My elk hunt

When Kyle told me that i drew a elk tag, he was so excited, no like he about peed his pants with excitement, I was just nervous cause it was with a muzzle loader and I hadn't shot anything but rabbits for about 10 year.

Pretty much the day the I drew the tag was the day that I started to practice with the muzzle loader, and holy cow it is a lot to remember! Kyle did most of the work, ok he actually loaded the gun and then I would shoot it! We mostly just shot milk jugs. But one day about 3 weeks before my hunt I got really bad and was shooting very low. Kyle got really nervous and that night he came home and made me a elk sized and shaped target! After learning that I had to aim high to make it hit where I wanted it to, Kyle got less nervous!

Kyle was pretty much my guide to. He went scouting in July, August, September, and October, and then went up 4 days before my hunt and found lots of bulls for me!  I think that was the funnest part for him!

The hardest part if this hunt was leaving the girls. Luckily I have a great sister who decided that she would come from California to watch the girls for a few days.  It seems like every time Jerrica comes to visit, someone is sick and she takes the sickness home with her. This time was no different.  Grace got the stomach flu the twins had earlier in the week and Khole got a bad cold that the twins also had!

Jerrica had them from Wednesday to Friday. She did good and I think was excited to go home, and the girls had a lot of fun with aunt Jerrica, Jody (joey), Rikki, and Kohdy (khole).

Nancy took them for Saturday and Sunday, I love that all the family is willing to help with the girls, cause they love to go stay with grandmas!

 

We left Wednesday morning and got there just in time to get our backpacks full and our warm clothes on and went to “glass” before the opening morning hunt.

We seen the huge 370 bull but he was walking away from all the cows and other bulls, so Kyle thought for sure he was leaving to go to the trees where it would be really hard to find him. But there were still a lot of really nice bulls down in the burn area that we had planned on hunting, so Kyle wasn’t too worried. 

On Thursday morning we woke up WAY before the sun was up and went on the 4 wheeler in the freezing cold and then hiked up a little mountain to glass and see what was out and to make a plan.

All the elk were on the opposite side we were and so decided that we would just wait till later that night and then hike up into the burn.

I am pretty out of shape and kinda a baby and well I like to complain, so I was worried Kyle would leave me behind and make me fen for myself, but to both of our surprise I didn’t fall behind to bad, and I wasn’t to sore and I only had one break down of complaining (out loud) the whole time.

So we hiked into the burn and it was a hour and a half hike.  ( I measure distance in time) I kept asking Kyle “so how much further are we going to go?” every time I would ask he would say, “about uhh, 300 yards.”  I learned quickly that 300 yards as the crow flies is not the same as the 300 yards I hiked.  Where we were hunting had lots of rolly polly hills that were very tiring to hike up and down. We got up to where we thought the elk should be and all of the sudden we heard them start to bugle, behind us! So we had to go back down a little ways, sneaking the whole way, ( Kyle thinks I could work on that). We came up on a group of elk and Kyle told me to get ready, so I did! We snuck up on a huge bull, we got 127 yards away, (which is a lot closer when you aren’t hiking)  and I shot. HE hunched up and I thought he was going to fall over, but by the time we got the gun loaded again and I had a decent shot at him, he was gone.

Kyle tracked him for a little ways, but it was getting dark so we just put our pink tape ever where and decided we would come back up in the morning and find him dead in his bed.

So we woke up before the sun was up again, this time Penn was with us. We hiked our hour and a half hike and listened to the elk bugle all around us, but we couldn’t see the bull I hit and our plan was to track him till we found him.  When the elk had laid down for the day, we found our pink tape and started our tracking. I had never tracked a animal before and so mostly I just had panic attacks and prayed we would find the elk dead. Kyle and Penn looked for blood and his tracks. We tracked him up a HUGE canyon going straight up threw really thick poky trees and found his bed with some blood, but not enough and he was not there.  We didn’t have our backpacks and so Kyle went down to get them while Penn and I still followed his tracks. We looked for 7 straight hours of hiking with nothing but a string cheese, a few tootsie rolls, and a bottle of water.  But he was headed up and over the mountain, and was going much faster than we could go.

I felt depressed and cried a few times, but we decided the best thing to do was just to go back down the mountain and start fresh in the morning. As we were going back down to the trailer the elk started to bugle again. When we found the elk that was bugling it was the huge one! Penn was bugling back to him and we got 278 yards away from him. That was one of the funnest times of this hunt, it was really cool to watch him bugle and interact with his cows.

After watching him for a while we hiked back to the truck, as soon as we got there we drank a gallon of water! 

 

Saturday morning we woke up without really a plan, so we hiked back to the same spot as where we left the big bull, but after looking for him we realized that he had walked a few miles away to get water. So since we were a little more prepared we decided to just stay up where we were for the day and hope that the elk would work there way back over to us like they had been the nights before.

This day I woke up with my stomach sickness that I sometimes get, so I pretty much slept the whole day on the hard ground.

When we started to watch the elk again, they did the exact opposite as we thought they were going to do. That big bull was just way to smart for us. So we tried hard to get close to him, but he was a lot faster and had to many cows with him to keep watch.

 

Sunday we went to get kyles trail cam and on our way down the road we heard “him” bugling again. So since I was obsessed with killing this elk I made Kyle hike over a HUGE wash and ridge and we still just couldn’t get close enough to him. If we would have had a few more people to spot for us and just 2 more days I know I would have got him. But Penn told me that it is called hunting and not killing for a reason, and I now know the reason! 

We had a long depressing trip home, but we also seen another guy with my tag that didn’t see anything so after that I felt a little better cause we seen a lot of elk and had a really great time.

After we got home and got a few things in order, Kyle talked me into going back up for 4 days! Nancy was nice enough to take the girls to cedar with her. We left Thursday morning and got there in time for Thursday nights hunt, but didn’t see anything but people and lots of deer where we were hunting the weekend before.

We decided that we would try the hills behind our camp Friday morning, and as we were climbing a mountain we heard a elk start bugling, clear down the mountain. So we decided to run, quietly, down the mountain. But as we got close the elk smelled us and slowly started to move away, just fast enough we couldn’t catch them.

After that hunt, we decided to go back to the trailer and take a nap, but our neighboring camp decided it would be great to target shoot in the direction of the elk we seen. After all the target shooting we didn’t think that we would find any other elk, so we went in a different place and had no luck.

That is just pretty much how the whole weekend went, we would find a small bull and start to go for him, but the closer we got the further away he would go. Or where we thought the elk would be, they would be on the other side of the mountain!

Sunday morning was the closest we got to shooting something. We had pretty much given up hope so we were just riding around on the 4 wheeler when we went around a corner and there was a big elk in the road. As soon as we got the gun out and it ready, it was gone into the trees. We ran over “hills”, they were mountains, but we were close but just not close enough!

Even though we didn’t get really close to anything and really didn’t see anything to great, that second weekend, we had so much fun and I only had the thought of hitting Kyle over the head with my shooting sticks a few times. 

I was really nervous about sleeping in a trailer, in the cold, without a good shower, hiking, eating camping food, and well shooting an animal, But hunting is defiantly something that i missed! I had so much fun out hiking and looking for the elk, the only thing that i wish i would have done different is take more pictures. But I had on my huge backpack and i didnt want the camera around my neck in case I had to shoot! I told Kyle that when Luke gets home and draws this tag I want to go just so I can follow him around and take pictures of everything!