Mustangs Rule
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2021
- Messages
- 823
When deer season begins, I will spend more time sitting on a knife-edge ridge with my spotting scope.
Even without a hint of ice or snow, driving the dry dirt road to go there requires a mix of guts and gulp!
It is so narrow cut into a so steep canyon side. It has a few wide spots which were bulldozed so one vehicle can stop and wait for another to pass by. You just do not want to have two vehicles try to get by each other on such a skinny road.
There is nothing to stop a vehicle from going over into a series of bounces, bangs and rolls in which any tiny chance of living would be a life on life-support.
This ridge offers a great view of about ten miles of a wild canyon, with a free un-damed river flowing through it. The river and canyon go on together for a total of 73 wilderness miles.
This land is so defiantly steep, that it’s super nutritious over wintering native bunch grass has not been lost to agriculture.. This one and all surrounding canyon’s cuts and fins have defied the tractor and plow. This topography here falls so deep then suddenly rises so steep, that it “gives a geologic middle finger” to machines that would tame it.
I know of no other place in the American West, where the land and it’s wildlife have remained so independent of us.
For all this canyons’ breath and beauty however, there is only one bowl with three wrinkles that interests me as deer, then elk season are breathing down my hunters’ neck.
This bowl is invisible from any where below. I can sit on this ridge with my spotting scope, see across the canyon and watch any wildlife present.
Each of these three wrinkles is seasonally wet, but the largest offers a year round small creek. The lower part of the bowl gets runoff from the 2,000’ higher canyon sides There are leafy plants which stay greenish all summer and fall, then there is the wild native bunch grass which dries in the summer but holds great nutrition fall through winter.
This is USFS public land but no people go there. There is no access for cattle or cowboys, It is really not far from the gravel road along the river, but it is hard to see up into and any hunter that did go would be spotted by wildlife long before they had the slightest chance of seeing any game animal, much less getting a shot.
After seeing game the night before, I would drive home, get a good nights rest, return hours before dawn, then under the cover of darkness, ford the river, with falling thermals in my face, climb up a a rocky cliff, then hiked up round hill covered with extremely slippery dry grass.
At dawn I am in command position for hunting success.
This trip was too soon, just an irresistible practice run !
I will go back after three cold days and nights have put the rattlers to sleep and hunting pressure has pushed the game animals here.
Coming down from my practice run to this ridge, there is a grassy greenish canyon side, almost hanging over a small flowing stream lined with cottonwoods. The last time I came here, eleven mature Big Horn Rams had just watered and were going back to their high rocky pinnacles.
Normally coming down, my focus goes to the right to “BigHorn-land” but this time my attention went to the left after I saw two grouse , then quail darting back and forth into the dense wild raspberry bushes. Next, under a huge elderberry bush, heavily weighted with berries a covey of quail flushed.
Just beyond it was that steep, canyon side far more vertical than horizontal. It was completely covered with such deep and wide terracing that it looked like a small version of what was done in Peru by the Inca farmers. I had missed this before always looking for bighorns on the other side.
Most of us have seen terraces cut into soft hills or even mountainsides by deer,elk, and yes cattle too, but the scale here and the time to do all this earth moving suggested another possibility, bison !
The area which is my hunting and fishing home range, say a 1 ½ hour drive radius from my home, is about 3,000 square miles and it had been Buffalo Country for over 10,000 years.
They were plains bison, and to match the tightness and steepness of this country, they adapted by being just a little bit smaller and their herd sizes were less in number too.
Looking at this mega terracing, it seemed likely that it was more the work of bison than just elk.
These terraces were now used and maintained by deer, elk and cattle, but “ Holy Buffalo Shit”, I don’t think they could have made them by themselves. The cattle were never here long enough, and these terraces were far bigger, wider, and deeper than any elk trails I had seen. They protected the land too.
Despite occasional torrential rain and snow melt, there were no erosion gullies anywhere.
About 65 years ago, dozens of miles down this same river, there were reported Shiras moose sightings. They had nothing to do with any transplant. One day a small herd just showed up and has kept growing in size but they are in big warming climate trouble now. Tons of ticks and lack of deep snow for winter wolf protection.
