diamond hitch
Well-known member
Life is always exciting when you live at nearly 7000 ft. The air is always clean and sanitized by cold. It was -2 F this morning. Hope everyone is doing well on the government induced vacation.
Elk are tremendously powerful and do unbelievable feats under adverse problems. Hunting on the west side of Montana weather can be - miserable. In the early 80s we had a season of coastal-like rain. you folks on the coast and Alaska can identify as I say it rained so hard you could feel the torrent going through the crack of your butt on its way to fill your boots. Or - just another day in southeast Alaska. I had hunted every weekend without any luck of any kind and was starting to consider pine squirrelsl as an option. I decided to take the week off and really hit it hard for the Thanksgiving weekend. The weather broke and We got a dusting of snow. I found a little buck so I had some meat at least. I moved three ridges over and finally found some elk tracks. I worked my way down a little rounded ridge towards snow line. The ridge had a bunch of bumps on it and as I walked over knob I could hear a clack and then a rustle, then silence followed by a repeat. When I cleared the outcrop I could see a spike and a raghorn playing push. There were two clumps of young firs with a 10-15 ft gap between them at about 70 yds. There would be a rustling in one clump and then one bull would push the other through the gap and into the other clump and disappear. After a brief period there would be a rustling and the event would be repeated but in reverse and the would disappear in the first clump. This cycle was repeated about three times with the exposure each time of about 1-2 seconds. Closer to shooting trap than elk.
I got ready and when the cycle started to the right, I lead the raghorn a little and torched it off. He was quartering away a little which always causes me concern. He jumped, the spike ran off to my right and the raghorn dissapeared. We were right at snowline and the two bulls had really tore up the ground. Within a short distance I was out of snow.
I expected to see the bull lying dead or a blood trail within a short distance- nothing. After following the most dominant tracks of a running bull to the next saddle in a downward direction without success - I returned to the scene of the crime and flagged a starting point. Over the next 4 hours I picked out each individual set of tracks and followed them out a mile or so. When that failed I went back to the starting point and ran contours at ten ft intervals from draw to draw across the face of the ridge to the bottom - nothing. At dusk, disgusted and depressed I gathered up my box of rocks and started back to the truck. The next day was Thanksgiving and I had to go home for the family.
It bothered me immensely that I had lost an elk. I was sure I had shot him but why hadn't I found a carcass or blood trail. The following year I went out on that ridge and looked for sign, hair, bones - anything. It was bare. The ravens usually make a mess of things you can pick up on for a year. I made a big loop out of the bottom and started up the ridge to the west. When I broke over a hump, the bones of my bull were laying where he died. He had evidently jumped into a bunch of fir second growth and followed them to the draw and then went straight up in the thicket to where he ran out of blood on the next ridge less than 300 yds from where I shot him. I had been taught that wounded animals always go down or at least lateral but never up. I never lost another one but that has bothered me my entire hunting carreer.
Elk are tremendously powerful and do unbelievable feats under adverse problems. Hunting on the west side of Montana weather can be - miserable. In the early 80s we had a season of coastal-like rain. you folks on the coast and Alaska can identify as I say it rained so hard you could feel the torrent going through the crack of your butt on its way to fill your boots. Or - just another day in southeast Alaska. I had hunted every weekend without any luck of any kind and was starting to consider pine squirrelsl as an option. I decided to take the week off and really hit it hard for the Thanksgiving weekend. The weather broke and We got a dusting of snow. I found a little buck so I had some meat at least. I moved three ridges over and finally found some elk tracks. I worked my way down a little rounded ridge towards snow line. The ridge had a bunch of bumps on it and as I walked over knob I could hear a clack and then a rustle, then silence followed by a repeat. When I cleared the outcrop I could see a spike and a raghorn playing push. There were two clumps of young firs with a 10-15 ft gap between them at about 70 yds. There would be a rustling in one clump and then one bull would push the other through the gap and into the other clump and disappear. After a brief period there would be a rustling and the event would be repeated but in reverse and the would disappear in the first clump. This cycle was repeated about three times with the exposure each time of about 1-2 seconds. Closer to shooting trap than elk.
I got ready and when the cycle started to the right, I lead the raghorn a little and torched it off. He was quartering away a little which always causes me concern. He jumped, the spike ran off to my right and the raghorn dissapeared. We were right at snowline and the two bulls had really tore up the ground. Within a short distance I was out of snow.
I expected to see the bull lying dead or a blood trail within a short distance- nothing. After following the most dominant tracks of a running bull to the next saddle in a downward direction without success - I returned to the scene of the crime and flagged a starting point. Over the next 4 hours I picked out each individual set of tracks and followed them out a mile or so. When that failed I went back to the starting point and ran contours at ten ft intervals from draw to draw across the face of the ridge to the bottom - nothing. At dusk, disgusted and depressed I gathered up my box of rocks and started back to the truck. The next day was Thanksgiving and I had to go home for the family.
It bothered me immensely that I had lost an elk. I was sure I had shot him but why hadn't I found a carcass or blood trail. The following year I went out on that ridge and looked for sign, hair, bones - anything. It was bare. The ravens usually make a mess of things you can pick up on for a year. I made a big loop out of the bottom and started up the ridge to the west. When I broke over a hump, the bones of my bull were laying where he died. He had evidently jumped into a bunch of fir second growth and followed them to the draw and then went straight up in the thicket to where he ran out of blood on the next ridge less than 300 yds from where I shot him. I had been taught that wounded animals always go down or at least lateral but never up. I never lost another one but that has bothered me my entire hunting carreer.
