My wife and I missed our annual anniversary hiking trip in August this year due to summer house projects and work demands. We made up for it with a quick trip to Colorado in October. We passed several deer and elk hunters out for the opener of 2nd rifle on our way into the trail head. After checking with some hunters at the trail head to see which direction they were headed we got parked and headed up the trail. On the way in we flushed a few solitary dusky grouse, but each time they were off and through the trees before I had a chance to shoot. What I was after was above treeline anyway. After hiking for a few more hours, we finally found ourselves above treeline with howling wind and fresh blowing snow. We kept on through the fresh drifts over the traversing trail. Eventually I found some sign of what I was after, white-tailed ptarmigan. With the wind blowing hard, I knew the tracks I'd found were fresh and started my way up through the boulder field.
After about ten minutes of losing tracks in drifts and then finding them again I knew I was getting closer. We saw plenty of pika in the boulder field. Each one seemed to disappear when we got close enough to pinpoint their location via their distinct bark. As we crunched through the snowy boulder field, I looked up ahead and out stepped a ptarmigan. The ptarmigan stood on a boulder about the size of a bowling ball. Had it not been for the initial movement, I highly doubt I would have picked out the bird among the rocks and drifted snow. The bird stood still just a moment too long, and a single shot across the top of the boulder sent feathers blowing in the wind and a dead bird flapping in the snow. After the first shot, another bird flushed and caught the hard cross-slope wind, forcing me to swing hard to catch up. Another shot dropped this bird, which I realized immediately was much whiter in coloration than the first bird. I was about as happy as I could be with how things were turning out on this hike. As I hiked up the hill to retrieve the two downed birds, a third ptarmigan popped up onto another boulder and I was able to use the last shell in my shotgun to kill this birds as well. Even the cold alpine wind couldn't wipe the smile from my face as I held my first limit of ptarmigan.
Even if the hunting was over part of the conditions of this hike were we would still summit the peak and check out the rocky mountain views. We found the ptarmigan around 12,300 feet and still had another 1,000 feet to climb to summit the mountain. I couldn't think of a good enough excuse for my wife to head back down now that I had a limit of ptarmigan. I packed the birds into my pack and thought "a deal's a deal," and we kept on going. Burning legs and lungs and another hour or so of climbing and we reached the top. Some of you HuntTalkers may recognize this trail from the summit photos. We spent 7 hours hiking and hunting that day, and once we left the trail head, we did not see another person on the trail. I attribute some of that to the time of year and the elevation of the hike. Not a whole lot of recreational hiking going on above tree line on a less popular trail. For my wife and I, it ended up being a perfect day that we capped off with a beer on the tailgate of the truck at the trail head.
After about ten minutes of losing tracks in drifts and then finding them again I knew I was getting closer. We saw plenty of pika in the boulder field. Each one seemed to disappear when we got close enough to pinpoint their location via their distinct bark. As we crunched through the snowy boulder field, I looked up ahead and out stepped a ptarmigan. The ptarmigan stood on a boulder about the size of a bowling ball. Had it not been for the initial movement, I highly doubt I would have picked out the bird among the rocks and drifted snow. The bird stood still just a moment too long, and a single shot across the top of the boulder sent feathers blowing in the wind and a dead bird flapping in the snow. After the first shot, another bird flushed and caught the hard cross-slope wind, forcing me to swing hard to catch up. Another shot dropped this bird, which I realized immediately was much whiter in coloration than the first bird. I was about as happy as I could be with how things were turning out on this hike. As I hiked up the hill to retrieve the two downed birds, a third ptarmigan popped up onto another boulder and I was able to use the last shell in my shotgun to kill this birds as well. Even the cold alpine wind couldn't wipe the smile from my face as I held my first limit of ptarmigan.
Even if the hunting was over part of the conditions of this hike were we would still summit the peak and check out the rocky mountain views. We found the ptarmigan around 12,300 feet and still had another 1,000 feet to climb to summit the mountain. I couldn't think of a good enough excuse for my wife to head back down now that I had a limit of ptarmigan. I packed the birds into my pack and thought "a deal's a deal," and we kept on going. Burning legs and lungs and another hour or so of climbing and we reached the top. Some of you HuntTalkers may recognize this trail from the summit photos. We spent 7 hours hiking and hunting that day, and once we left the trail head, we did not see another person on the trail. I attribute some of that to the time of year and the elevation of the hike. Not a whole lot of recreational hiking going on above tree line on a less popular trail. For my wife and I, it ended up being a perfect day that we capped off with a beer on the tailgate of the truck at the trail head.
