Me: Limited Draw bull tag and general buck Son: Limited Draw Bull Tag, Sandhill Crane, Lope Buck, Lope doex2, Whitetail doe, general deer Wife: Limited Draw Bull, Cow Elk, Lope Buck Tag, Cow Elk, General Deer
With that being said we already started with the lopes in the blind. No luck yet but we will be back out on Saturday...
I hope you, good luck.
Good luck to you and yours the rest of the season!
Good luck everyone!!!
It was 34F at 7am at 10,600' this am when a couple tried to come into my site and then made a ruckus trying to back their rig back out to find another spot.....LOL
Sunday I covered 7 miles total in 2 different locations. First light I had 2 bulls bugle briefly and both were done and into the trees and beds before 8am. That day I coverd the miles looking at wallows and looking for any sort of consistent sign. There was sign every where but nothing consistent and none that was super fresh.
I can tell you this the country I am in just eats a person up. Over the weekend I ripped 2 pairs of pants. My feet, ankles knees and hips just hurt. There is so much blow down, boulders all over, and the areas that open and flat tend to be swamps with knee high grass and holes everywhere... It is ok this weekend will be better...
Camp will be moved up to the mountain, and hopefully the temps wont be 90...
Good luck and keep us posted please!
Friday after work I hurry home and help finish packing pack bows etc. We load up both the Jeep and the truck and head for the hills.
Friday evening we hit a spot where I have seen a huge bull in the past. We make a small loop and do not turn up any elk. We did however see several mule deer doe and fawns (like over 30) which is good. It was a hard evening as my heart was acting up and it was totally kicking my butt... Hopefully surgery this Thursday fixes that issue!!!
Friday night get to camp and the camper batteries are dead. Fire up the generator and let it run while we eat dinner and head to bed. As soon as we shut generator everything in camper dead. SO we let the generator run through then night... I am up several times. Finally at 4:00 am the alarm goes off and we get up. Off to the first morning with all of us together, it was a great morning...
We arrive at the parking spot 20 minutes before legal light. Load our gear and hike up to the first little spot 150 yards from the truck. I let out a bugle and immediately get a response just below us at like 200 yards. We hear a few cow calls and we hurry and set up. The wind is good, the sun is just rising and things are looking good. We set up my wife in one side and my son in the other side. The elk try to come up but the deadfall was too thick and I could not convince the elk to circle around. Entire encounter last 30 minutes with several bugles and cow calls but nothing happens. Eventually the cows feed up and out taking the bull. Cool deal not even 200 yards from the jeep.
We cover a couple more miles and no sign and no answers to our strategic bugles. The end of this location is a series of small meadows with water. It always holds some elk. We approach the 500 yards and I tell my wife and son it is time for stealth mode. We sneak through the trees to a dry sage park. As we near the last 100 yards of the park we see a bunch of tracks and sign. The elk have to be close. The meadows run North and south in a little valley. There is an upper meadow and a lower meadow. As soon as I bugle I get 2 immediate responses... One from the upper meadow and one in the lower meadow. 2 bulls.
We are just west of the meadows about 100 feet higher in elevation and about 80 yards from the meadows. Both the lower meadow and upper meadow have good trail leaving and heading up to he sage flat. My son sets up on the lower meadow trail and my wife on the upper meadow trail. I drop back 100 yards and try calling. Both bulls immediately fire back to the bugle. THe bull in the lower meadow start moving up the bottom. My son sees the bull several times from 80 yards but he never commits to my bugle or my cow call. Instead he walks up into the upper meadow and chases off the bull in the upper meadow(the wrong direction of course). The lower bull was a 300" 6x6. He also gave my wife a show as he destroyed a tree in the meadows and them thrashed mud all over etc. Again just in the meadow at 80 some yards. After a few minutes, he moves further up the bottom and out of our lives. After the 6x6 leaves the upper bull comes back in the park. A mature 5x5 he wallows in the mud, destroys the same tree the other bull beat up. He wants to come up but never commits. He goes back into the trees on the other side of the meadow and bugle to our bugles but no response at all to our cow calls etc. Both bulls moved off and things look to be over.
