Tag: Bull tag
Season/Hunt: Archery, partner hunt
Time/Date/Location: Late September, the wee hours of the morning, in an elk state
Camp/gear: You and your buddy have a base camp off a main FS road. You either hunt from camp (if you hear elk below you in the draw) each morning, or, head out in one of many directions to hunt spots you’ve gotten into elk before (take a truck there, or, quads). You both have backpack gear in base camp if you decide you want to head “in” to a spot for a few days.
Allrighty then. You and your bud located several singers the night before by locate bugling way, way across a large steep draw about 5 miles by road from your base camp. This morning, you’ve driven the truck to the spot, and are navigating on foot via an ancient outfitter trail, around the head end of the draw, to the ridge you received answers from the night before. You can hear bulls screaming (three of em) as you make your way across the head end of the draw in the dark (headlamps on low, just pointing at the trail so you don’t trip) coming from that distant ridge. There is really no way to access this particular ridge/spot from anywhere below. Once you start ascending down the timbered and brushy (huckleberry and U brush) ridge the elk are on, favoring the off side from where the bulls are howling, you can tell that the elk are moving down the other side of the ridge…… down, down, down into a super deep canyon on the way to the deep dark bottom where they will spend their day in the cool creek bottom. Over the course of the next week, you repeat this drill two more times with the exact same results (elk are singing at the crack of dawn but are moving off that particular ridge as soon as day breaks). Again, there is really no way to access this spot from anywhere below, and, no way to access the deep hole the elk are spending their day from the bottom (no trails and way too far in from below to hunt up/in to said bottom).
I know it's tough to answer without being there and knowing all the variables but again, it's just a scenario to offer suggestions and share ideas. What should you do with the information you have to maximize your chances of bringing an elk home for dinner? You know there are elk at that spot at night but depart when daylight hits, and, moving down that ridge after crossing the head end of the draw obviously puts the wind at your back when you’re moving down toward the critters this time of the day.
There are some “nice” bulls in this group. What’s your tentative game plan to let the air out of one of these seemingly inaccessible bulls?
