Friday, September 14, 2007

Left the Silverthorne house about noon, arrived at Sunnyside camp a little past 2:00.


Saturday, September 15, 2007

Got up at 4:30 am, left camp about 5:17, with guide Bob House. Drove uphill to “The Rhiney” hunting area. As soon as we got out of the truck, we could hear elk bugling on the far hillside. It was almost pitch black, but we hiked about a mile across some open fields into some stands of aspens, without flashlights or headlamps. We decided that I would be the one to take a first shot, so I hiked close by our guide, while Dad stayed back a ways. After an hour or so, we got into a little stand of aspens, where we were able to observer two bulls walking through an open area and through another stand of aspens about 100 yards away. They were small-ish 5X5s, and I had decided to hold out for a 300+ class 6X6, so we just watched them as they moved through the aspens – which was incredibly cool and awesome all by itself.

We hiked further uphill into some thicker forest. We could hear a bull bugling just on the far side of a small stand of evergreens. As we were waiting and watching for him, we heard a tree fall down nearby in the forest. Bob bugled back at the bull, and made some cow calls, and eventually he stepped out from behind the evergreens, about 50 yards uphill from our position. He had 5 points on his left antler, but his right antler was broken off halfway up the main beam. He stood uncertainly for a while, occasionally bugling, but mostly just looking down at us. He turned to walk away at least twice, but each time, after a few steps turned around and came back, though he never got closer than 50 yards.

Finally, after 15 minutes or so, he moved off among the trees. We resumed our hike uphill and to our left, and as we moved through the trees we came upon the tree that we had heard fall down earlier. It was a huge pine, and we were a bit mystified about why it fell, as there hadn’t been any high wind, or lightning.

When we got to the top of the hill, we could hear at least several bulls bugling, and then we could hear antlers crashing together as they fought. We were in the woods, but Bob said there was an open pasture where they were fighting. We were trying to move to the edge of the woods so we could see the bulls, but there was a cow grazing in a small clearing in the woods, and if we had moved towards the open pasture, we would have been directly upwind of her, so we were effectively pinned down. As we waited, we saw a satellite bull come out of the woods and collect the cow, and move off with her away into the woods on the far side of the clearing. Bob had Dad stay put, while he and I moved into the clearing. While we were in there, we saw one very large bull move along the edge of the clearing and deeper into the woods. We also saw at least one other bull and a couple of cows.

After a while we moved down the hill, further into the woods, trying to follow that large bull. As we were crouched down, trying to get the bull to bugle at us so we had some idea where he was, we suddenly heard a gunshot from directly in front of us. We looked at each other questioningly, since nobody else was supposed to be hunting in the area. Almost immediately after the gunshot, there were loud crashing and thundering sounds, and we could see two elk, most likely bulls, stampeding through the woods. Initially they headed towards us, and we thought that I might be able to get a shot, but they veered away downhill, and were quickly lost to sight and hearing.

We stayed crouched down, and quiet, and after a few minutes, we heard a cow call that sounded like a hoochie-mama call from the same vicinity as the gunshot. The call repeated quite a lot, and we became convinced that it was the unknown hunter.

So we stood up and hiked quickly towards the sound. We came upon a young hispanic-looking guy, we was walking rapidly away from us. Bob called out authoritatively to him, “You need to stop, right now!” They guy stopped walking, and we caught up to him in moments. Bob started interrogating him. He claimed that he thought that he was on National Forest land, and that he had not crossed any fences or seen any posted signs indicating private property. He also said that he didn’t have any ID or his hunting license on him. Further, he was carrying a rifle, and it was only archery and muzzle-loading season. After informing him that he was poaching, dressing him down, and arguing with him for a while, Bob had no choice but to let him walk away, when he started off through the woods.

Bob said later that he wanted to beat the guy up a little, and then hog-tie him and leave him in the woods for a while to think – but that the guy could have pressed charges against him for assault and battery, among other things, if he’d done that.

We went back to where we’d left Dad, and then went off across the open pasture where we’d heard the bulls bugling and fighting. Of course, by this point, it was completely empty of elk.

We wound or way back to the truck, passing very close to where Dad had shot his big bull the previous season.

