Rosies on the Peninsula

[treeclimber2852]

Ok...after having chased Rosies for the first time (actually first time hunting in WA period) I had some questions and observations after 4 long days in the woods:

1.  I located a ton of fresh sign, set up with a good overlook of the trail and beyond two cows trotting by - nothing.  How do you find the bulls if they aren't talking?  I only heard one bugle the whole time...and I'm pretty sure it was another hunter. 

2.  Having had the luxury of going home every night where I hunted in the Carolinas, how do you manage scent control when roughing it for 4 days without running water?  Or do you just completely rely on the wind not switching directions on you and completely busting you? 

3.  I hear of guys getting several miles deep and the terrain on the Peninsula would make it impossible to get several miles deep with any expectation of getting the animal out if it's shot.  I put a lot of miles on my boots, but they were very hard miles...and without the GPS I would have been screwed several times.  Do I need to get in any deeper if I'm seeing good sign 1 mile in? 

4.  Did I bite off more than I could chew going after Rosies my first time out? 

I wanted to get in the woods and I had a great partner who drove me around and showed me some great spots, for which I am incredibly grateful (thank you for the awesome weekend Smoke), but now that I'm back in the land of the living, without having seen so much as the tip of an antler, I am left to figure out how I could do better next time.  Congrats to all those who knocked one down this weekend.  I knew going in that this wouldn't be as easy as sitting in a tree over a corn pile.  The work and the time required for success doesn't bother me...I enjoy it.  I just want to make sure I'm learning what I can as best as I can. 

[JimmyHoffa]

For getting an animal out, there aren't many places where you're more than maybe 1/2 mile from a road of some sort.  Game carts, bikes with trailers if behind a gate or buddies with packs.  It might require some saw work in places. 
If you're in the heavier timber, the herds will usually be smaller--five or six cows maybe.  So the bulls have to go from drainage to drainage to find all the different little herds of cows.  On the tree farms the herds can be bigger, up over a hundred, so bulls can come from different directions to those cows over longer period of time.

[bwhntr350]

#1, keep looking, it is not easy

#2, from a guy that has killed 11 archery bulls on the peninsula, don't worry about it. The wind switches direction every 2 minutes. I never worry about it. I just hunt. I may hunt east to west one day and west to east the next because you can never count on it. After blowing stalks on a few bulls luck, eventually, wins out. Blew chances at two different 6 points Sunday because of the wind, oh well.

#3, pack multiple knives, hatchet, plastic, rope and 4 pillow case sized meat bags. Skin and bone the elk out, stuff the meat in the bags and hang in a tree for air circulation. Come back later to get the meat. It usually gets fairly cool on the peninsula at night. If that meat cools down it can be brought out the next day or even two days later. I have done this before and never lost a single pound of meat. The only time I got worried was when it was overcast  and never got below 60 that night. Meat had a sour smell to it after I packed it out the following day. I aired it out for an hour and got it in a cooler. MMM, delicious!

#4, you did not bite off more than you can chew, but you may have not been prepared. At least you are thinking about all this. Prepare yourself and you'll be fine. My hunting pack weighs 21 pounds. I am, probably, overly prepared but that is better than under prepared. I once killed an elk late in the day and was still boning it out by fire light at 9:30 p.m. I slept next to the carcass and walked out the next day. There was not a single item in my pack that I wished I did not have.

Good luck to you!