The night before the opener, my partner and I hiked up from our base camp and set up a spike camp closer to the elk. We set up my 6-man Kifaru tipi and stove and hunted out of that for the next several days, only going back for more food and water as needed.
It was nice during the day, but the evenings were still cool enough to enjoy the heat from the packable wood stove.
Opening morning we heard several bulls bugling and headed deep into an area where I knew them to be.
I cow called once in a while along the way, mostly to cover the noise from walking through the dry woods.
We were down near the bottom of a thick wooded area and I heard a bull up on the ridge above us bugle around 9:00 am. I bugled back at him once and he started coming to the the edge of the ridge, where we sat down below. Not having a bull tag, we hoped he had some cows or a spike with him. Suddenly, he revealed himself at the top, just as a cow with him walked past him and started coming down the hill towards us. She began making her way down the hill unaware of our presence. She stopped broadside at about 50 yrds and waited for her bull to come join her. My partner considered a shot at this point, but a low handing branch was in his shooting lane. The bull then dropped down the hill, a nice 6x6 with huge fronts. He got to within 60 yrds or so and then began to side hill away from us, taking the cow with him. I tried a quick cow call to try to get him to change his mind, but to no avail. They sauntered out of the area and were gone.
Although we tried to relocate them, we never did. We had no other shot opportunities, but only being our 2nd year with archery, still considered it a good trip.
