I believe I last blogged on Thursday evening after my successful (at last) shooting of a mule deer. It gets hard to remember exactly what happened on each day when all you do is eat, hunt, eat, hunt, eat again and then go to bed - then, do it all over again the next day. That said, Friday was a memorable day for me.
Before I go into the details understand that despite the sameness of the daily routine each day of hunting is unique, with great scenery, good food and fun times with the guides and the other hunters.
On Friday I hunted alone with Cody (guide) while Jerry was again paired with one of the other hunters to hunt mule deer. Friday’s hunt for me was one of the more fun and strenuous days of the trip. The “valley elk herd” of about 200+ elk had split into 2 approximately equally sized herds and moved off of the “no hunting” Circle S Ranch onto adjoining ranches. Before daybreak Cody and I hiked/ran about 3 miles to a vantage point on a hillside where we figured we could see where both of these herds were. Wrong – sunup was at approximately 8:10AM which meant we could commence shooting at 7:40AM – the problem was we could not find any of the elk. Thinking they had moved off even further from the Circle S (safe haven) than we thought we hiked back to the truck (3 miles back). Once there we talked to Tom Tash, the rancher, and he told us one group of elk was now on the hillside we had just left and that the other was now on the adjacent Harrison ranch. So, we headed back for the hillside, the difference being that now we didn’t have the cover of darkness and we had to follow gullies and creek beds – this seemed to make the distance about twice as far.
Now this particular stalk takes a twist. We are not quite to the base of our early morning hillside when the Harrison Ranch herd decides to cross in front of us and make a break for the safety of the infamous Circle S. We, at this point, are caught in the open and we have to “duck waddle” and crawl to the nearest drainage ditch about 50 yards ahead - then do the same to the next ditch about 75 yards further on. In this ditch we are partially protected by willow bushes and are in an excellent position at approximately 275 yards from the walking/milling/standing elk herd.
I line up the nicest bull elk in the herd in my scope and keep my scope on him for at least 30 minutes plus – but, he never was entirely in the clear so that I could pull the trigger. Complicating the situation was a herd of cattle that had been spooked by someone or something and were now intermingled with the elk herd. To shorten the story, this particular bull, a nice bull with a large “drop horn” tine in front of one eye, jumped the fence into the Circle S and ended this stalk.
Cody and I, once again, headed back (3 miles) to the truck as the herd that had moved to “our hillside” was nowhere to be found. We got almost back to the truck when we ran into Russ Kipp, the owner of our Lodge, and one of the other hunters coming out of a creek bed. They had been the ones that spooked the cattle herd and then had spotted us approaching the elk herd - whereupon they stopped and just watched us. Whilst talking with them we spotted the “hillside herd” moving toward the Circle S – Yes, we once again raced some 3 plus miles to try to intercept them before they got to the Circle S. Just as we got within range of the last of’ the herd, the best bull, a very nice 6 X 6 (we are very good at these insider elk hunter terms) was clearing the fence into the safety of the Circle S. We hiked back to the truck a third time and needless to say I was out of “gas” – the good news is that Cody was also out of gas, so I did not feel too bad.
The Friday afternoon hunt was somewhat anticlimactic – a tough hike up the side of a mountain to an open meadow area where we waited for elk to emerge out of the “black timber” into the meadow. Eleven elk showed up about 40 minutes before the end of shooting hours (6:42PM) but none was considered a “shooter”.
There, that’s the last of my hunting action blog – I’ll try to do a recap of the overall hunt later. (So, is this day’s recap longer than anything Jerry has done so far??? Or, do I have to try again????)
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