We sit and chat about what we saw, all the action. It was a good 45 minutes to an hour of action. In hind sight we probably should have pushed into the upper meadow. The wind and everything was right and they were busy enough yelling at each other that we could have pulled it off. But again both bulls were well under 100 yards from the shooters.
Before we leave I let our one last bugle and to our surprise the 5x5 had moved back towards us and was close again. This time I send my son into the trees while I bugle. My son ended up less than 14 yards from the bull but the scrub brush aspen were so thick all he could see was the bulls head. Eventually the bull bugged out. Dang close again.
So first morning 8 cow/calves and 3 bull bugling Also the sage meadow had a bunch of elk in it. At least a dozen. They had to be there someplace but I am not sure where...
We hike back to the jeep and head to camp for lunch and Nap!!! We get back to the camper and batteries dead again!! Check the solar panels they are not hooked up correctly. Fix that... Panels starting to charge. Start the generator and check things out. Batteries still low, dig around and find that when my son unhooked the trailer the tongue jack barely pulled out the trailer brake pin. Trailer brakes on full blast... Solve that issue, but already let the generator run for hours and hours. Getting low on fuel...
Nap and let generator run... End result we still have a battery issue, generator out of fuel. Oh well, we will get the electric issues figured out. Lunch and nap until 3:00 pm.
Get up and head back to a spot. We arrive at 4:00 and the wind is wrong... We adjust but fail. In 2020 we had this same tag and there was a massive September storm that blew down a ton of trees... It is a mess and the dead fall that was already bad is absolutely horrible... So much so that they have cut the cattle grazing because the lost so many cows trapped in the forest and now they cant access a lot of areas...
That evening on the way out we see another bug 5x5 and 13 cows. We got to about 100 yards before they got nervous and left.
That night we sleep hard and get up early on sunday at 4:30 to head to the "ridge" This location was my last archery elk kill in 2020 and was where my wife killed her first archery elk... We are a little early and have to sit in the jeep and wait for t to get light enough for us to walk with out head lamps. We start up the hill barely able to see. 300 yards straight up the bare ridge and the sun light is getting enough you can see a couple hundred yards. Above us on the ridge a cow barks. We setup, again only a couple hundreds yard from the jeep. My son sneaks into 30 yards from the calf but the small rag-horn 5 never gets with in 40 yards before the cow, calf and bull leave. Awesome... We crest the top of the ridge to the lookout and immediately see elk in the flat 100 yards from us feeding. 2 spikes 9 cow/calf and another rag horn. We set up and call. Got one cow to come up and withing 30 yards of my son but they never commit and eventually the group feeds off into the trees. We move over to the top and sit and glass and listen. We have 2 bulls below us sounding off but wind is wrong. We eventually make a move and I send my son and wife in after the elk while I circle back to the jeep and pick them up in a different spot. They still hunt through some trees and through the meadows. We end up seeing 2 5x5 bulls and a rag horn. They bumped a 12 dozen cows and then again found a lone spike that was under 30 yards but hard quarter too.
Sunday evening my wife dips out. I have a hard time getting my son out the camper door. As a result we arrive to desired hike about an hour late and find 2 atvs already there. We make a last second change and go to a new place. It is a cool new place and in time I bet it will be hot. We set up and glass. Solid winds make hearing anything hard but we needed up calling a rag-horn into my son but it hags up at 60 yards just out od range...
I like the build quality, I like the air flow for the heat issues, I like the blind windows ease of operation and silent way to open close. I like you can’t see in it at all with windows close but can see out really well.
The other issue is the height of the window. From my normal blind chair a small tripod type we are too low to shoot sitting/kneeling. The blind is tall enough my wife and some can shoot standing up but I can’t. So the window height is in between. It would be fine for a rifle, but I would need to be shooting uphill from blind or get a taller chair.
