Sticky situations

[diamond hitch]

If you hunt enough, you will accumulate a number of situations where the elk caught you with your pants down. It usually leaves you with a vision that you have difficulty getting out of your mind. As you walk through similar terrains the memory comes flooding back.

One that haunted me for a long time, was partiallly of the bull and partially of the situation. I had a local rat nest that towards the middle of the season, was known to collect a couple elk. The local terrain was comprised of two major ridges running parallel but at the head end there were three little knife edge ridges about 100 ft high. The south sides were intermitantly open with big ponderosa pines. The northsides were a mixture of larch, lodgepole poles and near the bottom a rat nest of grand fir and cedar. The south sides were a stroll through the park on good elk trails but as you started to cut across the little ridges it became a hand over hand green grapple experience.

I was working my way through the jungle on an established but ragged elk trail when I encountered a downfall across the trail. It was a 16-18 inch white fir with a dense array of broken limbs about 6 inches apart. Each was sharply pointed and ranged from 8 to 10 inches long. Above me was a cliff about 8 ft high. Below me was a domino pile of broken and stacked deadfall that had come down in a storm. The tree was a foot higher than crotch high.

I slung my rifle over my back and carefully started picking my way over this collection of punji stakes trying to avoid tearing my clothes or perferating low hanging body parts. At the precise moment I was fully balanced on my hands, spread eagled over the stakes I looked up and was staring into the eyes of a saber spiked bull at about 30 yards. I swear he had spikes about 2 inches in diameter and about 4 ft long. The look on his face was of utter fascination. I don't think he believed I could get through my situation unscathed but he had to watch to see the end of the movie.

Now that I had an audience, I struggled to hurry along and of course, slipped and fell through the mass of branches on the other side of the punji stakes. Trying to find footing in a pile of windfall left me imitating a drunk walking through a marble factory after a spill. By the time I finally got my feet under me, the bull was gone. I'm sure he walked away fully amused at seeing an idiot floundering in a pile of limbs.

I have never seen a bull with horns like that again but the vision haunts me. Surely I am not the only one to experience this humiliation.

 

[dgc1963]

In archery season we were working bulls all morning several of them and they were really talking then about 1030 or 11 things started to get quiet so we figured to lay low and eat something we got into a clump of pine trees ,we were talking quiet and eating going through our packs and my buddy found an old larry Jones reed cow call, the ones that were kinda like a harmonica with rubber in the middle
I saw it and said hey I used to have one of those too laughing a bit he blows it once or twice and says hell I never liked the way this things sounds and at that point a fair 5x5 came flying in on us blowing through some small pine trees and comes to a screaching halt about 10 feet away see us and freaks out exploded out of their scaring the crap out of us and laughing my butt off I said well he sure liked the sound
NOTE TO SELF DONT EVER BLOW A COW CALL UNLESS YOUR READY TO ROCK N ROLL

 

[Brad NSW]

2 years ago, slow still hunting into the wind toward the top of a ridge in fairly thick timber. Had to piss, so turned downwind, as I was finishing business, hear a branch break. Turn around and see the rear patch and nad's of a nice bull running away at 15-20yds. Guess my dad was wrong when he said never piss into the wind...tag soup that year too!