This summer 1_pointer decided that he wanted to come over and hunt cow elk in Colorado, and wondered if I could give any insight to the leftover tag list. I told him to buy a tag in the unit I was hunting and come along with me. I'm sure he had no idea what he was getting himself into. 
The night before the opener, we glassed up 40 elk feeding on public land, including 12 legal bulls, two of which were 6x6's. We made a plan to sneak in on them opening morning, and it worked out perfectly. We were moving through a stand of quakies when cows and calves started "chirping" right out in front of us. Soon we could pick out bits and pieces of elk as them fed through the aspens: a leg here, an antler there. I glassed through the thick trees hoping to find one of the good bulls in a shooting lane.
Before long, I spotted a 6x6, but he didn't quite offer a perfect shot. Meanwhile, a cow had come into plain view right above us, but 1_pointer held off, hoping I could shoot the bull. Suddenly, they winded us or spotted us moving, because the whole herd took off and left us wondering what happened. I'm thankful that 1_p didn't beat me over the head with his rifle like I'm sure he wanted to. We didn't see another elk that day or the next two.
Sunrise on day three of the hunt:
By day four, we decided to split up to cover more country. I knew that with the hunting pressure and warm weather, I'd have to find the thickest, darkest, nastiest timber in the unit if I hoped to locate any elk. Sure enough, I stumbled into a herd of about 30 elk right at daylight. Instead of shooting a cow and filling my cow tag, I got greedy and shot this giant public land bull.
This bull would make a nice mule deer :
When we got back to the truck with the last load of elk, I leaned the trekking pole that 1_pointer had loaned me up against my truck and forgot about it until the next morning when we pulled back into that parking spot and Tyler found it laying on the ground in the shape of a banana. Sorry about that, 1_p!
My greed got the better of me as the rest of the hunt, the only elk I saw was a single bull. Last night as we got into camp, 1_pointer noticed that one of the tires on my truck was hissing. A friend of mine taught me a trick a long time ago: when you don't really want to do something, you move very slowly and act like you don't know what you're doing. Eventually, somebody will jump in and take over. After 1_pointer finished changing my tire, we had some dinner and listened to the last World Series game on the radio before hitting the sack.
This morning we got up and broke camp, then headed down the mountain. I told 1_p that I would split the elk with him, so I threw a front and hind quarter into his cooler and poked a hole in the inside of his cooler with a leg bone. Sorry about that, 1_p!
We stopped in town to get gas before heading our seperate ways. It was then that I discovered that sometime in the previous 36 hours I had lost my wallet. We tore apart the cab of my truck and all of my bags of gear with no luck. So 1_p bought me $20 in gas and sent me on my way. I'll get ya back, 1_p!
The night before the opener, we glassed up 40 elk feeding on public land, including 12 legal bulls, two of which were 6x6's. We made a plan to sneak in on them opening morning, and it worked out perfectly. We were moving through a stand of quakies when cows and calves started "chirping" right out in front of us. Soon we could pick out bits and pieces of elk as them fed through the aspens: a leg here, an antler there. I glassed through the thick trees hoping to find one of the good bulls in a shooting lane.
Before long, I spotted a 6x6, but he didn't quite offer a perfect shot. Meanwhile, a cow had come into plain view right above us, but 1_pointer held off, hoping I could shoot the bull. Suddenly, they winded us or spotted us moving, because the whole herd took off and left us wondering what happened. I'm thankful that 1_p didn't beat me over the head with his rifle like I'm sure he wanted to. We didn't see another elk that day or the next two.
Sunrise on day three of the hunt:
By day four, we decided to split up to cover more country. I knew that with the hunting pressure and warm weather, I'd have to find the thickest, darkest, nastiest timber in the unit if I hoped to locate any elk. Sure enough, I stumbled into a herd of about 30 elk right at daylight. Instead of shooting a cow and filling my cow tag, I got greedy and shot this giant public land bull.
This bull would make a nice mule deer
:
When we got back to the truck with the last load of elk, I leaned the trekking pole that 1_pointer had loaned me up against my truck and forgot about it until the next morning when we pulled back into that parking spot and Tyler found it laying on the ground in the shape of a banana. Sorry about that, 1_p!
My greed got the better of me as the rest of the hunt, the only elk I saw was a single bull. Last night as we got into camp, 1_pointer noticed that one of the tires on my truck was hissing. A friend of mine taught me a trick a long time ago: when you don't really want to do something, you move very slowly and act like you don't know what you're doing. Eventually, somebody will jump in and take over. After 1_pointer finished changing my tire, we had some dinner and listened to the last World Series game on the radio before hitting the sack.
This morning we got up and broke camp, then headed down the mountain. I told 1_p that I would split the elk with him, so I threw a front and hind quarter into his cooler and poked a hole in the inside of his cooler with a leg bone. Sorry about that, 1_p!
We stopped in town to get gas before heading our seperate ways. It was then that I discovered that sometime in the previous 36 hours I had lost my wallet. We tore apart the cab of my truck and all of my bags of gear with no luck. So 1_p bought me $20 in gas and sent me on my way. I'll get ya back, 1_p!
