The last night. I had high hopes for a spot up above camp. We’d heard bugles up there every evening we’d been there. I knew where some thick dark timber/bedding area broke into some nice parks with some water… figured we’d get setup about 1 ½ hours before dark and I’d just do some real quiet and sparse cow calling.
Becky was in a perfect place between two alleys…
We did not hear a single elk that night… saw a few mule deer… but it was suppressingly quiet… our last night. We wanted to hunt for a couple hours the next morning, but after considering the work we had to do (packing out all the meat), the drive we had home… getting everything squared away and getting to bed and to work Tuesday morning… we thought better of hunting Monday morn… so, we built a fire Monday night and shared a bottle of wine… and enjoyed eachothers company. Becky was tickled with the hunt… I was on cloud nine…
We woke before light and broke down camp. Got packed up and started down the trail!
Above pics are after we went by the meat stash… Becky loaded the backstrap bag on her pack full of camp gear and I grabbed the head/horns… Neither of us had light loads…
We crossed the creek and headed up the hill… and a roaring bugle came from the other side of the saddle from us. It was the first bull we’d heard yet that was really fired up. I told Becky we should get up the hill about 200 yards, drop our stuff, then try and move in on him or call him in. We got up there, dropped our packs and gave a couple cow calls. He Roared back, but seemed quite a ways away. I wanted to head back down the hill and get near this saddle where I figured he’d bring a herd across to shade up for the day. It was silent for a bit, then I gave out some cow calls and he answered. He didn’t sound far this time. I hurried Lady Luck along the ridgeline and told her to get ready… as she was moving up 75 yards ahead of me he roared out a bugle that made me smile. I LOVE those big, loud, challenging bugles… damn! Anyhow, I thought he was going to come walking right through the saddle… and Becky was set up right on it… he didn’t. The prob was… as many of you know, a saddle in the mountains, at 8000 feet… at 8:30 in the morning… is a fickle winded SOB… the wind pretty much blows in every direction at once… I should have thought of that. We shoulda pulled way out of there and tried to call him in away from the saddle… The next time we heard him bugle.. .it was a good one and he was 300+ yards away…
The real kick in the nutz… was when we got back to our packs… and the elk skull… there were fresh elk tracks basically on top of the packs! That bull, or a satellite… went RIGHT up to where I initially cow called from!!
We hiked out to the truck with a smile on our faces. What a great trip.
We emptied our packs and headed back in… I wanted to make 2 more trips. We’d each pack about 45# each load.
This pretty girl of mine says, “I don’t want to come back again, lets just pack heavy loads and get it over with!” I was really reluctant. Ive done it a ton of times and hated every one of them… but..well… you know… when a girl… scratch that… Lady… tells you “lets just pack a heavy load” you cant exactly tell her “No, its too hard”… So off we went. The loads were not nice. My hips ached in the first minute. We had 1.5 miles to go. 1 mile of it uphill. After three sit downs on logs… we made it. I got home and weighed the meat bags and our packs. Her’s was 77# total. 5’3” hundred and something pound Lucky Lady packed 77# out… It was impressive! Mine was 104#. It sucked.
That… was that! Me and my bull one more time…
