Whiskers
New member
Elk Pics
- Thread starter Whiskers
- Start date
Wyodeerhunter
Banned
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2002
- Messages
- 2,150
nice bull greg!
I love how you cleaned the beer cans out of the bed for the pic
BTW LOVE the shirt
I love how you cleaned the beer cans out of the bed for the pic
BTW LOVE the shirt
trophy_killer
Active member
haha.. thanks ernesto.
whiskers, thanks for posting the pics!
I'll type out the story tomorrow when i have more time..
whiskers, thanks for posting the pics!
I'll type out the story tomorrow when i have more time..
AZ402
Well-known member
Nice job dude!
Nut
New member
Congratulations on a nice bull.
Moosie
Grand poopa
Thats actually common in Salmon to hunt elk with a truck
Is that you TK ? You've grown up !!
Tell us the story man.
Is that you TK ? You've grown up !!
Tell us the story man.
IdahoBugler
Well-known member
Congrats on the bull.
trophy_killer
Active member
Alright so here goes the story..
My hunt was set to start out on the 1st of the month but since i had been so busy with work lately i really didnt have a whole lot of time to scout for a nice bull. I really wanted to shoot a 6 point but i knew that without finding one prior to the season and still having to work that it would be tough to get a nice bull before deer season was to start on the 10th. So luckily i had some friends that knew where a few decent bulls had been hanging out.
From the 28th to the 30th of September i set out to try to find me a bull. This year the weather had been warmer than usual so in those 3 different days of looking i saw a total of 4 elk. Not really what i was hoping for to say the least. So season opened on a wednesday and luckily i have a boss that is very bad ass and he let me take off to go hunting. So after only seeing 4 elk i decided to head into this area that i had heard from a friend of mine that he had called in a 6 point that was roughly a 320 bull. However upon reaching the gate that has been locked for the 8 years that my dad and i have been hunting in this area we were pissed off to see that someone had either cut the lock or someone had hookups and got a key, needless to say the gate was wide open and there was fresh tire tracks going down the little old logging road. That pretty much ruined that whole area in my mind since usually you can walk out that road for 60-75 mins and you glass the meadows on the surrounding hills and see elk.
Anyways that was really a bummer since now i had no idea what to do. Ive always had good luck seeing elk in that area and now it was ruined. So my dad and i basically spent the whole opening morning hunt overlooking a drainage to the south that pretty much everyone and their brother hunts in hopes of catching a bull trying to make his escape from the circus of people but we didnt see anything in 3+ hours or glassing. Not even a deer. So we decided to head back into town. That afternoon i get a call from a guy that i work with telling me that a friend of his took his son in law in and they shot a 307 bull and there was another bull roughly the same size but had a broken 5th point on the one side. So i meet up with him and he shows me how to access the area that the guy had shot his bull in so that was my plan for the evening hunt.
I get to the turn out where i was to park and the guys that got the 307 bull or the guy i work with must have told half of the tag holders as there was 3 trucks parked there. So again im thinking "WTF". Ive had this tag 3 times now and i have never had such crappy luck. So back to another back up plan. We went to a spot where the elk will sometimes feed up in the trees for the last 30 minutes or so of light and then they make their trek down to the hay fields at night and then head back up into the trees before day light. Once again NO ELK spotted. This was now the 4th day in a row between hunting and scouting and I had only seen 2 cows and 2 calves. Not really too fun since usually on this hunt i see 15-20 elk daily.
The second morning of the hunt my dad and i headed up to an area that we had heard from a friend of ours had a few elk running around including a 5x5 so i figured what the hell i guess we could check it out. We got up there and hunted the whole morning not seeing a single thing again. By this time i was really wondering what had happened to all the elk. We got back to our truck to find 3 ATV's parked nearby. Oh well, at least these guys were kind enough not to drive under or around the gate like so many other guys love to do. We headed down the mountain and about 20 minutes down we ran into an older man on an ATV who said he was with the other 3 guys and that they had gotten a 5 point down last night up there and they were packing it out this morning.
By this time i was kinda pissed. I had now hunted a day and a half and not even spotted an elk nor any sign of elk being in the area recently. So we get back to town and I had a bunch of stuff to do. We ended up running late for an evening hunt to anywhere 'good' so since the weather was finally clouding up I told my dad 'lets try where i killed my last 2 bulls' Well we debate it for a few minutes and decide that is about the only place to go given the time we have. We start heading up and I joke "Wouldnt it be funny if there was another bull in that clearing?" This area is solid sage brush except this one hill that is covered in pines and has a clearing near the top that is about 30 feet by 40 feet and i have killed two 5 point bulls in it both times i drew this tag. Well we are working our way up the sage hillside that runs parallel to the hill with the clearing and I spot an elk.
