Hunt recap - first elk

[Deckerp]

I went into this past third rifle season with a bull elk tag, a doe tag, and a strong desire to find some success. The cow elk from last year that my hunting partner killed and we split had run out, the deer I had killed earlier this year on a private land tag had tested positive for cwd, and despite some close calls I hadn’t connected with a cow elk during the archery season. I just had one turkey breast left over from the spring! Plus, I had yet to kill an elk of my own despite quite a bit of hard effort and close calls.

I headed out Thursday morning so that there would be 3 prime time glassing opportunities before opener so that we could ideally get it done opening morning before things get blown up. Our style is generally ultra mobile, glassing based - don’t go in anywhere that we haven’t seen elk but definitely willing to hike fairly hard to glassing vantages and will backpack camp when advantageous.

I went in with a bunch of new glassing spots in mind at a lower elevation band then previous hunts since this was the first time I had been there in 3rd and I had heard they were lower during first season. However, when I arrived Thursday afternoon and headed up the first access road on my list there were more camps and horses down low than I had ever seen including a camp at the new spot I had been planning to hike in from. So I scraped that and drove higher up into the snow to hit a phenomenal glassing spot that had literally always presented elk. Sure enough within a few minutes of glassing I spotted elk on the far side. The thing is though, this place is the last spot you wanna have to pack an elk out of - the access is on the top and you drop into a wicked steep 2200’ deep canyon. Towards the end of light I spotted a lone bull on the near side fairly far up the canyon - not a terrible spot. This made me feel that the elk where no longer lower down and would probably be found in the same areas we have found them in past years.

 

[Deckerp]

To be continued.

 

[Sytes]

To be followed.

 

[Deckerp]

As night fell I hiked back to my truck, slightly concerned I would have trouble driving back up a side spur I had driven down in the snow but was pleased to get back out without issue. I left this first area (I will call it area A) and drove to a different access road to meet my hunting partner and glass a different drainage Friday morning.

We got up at 4am or so to finish the drive up to the end of this road. The snow was substantial towards the end but had been tracked down and caused no issues in the early morning temperatures.

Leaving the trucks in the dark we hiked about 45min out a ridge where we had been several times before in past years. At out stopping point the ridge turns into an impassable rock system. From here you can glass into both the drainages on either side. The drainage to the south can be accessed by dropping down a nasty Aspen choked shoot, while the drainage to the north is completely cliffed out on this section of ridge. We made the drainage to the south our glassing priority for the first hour of light and both glassed this one. We didn’t turn up anything.



Moving our attention to the north drainage we started glassing into the mixed timber and small openings. And before king I spotted four bulls in the drainage to the north.



There had been a fire closure here earlier in the year so we weren’t sure if we could hunt it or not. To access it the best option is to make a 2 hour drive down and around and we figured that doing that and checking for closure signs would be our best option since the day was a holiday and we thought CPW and forest service would be closed. On the way down we talked with a hunter that works for the forest service and told us it was open. At that point we should have turned around and gone back to the same spot for the final glassing before opener to verify their evening location, but we continued on thinking to be closer to striking distance.

We proceeded to hike into this drainage and and then hike up the north slope below where we had been that morning to the base of the cliffs. This was a pretty difficult endeavor as it was hard to find a vantage and the slope was steep and snowy.



We couldn’t get as high and the vantage wasn’t ideal - the slope we are trying to look at has a lot mixed trees and a lot of little holes and pockets - it’s not just meadows. As this was the evening before opener it’s really the key glassing session - but it’s largely a bust. My hunting partner spots an elk momentarily but it’s gone before we can get a good look at it and it’s not in a spot that would be easy to kill.

 

[Deckerp]

We hike out in the dark and after some debate decide to abandon this area for now. I am reluctant to attempt any type of still hunt through their zone without knowing exactly where the bulls are. We haven’t seen much of any pressure here and can’t imagine anyone else crazy enough to go the the lengths necessary to glass these elk up. We think that if we leave things alone we can come back and pick up where we left off later if necessary.

In the past, Area A has gotten hit pretty hard on opener and so we figure we have one shot at that bull I saw Thursday night. Without a more recent sighting our hope is he will be out feeding in a similar area at first light. We make part of the drive that night and get up early the next morning to finish it off intending to be at a point above where the bull was at first light to look down in.

