Our season of memories and successes...more harvest pics!

[Tom Leemans]

   

[steadman]

Mark, a big congrats to you and your son. That velvet whitetail is awesome!! Good luck on the rest of your season.

[swp]

Nice job guys!

[Longbowwally]

Congrats to you and your son on your kills....Keep it coming....I always enjoy your posts...

[Talondale]

Thanks for sharing.  Kudos to your son.

[Mark Baker]

Thanks guys....I am indeed a lucky man to be sharing the woods hunting with my sons.   I hope that all of you can experience what I have already.

Rusty, good luck in the crazies!   Access can be tough, but there are a lot of good bulls in there.  If I can help you out any, let me know.

[Pinecone]

Awesome story, great pics, and noteworthy achievements for both of you.  Congratulations!

Claudia

[Mark Baker]

Thanks Claudia...I might add congrats to you as well on that fine antelope!

[deertraks]

[paleFace]

congrads to both of you... i hear some new music coming from this season already. like Charlie said, keep this one going. love the stories and photos.

[allanburden]

Congratulations to you and your son...I have a two year old and a one year old and I can not wait to hit the woods with them.  Again congratulations, great story and pictures.  

[knife river]

Wonderful thread -- great stories from good people.    

[Mark Baker]

Sorry for the long delay in updating all this, but hunting season is hectic around here.

Anyway....

After having to go home and "work", etc. I did manage to get back up and after some elk.  The boys and I discovered a hidden wallow at the north end of the ranch on the Forest Service boundary.   The wallow was on a bench that ran along a finger ridge...the same one that we usually hunt much lower down.  Right next to the wallow was a huge Ponderosa Pine that had been snapped in half by a freak windstorm....the tree is easily 4 foot in diameter.  Alongside it is a smaller fir tree, and we placed a stand in it.  Nobody had cared to sit this stand yet, really, except for myself one time....I was really drawn to the quiet, peaceful, remoteness and felt it could be a real producer.  

Here is a pic of the "keebler" tree...the fir tree is hidden right behind and close to it.

 

And here is the evening view from the stand looking towards the northeast...

 

And here is my view looking down at the wallow, and any impending shot opportunities...

 

[Mark Baker]

I was hunting alone for a few days this trip....the boys had work committments, and Fish had a buddy and was hunting elsewhere.   There were some paying clients hunting our usual haunts, which means that I had to seek out new hotspots that they were not able to hunt....the "keebler" tree was the perfect spot, and if I was going to hunt elk, it was my best bet thus far.  

My first evening there I had found a 5pt shedhorn, and scared a couple whitey bucks out of the spring on my approach.   This was a special place, I just knew it.  

I had'nt figured out how to get to this stand for mornings yet, and I still can't quite.    The elk feed at nite in the only approach that I can make, and to go in there in the dark would simply scare them off....and you know what they say about a bird in the hand.   So evenings it would be.  

My second evening sit found the weather warm, but cooling at sunset.   Also, sunset brought the thermals, so critical to making this settup work.   Consistant wind is hard to find especially on a north/south running ridge, where the easterly or westerly winds swirl so throughout the day.   Thermals from the higher mountains at daybreak and sunset are the only times these places can be productive.  

As I sat the first two hours, wondering about the swirling wind conditions, I could hear above me on the ridge an occasional clash or horns from friendly sparring between a couple bulls.   As sunset neared, the air began to fill with bugles from all directions.  

I cow called, more as a confidence call than to entice something in.   I followed with a couple small bull sqeals....

Shortly before shooting light gave out, three bulls made their way down the ridge  behind me, all three 5x5's.    The wind was perfect as they cautiously approached the wallow area...

[Mark Baker]

The first bull walked a sidehill trail directly behind me and passed my left side at 20 yards.   He paused for a couple long minutes in a good shooting lane through a hole slightly bigger than a basketball through the limbs of another fir tree ten yards away.   I just knew he was going to continue on, and make the turn towards the wallow giving me a 10 to 15 yard shot in the wide open.....so I waited.

Patience, so often a virtue, was about to burn me again.   "If I only knew".....but you can't turn back time.

The bull did indeed continue on, only to hit the opening at 40 yards distant, and quartered away, feeding on the lush grass and IGNORING the wallow .....what was up with that?!!!

