Well it started out on Sunday afternoon..I took my nephew into the Big hole for a walk in elk hunt. His first. The first bad thing was the river was froze half over, so instead of driving a couple extra miles to where I usually park and walk in, it was a walk from there. The snow was about four inches and the hike was five miles. We found my old camp well after dark and the lean to was caved in and totally collapsed. So we spent the next couple hours getting every thing cleaned up and the snow cleaned off the ground well enough to set the tent up. Finally hit the sack and had a good rest. Up early the next morning, I turned my nephew loose into a good area up on the hill were I shot a spike last year, while I took off for the top of the mountain on a scouting run. Finally broke some tracks that were half filled in and set to following. They meanered around for about four miles, in the mean time, I knew I was gaining on them because I ran across three sets of beds in the snow and the tracks had less snow in them each time. On the third set of beds, I noticed that there was no snow in the beds or in the exit tracks..Looking up in the trees there was the heard, there was about a dozen to the group. I wasn't to concerend on what I shot since I had a cow tag. There was a calf looking at me and would have been an easy shot, but I was after some thing a little bigger. Manuvering around the trees, I picked out what looked to be a good sized cow. I couldn't see the whole head and only the hind end with the stomach. I could also see part of its neck. So that is what I shot. It dropped like a rock and the rest of the herd scatterd as expected when the silence of the woods is shatterd by the sound of a 300wthby. Getting over to the downed animal, I realized I had shot a 2x3. Pics will be in next week some time along with the pics of my buck from a couple weeks ago. Have lots to do before then. I packed in two loads the elk to our camp a mile and a half away..Then this morning I packed the front half of the elk the five miles to the truck in one load..That was kinda heavy...LOL..Tomorrow we will go up after the rest of the camp and I will carry the back half out in one load. It, I am guessing will hit the scales at around 110-120 lbs....That is the fun I have been having for the last few days....
