Darren, Doug, and I piled all our gear and food into my Chevy Equinox and made the relatively short drive up the canyon to the cabin. Grandpa, having left earlier that morning would be waiting for us to arrive with the fire already roaring, the cabin toasty warm, and a pot of taco soup simmering on the stove. We unloaded our gear and settled in for the evening with the anticipation of opening morning growing. Jared would arrive early Wednesday morning, and my uncle would arrive Thursday morning due to some Church responsibilities.
Darren, Grandpa, and my uncle would primarily drive the roads hoping to find “a stupid one” which they could shoot. Doug, Jared, and I would take a very different approach. Opening morning found Doug, Jared, and I high atop the ridge glassing the big valley below and across from us. After several more minutes than we had originally hoped, as Doug hunched over the eyepiece of his spotting scope he muttered the words that would set the day into motion… “We got elk!”
Sure enough it was a decent sized herd working along an area we call The Short Ridges. A plan was devised and off we went splitting off to cover different routes in our pursuit of the herd. Shortly after that a second herd was spotted coming down a rocky chute from a saddle two ridges away. I dropped all the way down to the bottom of the big canyon then up the other side where I ultimately lost the two herds. I decided to take a stroll up the ridge to glass a familiar bowl with ponds where another friend and I had shot a cow elk during the muzzleloader deer hunt. I found a great rock to lean up against as I sat on the ground and glassed the hillside. I had a prime view of the area and there was a good deal of animal activity in the area… three bull moose sparring over a cow, two small buck deer grunting and chasing three does and a smaller buck around… but no elk.
I got comfortable sitting against that rock and just soaked in the late October scenery and the activity around me knowing that the herds could not have gone far and I had a pretty good idea where they were. Up the hill above me near the rim of the bowl I began to hear talking and I scanned the horizon to locate three guys above me in not-so-quiet conversation about their morning hunt. It was noon, and after several minutes of listening to their conversation I began to hear the unmistakable sound of elk vacating an area. It took me a second to get eyes on the herd because it sounded like they were stampeding from everywhere. Eventually a string of 17 elk made their way south of me back across the rocky chute below the saddle and out the area I was watching. The elk were actually right where I thought they would be. There were 10 cows and calves and seven bulls in the herd. One of the bulls was a good bull, considerably larger than the raghorn bulls in the group.
I decided to try and follow the herd and I made my way across the rocky chute and up to the saddle. At the top I peeked over and took a couple minutes to glass an area that we call “The Claw.” Even if I was able to spot something I’m not sure if I would have been too anxious to go any further after it because with every step my little silver car on the horizon two ridges to the north was getting further and further away and the afternoon getting later and later. I also peeked around the rocky saddle to the south and spotted a group of three hunters sitting on the ridge below me quite a ways. I decided that it’d be best to begin my trek back in the direction of the car figuring that it may take me all the remaining daylight hours to get back there. On the return hike I was able to spot and photograph one of the biggest bull moose I've seen in a while.
After finally reaching the car, I realized that I may have overextended myself on this opening day!
The forecast for Thursday was not great as a small storm system would work its way through the area. We again found ourselves high on the ridge in the morning glassing and spotted the herd from the previous day again working their way down the rocky chute below the saddle. The clouds began to roll in and visibility soon became somewhere between none and zero. We tried to wait it out as long as we could and spent a good chunk of time in the car just kind of existing together waiting for any little break in the clouds. We’d had enough of that and decided to head back to the cabin. The valley around the cabin was considerably clearer so we decided to hike up to a spot that my family calls “The Big Rock” which was a very popular place to go sit years ago during the rifle deer hunt… too popular in my uncle’s words. We spooked a couple of deer but that was about it and as the storm began to roll into this valley we decided to head back to the cabin and hunker down for the night & Jared decided to call it a trip and head for home.
Friday morning Doug and I followed the usual routine and arrived high on the ridge and began glassing. In the very early pre-dawn we spotted a new herd of elk directly across the canyon from us. There were 6 or 7 cows and calves and 4 bulls… one small bull and three 5x5s. We watched as the cows/calves made their way into some nearby pines and we assumed at that time they bedded down. The three 5x5 bulls continued to feed, moving at a very leisurely pace. We hatched a plan to shadow them from the ridge we were on and see if we could see where they would possibly bed down and hopefully it would be in a spot that would allow us to make a decent stalk.
The three bulls entered a small clump of pines and didn’t come out. We decided to give them a couple minutes and just make sure. One of the bulls emerged from the pines, circled them, then went right back in and did not come out. By this time we had dropped nearly halfway down from the ridge we were on & we knew that we had three elk in a clump of pines and it appeared like they were in a relatively vulnerable position. Our plan was to always keep those pines in sight and we would leap frog each other to various landmarks until we got all the way down to the bottom of the canyon and would have to lose sight of the clump of pines. Once at the bottom of the canyon, we made a straight line assault on the steep incline to a pine tree that we had selected as our preferred final destination.
As we skirted the pine and found a good spot to sit in full view of the pines, we spotted one of the three bulls bedded just behind a scrubby bush. He was bedded with the front shoulder and a small portion of his vitals exposed. We debated as to whether or not to try the shot, but I never could feel confident looking through the 1x scope the vertical crosshair covered up that entire opening. The range finder repeatedly told me the elk was 161 yards away. Doug and I sat in the wet leaves for several minutes with both of us stating our disbelief that our plan had actually worked and here we sat with what we really hoped would be that one opportunity… that one chance.
We sat for a couple minutes and discussed the shot that we were hoping would be presented and I clearly remember reminding each other to aim slightly lower than we would think due to the steep angle of the shot. At 161 yards, at that angle, the aim point should be right on the vital area with very little compensation for the distance. We were ready for anything to happen now, I was on the shooting sticks and it was a waiting game. Sooner than expected, the bedded bull that we could see came to alert and then stood. It was slow motion and chaos simultaneously! Everything that we had just discussed went completely out the window and the first bull stepped clear of the scrubby bush. I put my vertical crosshair right where the dark mane of the neck meets the light hair of the body and the horizontal crosshair at the top of the hump on the shoulder and fired. The other two bulls stepped out as well and Doug fired. The bulls then stampeded down the hillside towards the bottom of the canyon appearing no worse for wear. We sat in the wet leaves reliving the three seconds that it took for us to both shoot and the elk to be gone and as we recounted to each other our shots we both realized that in the heat of the moment “Bull Fever” won the day. Both of our shots wizzed just over the backs of different bulls! A good scouring of the area where the bulls were bedded then ran revealed that the elk had incurred no injury and were safe on this morning. I have relived that image through my scope a number of times now and think of the “what could have been” had I actually followed my own advice and aimed just as we had discussed!
We made it back to the car and a wave of unforecasted snow settled into the valley for the afternoon. Back at the cabin we again relived our exploits of the morning and prepared for Saturday morning which would be our last morning to hunt. Saturday morning we located the cows and calves that were with the bulls the previous day but they were methodically moving their way up the mountain putting distance between us and them at a steady pace. We closed the final chapter of this hunt by watching that string of elk zigzag through the pines two ridges to the west of us and up over the top dropping over into The Claw.
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