Pathfinder's Colorado Drop Camp Elk Hunt

[nwwanderer]

Thanks, huge country, good stuff!!!

[Pathfinder101]

  After taking plenty of photos and tagging him, we got to work cutting him up.  I have gutted and quartered elk before, and I have done gutless on a couple of deer, but I have never done gutless on an elk.  I figured it would be the best way to get him broken down and keep from churning up the mucky ground and keep the meat clean.  We laid out a space blanket to lay the quarters on.  In two hours we were done and had the quarters hung up on a broken spruce tree about 100 feet uphill in the treeline. 

[Pathfinder101]

I sat down and sent a text with my In Reach to Trent.  “Bull Down. Sending coordinates.”  Immediately, he replied back, asking if he could get horses to the bull.  I looked around.  It had taken us 3 hours to get in here.  Down 3 sheer, timbered slopes, over logs the size of desks over and over.  I honestly didn’t know and I told him so.  I sent him the coordinates.  He cheerfully texted back. “Oh, no problem.  I can get in there.”  I was stunned.  “He must know another way in here.” I thought.  “No way he gets a string of pack horses in here the way we came.”

[Pathfinder101]

LP and I strapped on our gear, putting both tenderloins in a bag for a treat later when we made it back to camp.  It was now past 5:00, so we had 2 hours to cover a LOT of contour lines back uphill to camp before it got dark.  Suffice to say, we didn’t make it back before dark.  The first two hours we made it up the first two hills, dodging windfalls as best we could, often only making it 15 or 20 steps before having to stop and get our lungs working again.  LP was suffering from altitude sickness again, gagging and dry heaving over and over when we would stop.  When it got dark we did our best to avoid the blowdowns with our headlamps, but it was impossible.  Dodging the maze of logs would put us off course, then getting back on course would put us in a mass of blowdowns again.  We finally rolled back into camp after 9 pm, exhausted, sick, hungry, but happy.  We were too wiped out to eat our tenderloins.  We sliced a few bits off and dropped them into a cup of Ramen that we shared before collapsing into bed.  We figured we’d save the rest for dinner the next night when we had enough energy to build a fire outside and cut a couple of roasting sticks.  It was freezing at night, so I put the tenderloin bag on the folding camp table just outside the tent.

[Pathfinder101]

The next morning Trent rode by our camp to check on us before riding in to recover the bull. He congratulated us, suggested an area to go while he was in the basin loading up the elk, then led his string up the trail.  I still wondered how he was going to get in there with horses, but he didn’t seem concerned at the least.  That night LP and I climbed up to our 12,000 ft glassing point and were met with alternating fog and snowstorm.  We built a twig fire and kept it going while glassing until dark between fog banks.

[Pathfinder101]

That night we got back to camp, expecting to start an outdoor white-man-fire and roast our tenderloins on sticks medium-raw and eat them like cavemen.  I thought I was losing my mind when I looked at the table and it was empty.  Nothing else in camp was disturbed and there were no tracks that I could see, but something had carefully plucked a 7 pound bag of meat off the table and made off with it.  My best guess would be a Pine Martin.  When I asked later, Trent and Chase agreed that this was most likely the culprit.
The next morning I had an idea.  “Today, we are going to follow Trent’s horse tracks into that basin and mark our route on the GPS” I said.  “He must know an easier way in there.” By this point, LP was over his altitude sickness.  With the wet ground and a slight skiff of snow it was easy to find the horses’ tracks when they left the main trail in the direction of the basin.  Ok, so far, the same route we had taken.  We continued to follow the trail.
As it turned out, the route that LP and I took into the basin  was the same route that he took those horses to recover my bull.  Honestly, I wish I could have watched him do it.  He must have been sliding those horses downhill on their butts in places, and how he negotiated some of those logs still leaves me puzzled.  And then back out the same way with panniers full of elk quarters.  I grew up around horses.  I have done a few trail rides (I have never hired an outfitter or hunted on horseback before this) and LP is around horses quite a bit.  We were both speechless when we followed that trail.  I can say without hesitation that Trent possesses some of the most impressive mountain horses I have seen. 

[Pathfinder101]

For the remainder of our season (first season in Colorado is 5 days in total), LP and I hiked into and hunted that basin, hoping to catch another herd in there or a roving bull.  Unfortunately, we never caught up to the elk again.  True to most end-of-rut bulls, they clammed up and found a hidey hole someplace once the shooting had started.  I had high hopes of Little Pathfinder filling his tag too when I was done the first day, but it just didn’t work out.  Although we did gradually acclimate to the elevation, we were not able to get to a point where moving into farther drainages was feasible.  Chase came to pack us out the day after the season ended.

[Pathfinder101]

Chase rode us down the mountain, got us loaded into our pickup and pointed back in the direction of Trent’s place to get our bull out of the cooler.  After some caping, packing, lashing and much playing with a cacophony of cougar hounds (a pack that looked to be in as good a shape as his horses) at Trent’s, we were on the road headed back to Washington to try to catch the last few days of deer season (more on that in another thread). 

[Pathfinder101]

We made it as far as Monticello, Utah that night where we got a motel room (with a shower!), and located a fantastic BBQ restaurant.  I don’t think I need to illustrate to most of the members on this site what that first non-dehydrated-meal after 7 days in camp tastes like.  LP is pretty sure that it was one of the top 3 meals he has ever eaten in his life.

[Pathfinder101]

We got a good night’s rest and picked our way home the next day, stopping for a couple of hours in Moab at Arches National Park and to see the world record mule deer and pronghorn at Cabela’s in Salt Lake City.  We decided that our chapped lips had healed sufficiently to attempt a platter of hot wings at Buffalo Wild Wings while we watched the Phillies-Padres game (turned out not as healed as we thought, but we did manage to get through that entire plate).  We rolled back into Walla Walla just before 3 am on Saturday, slept 2 ½ hours and dragged ourselves back out (in the pouring rain) to try to take advantage of the only two days that LP had left of the general deer season before school and cross country practice would occupy all the daylight hours of his life.

[Pathfinder101]

For those of you who have never done an outfitted drop camp, if you are considering one, I would offer two things:
1.   Be very careful who you book with. Mine was great, but if I would have booked with the first one I saw that looked or sounded good on the internet, I am sure you would be reading an entirely different story right now.  Get references from someone you trust before booking.
2.   Ours was worth every single dime.  When we hung my bull up in that broken spruce tree and started our 4+ hour hike back to camp, I would have paid any amount necessary to have that bull hauled out of that hole.

[boneaddict]

Fun times!  I’m glad you guys had a wonderful experience and hunt.  Trophy to boot

[C-Money]

Hunt of a lifetime! Glad you guys got to do it together!! Congrats on your bull!

[trophyhunt]

Great story, thanks for sharing!  I’m sure people are googling that outfitters name as we speak!! Lol

[elkboy]

Great thread- one of my favorite this year, between the writing and the photos!  Thank you, Pathfinder!  Congratulations to you and your son!  What a great fall season for you two.