By noon, neither of us had seen anymore game. A trailcam place on this waterhole had shown not only Elk, but several Black Bear, including a sow with triplets! As it was noon, we were expecting Dick to be back anytime. A thunderstorm moved in and we hung my poncho between 4 trees and waited the storm out.
2:45 and Dick had not shown up at the waterhole. Under normal circumstances I would not have been concerned, but during one of our last phone conversations, Dick was telling me about his latest scouting trip and then casually mentioned he had gotten a heart stint put in a week or so ago! Well, I am not a doctor, but Scott is a nurse and we were starting to get a bit concerned. As it turned out, Dick had hit some fresh Elk sign not too long after he had left us. It seems that while following the fresh sign, he became a bit "bewildered"......not lost mind you!! At around 4:00 he showed back up and we decided to head back down toward camp. Starting down the mountain, I soon realized I was going to have some "issues"!!
36 years of heavy construction and several years of sports have taken their toll on my knees. As soon as we started our descent, the pain began. While climbing, I had no issues with knee pain. Out of breath for sure, but no pain issues. Every step toward camp was painful. No ACL and not much cartilage in either knee was really taking the fun out of this. I should have dropped off somewhere on the way up and worked into this more gradually, but it was a bit late to worry about it now. Whenever we came to a place where there was a log crossing the trail (and there were several), I actually had to turn around backwards, bend until my hands touched the ground and lower myself to the ground on the downhill side of the log. As much as my knees hurt, my pride hurt even more!
Topic: 1st Elk hunt...I am back 9/11/13 (see pg. 4) (Read 1415 times)
