Frozen elk tag soup, that's what. Oh, it started out so promising; a bit of tracking snow, and cool weather that had been sadly missing in the earlier season. I had a few days, and I was encouraged.
No elk, but some fresh sign got me fired up, so I set out early, with a light snow in the air; a couple hours in, the snow started to get halfway serious.. I did have two mule deer bucks at 6 feet during the snowstorm; they looked really surprised when I yelled at them.
A the storm got a little more intense, it looked like time to head to camp…
Suffice it to say that it dumped over a foot overnight, and there was no way to hunt in this wet stuff, at least for this old guy. Had I killed an elk, getting one out would have been a worst case scenario.
Camp was frosty…
And, we were back on an unimproved (read nasty) road that was a couple of miles to a decent dirt road. The wife, beagle and I waited for the snow to abate a couple of days, and then pushed our way out to the road. The trailer will have to wait a while for the road to dry out before we can get it out.
Looks like the elk win again, but this year I could have killed several if I was using a gun, not a stick and string. I am used to it, and whitetails and turkeys await. Life is good, but it would be better with some nice elk steaks in the freezer. Alas, another elkless year.