Top this, if you can

[gburk]

predictably, we weren’t the only ones on those elk. My son says he’s watching another hunter 250 yards from them while I wait for the office to open.
One slack day between tag reissue and season opener would have come in handy!
Gonna stay the course for our unit though, even with plan A evaporating.

 

[gburk]

The hunt continues, actually got an EE tag rather than EF. Cpw agent said they use the same website we all use but it didn’t look familiar so I don’t think that’s right. Five or six guys in there, and roughly half got the tag they wanted. Agents were clicking furiously at all stations.

The elk have scattered since this morning but the boys didn’t report any gunshots from that direction. So maybe a chance for the afternoon.

 

[SaskHunter]

My wife drew a pretty good mule deer tag once that I completely forgot about... She wasn't too bummed out about it and is back at the same priority level now!

 

[Khunter]

The hunt continues, actually got an EE tag rather than EF. Cpw agent said they use the same website we all use but it didn’t look familiar so I don’t think that’s right. Five or six guys in there, and roughly half got the tag they wanted. Agents were clicking furiously at all stations.

The elk have scattered since this morning but the boys didn’t report any gunshots from that direction. So maybe a chance for the afternoon.

Hopefully did not get the EE061E1R tag. LOL.

 

[rebjfan]

Two of my sons and I had been making preparations to take my nephew from back east on a Colorado first rifle elk hunt that he drew in the youth preference secondary draw. He’s 16, lives on a farm in Kentucky, has shot some things but never hunted anything like elk in Colorado. Anticipation was high. Time off work, gonna trailer the jeep, new-to-me wall tent and stove, e-scouting 10 plans deep — the whole nine yards.

Well I turned my office upside down yesterday, the day before he’s scheduled to fly into town, and.. no tag. Oh well, I’ll hit an office Monday or Tuesday after we get up there, inconvenient but so is most of this stuff anyways.. nbd. FINALLY I think to check nephews CPW account overnight and it appears I invented this hunt out of whole cloth. There was no tag awarded. No idea how I misread it, months ago. No idea why I waited until now to confirm its non-existence in this years stack of tags sitting in plain view.

I just texted him, my sister and two sons to let them know just how much of an idiot I am. Have offered to take him fishing on the coast instead, and I hope he still makes the trip to Texas but I don’t know, man.. I’m feeling pretty bad about it.

His mom might say he’s got to stay home and not miss school, which I wouldn’t blame her for. This is practically on the way to the airport for them, scheduled to arrive here at 10am

Anyone done something similar? I suppose it could be worse, I could have waited to make this realization in the CPW office after a 700 mile drive. That would have been an epic meltdown.. and probably a much better story

I suspect I’m in a league of my own on this one but there may be some therapy in writing about it. Bad stuff

Just means that you are human. You had great intentions.

 

[gburk]

Hopefully did not get the EE061E1R tag. LOL.

Ha yeah that caught my eye as I was filling out my proxy form.
Later the cpw employees were entering the data getting ready for the big drop. The new trainee among them was confused when the system wouldn’t let her enter it on someone’s behalf- so yes, someone did try to buy that

 

[ammo]

Made it into the unit and set camp this afternoon. I basically pulled an all nighter behind the wheel plus a couple catnaps, so pretty well toasted now.

Located a big herd of elk today, a cow should be very killable if luck is a lady in the Montrose CPW office tomorrow. My nephew was the first to spot them, pretty cool.

Bears, yup got him a license but no idea yet what we’re doing with it Hopefully we won’t be under pressure to figure that out, with a cow tag in hand.

If you don't get an elk tag...whacking duskies this time of year is a whole other kind of fun. Sometimes even more fun than elk hunting? I know I have a problem.

 

[El Jason]

whacking duskies this time of year is a whole other kind of fun.

Shhhhhhh….

 

[gburk]

Hunt recap follows. Just got back early Sunday morning after 15.5 hours, at least six of which were dedicated to Macbeth podcasts since nephew had a paper due Monday he was working on.

As usual, the vehicles were the mvps of the trip and deserve most of the credit.

No, we did not travel light.

