Peaches Ridge (anyone get drawn)

[runniNgunnin]

man my blister have blisters , trying to heal them up for montana next week , dude i looked like chevy chase from vaction one day in the heat was almost stripped down to my underwear , if a guys a true true hunter then you bust your ass, if not have a nice camping trip and don't complain about tag soup. I will say at 40 I see the changing of the gaurd comming in my family Good times out there.

HA! my number one on the x-mas list is a NICE set of new hunting boots(Cabelas, Danners, etc.). does anyone know how the late archery deer season is up there in the little naches unit? i ask cause now that ive walked every deep dark hole in the unit i figured i might give the deer a chance there?

[coachcw]

you can see a good buck in there , the elk are far and few then , did see some freash elk sign up on baldy late so ifthe weather holds off you might do good up there.

[countywarrior]

anyone know how i can get ahold of buckmaster_wa?  Ive got some great info for his ML peaches tag. I drew the archery tag this year and spent damn near every day on calling elk.  thanx

[gasman]

anyone know how i can get ahold of buckmaster_wa?  Ive got some great info for his ML peaches tag. I drew the archery tag this year and spent damn near every day on calling elk.  thanx

Check out his profile and send him a PM or email.

Serch for him in the members section.

[brianb231]

ok, so after 16 pages on this thread I am still curious how Teacherman faired in the peaches with his coveted tag. I love this tag and am hoping of drawing it next year, but I have not heard if he was successful or not?

Anyone know?

Thanks

[tmike]

I hunted with him the last morning and second to last evening. When I checked on him Sunday around 11 his tent was gone. I have Pm'd him and called, but haven't heard back. I hope he's ok. He was getting into a lot of bulls but hadn't connected yet.

[runniNgunnin]

dido, sounds about like me....

[Da stump]

Just a quick report on Teacherman, he has been trying tabasco in his tag soup so far.  Work is really interferring with serious hunting this year.  If he isn't working late he is off with his track team now.  He is also moving into a place just north of curlew and is one busy kid.  Hopefully late season may bring some fun.

Da stump

[Pathfinder101]

Just a quick report on Teacherman, he has been trying tabasco in his tag soup so far.  Work is really interferring with serious hunting this year.  If he isn't working late he is off with his track team now.  He is also moving into a place just north of curlew and is one busy kid.  Hopefully late season may bring some fun.

Da stump

Well, that's good news I think... He was talking about running away to Montana earlier this year (permanently).  So if he's moving to Curlew then he must be sticking around for a little while.

[gasman]

Just a quick report on Teacherman, he has been trying tabasco in his tag soup so far.  Work is really interferring with serious hunting this year.  If he isn't working late he is off with his track team now.  He is also moving into a place just north of curlew and is one busy kid.  Hopefully late season may bring some fun.

Da stump

A couple of 1" round stones in the soup will help   

[TeacherMan]

Well sorry I've been gone so long!!!

Hunt run down:
I left Curlew with a young kid on Wednesday evening and we got to the Little Naches at midnight and had camp set by 1am! We got up at 4:45 and head out of camp to an area that I have had luck in the past in and had several reports of different bulls in. At 5:25 we got onto several bulls in the bottom of a drainage that where bugling really well so we dropped in on top of them and played cat and mouse until 7:25 when the wind completely shifted on us so we backed out and headed down to another spot that I was originally heading for. About 250 yards before we get to our final destination I look at the kid next to me and say "did you just see that freakin bull!!!" quietly of course   I pull my jeep froward and about 20 more yards and get out with my bow and knock an arrow and walk back at full draw to the opening he was standing in, of course not to be seen, at that point I turn back toward my jeep and or course my door is open blocking the road and there he is standing in the road 30 yards in front of my jeep   A nice 300 ish 6x6 with a couple cows and a spike. We obviously didn't connect. I follow him into the timber and within seconds realize all I'm going to do is push him into the wilderness so I back out. We go up to the end of the road and park the jeep and sit and listen for about 20 minutes, perfectly quiet, nice for camping not for elk hunting. At this point its just a few minutes after 8 and we start heading out, I haven't been into the area for over a month so I was planning on spending most of Thursday looking for animals. On our way out we end up seeing a nice 350 poundish black bear that I chased for about 1/2 a mile, as soon as I got back to my vehicle we drive down the road another 1/4 mile and a three point mule deer jumps out but I pass him up and continue down the road. we scouted the rest of the mt. that afternoon and didn't see any more elk.