Unfortunately on the drive up we try to drive in the final side road to get a bit closer and we get both our trucks stuck in the snow. Luckily I have one set of chains which we first put on my truck and attempt to get further in. Even with the chains this is a no go. We switch the chains to my buddies truck but it’s still not enough for him to back out so we shovel a turn around and get him turned around. I am able to turn around without chains and we get our trucks back out to the start of this side access. This process takes about an hour, so after hiking in to the glassing spot we are about an hour behind schedule and it’s already light. Nevertheless we set up on some cliffs above where I had seen the bull and have a view of that and a few other meadows, as well as the far side of the drainage. He isn’t there and doesn’t show. (plenty of elk on the far side though).

We had expected this zone to blow up that morning but we don’t hear a single shot.

 

[Deckerp]

We bailed out of this zone and decided to do a mid day check out of one of the new lower spots I had before deciding what we wanted to do that evening. The glassing vantage is great and the country looks promising but after glassing for a bit we pick up 4 hunter groups throughout the zone and figure it’s pretty well blown and not worth an evening attempt.

From this vantage the one direction looks like good elk country but the other way looks like good deer country so we decide to glass that way for a bit before we head to a different spot of the evening. Sure enough, my hunting partner spots a group of does two ridges over above the road we’d come in on. They are side hilling and move out of sight. We drive to the next ridge but can’t pick them back up. We think they are either behind a ridge in this little bottom or in a stand of aspens. We park the trucks and get the wind before stalking over the ridge to get a view into the little bottom. No luck. We decide to try a little deer drive, my buddy circles the trees and then starts into them while I set up across the bottom with a view of the hill. Sure enough I see three does come out, but they head down the hill towards the road. I circled around so I had a safe backstop and got into about 300 yards. It was a bit too easy as they had definitely seen me (wind was good) and actually ended up closing the distance to 200, at which point I shot the lead dead. The shot was ideal and she went down quickly. I was using a 180g Hammer Hunter out of a 300WSM. We didn’t recover the bullet which appeared to stop just under the off hide but must have fallen back into the chest cavity during the death throes. It punched a rib but didn’t hit any shoulder bones and seemed to go a good job dumping its energy into the deer.

She was only a couple hundred yards off the road but by the time we finished getting it quartered and into the cooler it was about dark. This had been a fun aside from the elk hunt and meant meet for the freezers. (We split whatever we get hunting together)

 

[Deckerp]

That night we drove back to access the road leads to the dead end ridge from Friday morning but camped about half way up where we had a good glassing vantage right from the trucks to some lower country. (we sleep in the beds when at the trucks).



We slept in till nearly first light and then set up to glass. In addition to some hunters on the other side we spot a group of three Bull elk- they are too far off for any kinda of move that morning and unlike the opener before, this morning we hear a lot of gun shots. The first few shots don’t seem to bother these guys but after a few more groups of shots they look to lightly spook. I don’t know if that was from the shots or if they winded some unseen hunters that may have been near them. Since there were a fair number of hunters on their side of the canyon we decided to try and relocate the bachelor group from Friday morning.



So for Sunday evening’s glassing session we hiked back out the ridge that looks into the valley to the north and the valley to the south. You can get a better view into each if you drop down and out onto fingers of rock so we split up agreeing that if my partner should see elk within striking distance on his side he should just go and if not we will meet back on the ridge top. I spot one elk on my side in a good spot but the light was really fading and I was not able to see antlers - based on the coloration I believe it was a bull.

When I get to the ridge at dark my buddy isn’t there. I figure he spotted something and went after it. We communicate with SpotX but the lag is significant. All I get from him is “no luck” and after waiting an hour after last light I start to get a bit concerned. Finally after another 20min I hear him coming up the hill and see his headlight. He’d spotted elk almost immediately and with an hour of light remaining decided to go after them. He didn’t take the time to make sure they were bulls but said they were also light bodied. He wasn’t able to find them that evening but we made a plan to go after his elk in the morning and to be near where he’d last seen them that evening at first light.

 

[Deckerp]

Monday morning is an early 3:30am wake-up to get into where we wanted by first light. We get within a few hundred yards of the first potential zone and wait until headlamps aren’t before working our way up into the first open finger ridge. Nothing. We continue to work west siding hilling to the next finger ridge to gain a view of the next ridge over. Eventually, I spot a light bodied elk on the furthest clearing. I quickly close the distance as much as I can and get my rifle set up only to find that it’s a cow!