Eventually we got back to the truck and drove back to the camp, where our discovery of the poacher was the talk of the camp for the morning.

As was to become our custom, we took naps, and were up in time to leave the camp by 4:45 in the afternoon. This time we headed downhill to an area called “The Gates.” We got on four wheelers, and rode along a path that went through at least 5 fences (which explained the name of the area). We drove up a hillside, dismounted, and hiked along the top of a cliff.

We settled in at the cliff edge, and glasses down below, and across the valley and the opposite hillside in front of us. We glassed for quite a while, but didn’t see anything, except a hunter on the public land on the far hillside. After a while, Bob and I left Dad to glass, and hiked uphill along the cliff top. When we got to the top, we headed downhill away from the cliff edge, going slowly, and glassing all around. Just as the light was fading, we spotted a large herd running hell-bent down a hillside perhaps a mile or two away from us. They were in the “Johnny Burns” hunting area, and had undoubtedly been spooked by another hunter. We watched until they vanished in the heavy cover in the bottom of the valley, and quietly stayed put, hoping that they might re-emerge from the valley bottom into the field in front of us. But eventually, they light died away completely, and we still hadn’t seen any trace of that lost elk herd. So we headed back downhill towards the four wheelers, where Bob had asked Dad to meet us at dusk.

I had a fun time hiking quickly through sage fields in what rapidly became pitch blackness on our way back to the four wheelers. I wanted to stop and put my headlamp on, but it was tucked away in my pack, and I didn't want to stop, or make a big deal about walking in the dark. In a way it was fun, even though I sort of kept thinking I was going to catch my feet on the sage at every moment.

We rode back to the truck, loaded the four wheelers on the back of the truck, and drove back to camp.


Sunday, September 16, 2007

Up at 4:30, and left camp by 5:15, as usual.

Bob drove us down to “The Edge” hunting area, which was very close to a farmhouse. The prime hunting in this area was a large and long (1 mile +) field, that the elk like to graze in. We approached in the pre-dawn gloom, and hiked up a little rise, staying along a fenceline for maximum cover. Bob spotted a herd out in the field, grazing. He said that they usually moved down along the length of the field as they grazed, and exited the field into the brush from the west side. So we went back down the hillside so that we were completely hidden from the elk herd, and hurried as quickly as we could to the west end of the field, where we walked back up a little hill so we could see the field. By the time we got there, however, we could find no trace of the herd.

After a while, we crossed over the field, and hiked up into the scrub evergreens on the far side. We went slowly, listening for calls or bugling. After a while, we heard a bugle, but had a hard time determining where it was coming from. We continued on, until we came to a little overlook, from where we could look down onto the field where the herd had been. From there, Bob did some bugling, and was immediately answered back by the herd bull. The two of them bugled back and forth for some time (20-30 minutes), during which Bob took a large branch and just about destroyed a large juniper bush – simulating a really rutty bull elk thrashing the bush with his antlers - that was very cool. The real bull consistently responded, sounding very ornery, but he would not come to us, as he already had a bunch of cows with him, and we could not go to him, and he was near the top of the hill, and on private land that was not part of the ranch.

After a while, we gave up and moved away, back to where we had ditched out packs. Along the way, we found the tracks and some extremely fresh droppings that the herd had made earlier that morning, as they moved up the hillside.

Once we picked up our packs, we hiked back to the truck. Then we drove up a nearby hillside, and hiked out along another ridge, and down to the top off a cliff (a different one from where we had been the previous evening). There we spent quite a long time glassing the valley below us and the hillside opposite us for elk, but completely without success.

Eventually, we hiked back to the truck, and returned to camp, where we ate a hearty lunch and napped.

Around 4:45 we were back up and heading out of camp again, this time we returned to the same location, hoping to catch the elk returning to the field to graze for the evening. I hiked out and lay prone beneath a cottonwood tree for almost four hours, glassing the field and the far hillsides for elk. About an hour and a half into my hunt, I heard a single shot, and I thought it very likely that the sound was Dad, bagging a bull. It later turned out that I was right.

Dad and Bob had gone further down the road, where they hiked out across a center-pivot-irrigated field, and found a herd of elk on the steep hillside past the field. That was where Dad shot his beautiful 6X6 at about 60 yards, through a large juniper bush.