The elk have always been here, for 8,000 to 10,000 years. They were never expatiated and then re-stocked. Their gene pool is pure and their knowledge of every aspect of their home territory is ancient.
Where I live, there are 7,500 people, 15,000 elk, 21,000 deer, superb feed habitat and at least 100 wolves.
About twenty years ago, reports were coming in about wild bison in the wildest parts of these mountains. Now we know for sure that we live with one of only two truly wild and free ranging self reproducing bison herds outside of a National Park in the lower 48. There are now about 50.
A good measure of how wild their territory is, is the fact that about 20% to 30 % of late season elk tags there never sell out, despite having abundant elk.
I took a picture a few days ago of a mountain meadow in that elk zone with aspens in fall color. If I held the camera so the land was level, the trees looked like they were half fallen down.
That dark mountain range faces the northern fall snow storms that come roaring in. Many an elk hunter has just left in a panic with rifle and day pack, happy to get out and then waited for the coming spring to retrieve his tent and other gear. Elk hunting guides offer bookings with a weather disclaimer.
This is our Wild Buffalo Country. They have learned to stay far away from us.
I was taking an intensive week long tracking class at Yellowstone NP a year after wolves were reintroduced. I recall hearing the sound of their howling and feeling a deep sense of natural completeness for the first time in my outdoor life.
About ten years ago I went through the federal red tape to get my BIE certification, (Bureau Of Indian Education) to teach Native American students. I taught biology in the north country where tribal elders taught the young to have enormous respect for wolves.
Always in their tribal history were stories of near starvation during a hard winter, then finding a wolf packs stash of frozen surplus elk killings. That saved them from starvation, many times
During that period I did a lot more hunting than a teachers’ fall schedule normally allows. My principal understood, everybody supported,,,good hunting. Let the big bulls and bucks live. Their great genes belong to the herd, not us. Tough meat anyway.
There was this deep dark canyon, hard to access. At the mouth of it was a muddy marsh. I put on my metal frame US Surplus snowshoes with wire mesh and got in. I used them a lot for field bio studies in marshes and bogs, like walking on water.
There was a huge black male northern timber wolf and massive lone bull elk in there. The wolf was living on deer, and the elk off plants in an open well watered green meadow. I kept hunting there for grouse after taking my fork horn buck. The three of us kept playing hide and seek while backtracking each other. The wolf and I were peeing and pooping on each others pee and poop. His front paw tracks, were 5” long!
When it got really cold, 20 below zero, the bull elk left for their wintering grounds to join his herd. The male wolf stayed until a grey female showed up out of nowhere. They played, jumped around in the snow then followed the bull elks trail to the wintering elk herd. They crossed a vast open plain, looked like Siberia. When they left, I never went back. Without wolves the canyon was empty for me,
I had a chance to to do some field snow tracking measurements before they left. The center to center distance from ball joint to hip joint of the wolf was only two inches less that the huge bull elk.
On my first elk hunt here, I missed the winter migration when the elk went from high cold prairie, into low elevation warmer canyons. I followed the tracks of at least a hundred elk. Trailing them were the tracks of the hugest wolf I ever tracked. I like being around wolves, their howls offer me a sense of freedom.
One way below zero morning, I was driving around my cattle ranch neighborhood. There was a heavy deep packed snow. One rancher was feeding his cattle in a huge closed feed lot. A herd of over a 100 elk were jumping in and eating his cattle feed, lots of it. They would leave for the night to bed in a grove of cedars and be back right at feeding time. The rancher could not shoot elk for eating his feed.
Then some big wolves came in. Mostly they would eat elk but did eat one calf. The elk ran far away. The rancher lost a calf but was way ahead because of the wolves moving the elk. He was grateful.
Around my 3,000 sq. mile hunting home range there are deer and elk with lots of CWD and Elk hoof rot. Here in wolf land, there is not one case of CWD and only the smallest incidence of elk hoof rot. As soon as an elk shows the first symptom of this disease here, they are taken out.