FINALLY! Pull up the binos and its just a calf.. I know there has to be more elk there and wait and finally about 5 mins later a cow walks out. I give them another 10-15 mins and nothing comes out so we decide to keep walking up. We make it another 500-600 yards and we are now directly across from the clearing and I sit down since the cow and calf are still standing there totally careless to the fact we are there. So we watch them for about 5 mins and a spike strolls out into the clearing. I know i can make this shot.. Ive made it twice so i put my rifle over my knee and hold it on the spike just to make sure im totally calm. I look at him the whole time thinking "Youre lucky you arent bigger" About 15 minutes go by and all 3 pick their heads up quick and look down the draw towards the area we had parked. We look down there and dont see anything so we continue to watch the elk. Finally they get nervous and move out of the clearing and into the trees.
We get up and walk roughly 100-150 yards farther up the hill and something told me to look back into that clearing and "CHIT!" theres a bull standing there and its not the spike! I look with my scope and can see his fronts and decide "What the hell.. He will do". its fairly easy to get them out of here and I hadnt been seeing any elk during the previous hunts. So i sit down and my dad says '427'. So me being the nice guy I am decide to give him a warning shot right over his back. The bull looks around real quick to determine which way the shot came from and starts to head down for the thick trees. I regain myself and take one more quick shot right before he goes into the trees and my dad goes "How the hell did you miss?" I tell him "That first shot i jerked but the second felt good"
So I start working my way over to where the bull last was when i saw him meanwhile i jumped the rest of the herd and I have no clue what that consisted of.. It just sounded like a half a dozen or so elk running up and over the hillside. I get to where the bull was when I shot and there was no blood. I start heading down the hill a ways and find his tracks and I can tell they are his because they are heading downhill and they were far away from the other elk I had jumped. Finally after about 100 yards of tracking him (my first ever animal I had to track) There he was laying spread eagle about 50 yards down the hill from me. So after the joy of gutting this thing we decided to just cut him in half and drag him to the truck in pieces. That is still hard work!!
Let me just say that is the biggest pain in the ass is trying to load an elk in the back of the truck in pieces. We fumbled around in the dark with our head lamps trying to get him in there in 2 pieces for probably half an hour. You have to love the fact that I have a lifted truck and big tires on it. Now i realize if it ever happens again im just gonna cut the thing into 3 or 4 pieces, no more of this busting ass trying to get it in there . There you have it!
My hunt was set to start out on the 1st of the month but since i had been so busy with work lately i really didnt have a whole lot of time to scout for a nice bull. I really wanted to shoot a 6 point but i knew that without finding one prior to the season and still having to work that it would be tough to get a nice bull before deer season was to start on the 10th. So luckily i had some friends that knew where a few decent bulls had been hanging out.
From the 28th to the 30th of September i set out to try to find me a bull. This year the weather had been warmer than usual so in those 3 different days of looking i saw a total of 4 elk. Not really what i was hoping for to say the least. So season opened on a wednesday and luckily i have a boss that is very bad ass and he let me take off to go hunting. So after only seeing 4 elk i decided to head into this area that i had heard from a friend of mine that he had called in a 6 point that was roughly a 320 bull. However upon reaching the gate that has been locked for the 8 years that my dad and i have been hunting in this area we were pissed off to see that someone had either cut the lock or someone had hookups and got a key, needless to say the gate was wide open and there was fresh tire tracks going down the little old logging road. That pretty much ruined that whole area in my mind since usually you can walk out that road for 60-75 mins and you glass the meadows on the surrounding hills and see elk.
Anyways that was really a bummer since now i had no idea what to do. Ive always had good luck seeing elk in that area and now it was ruined. So my dad and i basically spent the whole opening morning hunt overlooking a drainage to the south that pretty much everyone and their brother hunts in hopes of catching a bull trying to make his escape from the circus of people but we didnt see anything in 3+ hours or glassing. Not even a deer. So we decided to head back into town. That afternoon i get a call from a guy that i work with telling me that a friend of his took his son in law in and they shot a 307 bull and there was another bull roughly the same size but had a broken 5th point on the one side. So i meet up with him and he shows me how to access the area that the guy had shot his bull in so that was my plan for the evening hunt.
I get to the turn out where i was to park and the guys that got the 307 bull or the guy i work with must have told half of the tag holders as there was 3 trucks parked there. So again im thinking "WTF". Ive had this tag 3 times now and i have never had such crappy luck. So back to another back up plan. We went to a spot where the elk will sometimes feed up in the trees for the last 30 minutes or so of light and then they make their trek down to the hay fields at night and then head back up into the trees before day light. Once again NO ELK spotted. This was now the 4th day in a row between hunting and scouting and I had only seen 2 cows and 2 calves. Not really too fun since usually on this hunt i see 15-20 elk daily.
