IDsageStalker
New member
Hey guys, Couldn't wait to get on here and share the good news. My DIY public land Idaho hunt was a success. Second day of the season, 5th day in the woods. we backpacked in and spent the first four days watching the same elk (three 5x5s some 4x4s and spikes and @ 12 cows) do the exact same thing day and night. Thank goodness for seeing these elk, it made the driving sleet and 20 degree temps more bearable. I watched from the opposite ridgeline thinking about backstraps and how my tag was practically filled already. Then the day before openeing day hit and one four wheeler after another came cruising down the closed road I had hiked three miles down. Needless to say that spot was completely lacking in the one crucial element to my success the next day....ELK... I made a new gameplan, Hoofed it back to the truck and moved about 10 miles, hiked another three miles up a horse trail the following morning and settled in. No sooner did my behind hit the sagebrush than I saw a cow through the binos, then another, and another, until I was watching nearly a hundred head being pushed up the canyon on the opposite ridgline by six or seven different bulls. after watching them climb straight up about 800 feet in two minutes I knew it was time to move. I dropped the 50lbs of dead weight on my back and took off through the timer, rifle in hand, like last of the Mohicans. as I came crashing through a dark creek bottom half a mile later a bugle eruputed. As I remember it, the hair on my neck stood up, sapplings shook, and clouds parted, having never heard a bull that close I was startled to say the least. still focused I shouldered the rifle in the direction the sound came from, Big mistake. In my haste to get closer my scope was still on max power from the sage country I had just left. I quickly turned it down to 6x. Now where is he!? after what felt like a lifetime I heard a small rock roll down the bank across from me, I looked up to see a large body and branched antlers through the brush. Go time! I threaded the needle through the pines and the 180gr. TTSX from my .300Win jellied both lungs at what I later ranged to be 72 yards. First elk hunt, first elk down.
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