Sorry for the little teaser in the last blog entry. I couldn’t help myself. Besides, the trip was fun.
It wasn’t real productive as far as providing venison for my freezer, though. Nope, those of us in the HogBlog household won’t be eating fresh elk tenderloin this year. So here’s a quick summary of the most memorable parts of the trip. A more detailed account will be available on the JHO Journal later this month. I’ve also got a lot of video to wade through to see if I can put some kind of comprehensive production together. Unfortunately, I left my external hard drive (containing the first three days of video) at the lodge, so Rick, the outfitter, is mailing it to me tomorrow. Should be a week or so to get it in and get the footage edited.
So anyway, here’s the skinny…
My brother and I met up in Montrose, CO to hunt with Rick Webb’s Dark Timber Outfitters. We’d hunted with Rick’s organization during the first period rifle season in 2005, and had great success, with my brother taking a 320″ bull on the first morning and me taking a raghorn bull the next day.
Of course, never content with success, we decided to go back with archery tackle this time and up the challenge a touch. As it turns out, it wasn’t a bad plan, but sometimes things just don’t quite work out as you’d like them to.
First of all, the weather had been very consistent for almost a full week. Rick ensured us that this was a good thing, as the elk would be moving, feeding, and watering on a consistent schedule. It had been warm and dry, which wasn’t exactly what I think of when I think of elk hunting in the Rockies, but at least the elk had had time to get into a sort of pattern.
Of course, we arrived on Friday, and by the time we went to bed on Friday night, a thunderstorm swept down over the mountains. For anyone who’s never experienced a thunderstorm at 9200 feet, it can be quite spectacular. Unfortunately, for the elk that had been settled into a calm weather pattern, it was the first monkeywrench in our plans.
Saturday, the first day of our hunt was fairly uneventful. We spotted elk in the morning, but nothing was close enough to offer a reasonable stalk. Scott set up in a blind on a waterhole/wallow, and I took off with our guide, Chad, to search the countryside. We didn’t go far before the mid-day sun began to bake the mountains, so we found a shady spot near a good meadow and set up to wait out the heat. As the day wore down, Chad and I moved on and found some very recently used wallows, but no elk.
Just before dark, the bulls began to bugle. This was a good sign, because it suggested that they’d still be at it in the morning, which would allow us to locate them and possibly even call one in for a shot. That’s not quite how Sunday morning worked out, though.
First thing on Sunday, we ran into a pair of spike bulls and a cow elk, right in the trail. The first spike had his head down when we approached, and I didn’t see antler. My bow was up and ready (I had an either-sex tag which would allow me to take a cow elk, or a branched bull with at least four points on a side), but when he raised his head and I saw the slender, unbranched antlers I was a little disappointed. Here I was, less than 10 yards away, and couldn’t shoot. Finally, he got tired of us interlopers and crashed off into the brush. That’s when we spotted the cow with the group. My brother tried to get in range for a shot with his compound bow, but she disappeared up the mountain before he could.
The rain set in Sunday evening, turned into a full-fledged storm on Sunday night, and raged until sometime around noon on Monday. We did some glassing from an overlook Monday morning, but in that weather we saw no future in going out to hunt. With the lightning flashing and popping, it simply wasn’t safe.
Monday night is when things first got really interesting. We hiked out on a long ridge in a new area. At first, things looked pretty bleak. It seemed as though the storm had driven the elk clean off of the mountain. We found a few fresh tracks, but nothing to get very excited about. After a few hours of tramping through oak thickets and getting deeper and deeper into a big canyon, we started hiking back out.
As the day got darker Chad decided to try one more bugle. As the echoes died across the canyon, I spotted a bull elk bursting out of the brush below, about a quarter of a mile away. It bellowed back, and started coming fast in our direction. Chad directed me and my brother to spread out about 40 yards and drop down the trails toward the bull. He’d stay back and call, in hopes of bringing the animal past one of us.
My heart was already pounding on seeing the bull coming our way, and scrambling down the steep hillside got it going even faster (and louder). I went down until I found a nice little clearing with two heavily used trails emptying into it. I stepped off into the brush on one side, and used my Bushnell range-finding binoculars to get ranges on landmarks in the clearing. The far side of the clearing was 31 yards away, with two small bushes in the clearing at 19 yards and 12 yards from my position. 31 yards is typically a stretch with my recurve, but I’d been hitting pretty good on the 28 yard target at the range, and an elk offers a huge kill zone. This looked good.
I hunkered down to wait, but as I did I felt the wind on the back of my neck. This was no good, so I moved across the trail and set up behind a screen of oak brush. This turned out to be a mistake.
After only a couple of minutes, I heard something coming up one of the trails. Then I spotted antler tips moving through the brush. My heartbeat went crazy, my breathing turned shallow then deep then totally erratic as the beast came into view in the meadow. I can honestly say I can’t recall ever being this excited during a hunting experience. It was almost overwhelming. My heart pounded against my eardrums, and I swear I could hear the blood coursing through my brain at a speed somewhere near Mach 3!