Oh well, two more bulls were right behind him, and the second was was a better bull, with some non-typical trash on his right antler.   The only thing was, he never stopped in the hole where I could shoot, passing too quickly....as did the third bull right before dark set it.   They fed in the clearing merely 70 yards distant, and I had to eventually spook them as I climbed down well after dark.  

And so that perhaps might have been my chance for the year, dang it....I'll still keep trying, though.

[Mark Baker]

The next evening, one of the coolest things I've ever witnessed in the woods happened to me.  

As I drive into the area where I park I have to cross the creek.   Not really a road, but a trail of sorts.   Across the creek, between it and another fork of the same, I usually park my truck and hike the remainder into the stand site.  

This time, just as I was driving across the creek, a flash of brown and white streaked in front of my truck, not 15 feet away.   A whitetail doe in full flight, not out of the ordinary....and then right on her heels and seemingly in slow motion was a mountain lion in full pursuit of his dinner!   It was like I was watching an episode of "Wild America" or something....in the slow motion mode....the deer bounding so fast over the blowdown trees, and the cat floating over the tops, log to log, so smooth and effortless.  

Right in front of me, the cat sees me there, and ends his chase, disappearing in the brush to the left, and then reappearing on a log, posing and looking back towards me, 10 yards away!   He stood there for untold seconds....just until I reached for my camera, and he disappered again.  Wow!

[Mark Baker]

Sorry for the lack of pics in this part, but it's tough to get pics in these circumstances....

I'm right where I park my truck, so I pull in and get out, and gear up, and then look across  the trail, and once more the cat is there staring at me....

Now, I know that one of the neat things about hunting montana is all this stuff, the lions, the bears,....real adventure that often you take for granted.  I've probably, as have many of you across the western US, walked just as close to these cats, unkowingly, many times, heedless of the potential for serious adventure.   I also know a few guys that have had run-in's with cats while elk hunting....and I have great respect for them as predators, - they creep me out even more than grizzlies, cause they are so sneaky.

Seeing this cat in the chase, so close, made me realize that I was pretty useless in a fight with him should he choose to "get" me.  So fast.
All I had with me was my selfbow....I'd be like a little leaguer flailing at a Nolan Ryan fastball, I'm afraid.   Now this cat was staring at me again, after I'd just ruined his eveing meal...like he knew I had a half-mile walk in and out of my stand.   It makes a guy wonder.   That, and I was hunting alone, and nobody else knew where I was.    Once again I tried to get my camera out, but then he disappeared again.   As the doubting about the evening possibilities for elk was peaking.....a bull bugled on top of the ridge, anwered by a couple others.   They were just above the wallow again...I'm going, cat or no cat!  

Of course, aside from a bugle filled evening chorus, nothing to tell about that topped the cat encounter for me.    I did exit my stand a bit earlier while I could still see in the gray light before dark, as if that would help.

[Mark Baker]

I had to spend another week and a half home....work and committments.   I took some time and put the finishing touches on a couple selfbow for myself.    These are both "experiments" of sorts, made from the carcases of long-dead bows and fashioned together.  

 

I've named them "Frankenstein" (the snake-skinned flatbow) and "the Bride" (the static-tipped recurve)

This is my trusty bug-eating (and sinew eating) "lab" assistant, Knute.  He has his head in every stage of constuction of these bows....

 

Here's a better look at the tips....

 

[knife river]

Cool experience with the cat.  Oughta be a great song in there somewhere.    

[Mark Baker]

Both bows are sinew backed, the "bride" is left natural.  "Franky" is covered with a pair of prairie rattlers.   Both use the same length string, with Franky being 58 inch nock to nock.   Both pull in the mid 60's for weight and are great shooters.  The Bride is deceptively fast with the smooth draw characteristics of the static tips.  I planned to hunt the remainder of the season with "Franky"....

Kory and I went back this past weekend hoping to get into elk again.  Once again, paying clients forced us back into the north endof the ranch and on Forest Service.....but we wanted to be there anyway.  Sign was everywhere....

Here's a typical rub....

 

Although sign was there, the woods were very noisy and the bulls silent, although we set up and tried to coaxe them in anyway.   We only had a couple days  this trip.  

Midday's are spent chasing lopes again.  Here, Kory is using our "cow"  to try and gain spitting distance on a good buck with his girls.  We are not really the type who like sitting in the blinds, so we do a lot of sneaking, and scaring antelope.  We thought the cow might work, so we've givin' it a couple trys so far, with so/so results....but no shots.