Day 1 Wednesday
Let’s get legal
For the first time since they modified the process, I was able to get a reissued tag at 11:00 am at the cpw office. That morning the boys had been monitoring a herd that was seen on nearby public the day before season and had retreated into the trees by midday but could in principle reemerge late in the day. After I got back to camp we busted through a lot of oak brush and got into position but the elk never did come out. We noticed a hunter sitting fairly exposed at one end of the target meadow and later saw him unnecessarily just walking right through it in plain view. The first of a few unexplained hunter behaviors of the week. Saw nothing on public that day.

Day 2 Thursday, part 1
Shoulda been here yesterday
This morning saw us driving for over an hour over horrible roads, only to arrive at a remote trailhead with three trucks already there. A bit deflating but I thought the area would have enough options to allow us some separation. So we forged ahead.

Again, we were perplexed by hunters - this time stopping partway up the trail and setting up overlooking the trail itself with little visibility. As we ascended we could account for almost all of the trucks by the time we got to the top. Nephew was dragging ass and no doubt wondering what he had gotten himself into. Didn’t complain though.

We climbed 1800’ net elevation gain and towards the top saw a bull carcass from the day before with a flock of birds cleaning it. Damn. But looking over the backside we could hear intermittent but persistent bugles coming from a deep canyon, and I was confident some elk would feed out a bit later in the day. Just a bit further back than they were the day before. Also, we had to whole area to ourselves.

Sure enough, lunch and a nap later, a couple cows appeared, a cow and a calf actually, fairly close beneath us. Nephew and I bailed off the side, which was about at my steepness limit. He got set up on a nice roll in the terrain. The cow bedded down and with a knee sticking out we decided to wait for her to stand up before shooting.


* orange vest obscured under jacket for photo my bad not noticing that at the time …

 

[gburk]

Day 2 Thursday, part 2
Comedy of Errors
After some 15-20 minutes it became apparent that the cow could remain locked in that position for hours, and my shooter was getting cold while splayed out on the ground. A conversation followed in which I attempted to determine his confidence level on making the shot, as compared with a basic urgency to unload it and get out of a cold and damp position.

In the end he convinced me he could do it and I figured waiting any longer wasn’t going to help our chances in the long run. I signaled up to our spotter still on top and gave nephew the green light.

Kaboooooom goes the muzzle braked 270 shooting 150 grain accubonds.

Impact certainly looked high, cow got up rather deliberately and confusedly. Nephew looks back at me, also confusedly... “shoot again shoot again shoot again”. Cow stands still for a beat then starts trotting downhill, plainly unhurt. Plenty of time for a follow up but he was not in the following up mode. Calf rejoins her and they disappear out of sight below our view.
Well Dangit. We obviously didn’t talk about follow-up shots enough.

We gather up our stuff and head down to examine the hit/miss site. It takes us awhile to get there but as expected find nothing to indicate any contact. Pep talk number 1: misses are going to happen, it’s the next shot that counts, etc.

At this point I realize I erred by not having my sons take him to some blm for a practice session while waiting on the tag delivery service (me) to come through on opening morning.

But there were bugles still issuing from the canyon ahead of us, and we couldn’t have climbed the stuff we just descended anyway, so we continued ahead rather than going back. We could follow a different path back to the jeep. There was still a chance to make good and plenty of daylight.

 

[gburk]

Day 2 Thursday, part 3
You always miss the shots you don’t take

We continued up the slope the cow had been bedded on and just as I crest the top I pick up some movement and see a cow coming right for us. I dive back behind the top of the hill and tell him to get next to a tree at the top and get ready to shoot.

He did a good job getting a solid rest against the side of the tree and now we can see there are two cows and two calves trotting towards us. “Pick one out and shoot it” I tell him, still keeping my cool, hoping to avoid a flock shot. The four of them continue towards us and then notice us and head off slightly to our left, approaching the edge of the hill about 60 yards from us. Solid wind in our favor. They have seen us, and are milling around nervously but have stopped right at the drop off.

(whispered, no longer cool) SHOOT! SHOOT! PICK ONE AND SHOOT IT.

The cows start to turn back towards the way they came and slowly head away from us and eventually trot out of sight.

What the heck happened? Safety on? No. I notice the scope is on 10x. Couldn’t find in the scope? No, he claims he did. So why didn’t he shoot? Apparently he realized that there were cows of different sizes and he couldn’t get a clear shot on the biggest one.

