So looks like I will end my first elk season unsuccessful. It's disappointing since me, my friend, and his wife drew cow tags in Washougal (568). Granted, not the best tag (just switched over from any elk), but you would have thought we would at least get something.
The hunt started last Saturday as we headed to our scouted area. Of course, about 5 minutes up on the FS road I got sick (fortunately for my friend, he stopped the truck just in time so I could get out of the truck first
).
Then we get up to the road to our spot to find it all torn up (a logging camp looked to have moved in between deer and elk and were afraid they were going to lose the road so they dug out some drainage ditches, making it impassable).
Bummed, but oh well, we had a backup spot. We get to our backup spot to find it sleeting, windy, and fog with about 50 yds of visibility. Even if we could see an elk, we were a bit worried about shooting at something without having a good idea of what was behind it. We tried the spot a couple days but no luck. We found another promising spot, but again, never saw anything. A bit depressed we came home for a couple days to regroup and come up with a new game plan. Of course, on the way home my backpacking pack rolled out of my buddy's truck. We saw it happen, but needed room to turn around. By the time we got back (5 minutes max), someone had picked it up, so I lost my pack, mummy bag, backpacking tent, sleeping pad, and quite a bit of clothes.
Thursday, we moved onto another spot. Again, saw LOTs of sign everywhere, just no elk. We did find a spot we were virtually certain would pan out for us, but it was getting late so we decided to go back up today. Went back up, and again, nothing. We saw tons of sign and a lot of it looked fresh. We also found an area they had definitely bedded down recently, but again, no elk. We know they are there, we simply cannot find them.
That makes 5 days out in the woods with sign everywhere, but not one elk sighting. And we aren't road hunting, we're out beating the brush, following game trails, walking the edges of clearings, etc. What are we doing wrong? We are actually kind of confused as to why the elk weren't in the meadows we saw (with tons of sign). I know the weather was pretty nice most the week, turning to rain this weekend. Does that change where the elk hangout? What is the typical reaction when it changes from warm and sunny to rainy?
I'm just bummed and hoping to at least learn something from all this and apply what I learn to next year's hunt.
Brian
