Last night around 7:40 pm I finally bagged a beautiful 600 pound plus elk. For 5 days I had hunted and passed up many animals looking for a larger bull. We were due to leave for home today though could have stayed until tomorrow morning. Knowing this I decided to treat last night as if it was my last hunt. What this means is if you see an animal you say to yourself, “if it was the last day, would I shoot this animal”. So after about 30 miles of hiking up and down steep, and I mean steep, mountains, I shot a great bull that will feed us for close to a year.
I won’t go into all the details to gross you non-hunters out, but after driving a 4 wheel drive Ranger up 4 miles or so into the mountains, I hiked another 3 to a spot by what you’d call a pond but was more of a watering hole. I set up in some Aspen trees in a rain storm and proceeded to kill a couple hours until dusk. Finally around 7:15 a smaller elk came out of the woods down one of their many trails towards the water. You see they never come out until dusk at night and in the morning go bed down soon after sunrise. Jeremy, my guide from Montrose, saw him first and told me to freeze. After about 5 minutes of motionless standing, something spooked it and off it went. It didn’t take long f0r me to spot the bear at the water which made the elk run off. Soon the bear meandered down the hill and about 7:30, 30 minutes from sunset, a larger bull came out of the forest right above me. I saw this guy first and froze. I was hoping a group would follow so I scanned the trails coming out of the forest looking for his buddy’s. For the next 10 minutes this thing walked right towards me not seeing me at all. The problem was he was coming straight on at me so I had no shot. Finally he turned away from me and that was it. I’m a pretty good shot, (not bragging, just fact, I won a bet hitting a Gatorade bottle at 419 yards earlier in the day with one shot) and with today being the last day, didn’t want to take any chances that I wouldn’t get another shot at a good animal. Then the fun begins, again I won’t gross you out but for the next hour and a half we had to quarter him up and prepare to pack him out in the pitch black dark. All the guides carry radios so Jeremy radioed the other guys who drove the Rangers (4 wheel drive vehicles) as close as they could to us. We wore head lamps and used flashlights to get the elk loaded up.
It was a great time with great guys and an experience of a lifetime. I think I’ll be going back next year. On Friday I’ll be driving to Craig, about 110 miles to pick up my meat. I left the hide and antlers as Lori doesn’t like them hanging in the house anyhow. I did take the ivories which are the back two teeth that are real ivory just like and elephant tusk. These are the two teeth that elk use to bugle and for centuries been known as an homage to the animal. The Indians use to make necklaces from these and decorate their shirts with them. You might have seen these on Indian shirts. Â So that was it, a great time, lots more stories but too many to write. I made it home by 1pm today and did all my laundry there before I left. It’s good to be home, the boys grew a lot in 5 days and are doing well. That’s it, lots going on, God Bless.