Jason.....you figured right...just been working.
As Dan said, Our tags were for 3 months...but we waited until the last day to go for it.......in an area we had never laid eyes on.
Buzz called and said for shits and giggles lets go whack a couple of cows.......and figuring since I did pay $150 for that damn tag back in the last summer, what the hell.
It was a quickie....you know the kind. Left the ponies in the barn, grabbed the packs and hauled ass up north. Hooked up with Buzz, and hit the road again. After driving all day, we arrived with and hour or so of daylight left, and maps identifying the hunt area. Not much time to set up a "last day hunt"...and we saw zero elk on the winter grounds.......but beef cattle had pretty much decimated it to a resemblance of Walmart parking lot, so it was no wonder the elk were not there. There was a big sign that said.." Important Elk Wintering Ground".....and right behind the sign was barren ground......except for the heaps of cow patties. It will be a long hard winter there......
Long story short, we had one hour to find elk for the next morning's hunt, and the road hunters were beating down every road, and the AYV's were in full force...really shaping up into a "quality" hunt
After being told there just weren't any elk, wolves had decimated the herd
, Fish and Game were wrong about herd numbers
, and there just weren't elk like it "used to be"
......we opted to take a high vantage point and pull out the glass and spot an adjacent roadless mountain on the wilderness edge. We were on the opposite side, ...a very roaded, open mountain side, with trucks constantly passing us wondering what the hell we were doing. Actually, what we were doing was glassing three seperate herds of elk.......two with at least 30-50 head..more than a mile away, but very do-able for the next morning.
As we broke out the packs....headed up the mountain in a windstorm two hours before daylight, we began to see the caravan of vehicles piling down the road just before daylight as we looked back behind us. There were probably 15-20 trucks total....none ever leaving the road, some racing 4 wheelers back and forth, and none ever fired a shot that day.
We continued our ascent....me slipping and falling in the dark and taking a face down bashing against my guns and the rocks.....it was plenty steep and slippery......and then add in wind gust as hard as I have ever seen...it was brutal.
Upon arrival on top...we followed the plan to drop over the backside and try to intercept the herds as they fed back across the open to the heavy timber.
It was over in a matter of minutes.......a herd of about 50 or 60 appeared right on que...oblivious to the death squad that had marched in the night to take a position on the top with them and do a WWF Smackdown on them......the shooting was quick and easy.....about 150-200 yards....and the herd gave their two sacrifices and continued on up the slope...looking back to make sure we were done.
This was about 8 am or so....we packed an elk each.....boned out, off that hell hole on our backs........it was after 4 pm when we had it in the truck heading home. The road hunters and ATV warriors were gauking at the two old boys who had no doubtedly killed the only two cows the wolves and Grizzlys had left in that unit........for there were just no elk there
as the some 15 vehicles would tell you in an instant.......as the herds "in plain sight" on the top chuckled and went about their merry way......
It was loads of fun.......no feedlot on truck hunt by any stretch...but rather a great way to spend the last day of January 2003......high at over 11,000 feet ...with a couple hundred elk sharing the view with you.
....ONLY HALF A YEAR UNTIL WE HEAD BACK OUT CHASING ELKS!!!!
