This is the story of my 2021 elk hunt. I’ve done these for the past few years. I was lucky and haven’t ate tag soup on any of my first 4 western hunts, would this be the year?
Great first story, niece sitting on my lap tom reads the script, gobbling and strutting in the whole way. Decoys are at 10 yards, I say let him have it. She shoots, the tom jumps straight up in the air, goes right back into strut…me to Lilly, “Make sure you aim for the base of his neck.” Jack another shell in, she shoots, he jumps up. But now the idiot knows something is up, he slowly starts walking away. I jack the 3rd and final shell in. Lilly shoot him. Bang, this time he tries flying but his wing is broke. I launch her off me and haul ass across the field to catch the stupid thing. He Barry Sanders style jukes me as I’m reaching for his head, eventually I kick him and it ends. Next morning, same thing, niece #2 misses, but her twin brother doesn’t ??
My normal hunting partner Jake was expecting so he wouldn’t be joining on this expedition. He killed a spike last year, I was hoping he’d maybe sneak up from Kentucky and chase pheasants with me in January, but I advised him that elk hunting probably wasn’t a great idea with his wife due in mid-October. As I was leaving for my hunt he texted me, “good advice, I’d be worried the whole time I was out there.”
I had hunted MT before and killed a raghorn, but was after a little more solidarity compared to my first hunt. We found elk, but I hated hunting around a bunch of other people. I came up with a solid game plan with the help of another local bowsiter to MT (he can chime in if he wants).
My 2 soon to be 3 year old’s birthday is on the 14th, and I was determined I wasn’t going to miss another one, so myself, my bro in law headed west on the 16th. A quick stop in SD to pick up my uncle and we were headed for the mountains.
As always, I enjoy the drive out west, I get to see the country. We made it straight to the trailhead at about 2 am (with my esteemed friends sleeping the last 3 hours). Quick set up camp, and we were awake a couple hours later and we split up in hopes of finding a few elk.
I had a tentative big loop planned around a couple canyons and potential bedding areas. I was just after fresh sign. I bugled my way down into a canyon not seeing much for sign.
I needed to climb up about 1300 feet to check out some elky looking areas on google earth. I hiked, and I hiked, and I hiked…but found little to no fresh sign. It was also some of the worst blowdowns I’d ever seen. Several times I got stuck 2-300 yards into some hellacious blowdown areas and had no real way to get out safely. I knew I wouldn’t be able to consistently hunt this, it’d be a nightmare getting one out and it didn’t seem like the elk were using it anyway.
I made a 15 mile loop with 4000 feet of elevation change, I saw a cow and 2 calves, but no real fresh sign at all. I met up with Mitchell and Doug and neither had seen much for fresh elk sign. Mitchell had bumped a small bull, but there didn’t appear to be an abundance of elk in the area. Nobody had smelled anything either.
We drove around to a different trailhead and split up for the morning. Doug and I bumped an elk of some sort off the trail (didn’t know what it was ). We spent the morning walking through a few different areas, but neither Mitchell or Doug/me had heard or got into much fresh sign. At this point we were wondering if maybe we were just a bit too low.
Highlight of this day was a nice 150” muley buck watching us from 60 yards away slowly feeding during the AM hunt. We talked to bowsite buddy, and they hadn’t seen or heard anything in the last couple days either, he thought it maybe had something to do with the drought.
We pulled up camp and moved 50 miles away to a different trailhead. We all split up for an afternoon hunt solo, I ran into the same blowdown mess that I had earlier. I hunted my way through some elky looking spots, but absolutely zero fresh sign whatsoever. I did kill a grouse though, but lost my damn arrow when it deflected off a rock.
We decided to get up early and head 5-6 miles into the wilderness and see if we could get into anything. What started as a pretty nice day turned to snow and sleet pretty quickly. I didn’t care, I was in the mountains. Same deal as the last two days however, hiked through some excellent looking spots but not an animal to be seen and no fresh sign. I put on 13 miles, 3000 feet of elevation change and no fresh tracks or bugles.
We did get into a good grouse brood however and we killed 4 out of the group pretty easily, but we figured that was enough. We moved spots after dark again another 50 miles to try and find some fresh sign. We did some night bugling at a few different vantage points but still didn’t hear a bugle.