Meanwhile, I didn’t see or hear any elk until it was probably too late to do any shooting anyway. And the elk I finally did hear were out of sight past the west end of the field.

As it was getting dark, storm clouds rolled in, and by the time I decided to hear back to the truck, it was pouring, the temperature dropped considerably, and lightning was going off all around me. To get back to the truck, I had to cross a large (1 mile) field in the open, exposing myself to the lightning. I was counting the seconds between the lightning flashes and the thunder, and the closest flash was at least 10 light-seconds away, but in the pitch-black gloom, the lightning bolts lit up the entire world so brilliantly that they seemed much, much closer than they really were. As a consequence, I was very much concerned that I was about to be struck dead by lightning at any moment (okay - slightly terrified might be a more accurate description). In fact, when the first bolt struck when I was in the open, I instinctively threw myself to the ground. When I got up, I jogged across much of the remaining distance of the field.

As I approached the barn where I had been dropped off, I saw someone holding a flashlight approaching. It was Dad – and was I ever glad to see him. I asked him if he’d gotten one, and he said yes, with a broad grin.

We hiked back to the barn, where another hunter, Phil (a Urologist from Norman, OK) was waiting. He had shot an elk that evening also. Our guides were off collecting the two bulls, and they had dropped off Dad and Phil to collect me. We waited for probably an hour, standing in the open-sided barn, while the rain poured down and the lightning roared all around us. We talked about hunting and about our lives, as we observed 5 or 6 salamanders crawling past the barn, all headed in the same direction. We guessed that it might be mating season for them, and that there might be a female in that direction.

After a while, our guides returned, along with some other hunters. All of us hunters climber into one truck and drove back to camp, while the guides braved the nasty weather to collect the carcasses.

We had dinner, and then stayed up late, waiting for the guides to return with the bull carcasses. Eventually, they did return, but they only had Phil’s bull, not Dad’s. They had tried to recover it, but the steep mud-slick hillside, pouring rain and pitch blackness had seriously hampered their efforts. They planned on collecting it early the next afternoon.


Monday, September 17, 2007

Up at 4:30, left camp around 5:20. We returned again to the field at “The Edge.” It was raining hard, and had rained for much of the night, so the road, the field, and everything was very wet. As we went out into the fields, lightning intensified near us, so we left the farm track and stood closer to a stand of trees, where we spent a good half hour standing in the pouring rain, counting the seconds between the flash and the rumble to determine how far away the storm was and if it was moving away or closer. After a while, the lightning subsided enough that we felt safe going away from the protective trees, and out into the fields.

Again, similar to the pervious morning, we saw the elk grazing on the far side of the field. They were in a position where it would be almost impossible for us to approach them. We left Dad near the fence at the top of the hill, and Bob and I followed the fenceline down, closer to the field. When we were still perhaps 20 yards short of the field, we had to stop because another fence was blocking our way. At that point the elk were about 550 yards away. A really superior marksman could have made a shot at that distance, but I certainly didn’t feel comfortable making the attempt. So we climbed over the fence, and made our way out onto the field, screened by a big clump of bushes along a little rivulet that ran through the field. By this point, the elk were beginning to move off to the very edge of the field and into the scrub brush that ran along it, as the sun came up and the morning brightened. Bob and I decided to try to get to the far end of the field, so that we could move towards the elk through the brush so that they might not detect our approach. We walked along the little stream, and then had to cross it. At this point it had worked its way down perhaps 6 feet below the surface of the field, with steeply eroded dirt banks. We climbed down, crossed the tiny stream, and climbed back up the other side. We continued along the fenceline for another 200 yards or so, until it became clear that the elk were moving quickly up the far hillside, and had, in fact, already crossed the far fence off the ranch. So we had no alternative but to return the way we had come.

As on the previous morning, we drove up the road, and hiked out along a ridge and down to the top of a cliff, where we spent quite a while glassing the valley below and the far hillside. The only good part about it was that the rain had stopped and the day was warming.

Eventually, thoroughly soaked, we returned to the where the truck was parked, where we met up with several other guides and hunters. The guides went off together to retrieve Dad's elk, and I got to drive one of the guides ancient, battered Chevy Blazer? back to the camp, along roads that were still slick with rain and mud. It was fun.