All is well when ancient laws are honored.
Even without a hint of ice or snow, driving the dry dirt road to go there requires a mix of guts and gulp!
It is so narrow cut into a so steep canyon side. It has a few wide spots which were bulldozed so one vehicle can stop and wait for another to pass by. You just do not want to have two vehicles try to get by each other on such a skinny road.
There is nothing to stop a vehicle from going over into a series of bounces, bangs and rolls in which any tiny chance of living would be a life on life-support.
This ridge offers a great view of about ten miles of a wild canyon, with a free un-damed river flowing through it. The river and canyon go on together for a total of 73 wilderness miles.
This land is so defiantly steep, that it’s super nutritious over wintering native bunch grass has not been lost to agriculture.. This one and all surrounding canyon’s cuts and fins have defied the tractor and plow. This topography here falls so deep then suddenly rises so steep, that it “gives a geologic middle finger” to machines that would tame it.
I know of no other place in the American West, where the land and it’s wildlife have remained so independent of us.
For all this canyons’ breath and beauty however, there is only one bowl with three wrinkles that interests me as deer, then elk season are breathing down my hunters’ neck.
This bowl is invisible from any where below. I can sit on this ridge with my spotting scope, see across the canyon and watch any wildlife present.
Each of these three wrinkles is seasonally wet, but the largest offers a year round small creek. The lower part of the bowl gets runoff from the 2,000’ higher canyon sides There are leafy plants which stay greenish all summer and fall, then there is the wild native bunch grass which dries in the summer but holds great nutrition fall through winter.
This is USFS public land but no people go there. There is no access for cattle or cowboys, It is really not far from the gravel road along the river, but it is hard to see up into and any hunter that did go would be spotted by wildlife long before they had the slightest chance of seeing any game animal, much less getting a shot.
After seeing game the night before, I would drive home, get a good nights rest, return hours before dawn, then under the cover of darkness, ford the river, with falling thermals in my face, climb up a a rocky cliff, then hiked up round hill covered with extremely slippery dry grass.
At dawn I am in command position for hunting success.
This trip was too soon, just an irresistible practice run !
I will go back after three cold days and nights have put the rattlers to sleep and hunting pressure has pushed the game animals here.
Coming down from my practice run to this ridge, there is a grassy greenish canyon side, almost hanging over a small flowing stream lined with cottonwoods. The last time I came here, eleven mature Big Horn Rams had just watered and were going back to their high rocky pinnacles.
Normally coming down, my focus goes to the right to “BigHorn-land” but this time my attention went to the left after I saw two grouse , then quail darting back and forth into the dense wild raspberry bushes. Next, under a huge elderberry bush, heavily weighted with berries a covey of quail flushed.
Just beyond it was that steep, canyon side far more vertical than horizontal. It was completely covered with such deep and wide terracing that it looked like a small version of what was done in Peru by the Inca farmers. I had missed this before always looking for bighorns on the other side.
Most of us have seen terraces cut into soft hills or even mountainsides by deer,elk, and yes cattle too, but the scale here and the time to do all this earth moving suggested another possibility, bison !
The area which is my hunting and fishing home range, say a 1 ½ hour drive radius from my home, is about 3,000 square miles and it had been Buffalo Country for over 10,000 years.
They were plains bison, and to match the tightness and steepness of this country, they adapted by being just a little bit smaller and their herd sizes were less in number too.
Looking at this mega terracing, it seemed likely that it was more the work of bison than just elk.
These terraces were now used and maintained by deer, elk and cattle, but “ Holy Buffalo Shit”, I don’t think they could have made them by themselves. The cattle were never here long enough, and these terraces were far bigger, wider, and deeper than any elk trails I had seen. They protected the land too.
Despite occasional torrential rain and snow melt, there were no erosion gullies anywhere.
About 65 years ago, dozens of miles down this same river, there were reported Shiras moose sightings. They had nothing to do with any transplant. One day a small herd just showed up and has kept growing in size but they are in big warming climate trouble now. Tons of ticks and lack of deep snow for winter wolf protection.
