Last week i was scrambling with school, tests and homework to take friday off for the weekend. Thursday I was done with class at 3:15 and on the road by 4:00... dropped by Lewiston to see Al and BS a bit, took my time as I knew I was already gonna be up at camp past dark and by myself. Hopes were definitely high with me having a full two days to find my bull, tie him to a tree, and shoot him sunday morning... Didn't turn out exactly as I'd thought!
I rolled into camp, setup a chair by the fire, split some firewood and read one of them Capstick books about hunting dangerous game in Africa. Roasted a Hillshire sausage on the flames and had a drink, life was pretty good.
Friday morning I was up at 5:15 and hiking by 6... shooting light was around 645 and I just wanted to get out onto the breaks where I could do some glassing. Ran into a couple cow tag holders slow hunting the two track road and since I didn't want to screw them up I bushwacked it straight to the breaks. Found a herd of about 40 elk across the canyon with no bulls of any even decent size to speak of. Seen a couple deer, but after glassing a ton of country for about an hour I decided to hike back to camp, take a nap and hike out a different area to see if I couldn't get a closer look at that big herd.
I was hiking by 1:15 and made it the 5 miles out the ridge glassing a long the way by 4:00... too bad I was socked in with fog, rain and wind... I made it to the ridge I wanted and decided to cook a mountain house and see if I couldn't wait for the fog to lift... I got lucky and it lift for about 5 minutes and I glassed the herd from about 1500 yards away (just about right for a shot had it been opening day! lol
). Once again I didn't find a decent bull. I started hiking out about 5:15 and didn't get back to the truck until well after dark.
That evening Al and his wife showed up from Lewiston. They were gonna try to fill her buck tag the next morning (Saturday). It was good to have some company around the fire and we discussed game plans for the following day...
Saturday I hiked out solo about 4 miles onto a main ridge that runs out into the breaks of the salmon river. The day was clear and I had Al's spottin scope with me. That herd of 40+ elk had moved on, why I don't know but there was a herd of muleys in that same canyon and they had a nice buck with them. All in all I spent a lot of time behind the glass covering a LOT of country and never found a shooter bull... Seen 8 elk that evening with the biggest being a little 3x4 raghorn... Things weren't looking too great for the one opening day I had to hunt this weekend... I was worried because this is the first year that they've had my late season bull tag and my hunt started the day after 70 some tag holders had already been chasing bulls for 2 weeks... Also having a 80+% success rate during that first season was not brightening my outlook any either...
That night we discussed my options and Al's wife decided she didn't want to hunt the next day... Once again me and Al would be going at it, we knew that opening day was gonna be a good one for me... We awoke at 4:30 the next morning, out the door by 5 and hiking by 5:30... We covered the 5 miles in to where we could glass in record time and started glassing. Al spotted some cows on a far ridge and we herd an elk barking down below us... not being sure what it was barking at we kept pretty alert. Pretty soon we see 4 cows bust out of the timber on a dead run down below us coming to us... "WTF is that all about???"
About 5 minutes later we hear elk crashing towards us and I stand and grab my gun and here come the same 4 cows at 10 yards... of course I'm stuck in some weird Elmer Fudd position holding my rifle and Al is sitter there on the ground trying not to laugh as one cow got a really confused look on her face but they never knew we were there... pretty cool experience and made our morning by far. After not seeing anything in the nearby canyons we hopped on an old road and walked the breaks out... We busted out a few muleys from their beds with both being decent 3 points... We sat down to glass and Al almost instantly says "There's a bull! Across the canyon..."
I throw up the binos and sure enough there's our boy... all by himself happy as a clam thinking he's safe as can be. No visible from any direction except across the canyon where we were. We put the spotter on him and I could tell he was a nice bull, by far the nicest one I'd seen the past three days. I also knew from the start he wasn't the monster I had hopped for but I knew I'd be hard pressed to find a better bull in a better situation... We spotted him around 920 and put him to bed. Made our move about 1015 and dropped straight down the canyon about 1400'. There's a road in the bottom of the canyon that we crossed, then crossed the stream and unloaded all the things not essential to our packs... we moved up the dry creek bed of the canyon fighting alders and all sorts of vegetation from hell, not to mention the awesomely unstable rockslides... We stayed just uphill of the bottom trying to keep our scent off the thermals that would reach the patch of trees were he was bedded down...
