley from us and saw another hunter in orange. To the west of him was a camp, looked like a guy and his kid camping. A little farther west were two guys packing out elk quarters. A little farther west was a wall tent with horses. Way too crowded for me, I hiked to the top of the ridge we were on and saw two more hunters across a little saddle from us. Screw this, we're going back up past camp where we aren't in the middle of a circus.
We covered some miles that day and never saw any sign of elk.
Day three we set up in a saddle above our camp and waited, hoping to hear some bugles that couldn't be attributed to hunters. A little after shooting light I spotted a cow moose in the woods to the west of us. I grabbed my daughter and pulled her to her feet. "Moose cow." I pointed to it. "Whoa, I didn't know they were so huge!" was her reply. I told her it was just a cow "wait until you see a bull". Just then the bull came in 30 yards behind her grunting all the way. Of course, a nice bull 30 yards away, and no moose tag! An hour later we talked to another hunter who wasn't having any luck then headed back to camp for some breakfast.
This is what we ran into in front of our camp. You can see one of our tents above the cow.
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In the afternoon we headed further out from camp to a meadow where I'd had some luck in the past but all we saw that evening was a doe mule deer.
The next day we hunted our way back to the truck to resupply. We met a couple unloading horses for a trail ride who said they had been in RMNP the previous day and heard the first bugle of the season but weren't seeing many elk. They blamed the heat and the fact that there was food everywhere. That and the rut just wasn't going strong yet. We took a different route back to camp to check some new ground for sign...still nothing.
That evening we set up on a ridge a half mile or so south of camp and heard some hunters bugling below us. We knew they were hunters because we could hear them talking. Still, later, near dark there was a little bit of bugling off to our left.
That night I heard a couple of bugles.
The next day we had bugling over the ridge south of camp. Not sure if it was an elk or hunters we sneaked in but couldn't find an elk and he wouldn't respond to the little bit of calling that I did. We did see our friend Bullwinkle again though.
In the afternoon we climbed to the top of a high, steep, ridge that sat over a large valley. My intent was to relax during the middle of the day and hunt a little later. A front blew in and changed our plans. The wind had to be gusting over 40mph and I decided I didn't want to be under a bunch of beetle killed pines. We headed off to find an aspen grove to hunker down in. A little rain started to fall and we heard a bugle. In the wind I couldn't tell exactly where it came from. A few minutes later we heard it again, it was coming from the slope under the ridge.
We crept in. The bull was bugling enough to keep us keyed in on his position and the wind was covering our movement. We caught him standing in the timber about 80 yards away. She couldn't shoot because I couldn't see his head, we are in a 4pt unit. I figured if we were this close maybe a bugle will get him mad enough to come in. I bugled and he just walked away. We tried to get in front of him but couldn't find him again. That evening we heard him bugle a couple of times but he was on the move and we couldn't catch up.
That night we heard that bull above camp bugling all night. He shut up about fifteen minutes before shooting light. Unfortunately that was the morning we were packing out. The pack out was uneventful. We ran into a couple of hunters from Missouri and gave them the location and behavior of the bugling bull. We also ran into three hunters about a mile from the trail head. One of them lives across the river from me. Small world.
Overall it was a very fun trip and my daughter enjoyed it. Unfortunately the hunting wasn't worth a damn. I think it is time to find an area that isn't as crowded as this one has become.
I'll be happy to answer any questions.