[TeacherMan]

computer was being weird on the post above. Day two rolls around Friday, we go back to the area that we saw the 6x6 the morning before but we get there around 5:15 and start cutting up the clearcut to get over to the backside where I figure the elk would be holding. As we are going up the cut I make a couple cow calls and have cows answer me on bothsides in the cut but no bugles. We quietly get to the top and start working up the ridge line making cow calls ever 200 yards or so when all of a sudden my heart about exploded. A huge bugle erupted 70 yards below me in the timber just over the crest of the ridge. I immediately set up and continued my cow calling, of course I only had my one diaphragm with me since I had left my pack in the jeep so I could move quicker and quieter  I played with him for about 15-20 minutes and was able to pull him up the hill to about 40 yards out and we could see him but I could not get him to step out into the little 1/4 acre opening I was wanting him to get into. He completely demolished a small evergreen. This was one of the nicest bulls I had ever seen, honestly at the time I was thinking 390"  but realistically 340-350" but way past the point of should I shoot it or let it walk. I could hear cows down below him and several other bulls in the drainage below him and he finally disappeared back over the hill, I quickly moved in leaving my caller behind and I was able to get several glances at him pulling cows down the hill into the steepest drainage in the entire country, it was like a black hole.  At that point I didn't want to completely push him deeper into the wilderness so we backed out for the afternoon.   

[TeacherMan]

Continue from above   Well that afternoon we checked out the otherside of the unit and put way to many miles on our boots that evening with nothing to show for it but some great pics of deer and only a couple cows. No bugles at dark. i was starting to realize that if I didn't get one in the morning it was going to be over. Well the day arrived, the reason I say it that way was someone was looking down from above, at 6 am I herd a small rumble and before I knew it it was raining. At this point I has already hiked half way up the upper side of my favorite clearcut because I wanted a chance at that big bull again. Since it has been light I had been listening to 4 different bulls two of which where in the clearcut that I was trying to get across. Within minutes of the rain starting the songs began. The songs of at least 10 different bulls!!!! We where surrounded, I have never been in the middle of so many bulls in my life. They where down below the clearcut road they where off the backside, they where in it!!! Any direction that I went there was bulls and cows. We spotted that same 6x6 from day one on an open hillside calling less than 200 yards away but just down over the backside of my ridge I could hear the same bull from the morning before, and he was fired up! We moved across the the side of the cut as fast as we could, I must have had an ounce of elk pee on me to make myself smell like one of them, no matter where we stepped you could see elk tracks, poop, dust wallows, rubs, we where in the spot. We rolled over the backside of the hill because I had learned the day before this big guy was taking him herum of cows...

[TeacherMan]

(continued from above) down the ridge into the wilderness everday and it was deep, steep and very safe. As I rolled over the hill I could hear elk above me on the ridge breaking branches and feeding there way down toward me, I wanted to be quiet and just cut them off. I was just a couple minutes to late We where almost parallel on the ridge at this point, the big old bull had moved a little farther up the ridge and was taking them down in a new sport about 150 yard farther up than he had the day before. So I let out my first cow call since I had slid over the back of the ridge and the world exploded! I made him mad, my partner (young bow) was held back about 50 yards behind me with his little call that I had just been teaching him how to use over the last 3 days and I had him make 1 call and it was great. The bull was fired up but would not leave his cows, we moved in closer. We played cat and mouse for the next mile down the trail. He rounded the ridge and made it so I would be able to get within 30 or so yards of him, I was feeling really good about this. We closed the gap when all of a sudden he started bugle 200 or so yards down the hill on me? How did he slip down the hill? I wasn't going to let him slip away that easy, I turned my attention down the ridge and started calling back at him, he bugled back. I stopped. When all of a sudden my world stopped... the loudest noise I have ever herd in the woods!!! I thought bigfoot himself was coming into eat me, a loud roar/bark came from the hill just behind and above me and then it sounded like a small train moving down the hill!!! I looked back at the kid and I think he was cleaning his shorts.

[TeacherMan]

(continued) He looked absolutely scared. Of course we had ran into two bigfoot hunter from California the day before that had filled his head with stories.  I had blown my chance on a bull of a life time. When the bull bugled below me I had focused on him when I should have known that it was a different bull, but they sounded the same  I had turned my attention to him and let my guard down on the hill above me, I don't know if the giant had slipped down the hill on me and another bull had came in on top of me or what but it made the loudest, scariest, but coolest thing I have ever experience in the woods, It felt like a giant dog was about to eat me. The boy for the rest of the trip was within feet of me, I still think he thinks it was bigfoot  Well at this point it was almost 10 am and the hunt quickly faded. We had dropped at least 2 miles down the ridge into the wilderness so we started out hike out. The rest of that afternoon we hiked around the top side of some meadows and only saw a couple cows but we did get into some great late season huckleberries!!! That evening we hooked up with a couple other guys from this site and went back into my spot and got a couple bulls below the clearcut to bugle so they chased them around until after dark, we had no luck in our spot, we sat for a couple hours quietly just listening, the only thing we could hear was the wind.  Sunday morning rolled around and we went back in and it was quiet again, I had blown it from the day before, happy with my experiences but sick at all the mistakes I had made over the last couple days we hiked back out.