We made it almost to our little finger ridge with some rock outcroppings that would provide a great rest and some cover... Bad thing was, we had the sun beating right down our eyes but we dropped our packs and slowly stalked our way to the ridge. We slowly get to the ridge and I drop my bipod out and onto the rocks... Al is working the binos and we can't see him... I'm in a prone position, rock solid rest waiting for the bull to show...
Al; "There he is, right were that little clearly comes down to a V!"
I'm having trouble finding the bedded bull in my scope when he stands up broadside!
"354 yards right to him!" says Al...
I got the bull in my scope and settle the cross hairs. He's facing to my left and just BARELY quartering away from me, only possible problem is he's standing right behind a small sapling that is not quite block his vitals... This staredown continues for probably 10 seconds (unknown to the bull, but I think he had us pegged, just was wondering how in the hell somebody found him haha) when I start to get buck fever!
I tell myself to calm down, make the shot, I can celebrate afterwards just don't blow it, all the time in the world... I get my breathing calmed down and my heart slowes to the speed of a sewing machine...
I settle crosshairs once again and realize the ball is in my court. "Al, I can take him from here" I say a second before I touch off the trigger. I see the vapor mist out my barrel through my scope as we hear the WHACK! of a solid hit!!! As the vapor cloud clears I can see the bull is stumbling hard!
Al says I just got my bull! Bust him again! I hold a little higher this time and BOOM! Bull drops like a rock! Spine shot right behind the shoulder blades! WOOHOO!!!! Bull went rolling stumbling through the tree thicket to pop out the bottom, alive but just barely and trying to still hoof his way somewhere... I settle for a third shot at 297 yards and put one in his neck for good measure, he dies 10 yards away from the 3rd shot and about 50 yards downhill from his bed...
We celebrate, take a few pictures from where I made the shot and work out way over to him. By this time it's 130 in the afternoon... we get over to him to find him tangled in a mass of vegetation and pull him free and slide him down the hill to cape/quarter him out... What a HUNT!!! I had wanted all along to find a bull that was in a *censored* canyon and thought he was safe there from all the hunters and to outsmart him. I sure got my wish! We found the three bullet holes. First one was a perfect lung shot, just above the heart, he was dead on his feet with a complete pass through. Second shot was directly above the first in the spine that left a nice 1.5" hole in the spine, and the third shot was right in the neck but missed the neck bone... He had no reaction to the third shot se we think he was already dead but you can never be sure with elk! Talk about tough animals!!!
We quarter him out, I threw the cape/head/horns on my pack, grabbed a meatbag with a quarter plus meat in one hand, rifle in the other, Al had his frame with a rear quarter and grabbed the other two meatbags and we hauled the entire elk downhill about 60 yards to some trees to hang the meat... We hiked out the bottom to the road in little more than an hour. It was 6 or so and getting dark. Funny thing was (not funny at the time!) we had another 6 miles of uphill road to walk to get back to the rig! We ditched all our gear except for water and a few snacks and started hiking. Talk about a depressing walk! We're on a main road and we can't even find a ride to the top! lol We get about 1 1/2 miles from the rig when we hear a fourwheeler coming up the road!!! Flag him down and got our ride! Talk about a great feeling sitting on the back of that wheeler! We got to the rig, drove down and loaded up our gear from off the road while smoking a quality victory cigar and got back to camp around 9 or so. Slept in till 9:30 the next morning after a night of rain, picked up camp and it took us three hours to hike in, bone out the front quarters, split the three quarters between the two of us and make it back to the rig! Fun ride out to say the least!
Also got the entire elk cut up last night! We got a LOT of steaks that taste amazing and also a ton of burger meat that we need to grind up as well! Finally here's some pictures for you guys and sorry about the long story!!! Sorry about any spelling errors, I didn't proof read or use spell check! lol
From where I made the shot...
These pictures are just off my phone, Al has most of the pics on his camera... Hopefully I'll get them and post some more later this week. Hope you enjoyed the story!
Michael
