Yesterday afternoon around 3:30 I pulled into Minturn. It was a short but great hunt. I might head back out on Wednesday and do a little fishing there and see how the other two guys from Texas are doing. Warning! Skip the next paragraph if you don’t like to read about hunting and shooting an animal!
The reason I’m home so early is on Saturday, the first day of hunting season, I was done at 6:15 in the morning! I woke up around 4:30 as did all of us and to keep it short, was in the mountains hiking up a hill at about 9000 feet by 6 am. As we neared the top of a ridge, we were stopped in our tracks by a bugle (an elk) about 300 yards to the right of us. We bugled back and right behind us about 80 yards, another bull elk screamed at us. We froze watching for movement through the trees and I could make out shadows and brief glimpses of brown fur between the trees. After about a minute we heard crashing down to the left and I saw about 5 elk, a bull and 4 cows, running down the mountain I had just climbed. I raised the rifle an took a shot at the bull while he was on the run at about 303 yards. You can hear the thump even from that distance which is about 3 football fields away. I knew I hit him but these are 700 to 800 pound or more animals so I leveled my rifle to shoot again. My second shot was at 360 yards, which is a darn far shot, and down he went. Last year I shot one and he too went down but then was gone. By the way, a few months later he was spotted doing well high on a mountain. This year though, my bull was down for good. My buddy congratulated me and told me what a great shot it was. I’m lucky as I’ve always been blessed with being a good shot my whole life. Not sure why but I just am, knock on wood. Luckily we could get the Ranger (an all terrain 4 wheel drive buggy that’ll go just about anywhere) right to him so he was easy to get out after we gutted (butchered) him. This was a big relief as Sunday morning we had to pack out about 500 pounds of elk 2 miles up and down a mountain which took 4 of us over 3 and a half hours. So anyhow, I was done at 6:15 with a nice 5 X 6 bull which will make a lot of good steaks, summer sausage, jerky, stew meat, roasts and more. I went out with my buddy Marty on his hunts as I was done and thankfully he got his elk Sunday morning so we then left yesterday afternoon.
Marty was so excited as he had never bagged an animal in his life in over 20 years of hunting! He was shaking so bad when he shot we were all surprised he shot straight and true. It was great for him. He was like a little kid he was so excited. He said he wanted this more than losing his virginity as he knew someday he’d lose that but wasn’t sure he’d ever get an elk, ha ha.
Last night Lori, the boys, Marty and his wife Mel and I all went out to dinner for sushi at Matsu to celebrate. The chef where we hunt is not really a chef at all so the food is never very good but we’re not there for the food. That’s the one thing they need to change.
Tomorrow I’m headed down to Denver to do some business and the kids are back in school and Lori’s back to work. Not sure what we’ll do today. I’ll post pictures in a few days but wanted to give everyone some warning if some of you don’t want to see a dead animal. Here’s a few below of the country and our hunting cabin. For what it’s worth, I only hunt things that we’ll eat. I don’t trophy hunt and shoot bears or stuff them and hang them on the wall. It’s a magical time of the year I look forward to every year and both boys want to go next year. There’s worse things for a kid that hiking high in the mountains trying to stalk wild game. And by the way is it easy as many people never even get a shot at an animal. It’s hard work, physically and mentally demanding and also dangerous. Hunters are the biggest conservationists there are and contribute more money and resources to saving our wildlife and wild lands than anyone. There’s a tv commercial out there that says “Hug a Hunter” for those very reasons and it’s 100% true.
That’s it for tomorrow, have a great Labor Day and we’ll see you all tomorrow. God Bless.
