A group of my hunting partners and I put in for a Special Permit hunt and were drawn for one which runs from January 1st to the 16th. Well all came together! One of my hunting partners filled her tag in December leaving 7 of us with tags and 5 of us went down this past weekend. We slayed the elk this past weekend with 4 elk in 3 days
! A lot of hard work went into not only filling our tags and dropping elk, but packing them all out.
Day 1
January 1st, New Years Day. What a way to start off the new year by hunting! We all decided to hunt this lower clear cut and it paid off. Myself Randy and his Grandson walked into the timber and one guy went to the top edge of the clear cut with another guy walking to the bottom of the clear cut, another guy walked to another field were the elk went in the early season after being pushed out of the clear cut. Randy was showing his grandson some beds that he had found that were thawed out so he knew the elk had bedded there in the morning and were close (good way to teach a young one
), I happen to bust the elk and ran them strait to Randy but he was unable to put head on any of them but followed them. The elk ran to the second clear cut and Randy was on their tails. As Randy attempted to walk the road and try to get in front of them, the elk crossed the road and he shot the third elk to cross the road and she went down about 50 yards from where he shot
. This was an easy one to pack out and we had a game cart to take her straight to the road. We all hunted the rest of the day without seeing any other elk and then headed back to come around 4.
Day 2
Since our tactics work out great the first day we tried it again. This time Randy’s grandson went with Will to the bottom road of the clear cut as Randy and I pushed the timber to the clear cut and John and Bill went to were the elk normally pushed out to. I was walking through the timber towards the clear cut when I heard 4 shots break out right at shooting time, I ran to the clear cut as fast as I could without falling on my @$$ and say 6 elk at the bottom of the clear cut about 250 yards away from me. I heard another shot and saw the back elk hit the ground and get back up. I got on the radio and reported what I saw and found out that Will took that shot. I went down to the clear cut and meet up with Will on the knoll where the elk were standing when he shot. As he was on the radio I looked for blood and found one heck of a blood trail and found where she laid down a few times. Will and I followed the blood trail into a creek bottom when I heard elk running. Since Will was on a blood trail he did not shoot as two elk jumped right below me, I shot the first elk I could put a head on and she dropped in her track just on the creek bottom
. I went down to her as Will continued to follow blood. The rest of my group started to gather around me when we heard another shot. Will found his elk and put the Kill shot on her
. Two elk down
! Will happen to badly hurt his hand the day prior so Randy's Grandson and Will went to a road which was at the bottom of this clear cut and asked permission to use the privet road, the landowner gave us the go ahead which was great since both elk were within 100 yards of that privet road. We pack the two elk out and then came back home to hang the three elk.
Day 3 January 3rd.
I woke up at 3 am and Will picked me up at 4 and we headed back down to our unit. I met up with Bill and John and this time we put them in the clear cut as Randy and I again pushed the timber hoping our tactics would work three days in a row. Well, out luck had ran out and the elk had moved out of this location. We hunted hard all morning and did not see a single elk. Will John and Bill have ended up in another location on another road so Randy and I drove down to pick them up. When we got down to them they were talking to one of the locals who were telling us where the Elk where. He told us that he hopped that all of us filled out tags for the elk were crashing his fences and he spends most of his weekends repairing his fences. He told us to follow a horse trail and the elk were thick in the area. We all headed to town for lunch came up with a game plan and did our evening hunt.
By this time Andy had joined us so Will Andy and I followed the horse trail as Bill, John and Randy came in from the top side. Will, Andy and I were not seeing any fresh sign and kept walking higher and higher and farther into the unit. It was getting late and we got on the radio and no one was seeing any real fresh elk sign. Since Will Andy and I were close to the upper clear cuts where we were into elk last season we decided to check that area out before we hiked in 4 miles all uphill the next morning, we all decided that if we did not see any fresh sigh we would not hike in the next day. Well, when we got up there we were finding elk sigh all over the place and a lot of it look as if it were from that day but still not an elk in sight. We decided to go look at one last clear cut before it got dark and then call it a night. We got to the last clear cut glassed and did not see anything so we started to walk out when Will started to look at a "rock" that he thought looked funny. As Andy went to glass it I noticed it moved and as we glassed we saw 4 other elk all cows! They were about 220 yards away and we were in the open, they were across the clear cut from us and I decided the best way to stalk them was by staying on the road and walk straight towards them and Will and Andy agreed. We empted our pockets from anything that would make noise and I checked the wind which was in our face. We walked single file with me taking point and stalked 150 yards into good shooting range. Andy took a knee as Will and I picked out the best one for him to take, we found the biggest cow and it was standing broad side at 110 yards, Andy felt good with this shot and took it, the elk bunched up, and ran straight at us then stopped at 60 yards. Will handed Andy his rifle and I pointed out that she was at the rear of the group and he shot again. Will and Andy then went to get in front of the elk as they ran straight to the next clear cut as I went down to where they were standing to look for a blood trail. I found blood right away then found the elk lying on the ground not 40 yards from where we had last seen her
. I called Andy over and he went to walk up on her when she decided to stand back up and he shot her in the head at 15 yards. This elk then fell down hill another 40 yards :bash:and as the three of us worked our way towards her she fell again another 70 yards
into the bottom of the clear cut
. She happed to fall into the bottom of a nasty clear cut and packing her out was a pain in the rump
! The last shot was at 420pm and we did not get her out till 11:15pm and finally made it back to camp at midnight. She kicked our asses packing her out and it was the first elk any of us actually had to bone out to pack out.
It was all in all a good hunt and we all decided to split the meat evenly since we all worked our asses off for all 4 elk
. Not to mention any of us will go through a full elk over the next year anyways and I don’t know about the rest of my hunting partners, but I don’t have that much freezer space
.
I need to re-size the photos and they will be posted shortly. The best part of the the hunt was Randy's Grandson who is now our Good Luck Charm
, he was there for the first shots on the first three elk and he was very excited the whole time. Its nice to see a young one with this much love for hunting
. Hes hooked into and cant get enough. Side note, dont give a 11 year old the camera, he cut my head off in one photo and got me without expecting the photo in another one
.
