Monday, September 15, 2008

Here Elkie Elkie

I was able to join in all the hunting fun yesterday. I was both excited and not so excited remembering back to last season the one time that I went out and we saw nothing, froze to death and I had to sit under a bush for a long time with out any talking. That is the hardest part for me. The no talking and being sneaky. It seems that I am not so sly in the woods.

Glassing the countryside in my real tree camo pants.

We went to find Elk following a tip off on a spot from my bro. The spot was BEAUTIFUL! We could see 360 views of all of the surrounding mountain ranges and it wasn't too terribly cold. We could see a group of Elk grazing and hanging out in an alfalfa field quite a ways off and knew that those Elk were not going anywhere but Keegan had said that Elk move across the spot where we were every evening to feed on fields that were on the other side of the hill that we were set up on. So we watched the Elk that we could see and waited. Just after the sun went down we were standing around getting ready to go and I started to hear a very faint cow calling. (Elk cow; not mooo cow) Sure enough 20-30 elk started filing over the top of the hillside on their way to eat. They were just under 300 yards away and of course across the boundary onto private land. The cows were talking and the bulls were bugling. VERY EXCITING! I have spent all of my life in MT/WY and aside from seeing herds on hillsides from the road or seeing the Elk in YNP I have never seen Elk being Elk. It was pretty amazing. G called back and forth with them for awhile and just as quickly as they had come they were gone. We stood and talked for a few minutes more and I spotted two satellite bulls just east of us coming up the hillside. I am pretty sure that they spotted us too and changed their direction. The bull is pretty much right in the center of the shot to the right of 2 pine trees.
As we walked back to the truck it was dark out but we had a bright full moon shining down on us so we didn't use flashlights. As we walked we could hear the bulls still bugling. We couldn't see them and they couldn't see us but we could hear them moving.

All in all....totally worth it!

No comments: