took off friday night for pomeroy and got in about midnight at the inlaws place...already had the alarm set for me.
day 1: got out of the house on 4 hours of sleep and headed for the NF. got to the bounday and hit a few feet of snow blocking the road. turned around and headed to the weatherly state land. hiked back in a ways, running and gunning and found 1 mangey old turkey feather. no gobbles, no tracks, no sign, no nothing. couple hours later and 1 really steep hill back to the truck. headed down the tucannon and looked around...nothint to see but a few other hunters having the same lack of luck i was. stopped in at the last resort and heard the report i was afraid i was gonna hear...no turkeys gobbling, tough to find, they were here a few days ago, blah blah blah. well, i headed back to the family's land where i have only seen turkeys once before and headed down hill, calling here and there as i went. got almost all the way down to the bottom, look up and what the hell?? there's a herd of elk on the facing hillside. i've hunted deer there for the last 8 years or so and never seen elk. the winter they had down there really pushed the elk out and down to the lower elevations where they usually don't go. while glassing the elk, i heard a gobble way down on the creek. a few minutes later another...hmmm...this might get good here. well off i go...get set about 200 yards or so from where i think he is and get to calling a little, nothing, ever again. an hour later i pack it up and head back to the ranch for lunch.
after lunch, head to asotin creek, lower elevation...maybe some birds talking, and i got a good report on some birds down there. got there, almost ran over 4 hens on the way in, slowed down so as to not run them over and a gobbler sounded off right next to the truck. i didn't think the folks would take to kindly to me shooting a bird in their front yard so off i went. finally get up into NF land and there is nobody but a few horsemen there and they are all headed out. took a nice hike up a little trail, calling here and there, no response. a few hours later decide i'll take a ride up the road and have a look around. got a little ways in, maybe a couple miles and got blocked by snow. headed home and on the way out, saw a herd of bighorn sheep witha couple young rams. didn't see any mr. bigs, just a pile of young rams and ewes. headed home for dinner semi-frustrated, but had a great day with lots of wildlife sightings.
day 2: woke up to wind blowing about 40 mph. didn't hardly get out of the truck. saw some elk, saw some more deer, didn't see any turkeys...went for another great armed hike and saw some beautiful country, but no turkeys. i headed home for lunch and the wind never quit that day so i went out for a nice lunch with my family and called it a weekend.
to be continued maybe 2 weeks from now or so. maybe when the turkeys are talking a little more.
all the elk i saw were slick-headed with no new growth seen on any of their heads. also i will say that i saw a huge amount of yearling fawns with the does. hopefully a lot of deer were able to get to the lower country to get out of the snows up there this year. i saw no deer i would classify as winter kills. i saw one old skeleton and i probably hiked 10 miles or so of country in the 2 days i was in the woods...half of which was on the winter range.