The elk have always been here, for 8,000 to 10,000 years. They were never expatiated and then re-stocked. Their gene pool is pure and their knowledge of every aspect of their home territory is ancient.
Where I live, there are 7,500 people, 15,000 elk, 21,000 deer, superb feed habitat and at least 100 wolves.
About twenty years ago, reports were coming in about wild bison in the wildest parts of these mountains. Now we know for sure that we live with one of only two truly wild and free ranging self reproducing bison herds outside of a National Park in the lower 48. There are now about 50.
A good measure of how wild their territory is, is the fact that about 20% to 30 % of late season elk tags there never sell out, despite having abundant elk.
I took a picture a few days ago of a mountain meadow in that elk zone with aspens in fall color. If I held the camera so the land was level, the trees looked like they were half fallen down.
That dark mountain range faces the northern fall snow storms that come roaring in. Many an elk hunter has just left in a panic with rifle and day pack, happy to get out and then waited for the coming spring to retrieve his tent and other gear. Elk hunting guides offer bookings with a weather disclaimer.
This is our Wild Buffalo Country. They have learned to stay far away from us.
I was taking an intensive week long tracking class at Yellowstone NP a year after wolves were reintroduced. I recall hearing the sound of their howling and feeling a deep sense of natural completeness for the first time in my outdoor life.
About ten years ago I went through the federal red tape to get my BIE certification, (Bureau Of Indian Education) to teach Native American students. I taught biology in the north country where tribal elders taught the young to have enormous respect for wolves.
Always in their tribal history were stories of near starvation during a hard winter, then finding a wolf packs stash of frozen surplus elk killings. That saved them from starvation, many times
During that period I did a lot more hunting than a teachers’ fall schedule normally allows. My principal understood, everybody supported,,,good hunting. Let the big bulls and bucks live. Their great genes belong to the herd, not us. Tough meat anyway.
There was this deep dark canyon, hard to access. At the mouth of it was a muddy marsh. I put on my metal frame US Surplus snowshoes with wire mesh and got in. I used them a lot for field bio studies in marshes and bogs, like walking on water.
There was a huge black male northern timber wolf and massive lone bull elk in there. The wolf was living on deer, and the elk off plants in an open well watered green meadow. I kept hunting there for grouse after taking my fork horn buck. The three of us kept playing hide and seek while backtracking each other. The wolf and I were peeing and pooping on each others pee and poop. His front paw tracks, were 5” long!
When it got really cold, 20 below zero, the bull elk left for their wintering grounds to join his herd. The male wolf stayed until a grey female showed up out of nowhere. They played, jumped around in the snow then followed the bull elks trail to the wintering elk herd. They crossed a vast open plain, looked like Siberia. When they left, I never went back. Without wolves the canyon was empty for me,
I had a chance to to do some field snow tracking measurements before they left. The center to center distance from ball joint to hip joint of the wolf was only two inches less that the huge bull elk.
On my first elk hunt here, I missed the winter migration when the elk went from high cold prairie, into low elevation warmer canyons. I followed the tracks of at least a hundred elk. Trailing them were the tracks of the hugest wolf I ever tracked. I like being around wolves, their howls offer me a sense of freedom.
One way below zero morning, I was driving around my cattle ranch neighborhood. There was a heavy deep packed snow. One rancher was feeding his cattle in a huge closed feed lot. A herd of over a 100 elk were jumping in and eating his cattle feed, lots of it. They would leave for the night to bed in a grove of cedars and be back right at feeding time. The rancher could not shoot elk for eating his feed.
Then some big wolves came in. Mostly they would eat elk but did eat one calf. The elk ran far away. The rancher lost a calf but was way ahead because of the wolves moving the elk. He was grateful.
Around my 3,000 sq. mile hunting home range there are deer and elk with lots of CWD and Elk hoof rot. Here in wolf land, there is not one case of CWD and only the smallest incidence of elk hoof rot. As soon as an elk shows the first symptom of this disease here, they are taken out.
All is well when ancient laws are honored.
