Well Foambeetle and I had a pretty good hunt in our SW WA unit this early season. Didnt kill a bull but had a great time and were on them pretty much all days we hunted. We started out at the gate on Friday night the 10th. I got to the gait with about 4 hours of liught left and being high with elk fever I couldnt resist taking off up the road and seeing if I could hear or see anything.
That afternoon I made it a little under 2-1/2 miles into the unit. It was a pretty uneventful afternoon but I did notice a decent amount of fresh logging in the area, there were some things I didnt recognize from last year and I swear I was in the same general area. After bugling up inta a couple nasty draws down low that night I ended up walking back in the dark and settling in for the night.
About 11:30 Foambeetle showed up from his 6 hr drive and we made acqaintences. It was easy to see we were going get along well and we were both really looking forward to chasing some elk in the morning. 3:30 came early and we were behind the gate leaving the other truck at the gate with the two guys sleeping in the cab. About 45 minutes into the hike and a couple miles behind the gate we busted a group of elk along the river bottom, still way before shooting light we eased our way down the trail. 45 minutes later of pretty much regular vertical that burned the thighs and made me wish I had had run a few more times this summer we found ourselves on the rim of the Drainage from Hell.
I was pointing out a couple of known bedding areas to Foambeetle when we reached a point where I thought we should do some calling. Foambeetle filled the canyon with an echoing bugle...and nothing. We moved out way to the ridge line and foambeetle bugled off the other side into the ebyss and boom! We get a response coming from the adjascent wall from the canyon of hell. We bugle again and get an immediant response and chuckle. We wait a ferw minutes and cow call and another immediate response, yeah, the RUT IS ON! We ended up working that bull to about 50 yards but he ended up retreating into the depths of said canyon with his cows. A good way to start. We chose not to follow st least not on day one.
We ended up walking about 12 miles that day and lost/gasin about 1500 feet a number of different times. The end of the day about 3:30 in the afternoon we lit up another bull with cow calls but were busted by cows on the way in and he shut up so that ended that.
Day two found us back on top again before light and after trying to locate the bull in the drainage from hell we moved to the top and immediately heard a growl with chuckle. We moved to the edge of a clear cut and upon cresting the rim of a stump we saw a cut filled with at least 2 bulls and around thirty cows in two different groups. We then spent the next hour without succes at trying to call one of the bulls (90yards) from his cows. After an hour or so I thought "to hell with it" I'm going to try level two of "the threat" which got the bull really pissed off and he made a circle around his cows which spooked the cows and off everyone went into the timber. We ended up spooking them further into the thick stuff and gave up on them.
We worked our way to the end of the main drainage and bumped into another hunter who had been hunting in there for the past 30 plus years. He had a lot of insightful thoughts and I think I took a lot more away from the conversation than he did!
We ate some blackberries and worked the bottom the main drainage heading back to the cars. We were just walking down the road BS-ing and a bull lights up down towards the river. After about an hour of calling back and forth with the bull (which at one point we could of sworn to hear the bull crossing the river) we crossed the river and found what we dubbed "the Bedroom". This bull had torn the piss out of the area with three really nice rubs and the river bottom was torn up with track. there was a decent sized fresh cougar track in there as well. The bull was now on the ridge directly above us and we were on the bottom calling and trying to figure the wind and position to set up. Foambeetle let out a big bugle which the bull jumped on the end of and we could hear him coming. The bull ended up cmonig within 15 yards of me but never offered a shot and finally got uninterested and slipped off without a noise.
I was off to work Monday through Thursday, Foambeetle stuck with it and hunted another unit for those four days. We met up again early Friday morning at the gate and worked our way up to the backside of the Canyon from Hell which held the caterpillar bull.Letting out a deep bugle we listened intently for a response...we were rewarded with a response from down in the depths. We dawned our rainsuits and headed in, to make a long story short we crawled out of the otherside and jumped what we thought was the bull but we couldnt see. Needless to say it was thick as hell. Foambeetle and I fell a bunch of times he ended up falling into the creek bottom on his back with the water running around him. He also fell forward between two rotton stumps which we were pretty sure was the culprit for breaking hte face of his GPS. Anyhow we were soaked to the bone I hadnt been home in two weeks b/c I was traveling for work and we decided to call it quits. We covered a lot of ground and had good opportunities and a great time.
"All you can do is hunt"