Woke up early, we hunted together and walked through what looked to be ok bedding areas. Put on another 8 mile loop with fresh snow and did not cut one single track. We did end up at a gorgeous mountain lake that had some incredible scenery, but I wanted to hear a bugle.
I chatted with Bowsite regular with our hunt being almost half done and he said come on up to my place, I’ve got a spot to send you that I haven’t hunted in 10 years. We figured it was worth a shot, I had a few other places I was considering, but I figured his intel would be better. I drove up to meet him, and it was great finally putting a face to the cell phone number. We’ve stayed in touch and he’s going to chase whitetails and pheasants with me in WI one of these years. We took off the couple hundred miles to a completely different mountain range. We decided to stay in a hotel for the night and get recharged. We’d get up early the next morning. The plan was to hike in 3 miles and camp and hunt from there.
Early morning, loaded the truck and into the mountains we went. Left the trailhead about 5 am and got to our camping spot about 7 AM. We had about an 1800 foot climb up to camp, so it was a lot of elevation change right away. The main drainages we were going to hunt we had to drop off the backside so it would be a lot of elevation change every day. My uncle and BIL were going to glass and stay up top, I was too dumb for that.
We all split up, I was still feeling pretty well so I was fine dropping down to the bottom of the canyon and hunting my way back up. I scouted out some burned areas and saw a small 5X5 chasing a cow, but they were several miles away with no realistic way to get to them.
Around 11 I made my way down into the canyon that I had planned on hunting. I had a bit of lunch and a quick nap before I started slowly making my way through the canyon. This looked good, I smelled elk, saw fresh sign…they were in here.
1 pm and I heard my first bugle of the trip, clear as a bell and only about 200 yards from me. Game on! I started side-hilling to close the distance, thermals were great moving straight up with no signs of changing anytime soon. I eventually got to an opening with a half scree/half new pine growth opening between me and where the bull was sounding off.
I was within 120 yards, but didn’t know if I could cross the scree without getting busted. When I was debating 2 cows started moving out into the new growth and were headed my way. They were calmly feeding at 80 yards and during that time period 2 other bulls had sounded off in the same drainage. I now had 3 elk screaming within 150 yards and it was 1:30 pm, things can change!
I finally could see a bull come out and scent check a cow, 85 yards a decent 5X5, the other cow had made her way to 55 and I thought he would drop down to check her, and if he did I’d have a 55 yard shot which I was confident taking as long as he wasn’t jumpy. But for some reason they started dropping in elevation. Which was ok for me, since the scree field got smaller as you dropped, I thought if I just shadowed them on the north side I would eventually get a shot at one of the satellite bulls.
I dropped to the bottom of the canyon trying to relocate the herd but never did. I ran into a group of guys hunting that drainage. We had a good chat, nice dudes. They agreed they’d try and stay in the west drainage, and we’d stay in the east so we weren’t running into each other. But we both agreed if bulls are bugling feel free to go after them since it was a huge area even if it wasn’t in “your” drainage. I told them make sure if they shoot one and you need help packing come get me so I can tell you to go f(*k yourself. They all started laughing and we wished each other luck and went our separate ways.
Sorry to mess with you on that last picture, my nose bleeds like a stuck hog when I'm in the moutnains, couldn't let a good cliff hanger go to waste.
I was spent and I did close to 4000 feet elevation gain in the day and had 15 miles on my feet, a warm meal and tent sounded amazing; my feet were barking at me pretty good. I was happy though, I knew I had a couple days to get it done. I texted buddy and said this is a young man’s spot, he asked how Doug and Mitchell were doing and I said fine, I’m the only idiot that dropped down in here today.
We get a late start, my 450 am alarm was set for PM so we don’t leave the tent until 6, which ends up ok. We dropped into the canyon where I had heard elk the night before and 3-4 different bulls were letting it rip, but the thermals were really screwed up. We worked our way to within 250 yards of a bull when we saw a nice 5X5 and his cows working the edge of a new growth, no real way to get to them so we sat down and waited for them to get into the timber before making a play.
We sat for close to 2 hours as the thermals kept switching all over, it’s not hard to figure out why they live in here. The bull was bugling about once every 15 minutes and hadn’t moved a ton. Eventually we got some consistent wind and moved in for a cold calling set up but by this time he had shut up. We moved through some other areas that looked good and the elk sign was fresh and everywhere. We had really found some nice pockets of elk.