Here we belatedly had the discussion to let him know that a cows a cows a cow, and being four miles from the jeep smaller is in many ways better. There are long arm techniques and camera lens to take care of any deficiencies in that respect. We are learning lessons at a rapid pace. But that’s what we’re here for right??

But in retrospect I am pretty sure that scope on 10x did present a bit of a problem - he very well could have had one in the scope but with no idea which one it was. And if he was hell bent on shooting la grande dame that could have frozen him up.

I wish I had a go pro running for that scene.

Scope dialed to 3x, then pep talk #2: When you shoot a 320 bull later today these cow mishaps will be a mere footnote to the story, some humorous trivia, and you’ll be happy you didn’t punch your tag on the first or second encounter. Did he believe me at the time? Hard to say.

We continued towards the bugling canyon.

 

[El Jason]

DAY 2 part 2, did you have him dry fire a few times before taking the shot?

 

[gburk]

DAY 2 part 2, did you have him dry fire a few times before taking the shot?

No. Recall that you’re talking to a guy who proved incapable of correctly interpreting cpw draw results written in plain English.

it did cross my mind at one point. Definitely wouldn’t have hurt.

 

[gburk]

Ok let’s pick up the pace, I’ve got muzzleloaders to scope and sight in.

Day 2 Thursday, part 4
One more encounter
As we moved downhill towards the canyon, it became apparent there were at least three bulls sounding off. The intensity was growing, too- growling, screaming, gnashing of trees. Like I’m pretty sure some trees were torn up and taken down. I’d never heard such energy.

All of a sudden a bull came in quietly and stopped broadside at 50ish yards. Not sure if he heard us coming and wanted to check us out, or whether it was a chance encounter. I hadn’t yet been doing any calling. In any case, I did what I could to gesticulate my nephew into shooting it, while the bull stood quietly for at least 5 seconds. It was mature but I couldn’t see antlers. But no bullet was sent downrange; either he wasn’t ready or didn’t see it, or both. The bull moved on.

That was to be the last live elk we laid eyes on this trip.

Believe it or not, to this point I was having great fun, despite the disappointment of the miss, and despite not shooting elk that were readily shootable — we were encountering elk, learning lessons, feeling emotions.

By the time we got to the edge of the canyon, the bugles had mostly quieted and/or moved further away. Spent some more time but couldn’t locate anything. Maybe should have called more at this point. Hiked about 3.5 miles back in the dark.

Day 3 Friday
How about we leave elk to find elk?

This was the last hunting day we had, if nephew was to be back to Texas in time to make his flight home. It was also a stupid day. After the hellacious drive and climb from the day before, with no kill, I couldn’t muster the energy to convince the team to head back in there. If it was just me, it would have been the thing to do, but it's different with a group. Instead we tried a couple of spots closer by, that subsequently proved to have been blown out. Another carcass, and the obvious ingress of weekend hunting pressure. Now the regrets came, about not killing the day before, and also for not whipping the team back into the spot we knew there were elk. Why didn't we go for it?

The missed opportunities of the day before started to form a dark cloud. Why was I disappointed? Was I disappointed for my nephew, worried that he might get so discouraged he'd never want to do this again? How much of this was my fault for neglecting to practice with him and/or provide enough direction? Would dragging him back into the deep dark canyon one more time have made it better or worse? Was the hunt really about me and my goals, not wanting to explain to anyone who asked that, no, we didn't get an elk? Or just feeling regretful for not going all-out on the last day?

In the end I can look at the bright side. We learned a lot in a unit we’ve never been, and can’t neglect the fact that going into this we didn’t even have a tag. We had some great times in the wall tent, and hopefully built better relationships among cousins. So I can’t be too disappointed. I heard from my sister that my nephew was already back in the woods at home shooting his rifle the next day. He may be hooked!

Thanks for the words of encouragement and for following along!

 

[geetar]

I enjoyed this story. You're an awesome uncle for working so hard to get a tag and make this hunt happen. I was almost 30 before I saw a live elk in the wild. I wish I'd had an uncle like you to take me hunting as a teenager. He will never forget it.