I managed to get my breathing under control, and tried to get focus as the animal kept coming, finally holding up at the 19 yard bush. He looked around as I looked for a shot opportunity. Unfortunately, he was facing me directly. No shot there. This is where I realized that, had I stayed in the first spot I was in, I would have had a textbook broadside shot on the bull.
No time for hindsight now, though, as the bull took a few more steps toward me. Then he lowered his head and puffed his chest and started to bugle. If I’d died right then and there (and for a moment I thought my heart might burst), I think I could have gone happy, knowing I had just experienced one of the purest hunting moments. He was practically so close as to blow spit on me when he bugled. I could see every detail of his massive body.
The problem was, between us was now this screen of oak brush. I could see through it just fine, but the tangle of tiny branches made any hope of slipping an arrow through without deflection a pipe dream. I could only watch the show and wait, hoping he would come up the trail beside me…offering an even closer shot!
After looking around for a moment, he started to turn. I think he was disappointed to find neither a cow elk nor a challenger to fight in the little clearing. I hoped Chad would call again and bring him closer, but no call was forthcoming and the bull finally turned and headed back for the trail he’d come in on.
At this point, things may have become somewhat comical… at least to anyone who would have been observing. First, I tried to call or stop the bull with a cow call. Note here, that I had only bought my very first diaphragm cow call two days earlier on my way to this hunt. I practiced with it all the way to Colorado, though, and found it pretty easy to master… much easier than a turkey call. So I moved the call around in my mouth and made a sound.
What that sound was, I’m not sure. Chad said he’d never heard anything quite like it either. For certain, it wasn’t the sound of a cow elk (or any other creature that lives in nature either). But the bull hesitated and looked back. Unfortunately, he didn’t turn, offering only a shot at his big, white butt. That’s a bad shot even with a rifle, much less with a recurve, so of course I passed on it.
He took a few more steps toward the brush, and I tried again. This time, the call somehow shifted in the roof of my mouth and tried to crawl down my throat. If the first sound had been an unnatural squawk, the gagging, hacking, squeak I made next was even further off the mark. Even so, the bull stopped and turned to look for the source of this oddity. I don’t know what he was thinking, but part of me believes he actually felt pity for my calling, and wanted to offer me an opportunity.
It wasn’t an optimal shot, steeply quartering away at 31 yards, but I felt like I could make it. I drew and released, completely unconscious of the small oak brush that was tangled in the lower limb of my bow. I ignored the sensation that something was pulling my bow away from me as I drew, but I could not ignore the effect on my shot. The arrow fluttered away on the release, travelling at less than half speed and sailing wide of the bull by every bit of seven feet.
The bull, giggling hysterically inside, trotted off…headlong into an oak tree. He backed up, sheepishly, and turned to disappear down the trail he’d initially come in on. I could only watch in shame and dismay.
Despite the miss I was thoroughly charged up by the encounter. It was an experience I’ll never forget, and one that trumps pretty much anything else I’ve ever done in more than 35 years as a hunter. It was that cool.
The remainder of the hunt had more ups, then a lot more downs. On Tuesday afternoon, Chad stepped off of a rock at a bad angle, and tore the ligaments in his ankle. He hiked out the three and a half miles to the trailhead, despite our entreaties to sit still and let us go get the horses or the four-wheelers. The additional damage caused by the walk is probably going to come back to haunt him for a long time to come, but I must admit I was impressed by his determination and sheer fortitude.
Chad was replaced by a guide I’ll just refer to as “Wild Bill.” From this point on, the hunting experience went downhill. Wild Bill was inexperienced at big game guiding, and the lack of experience came through loud and clear over the last two and a half days of our trip. I know Rick was in a tight spot for a guide to replace Chad, since his other guide was busy with two other clients. Still, it did us no favors.
I won’t elaborate on the number of things Wild Bill did wrong, but in at least one case he almost certainly cost us (my brother anyway) a clean kill on a nice bull elk. There are no certainties in bowhunting, but in this case it should have been as close to a “gimme” as it gets. It was purely the guide’s actions that caused the opportunity to slip away.
At the end of the hunt, we talked to Rick and told him how we felt about the hunt’s outcome and Wild Bill’s behavior. He felt terrible about it, and after profuse apologies offered to set it right with a big price break on a future elk hunt… if we were willing to hunt with him again. I felt that the experience was an anomaly, and certainly was willing to come back and hunt with Dark Timber again.
If nothing major happens, my brother and I will be back there in 2009 for a rifle hunt… self-guided this time, but with the use and support of Rick’s lodge and equipment.
Outside of the hunt, by the way, one of the things I love about going to Colorado in elk season is the road trip to get there. Driving across all of Nevada and Utah offers some beautiful scenery that, to me, never gets old. The desert, canyons, and forests along the way keep me energized so that the 14 hour drive never gets monotonous (well…except for a portion of the Great Basin, between Elko, NV and the Great Salt Lake). Here are a couple of scenic shots from the trip.
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Well, life and the economy conspired against me this year, and I’ve had to cancel my elk hunt for this coming fall. I know, shed no tears for me… I’ve shed enough already. Wah wah wah and all that…