We get a late start, my 450 am alarm was set for PM so we don’t leave the tent until 6, which ends up ok. We dropped into the canyon where I had heard elk the night before and 3-4 different bulls were letting it rip, but the thermals were really screwed up. We worked our way to within 250 yards of a bull when we saw a nice 5X5 and his cows working the edge of a new growth, no real way to get to them so we sat down and waited for them to get into the timber before making a play.
We sat for close to 2 hours as the thermals kept switching all over, it’s not hard to figure out why they live in here. The bull was bugling about once every 15 minutes and hadn’t moved a ton. Eventually we got some consistent wind and moved in for a cold calling set up but by this time he had shut up. We moved through some other areas that looked good and the elk sign was fresh and everywhere. We had really found some nice pockets of elk.
Mitchell and I hauled ass, Doug was struggling to keep up and told us he’d just meet us up top and to go kill that elk. We ran as fast as we could but eventually ran out of daylight as the bull bugled his way down the other side of the saddle. We cow called to figure out where Doug was and shortly after legal light walking out; a big, beautiful 6X6 with nice whale tale’s was bedded right on the trail and jumped up. Win some you lose some. Two great days of elk hunting. We came up with a game plan for the morning that we were going to be aggressive, even if that meant blowing elk out. We only had one more full day to hunt, if we killed one down in one of those canyons it would be a full day+ packout, so we had to plan accordingly.
That alarm is getting early, my feet are barking at me, leukotape galore. Just need one elk. We hiked down to a good vantage point, had one bull give two half hearted chuckles. Moved in for a cold calling set-up with nothing in return. One other bull bugles from his bed at 11:30 and it’s the same deal, set up and nothing. Afternoon is dead quiet, no bulls to be heard.
We talk at camp and we need to leave in the morning. They all want to hunt the flatter stuff around camp. I said I’m going to at least go up to the saddle and see if I can’t pull one up, if I kill one up there we can get it out. If I drop all the way to the bottom of a canyon and tag out it’s clear my hunting partners will not be impressed with me.
I head to the saddle solo and I’m in the mecca. 4 different bulls bugling in the west drainage (same one with the guys previously). I sit and cow call and bugle from up top and everyone is responding, but all 1500 feet below me. I can hear a doug flutie sounding bugle moving in on a bull and I think it’s the group from earlier in the week. They seem like good guys so I keep bugling to keep the bull talking so they can move in (I couldn't get down in time). I hear a bunch of commotion and that bull quits bugling, hoping they killed him but I wasn’t dropping down to find out. Hopefully karma comes back my way on the next bull.
During this whole commotion I watch a nice young 6X6 walk up out of the basin over the top. It’s a perfect way to end my hunt. I have a point of clarity walking out at just how lucky I am to get to do this. So few people will get to experience anything what I’ve been able to do in the last 5 years.
Not every great trip ends with a tag notched. I had a hell of a good last couple days and feel like I could’ve made it happen with a few more days, but it just wasn’t meant to be this year .
I once again didn’t whitetail hunt during archery around home, it’s a big ask at the home front for me to go out west and I don’t want to miss things either at home, so I’ve traded my time in a treestand for elk hunting. I’ll pick it back up again once kids are a little older. I did however have one hell of a fall chasing pheasants with my golden and my 3-year-old in tow. I even figured out a way to attach my child carrier to my Stone Glacier for extra comfort. I killed a young 10 pointer with the rifle, it’s been almost 10 years since I shot a buck with a gun.
Hope you enjoyed my annual write up and have a great year gents, I’ll be living through you guys this fall!
Luke
Great story.
You know it will have both parents who were proven hunters and that's ideal.
I’m not buying that line about you chasing down that turkey with Barry Sanders type moves, though! ……You’d still be nursing two broken ankles ;-)
Puppies are kind of like babies, great to visit but not all that much fun to bring home haha.
Im hoping I have another 4-5 quality years of hunting over Lambeau. I keep him in shape year round and give him premium dog food in hopes to get a few more hunts with him as he ages well past his prime. I always told my wife if I could get to 250 birds over him Id be really proud of that.
