Oregon archery elk

[SlownSteady7]

Anybody ready for action this Saturday? I held off the excitement and told myself I’d play it cool to start now I’m camping out the first two weekends and then some with a few different folks and will hopefully get a few junior hunters on their first archery Bull.

 

[SlownSteady7]

Haha and as I posted that I get this from my camera…

 

[Salmonchaser]

Well I’m thinking you’re pretty well set up.

 

[Little Big Man MT Chris]

I went out Wednesday and scouted around one of our areas checked a trail cam , There were elk on it but most of the pictures were crappy the elk moved the camera, none of them were worth posting, I did find where a herd was at that morning, there were multiple piss spots not dried up , and a bull rub from about 2 weeks ago a few hundred yards from our camera


even though I’m not archery hunting this year , I’m still giving my friends intel on what I’m seeing, and I’ll be going out Sunday afternoon with a buddy as a caller if needed, should be fun , good luck everyone !!!

 

[SlownSteady7]

Took a neighbor out and got him his first elk ever after years of hunting 100 yrds from camp. Always fun to see that level of excitement and the only thing funner is when it’s a kid which I have coming up in the next few weeks. Someday I’ll actually hunt for myself.

 

[Little Big Man MT Chris]

Home after my Sunday afternoon in the Roosevelt Kingdom. We walked into a herd , and couldn’t see them all , in the end we had elk on 3 sides of us , front , left and right , and by the time we figured it all out it was too late, the reprod was just thick enough that we couldn’t see all the elk. But they smelled us and it was over as fast as it started.

on the way up the mountain


we stopped to check a trail cam, 2 bulls walked past it Friday about 3 hours apart



time for the hunt , an hour hike in to our spot


When we get to the clear-cut we had picked out as we approach the landing to glass from it and of course the whole herd was all over the landing on both sides of it.

On our approach before we even knew the elk where there I let John go about 50 yards ahead and I’m trailing behind and he turns and points and gives me the Elk signal. He had a calf about 10 yards looking at him. It panics and runs off. I get signaled to come forward as a spike walks across the road. And then a cow was standing in the middle of the road less than 50yds and it looks back at us but we’re behind a small tree and she’s looking directly into the sun and can’t see us so even though her calf got spooked she didn’t think anything of it and then slowly walked into the trees.

We wait for a second till all is quiet, I let John push forward and then I slowly fallow behind he points off the end of the landing and then I looked down about 100 yards down below us I can see a spike and a couple of cows and a calf feeding.

I pull out my cell to take a pic of the spike , while John investigates some noise to our left


After about 60 seconds all of a sudden you can hear some crashing and branches breaking and I turn my head to the right and down to draw comes a nice five point bull and more elk , I get John’s attention and tell him bull , As we’re both getting our binoculars trying to locate what are the big 5 is more elk continue to come from our right and next thing you know we see bull 2 bull 3 bull 4 we’ve got 5 branch bulls going down the draw right in front of us. We never saw them or heard them , The clear-cut was just old enough that all the elk were hidden and the couple that we did see it is what it is. So we took out our phones and got a few pictures through our binos as they got a little farther from us and and went for greener pastures

in this picture we got all 5 bulls even though it’s a little blurry, The biggest five point is at 9 o’clock the elk at 3 o’clock is actually the fifth bull it had very orange antlers from rubbing alder trees and then the other three bulls are directly below the fifth bull at located at 3 o’clock


this picture has a better look at the 5th bull and his orange antlers as he is going up hill, and on the left is a 2x3 and the smaller 5 point bull in the group


this pic the elk herd has regrouped and is now going up hill away from us


As the elk are now gone and we talk about all the woulda coulda’s and armchair quarterbacking and overthinking things , We hear a few soft cow calls directly left , we go there’s more of this heard right there, we begin slowly walking toward the sounds next thing you know less than 40 yards from us is more elk feeding,
Three cows two calves, I sit down on a log and watch them John gets on a stump and weights just hoping that in the little draw behind the cows is one more bull, but it never was to be

As I sat on the log and had elk at 38 - 39 yards I took a picture of them feeding. I got 2 in this pic


Eventually one of the cows was at 31 yards she didn’t have a clue we were sitting there looking at her, Apparently these bulls aren’t feeling to rutty yet, As they’re still bachelor’d up some what . And this rub John found Saturday less than a half mile from where we found this group tonight

We seriously doubt any of the bulls in that group tonight did this !!!!!! So where is big Hank and does he have a group of cows with him already ??? anyways we know a nice Canyon that’s going to have a lot of satellite bulls running around in it here in a couple of weeks, we’ll be back and maybe next time will get that lucky break .