3 Guys, 9 Days, 116 Miles....Backcountry Adventure!!!

[chukar hunter]

I preface this post and following story that I've been a long time member since 2011, perpetual lurker and seldom poster.  I've seen the forum change over the years from a site of willingness to share pictures and stories of the passion that all drives us to this site to a site of skeptics and critics.   The amount of people willing to share pictures and stories seems to dwindle every year and I applaud those still willing to face this audience as it's what keep me coming back to this forum.  I hope my adventure may inspire lurkers like myself to share their stories and change this trend.  There are so many obstacles we as hunter's face in today's world, let's not be one of them, enjoy some comrade-re and share the passion that we all have.

Rant over, this story will take me some time as it's a long one(and I've got a huge backlog of "work").  Sit back and enjoy the ride!  Hope you enjoy as much as we did.

[slowhand]

Tag Me in 

[jstone]

Tagging

[Rainier10]

 
Looking forward to this.

[JohnVH]

 

[chukar hunter]

DAY 1:  IS IT REALLY GOING TO BE THIS EASY?

Leaving the comfort of the truck at 7:30am, we make the journey for a 9 day base/spike camp way over weight.  A gallon of whiskey doesn't help, but it's the best backcountry medicine for easing aching muscles, backs, and bones!  The area is a ghost town and not a single human, stock, or animal sighting on the way in.  Base camp completely set up by 1pm, water pumped, we're way ahead of schedule.  Instead of hiking to a vantage point to glass for the evening, having a couple of extra hours to play with, we decide to hit a canyon that I shot a nice bull in the year before.  Taking the trail another 3 miles into another canyon, we sneak along the river calling into each ravine trying to raise a response.  Nothing....but some bear tracks and decent fresh elk sign.  With three hours of daylight left we opt to circle around the canyon, gain about 1500 ft of elevation and plan to spread out sidehilling through some historically promising ravines.  On the climb up, we bump 6 does feeding on an open hillside and continue to see fresh elk sign.   We spread out as planned a couple of hundred yards apart and slowly begin sidehilling.  Crossing the first ravine we're navigating shale slides, attempting to be as quiet as possible when I hear a cow chirp in the ravine below me about 500ft in elevation.  I cow call back and immediately receive a response from a bull and multiple cows.  Soft at first, we call back and forth for a couple of sessions, until I hit him with a challenge bugle.  This bull flips a switch and immediately sounds like a brahma bull....we've got him fired up!  I then see a couple of cows filter out on an exposed knob and through the binos see antlers through some thick pines working back and forth.  After a few heated hand motions, the plan is understood that my brother and I are going to circle back to the ridge he's on and hunting partner C is forging ahead to the ridge we were working towards.  We're all going to drop elevation and surround this guy.  15 minutes later we're all in place and I find myself on an exposed finger ridge overlooking a dense jackpine thicket and across the ravine at 300 yards a sparsly vegetated open hillside.  This bull is firing bugles every 30 seconds and sounds massively angry.  Within a minute cows begin to filter out on the opposite hillside.  I'm sitting in front of a stump with the gun on it like a turret.  I'm locked on the cows, mentally preparing for when the bull walks out.  3 cows, then a spike, 2 more cows....then BOOM,  C's gun cracks from the opposite side of the ravine.  Elk barely move and continue to feed.  2 more cows, 2 more minutes and then BOOM a second shot.  Unknowing if C's shots are lethal, I frantically scan the group looking for the bull.  I then see C fast walking down the hill and the elk scatter.  11 in total, no more big bulls. 

We forgot the radios at camp, so after a few tense minutes of "marco polo" we find each other in the jack pine thicket and the first animal of the trip!  We take pics and it takes us til it's completely pitch dark to get him quartered up and in bags.  We carry all of the meat away from the carcass and opted to leave a front shoulder and some loose meat for a final load for C the next morning.  The packout ended up being the easiest of the trip, but in the moment felt like hell as I don't believe any of us were mentally prepared for what we had just done.  Was it going to be this easy......no, it never is!  Back to camp by 10pm, we eat some grub, and make a dent in our whiskey ration and relish in what had just happened.  An Elk on Day one, does that ever happen!?  Sore already, how were we going to keep this up for 8 more days?

[pianoman9701]

Good start. 

[JohnVH]

Only 1 gallon for 3 guys and 9 days?   

Great story so far!

[ljsommer]

Wow!!! Love it!

[shootem]

Great start.

[MacAttack]

tagging along

[Dan-o]

 

[silverdalesauer]

Tag.

Great start to day 1. Can't wait to read day 2!

[ganghis]

Awesome start - can I ask what state you're hunting in?

[HikerHunter]

Great story, nice bull!