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Unusual encounters

I'm not sure why I thought of this - an unusual encounter several years ago while elk hunting in Taylor park. After several hours on the mountain, I was nearly back to camp - the tent was in sight about 1/4 mile to the left. A movement off to the right caught my eye - a cow elk. "How lucky could I get", I thought. She stopped, and a calf piled into the back of her. My hopes diminished - I didn't want to orphan a calf if at all possible. The cow moved, then stopped again. Again the calf bumped into her, then another, then another. Triplets. This happened a couple times. Mom moved & stopped, & the calves kept piling into her back side. One of the most delightful comic moments of my long elk hunting career.

Thanks for sharing....cool story.

You saved 4 elk nice job

Great Story! Thanks for sharing.

I know elk are said to adopt orphan calves but they were just so darn cute! The last day of the season we were headed up to a high bowl. About half way up we were on a trail that was being (legally) buzzed by dirt bikers. As we approached close to the only stream crossing I looked about 20 yards to the left and saw nothing but antlers above some brush - no shot possibilities. An exceptional 6x6. We slid down & to the right a bit & waited for an opening, the bull was a step away from the end. He never took that last step - winding us and blasting away back up the hillside. It was straight up noon. You just never know when that moment may come! Had several sightings of one huge bull moose down in the bottoms as well. He would have been easy pick'ns with a tag.

A few years back we were checking out a new area northwest of Durango, near Vallecito Res. We identified a promising ridge and hunted it for a few days. On the third day, coming down the same closed off fire control track, we came across a huge pile of very fresh scat, laid in the middle of the track, as if intentionally - as a warning. It was more than twice the size of any black bear scat we'd ever seen. Pic's of the pile, using a bow for scale, indicated it was 18" long by 9" in diameter. It appeared to be mostly remnants of grass like material. Firm coils of crap about 2.5" in diameter. The first giggle search results for something that size and makeup were "Sasquatch", followed by Grizzly... We eventually ended up barely missing out on a nice 7x7 herd bull, accompanied by ~35 cows. 'Got him to within 50 yards, for about 20 minutes, before the cows finally drew him away. What fun!

Yet another - from 20-25 years back. The tale of the"broken bugle" bull. We were hunting a private ranch NW of Trinidad, having paid $150 for the whole archery season trespass fee ( those were the days). Hunting a long narrow N-S meadow, we came to a spot where it branched into three smaller forks. I set up on the east side, about 50 yards below the fork points , just into the timber. My partner chose the point between the east & middle fingers. We called and soon had a bull & spike responding from the eastern ridge. The 5 point came in and was easing down the side of the meadow, seconds from a shot for me. At the last moment my partner got greedy and turned him back around, luring him in to a 25 yard shot. His shot went high - he hadn't noticed about that about 1/4" of his sight pin had snapped off somewhere in the brush bucking earlier in the day. The bull ran up into the woods and refused to budge but continued to bugle back to our matching calls. Try as we might, we couldn't coax him back into the open. All of a sudden we heard a very strange "bugle" - ish. An old monster bull had come in from the west . He was high on a bluff, with a perfect view of the whole situation. There wasn't enough light left to try to flank him, he had us pinned down. A very smart old bull. What was really weird was his bugle, or lack thereof. We could hear the loud rush of air as he tried, followed by some very faint chuckles. It appeared his vocal chords had been damaged - either in rut battles, or perhaps a misplaced shot. It was to early in the season for him to have lost his "voice". It would have probably been humorous to hear the way our bugling went from matching "small satellite" to all out monster bull bugles. We sat there, pinned down by his vantage, and had a bugle battle until last light - all the while the spike & satellite bulls continuing to chime in. The big bull continued giving it his all with near silent responses - just a very audible rush of air. I love bowhunting elk.

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