opening day my dad, our hunting partner and i wandered around the woods from blacksnake/biscuit ridge to the north fork. ran into about 50 elk in one herd. they were about 450 yards away, bugling, fighting and milling around. 4 or 5 bulls, one good one.

BUT... guess where they were... yup, just inside the watershed!

oh well, we just watched then and

then we got rained out...
yesterday we headed up behind my dad's place and glassed the opposite hillside for about 10 minutes when i spotted a small herd of 6 cows/calves. HP and i zipped over to the other side of the hill and snuck upstream of the elk, who were still in the open, munching. i had one, i think yearling, HP says shooter, cow in the scope, but i held off so we could get them all in the open and get a double with 2 cow tags. of course she was the last one in line...

the rest of the morning we hounded those elk in some thicknasty. eventually we had to abort the mission as they were headed to the deepansteep. i have a half-torn achillies tendon on my right side and it was acting up. also, there was little or no hope of them hitting an opening where we could see, much less shoot.
HP and I both had to do halloween duty, and i had a 3 hour drive home, so those sneaky little nubnibblers got the best of us 1st weekend. next weekend, if my dot ends up on a cow, i won't hold off! my old man always said, "you go to cullin', you go to missin..." good advice for a lot of arenas!