The second morning of the hunt my dad and i headed up to an area that we had heard from a friend of ours had a few elk running around including a 5x5 so i figured what the hell i guess we could check it out. We got up there and hunted the whole morning not seeing a single thing again. By this time i was really wondering what had happened to all the elk. We got back to our truck to find 3 ATV's parked nearby. Oh well, at least these guys were kind enough not to drive under or around the gate like so many other guys love to do. We headed down the mountain and about 20 minutes down we ran into an older man on an ATV who said he was with the other 3 guys and that they had gotten a 5 point down last night up there and they were packing it out this morning.
By this time i was kinda pissed. I had now hunted a day and a half and not even spotted an elk nor any sign of elk being in the area recently. So we get back to town and I had a bunch of stuff to do. We ended up running late for an evening hunt to anywhere 'good' so since the weather was finally clouding up I told my dad 'lets try where i killed my last 2 bulls' Well we debate it for a few minutes and decide that is about the only place to go given the time we have. We start heading up and I joke "Wouldnt it be funny if there was another bull in that clearing?" This area is solid sage brush except this one hill that is covered in pines and has a clearing near the top that is about 30 feet by 40 feet and i have killed two 5 point bulls in it both times i drew this tag. Well we are working our way up the sage hillside that runs parallel to the hill with the clearing and I spot an elk.
FINALLY! Pull up the binos and its just a calf.. I know there has to be more elk there and wait and finally about 5 mins later a cow walks out. I give them another 10-15 mins and nothing comes out so we decide to keep walking up. We make it another 500-600 yards and we are now directly across from the clearing and I sit down since the cow and calf are still standing there totally careless to the fact we are there. So we watch them for about 5 mins and a spike strolls out into the clearing. I know i can make this shot.. Ive made it twice so i put my rifle over my knee and hold it on the spike just to make sure im totally calm. I look at him the whole time thinking "Youre lucky you arent bigger" About 15 minutes go by and all 3 pick their heads up quick and look down the draw towards the area we had parked. We look down there and dont see anything so we continue to watch the elk. Finally they get nervous and move out of the clearing and into the trees.
We get up and walk roughly 100-150 yards farther up the hill and something told me to look back into that clearing and "CHIT!" theres a bull standing there and its not the spike! I look with my scope and can see his fronts and decide "What the hell.. He will do". its fairly easy to get them out of here and I hadnt been seeing any elk during the previous hunts. So i sit down and my dad says '427'. So me being the nice guy I am decide to give him a warning shot right over his back. The bull looks around real quick to determine which way the shot came from and starts to head down for the thick trees. I regain myself and take one more quick shot right before he goes into the trees and my dad goes "How the hell did you miss?" I tell him "That first shot i jerked but the second felt good"
So I start working my way over to where the bull last was when i saw him meanwhile i jumped the rest of the herd and I have no clue what that consisted of.. It just sounded like a half a dozen or so elk running up and over the hillside. I get to where the bull was when I shot and there was no blood. I start heading down the hill a ways and find his tracks and I can tell they are his because they are heading downhill and they were far away from the other elk I had jumped. Finally after about 100 yards of tracking him (my first ever animal I had to track) There he was laying spread eagle about 50 yards down the hill from me. So after the joy of gutting this thing we decided to just cut him in half and drag him to the truck in pieces. That is still hard work!!
Let me just say that is the biggest pain in the ass is trying to load an elk in the back of the truck in pieces. We fumbled around in the dark with our head lamps trying to get him in there in 2 pieces for probably half an hour. You have to love the fact that I have a lifted truck and big tires on it. Now i realize if it ever happens again im just gonna cut the thing into 3 or 4 pieces, no more of this busting ass trying to get it in there . There you have it!
trophy_killer
Active member
Holy hell that turned out long!
For those of you that dont want to read the whole thing and just want the main story start on paragraph 6.
For those of you that dont want to read the whole thing and just want the main story start on paragraph 6.
greg, it might be to your advantage not to lift your truck, it still is work trying to load an elk in the back of non lifted truck,
I know it dont look as cool, but so many more things are better with a non lifted truck, like side hilling...................LOL
again congraulations on your elk
I know it dont look as cool, but so many more things are better with a non lifted truck, like side hilling...................LOL
again congraulations on your elk
Whiskers
New member
Good story, I liked it. Not too long.
Muleyslyr
New member
Right on....great story. Sounds like you got these 5pts. down to an art. Congrats to ya!
TOM IN TENNESSEE
New member
Congrats!!! Gud story!!! And just roll over the guys that don't like lifted truks wid yurs!!