We ate lunch, and then before we went to sleep, the guides finally came back with Dad's bull elk. We admired it for a while, and then took our naps, and left camp around 4:30 that afternoon. The day had turned beautiful, everything had dried out, and the weather had generally turned very pleasant.

We returned to our field at “The Edge,” where we set up near the far west end. We stood behind some trees and rocks, and glassed and glassed and glassed, while listening intently for bugling. We saw and heard nothing whatsoever for at least three hours, when all at once we heard a bugle. After a few minutes, we heard another, which enabled us to determine where it was coming from. It sounded like it was coming from the same little draw near the other end of the field where we had found the fresh tracks and sign from the herd the previous morning. So we set out, heading east, to get closer to where it sounded like the elk were located. After only a quarter mile or so, we paused and Bob glassed some more for the elk, and soon spotted them nearing the edge of the field very close to where we had been glassing. So we hiked back in that direction.

When we got back to the two big cottonwoods where I had spent my evening the previous day, Bob and I crawled up over the crest of the hill to the base of the western tree. By this time the elk were fully out on the field, and beginning to graze. I tried to get ready to shoot using Bob’s steady sticks, only to find that they were too low, and I would have been shooting through the tall grass, which would be likely to throw my bullet off course. So instead, I crawled around the base of the tree until it was between me and them – fortunately, it was a big tree, with a wide trunk that fully and easily screened me from their sight. Standing behind the tree, I got ready, then braced my left hand on the trunk, and rested my rifle on it. There were two bulls in the herd, one a larger 5X5 and the other a smaller, less dominant 5X5. I waited until the larger moved out into the field so that I could get a shot off, then got him in my crosshairs and squeezed the trigger. The bull jumped up a bit, and staggered around trying to run. “Jack another one in there,” Bob instructed, and I worked the bolt on my rifle, getting a fresh round in the chamber. Then I found the bull in my scope and fired off another round. I did that once more, for a total of three shots, and he fell down. His legs kicked and he writhed around a bit, and then went still. I felt like I had just sprinted at least a half a mile. I was panting and trembling a little from the excitement. Bob gave me a high five and then shook my hand, and Dad appeared and gave me a big hug. We were all grinning from ear to ear.

I collected my pack and we set off across the field to inspect my kill. The other elk in the herd had long since vanished into the scrub of the far hillside, of course.

When we reached the bull, I poked him in the face with the muzzle of my rifle, but he was stone dead. We found two bullet holes in his side exactly where you are supposed to shoot them – right through the ribs and the vitals and behind the front leg. We never found any wounds from the third shot, so I am not sure where that one went, and it is definitely possible that I cleanly missed him with one of those shots, but two of them were textbook killshots from 150 yards, and I was very pleased and relieved that I did my job well. Of course, the other possibility (and the one that I prefer to believe) is that my shooting was so accurate that the third shot went precisely through the same hole that the second shot had made, and thus left no trace.

As Bob started cleaning the animal, we heard, and then saw a four wheeler approaching from across the field. It was another of the guides, “Skinny,” who had observed the stalk and the kill from the road on the opposite hillside, where he was parked with his two hunters. He helped us clean the animal and then heave the two halves of the carcass onto the front and back of the four wheeler. Bob then drove it back to the truck, and by the time we hiked all the way back, he had already heaved the (very large, and very heavy) carcass halves into the back of his truck. It is appropriate that his name is "House."

We drove back to camp. Had dinner, and celebrated our success.


Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Got up nice and late (7:00), got packed up, had breakfast, and drove out of camp by 10:00. By noon we were back in Silverthorne.

The Menu

With many thanks to the chef, Kent.

Lunch:
(Saturday) Chili and cornbread
(Sunday) Beef stew with dumplings
(Monday) Bratwurst and tomato soup

Dinner:
(Friday) marinated beef
(Saturday) Elk steak with bourbon glaze and red beans and rice
(Sunday) Lasagna and Caesar salad
(Monday) Chicken breasts with wild rice

Desserts:
(Friday) Peach shortcake
(Saturday) Brownies
(Sunday) Blueberry crumble
(Monday) Apple pie with brown sugar and oatmeal topping