Ok, got back home yesterday from the North River empty handed. Never saw one animal until yesterday morning. The "yellow dot" system threw me off, never knew about that. Closed weekdays and open sat. and sunday. Didn't make it down there last year due to my Margaret cow tag. Things can really change in a year! Got re-familiarized thursday then did a walk-in behind a gate on friday. Saw some fresh sign way back in there but no animals.
Hiked our tails off all day back in there. Ended up sleepin in saturday
guess we were a little bit pooped so we went in the "yellow dot" to see how things had changed and to show my huntin partner the area since he had never been down there. So saturday was pretty much road huntin and learning new area but we did manage to get out and hit the timber in one spot that looked good and saw one set of tracks down in there and that was it, no animals again.
Yesterday morning we decide to hike back in to where we saw all the good sign on friday but we went in on the back side since it was a little bit shorter. Well we hike way down the over grown skidder road and get in the timber. After we're in there about a half hour my partner thinks he heard something down below us. I give a call on my Primos Cow Girl and he signals that I got an answer!
So I give another call and the same thing happens
My hearing is so bad I'm not hearing anything.
All of a sudden here comes a damn elk running up thru the timber right at us! I couldn't believe it! I'm behind a little tree so it can't see me but it makes out my partner and freezes, BUSTED!! It's a good sized calf maybe lookin for mama, I don't know. My partner doesn't look my mama so the calf decides this isn't a good place to be and starts heading off back down so I give another meyew on the call and stops and comes back. I'm loving this!!! I've never done this or had it happen to me before!! Oh well so she heads back down into the timber and we keep going and decide to stop about 15 minutes later and I give a call again and my partner signals me an answer. Oh boy here we go again so we both crouch down and game on. Here comes an elk up outta the timber at a good clip! I can't believe I'm doing this with this call. But anyway it ends up being the same calf again I think. We ended up following the trail way down into the timber and using the call every once in awhile but no more answers. I didn't think about it til we got back to the truck and were on our way back. I'm wondering if the calf lost it's mom which I'm sure that's what happened and was it still with the herd and the herd was down there someplace where the calf was heading back to? I'm thinking we shoulda worked our way down there. But then I wasn't getting any other answers from down there either. This was the first time I've used the call. Made it worth the trip down there to see this happen. I was really looking all around for Mr Bull so show up but no such luck. I did manage to get a picture of the calf. I'll see if I can get it posted on here. There ya have it. Now I have to go add some beef stock to my tag soup.
