It was 11 degrees at camp that morning. We had steak burritos for breakfast. By 8:30am I was still slowly driving to where I wanted to be when I looked out the window and thought, those are funny looking ants. So I got out and glassed the herd for a while until I saw a spike. They were all moving north cresting a ridge and disappearing, and no way could I bomb down the canyon on foot, across the bottom and back up. So I studied the map to see where they might go, came up with the plan.
I drove to where I originally planned to go, geared up, and got to hiking the bottom of the canyon. I knew it would take about four hours to get where I wanted to and by 1pm I had been hiking, crossing water, stopping to eat, rest, and realizing if I didn’t turn back, i be coming back in the dark since it took five hours to get to where I was at 1pm. Since I hadn’t reached my destination which was another mile, I decided to give it another hour of of pushing through.
Right about 2pm I saw some elk coming down a ridge on my right when I had expected to see them on my left. I got into a position to glass without being spotted, couldn’t see well, moved forward to cover and glassed some more. Well there’s that spike from 8:30am. The whole herd is going south back up to the ridge they had crested that morning. Tired, hungry, heart rate up, ranged to 400yds. Got the shooting sticks off my pack and tried to slow down my heart rate. Zoomed in the scope to makes sure it was definitely a spike, kept watching so I don’t make a mistake and for him to clear the cows.
PEW….thunk…still moving….PEW….missed???….still hobbling…PEW…thunk…tipped over.
Pack the sticks and trekking poles and close the gap. Found him laid over.
Fortunately, I was in a spot with two bars of service and was able to communicate with friends in the area that were also hunting. Five hours later I had him quartered and deboned right before they showed up for meat haul. We loaded game bags and packs, the four of us took him out in one nearly five hour hike. We stopped for breaks and snacks along the way. It was a full cloudless moon and we often didn’t need headlamps. We got back to my truck at 11:49pm I drove them back up to their vehicles since they were able to take a non motorized only road to me and save a couple miles of hiking in the dark. We rolled into camp just after 1am. The next morning I got game checked at camp and all was good.
In total I put on 15.5 miles that day but some of us had put on even more.
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