Waking up refreshed and excited, we busily gathered our gear and downed some coffee and granola. Packing into our two trucks we headed 20 minutes down the road towards the promising area. We dropped off Jeff and Dave at the trout parking area to ascend and hit the hillside from the west, meanwhile Chris and I would come in from the East, while Neil came right up the middle of the drainage.
When we continued to our parking area and noticed there was a blue Toyota Tacoma parked nearby. Maybe we would have some company? It was a huge area though so we proceeded with our plan.
I was the first to get moving from the vehicle and my assigned position was closest to the drainage where Neil was to come up. I side-hilled upwards and had a smaller aspen topped ridge to go over, before climbing the main steep ridge. I felt good and was moving silently but steadily. It was the early gray of dawn but I was glad I removed a layer of wool before starting. The wind was in my face things seemed to be going well. Thick young aspens crowned the top of this smaller rise as I crested I was looking hard for any movement. Weaving around and over obstacles I suddenly heard the unmistakable mew of a cow elk! I froze... waiting for my next move I heard it again! I took my call carefully and slowly from my the little sleeve I made in my arm guard to hold it and blew a quiet call in response. Almost immediately I hard a return call not only from the area I heard initially, but from about 60 yards to my left as well.
Knowing I could not draw and shoot from the thick I was in, I began to carefully sneak out towards the calls. Then I saw movement, and immediate recognition in my brain, as I saw another hunter arrow nocked and approaching within 25 yards. The wind blew out of my sails. Drat! The guy was scanning hard but still did not see me, so I took my string hand away and waved my hand at him several times before I saw his face flush with recognition.
We made our way towards each other and made our greeting in hushed voices. He told me he was one of two moving up from the road while there were three of his friends coming down from the top via another access road. I asked him if he was in the blue Toyota and he said, "yup". I let him know we had 5 total coming in from two directions and he let me know they thought they heard animals moving on the other side of the valley a bit earlier and were waiting for his top guys to move them towards him. Not knowing what else to do, I decided to head towards the creek bed to let Neil know of the others. I bid the fellow farewell and good luck.
At the bottom of the gully was the skeleton of an elk, and I found a nice log to sit on which gave me a shot towards the hillside on the far side and would allow me to see Neil, or anything he pushed up to me from below. After 1/2 an hour I didn't see any sign of Neil so I stalked up the far hillside to explore. The was a fine looking grassy bench up there and I moved as slow and quietly as I could. Several times, I sat in good looking areas waiting. The bench wrapped around the hillside so I continued snug against the slope and skirted the bench. At one point I saw a hornet nest torn apart, and this was the second I had seen from the bears feeding. It was bear season concurrently with the elk, and that had also increased the hunter numbers around as we had talked to two other bear hunters sporting orange previously.
At the corner where the bench wrapped I sat for a few hours until I caught movement behind me. Chris had finally crossed over and he had not seen anything either, not even the other hunters. We headed back towards the truck with no elk sighted, no fresh elk sign, and only other hunters. This was starting to sound all too familiar.
Back at camp we all decided on another drastic change, we would travel 2 hours South to the opposite end of the forest and another unit entirely. Packing in haste, we hit the road. If we failed it would not be for lack of trying.
No comments:
Post a Comment