That’s the only elk we spot that morning and although we have an idea of where they are bedded we suspect they might be all cows after all. After a little test we decide that rather than risk wasting the evening chasing cows here we will bail out of there and try the elk I had seen the night before in the same general drainage as the four bulls we’d seen Friday morning. (Up till now I feel like we have been bouncing around too much but at the time it’s seemed like the right call)

We make the long hike out and the long drive around to access this other area. Rather than hiking up the north slope to glass across to the south face like Friday night, we decide to get up on the ridge and glass down into the south facing slope from the cliff systems above. What we can see will be more limited, BUT if any bulls appear in our area we’d have a good chance of a shot opportunity.





20minutes before last light we see three elk on the furthest clearing about 1400yards away. (Why can’t they ever show up closer?) We hadn’t brought the spotter since it was a close area we were looking over but we could tell two were sparring. It looked too far to close the distance in time but I gave it a go anyway - grabbing my rifle, tripod, range finder and headlamp I started running/hiking as fast as I possibly could to another closer rock formation. I made it too! 5 minutes till last light! But the glass on my range finder was not up to the task and I could barely decern the hillside to range let alone the actual elk which were still about 700yards away.
Over the years I have increased the shooting distance I would be confident at and currently feel that 500 yards is generally a good maximum shot distance if conditions allowed. In reality my bullet/load could allow a shot out to 800. The air was dead calm this night - calmer than any conditions I have ever shot in actually, and there was a perfect flat rock for a nice prone set up. Had the light been good with time for a good range and condition check I might (if I am being honest) have been tempted - but then again if there had been time I could have just closed the distance. As it was with the light failing there was no way.



We headed back to the trucks knowing those elk would likely still be out in that clearing the next morning.

 

[Westelker]

You guys are showing good judgement, patience and persistence. Just don't kill your bull too far down the hill, that you can't pack out. Is there any access down below to hunt upward? Looks like fine elk country. Good luck to you boys!!

 

[hank4elk]

Oh to young again.
Good Luck and Good Hunting.

 

[Deckerp]

My hunting partner needed to leave either Monday night Or Tuesday morning, after that long day Monday, despite (or maybe because of) the excellent lead for the next morning he decides to head home after hiking out.

With the best opportunity to kill an elk yet I make an obviously poor decision and decide to do some R and R before backpacking back onto that ridge. Rather than getting back in there before light the next morning I grabbed a cheap hotel and an expensive hot shower for the night. The next morning I sleep in and then pack my pack for a two night effort on those elk.

There was no water up there so I begrudgingly carry 5.5L of water and head back up that afternoon. I set up camp 3/4s of a mile down the ridge from where we had been glassing the night before and then head up to the spot I had run to that was 700yards out from the elk the prior night.




From here I could see a decent bit to both sides and the thermals seemed to continue to blow upward until after last light- I think because the south facing rocks I was atop stored heat for awhile. More than an hour before last light I spotted two elk almost directly below me in the mixed trees. But they quickly vanished again and much to my frustration never fed into any openings. I headed back to camp thinking that I’d rather shoot an elk at first light than at last light anyway!


Slept in a tent for the first night of the trip and got up in time to get back to the same spot before first light. I hung back a few so I could just barely glass some of the openings I would pass on the way to this spot so as not to blow them out. Seeing nothing I continued up. I am more concerned about the thermals in the morning as they are sometimes dropping down in front of me, though the light prevailing wind is blowing towards the backside. Still with a small valley directly below me I figure it’s a small area that my wind will disturb and it’s a risk I am gonna take.

As the light grows I don’t spot anything in the higher openings, but I hear some noises from below that sound like something moving around. Then I hear antlers thwacking and know they are still down there and apparently not catching my wind. I spot one for a second at a dead run through a little opening - running towards me. Maybe part of their dueling? Then I spot one on the finger ridge to my left working through some trees. I have a decent view of him for a bit, can see he is legal but am not confident in the range or shot as there are too many trees between us. He works behind a group of trees with no further opening in sight so I decide to change positions. I grab the essentials - rifle, tripod, range finder, and run around to the East and down off the high point on the ridge in an effort to get a vantage from the other side of this finger ridge and a shot opportunity - nothing, no elk. I am not sure if he went back down on the other side I was on to start with or if he dropped into the trees on this side but I return to my original spot where hear some small bugles both from below me and from the timber to the north west! - Quite surprising for November, but there’s no way the ones below are from a hunter.


The morning is dragging on now and things have gotten still. I figure the opportunity is gone and I am thinking about the evening now. I contemplate heading back to camp for awhile but don’t want to do that until the thermals are blowing up consistently and so I decide to keep glassing. Within a few minutes I am shocked to spot a bedded bull elk through a gap in the trees. He is somewhat obstructed but miraculously the vital zone is just open.

