Day 1: Up at 4:50 30 minute drive to an old road system with people blocking the road, so brother in law drops me off and i take off around the truck blocking the road, i didn't want to hunt the clear cut, i wanted the draw behind it. Well lond story short they were pissed, and took off past me in the truck, they get about 200 yards ahead of me and run for the clear cut. I am round the corner to head down in the draw and hear the familiar boom of a ML, 1 of the bulls in this draw down, it was a dinker 4 point. That was all the elk we saw day1, but i had a heard in the timber in front of me but the wind was screwing me.
Day 2: 3 bulls down in a draw heading into the jack fir. Nope let them stay in the pissing down rain. All the elk we saw on sunday.
Day 3: Nothing, no elk seen, not to many booms heard. Brother in law went home early.
Day 4: We are about ready to give up, hike into draw where we saw 3 bulls on sunday, can't even find a track, it was like they dissapeared. We talked about packing camp and heading home. But we decide to try somewhere else. We cut freash track and some bull poo in the track. But 3 cows 2 calves, 1 of the calves must have been a bull. Heading back to camp my brother in law and i decide to head intot he timber that must have passed over. I get a call on the radio saying he has a bull bedded about 50 yards but has no shot. He gets screwed by the wind and he tracks him for 30 minutes before his tracks dissapear, brother in law said that bull made hardly any noise. We just lost him. So we decide to let him rest for the night as he is crippled. His right rear leg is missing the hoof, and he is gimping pretty bad. We nicknamed him gimpy, we have seen him a few times over the summer. He is a nice 5 point that we didn't see again. But we decided to go after him this morning.
Day 5: (today) Heading up we stop where i get cell phone reception as my wife hadn't heard from me for 3 days and was not to happy with me, i called. She said try not to shoot anything today, as she knew i would be comming home today.
Well we leave and get to a point where we could see where gimpy could be and low and behold there is an elk down there... Looking through the binos i thought i saw head gear, but i wasn't sure. Brother in law says he can't tell. Elk turned the head and we can see the fork. Now we are looking at first light 5-600 yards down into a creek bottom, and we saw the fork. We dive off brother is lighter and faster than me. So he gets down there i am 50 yards behind him, wind was perfect, he got below the bull and thought he lost him, but he broke a twig and brother moved back up, saw the fork and knew he was in position. Bull went down with a shot from 40 yards. Perfect shot hit ribs and riccocheted into the back, bull dropped in his tracks. Then proceded to roll 40 yards down hill into the ravine from hell. Father in law drove around to the closest landing, that was only 500 yards from the bull straight up hill. 3 trips a piece later and bull was in the truck. The pack was straight up hill, lots of fun. Will post a pic later, need sleep.
We saw this bull 2 sundays ago with 20-25 cows, he is a nice 5 point.
Also for the season we heard no bugles for the first time since we started ML, the big bulls have seperated from the cows. But over all was a fun early season.
