Wyoming Elk 2017

[icebreaker12]

Well, I leave Friday for my second archery elk hunt with my dad. Last year we spent 8 days in Colorado and both had bulls in range but never sealed the deal. We are headed to Wyoming this year. My dad has been chasing elk for quite a few years and has not killed one. He gets every opportunity until his tag is filled. I found great sign while scouting. Hopefully, not to many other hunters in there when we get there Friday evening.

I'll do my best to keep this thread updated as the hunt goes. But I didn't have any reception while scouting!

 

[PAGOAT]

Good luck on your hunt, take lots of pictures.

 

[bigharge]

Good luck, will be in Wyoming this year as well and cannot wait to get out there.

 

[wytex]

Hope you brought your cold weather clothes, snow tonight in higher elevations.

Good luck!!!

 

[Majja]

Good luck and stay warm.

 

[icebreaker12]

Well, I have done a terrible job of updating this. So I will give it a day by day account of the hunt.

Day 1
Due to the weather forecast on Friday night (snow), and our estimated time of arrival being after dark, we decided it would be best to wait and head up the mountain in the morning. We arrived on the mountain at about noon. I had a spot picked out to camp, but when we arrived a horse trailer was backing in. This was disappointing, so we ran down the road to check another spot. We really didn’t like that one so drove back the other way to look at another spot. On our way we realized that horse trailer wasn’t backing in but pulling out! We were able to get all set up by 2pm and decided to drive the roads a little to assess how many other hunters we were dealing with. It appeared to be quite a few, but we were hopeful that the drainage we were looking at was less accessible from other areas.

At 4pm we made a short hike in to the bottom of the drainage to look for sign, and put together a potential plan for the morning. While it appeared that much of the sign I had seen during scouting had continued for a bit, nothing we saw was incredibly fresh. This was somewhat concerning, but I was confident there were elk somewhere nearby. We planned to make a long hike in the morning to check out the entire area.

With that decision we headed back to camp to finish set up. After we arrived back at cam we got the stove going and finished unpacking. This was when my dad realized he had forgotten his sleeping bag. Luckily I am a chronic over pocket (which I learned from my dad) and I had pcked an extra. As we were finishing the unpacking we got the stove red hot. Then I found out that I hadn’t done a good job of seasoning the stove and we were smoked out by the smoke from the oils in the stove. This made for a late night, and a slightly cold one, but we figured we wouldn’t sleep well with the anticipation of the hunt anyway...