The situation is now ideal in many ways. The bull is bedded, no idea I am there, no other rigs at the trail head (visible from my vantage), I have plenty of time to figure this out. I can see one side of his rack and it looks to be a legal bull. I range him a number of times and am confident I have a good range at 428 yards with a -24 degree slope. I check the temperature and I put the data into the ballistic app on my phone. I have a fairly complete dope chart but given the time would prefer to have all the data exact rather than approximate. There’s virtually no wind at this time and I do not correct for any wind. I get set up in the rocks using my tripod at the base of the fore-end for the steep down angle and the rocks as a good shooting arm support. At first it’s not steady enough and I spend sometime fiddling with the tripod position until everything feels good. But now my adrenaline in pumping and I am no longer steady. I take a pause and do some deep breathing and calm myself down. I take the shot.

 

[Deckerp]

You guys are showing good judgement, patience and persistence. Just don't kill your bull too far down the hill, that you can't pack out. Is there any access down below to hunt upward? Looks like fine elk country. Good luck to you boys!!

In one of the canyons we were hunting there is no good bottom access and it has to come up - I would not want to kill an elk down there by myself!

 

[Deckerp]

First shot breaks clean and everything looks good. Still I went into it planning to keep shooting until I was sure he was dead since I would have very limited options for follow ups if he moved much. After the first shot it looks like he is down but trying to stand and has moved forward just a bit so I fire again. Same, fire again, and once more for good measure. The shot window on the last two shots is definitely not ideal and I sent at least one through some brush but now I can see he is down and not moving.

I snap another reference photo in case I have any trouble finding him, pack up my stuff, and go around the cliffs to drop down to him.

I am pumped when I first spot him and see that he is more than just a legal bull and shocked by his size when I walk up on him. This is a huge animal to beak down and pack out by myself!








Luckily the pack out was about as easy as I could have hoped for. It was a little over two miles to the truck, a steep down hill section off trail, then an unmarked fairly flat trail section, followed by another mile on a snowy but well tracked and flat trail section. Basically a dream.




I have quartered one cow elk, two antelope, and two deer up to this point but only one deer by myself. It was challenging to manage this guy and took me about 4 hours to get it hung and the skull off. I took a front shoulder and my day gear back to the truck that afternoon. My trekking poles were holding up my tent and I missed having those especially when right at the end I slipped on some ice and took a hard fall that broke the grip off my rifle and cut my wrist when it punched through the ice. Luckily that was the worst of it and I could carry on. I went into town grabbed a sled and a burger and then hiked back to camp in the dark - both because that’s where my sleeping bag was and because I wanted to get everything out the next day and needed an early start.

Thursday I got up a bit before light to a bit of fresh snow and more coming down. I packed up camp and headed to the kill site. On the way out the day before I has seen a few reasonably fresh bear tracks and was slightly concerned about having left the skull basically at the carcass and the meat hanging not too far away - but nothing had been there - still I moved it all a bit further away so I didn’t have to come right back to the carcass again then loaded up the other front and loose meat. The new snow made the steep section much more treacherous but at least today I had my tracking poles. Still I took a couple minor falls and wished I had packed my micro spikes the night before.



After getting this load to the truck I headed back in with the sled where I left it at about the halfway point past which it wouldn’t be as useful. I went back to the meat and brought a hide quarter down to the sled The micro spikes were a love hate - wearing them I wasn’t slipping but they would gum up with snow and I would quickly be stepping on huge ankle rolling snowballs. I opted to use them only in the steep section. After getting the first quarter to the sled I immediately returned for the other hide quarter which I carried down the initial steep section, then went back up got the head and brought it to the last hind quarter, loaded both of those and carried them back to the sled. I then used the sled to pull both hind quarters while I carried the head on my back. This was difficult, but certainly easier than doing multiple trips with a hind on my back. I had it all out by the early afternoon. Dropped my lymph nodes at the cpw office and headed home.

 

[Deckerp]

Now I'm nearly done cutting up all the meat - one front quarter to go and I'll have a nice freezer full for the coming year!

 

[GrantK]

Great write-up! I've contemplated hunting those canyons for a while now but always seem to tag out before I get that desperate...
looks like I need to spend some time glassing up ice climbs in there as well, some good-looking drops in your pictures...

 

[Deleted member 16014]

Nice write up, good hunt!

 

[MT_elk]

Congrats. Great pics and a great write up. Thanks for sharing.

 

[duckhunt]

That was a great hunt. Congrats

 

[Irrelevant]

def well earned, nice work, great write up.

 

[Sask hunter]

Congrats!