Well, our hunt didn't turn out like we had originally planned, but we managed to have a good time. We went in two days early and were able to get our camp set up fairly quick the first night. With about 5 inches of snow on the ground, the amount of sign we were seeing was lets say minimal to nonexistent. After two good days of covering some country we only saw a spike and two cows. The Saturday of the opener wasn't all that different from the previous couple days other than hearing a few shots hear and there in the distance. Day two of the opener, all snow had melted and the fog rolled in thick. Our camp was placed in a fairly heavily timbered area which my dad or I don't prefer to hunt as much as the open country. Day three was clearer than day two except our chilly weather had warmed up to the mid forty's and it rained cats and dogs. Not elk. Day four was fairly exceptional. We managed to glass a small heard of about 13 about a mile away from an area we found that was great for spot and stalk. After already hiking about 7 miles, we started our trek to the heard that was starting to rise from their beds and move up the draw. We got on top of them pretty quick. I fired the hoochie mama off and they instantly started talking and making their way to us. We had a "descent" shooting lane through some old burn and scrub brush. After the first two cows passed by, a 300 class bull presented himself with a slightly quartered away shot at his vitals at 100 yards. BOOM! I fired one off towards right behind his shoulder. He paused for a minute, took two steps back and took off down the hillside. The rest of the heard just filtered out of the area. Long story short, we looked long and hard for that bull. No signs of blood or anything. After a long hike in the dark back to our camp, we spent the next couple of days without seeing an elk. We called our trip a couple days short. We were physically and mentally exhausted. One old guy maybe in his sixty's ended up killing a hog 350 bull. I was glad to see he did well. I saw pics of it on our packers camera. He was a real nice guy and was hunting by himself. When the packer got his elk for him, they almost started crying when they saw he had cut its head off w/o caping it out. He said he could never afford a mount. Anyway, we came home empty. We had two opportunities to kill spikes, but we honestly wanted to each kill good bulls. Time to start building points again, it was a good lesson, and we both know what we would do differently next time. My photo bucket is acting goofy, I'll try posting a couple pics later.
MS
