The day before opening weekend my cousin and I hiked way in to one of our favorite vantage points to do a little scouting from afar. We spotted around 90 elk total, way more than we usually see in this area.
One group of 30 elk was on the mountain that my Dad planned on backpacking into with my Mom. The herd bull with this group was impressive. All morning he would run around the cows with his head tilted back. Of course we were too far to hear him bugle, but we watched him stretch out his neck and cut loose every few minutes.
We hurried off the mountain so we could catch up with my Dad before he packed in. We got out our topo maps and showed him where the elk were. The cows all bedded down in the wide open, but at 9am that herd bull got them on their feet and pushed them through a saddle. Since we have hunted this area quite a few times in the past we knew that on certain years the elk get in a pattern where they pass through that saddle twice a day. My Dad knew exactly where to be the next morning. We all wished each other luck and headed out to our separate camp sites for the following morning's hunt.
My brother, Danny, and I headed to the drainage where we saw the majority of the big bulls throughout the summer.
Danny and I crept through this beautiful area with that morning's elk sign all around. We must have barely missed them because we didn't see a thing and nothing bugled near us.
We all carry Garmin Rino GPS/Radios with us these days. It is fun to be able to check in with each other, or get coordinates to another's position with the push of a button. We all agreed that we would check in on the hour if it was convenient, but that we would make a real effort to check in at noon.
With the morning hunt mostly over Danny and I found a beautiful spot to take a break and eat a few snacks. 11am rolled around and I turned on my GPS to see if anybody else had theirs on. I was just about to turn my unit off when I got a half a second of static. I called back, anybody out there? A garbled message came back, something about a "bull behind the shoulder". I looked at my GPS, it was Dad!
"Come again Dad, what did you say?"
"I hit a bull right behind the shoulder. I thought it was a heart shot but I don't see any blood. I'M FREAKING OUT!".
My Dad asked how far away we were, and we told him it didn't matter.
I asked back, "Was it the big bull, and do you need any help?"
"Yes the big bull, and yes I need help."
Danny and I gave each other a big high five, we were PUMPED! Dad is color blind and cannot see red hardly at all, so him not finding blood didn't concern me. We gathered our things and started walking. We had a long, long, looooong way to go.
A half hour into our walk and we could finally see the mountain that dad was on.
Here's a zoomed in shot of the picture above. You can see the small saddle that the herd went through.
Topic: Big Bulls on Opening Weekend (Read 1913 times)
