Pandemonium

     Last Thursday Ryan and I had planned on returning to Boulder for one final crack at filling our freezers with elk meat with a bow.  Our hunt was slightly postponed because of an apple appraisal that we had to help out with over in Quincy, WA Thursday morning but even though we knew we would be in for a long day we were excited and up for it!  We hit the road  just after 5 am and were picking apples in near 70 degree weather by lunchtime.  After a quick trip back to Spokane we loaded up and headed towards camp just after 3 pm.  Now earlier in the week Ryan had asked his brother to ship him a wall tent that was hanging in the barn at their shop for years.  We'd been looking at them for a year, nearly buying a couple different ones, before Ryan remembered about the one in the barn.  The only glitch in our plan was his brother didn't find time to ship it so Ryan had to get it on the Greyhound last minute and we were to pick it up in Butte on the way through!  Luckily the tent caught it's connection bus from Glendive to Butte and made it just in time for Curt's wife Jen to pick it up for us, you'll have to ask her about the Butte bus depot if you want the rest of that fun story:)  So with tent in hand we were off to camp.  
    Butte had seen some abnormally early winter weather last week and the closer we got to camp the colder the temp got as well as the more snow we ran into!  Curtis had pulled the camper into a good spot just about a mile lower than where we had intended on setting up the tent and as we crept up the mountain road towards Curt I anxiously watched the temp fall lower and lower.  By the time we got to the tent site the truck temp read 28!  So we did what any clear thinking people would do and began to set up our tent at midnight under the lights of the truck in sub freezing weather.  We really lucked out though and the tent was an external frame style, much like the ones I guided out of years ago, so with some help retrieving lodge poles from Curt along with the pent up excitement of 11 hours of windshield time thinking about elk we went to work and had the tent ready for use around 1:30 am!  Curtis headed back to the camper for bed and Ryan and I spent the next hour and a half trying to find wood dry enough to keep a fire going!  

  

Base camp

One happy elk hunter

    So we finally got to sleep and began dreaming of stalking a big bull, that was until Ryan started dreaming that he was on fire only to wake up to a wall tent full of smoke and canvas on fire!  The tent never had a stove pipe jack on it, just a hole cut through the front of the canvas, and as we stoked up the fire the pipe got hot enough to ignite the canvas!  Once we got that situation under control we were back to bed.  The next morning we slept in for a while from our late night excursion, and took a short still hunt through the timber behind the camper.  We saw nothing and Curt had the good idea to take the quads for a cruise to some different areas and see if we can use the snow to our advantage and try to spot some fresh tracks to at least see where the elk had been.  So we split up and Ryan went one way and Curt and I the other, after a short while Curt and I got on top of a big hill and as soon as we shut off the quads we heard a bugle!  Then another, and another, over and over again, bulls just talking to each other all over this small ridge in front of us!  We waited for Ryan to meet up with us then raced back to camp because dad was on his way in and we knew just where to go for an evening hunt!

    

Action, Curt, and Me

     Around 4:30 we all four headed in from the bottom of the ridge up towards all the action.  I left my bow in camp as I was going to attempt to lure one of these bulls in front of one of the other three.  We had to cross over a little finger ridge to get into the draw that I knew we had to be in and as soon as we did we began to hear the elk again.  We worked up the draw slowly closing the gap between us and the elk and we'd been on this ridge enough in the past to know that at the top of this draw was a huge meadow, it certainly sounded like all of the bulls were in or near this meadow.  

     I waited until we were a few hundred yards from the meadow and began bugling back and forth to the other bulls.  One responded immediately, then another from my left side, then a third from behind the first one!  I played cat and mouse with these three bulls for about 20 minutes with the three shooters fanned out in front of me and after none of the bulls came in any closer we decided to slowly close the gap.  We crept up the draw fanned out like a front line of soldiers, me bugling back and forth to the bulls the whole way up.  The closer we got to the meadow the more elk we were hearing!  Once we got on the edge of the meadow we could hear cows out there with the bulls and we noticed that there were pockets of pine trees scattered through the meadow along with 5' high sage brush!  The elk were nearly impossible to see!  Dad and Curt had swung to my right side to get to the other side of the meadow and I went over to Ryan's side to follow him up the left side.  All three of our shooters had begun cow calling a little bit and just as Ryan did a nice bull came walking down the edge of the meadow and stopped just in front of him.  Ryan had no time to use his range finder and guessed the bull to be 40 yards and shot, he must have been a little farther cause his shot just missed low and the bull spun and lunged into the protection of the thick timber!

     Ryan stayed there to look for his arrow and make certain he drew no blood and with darkness approaching us I swiftly moved farther up the meadow, keeping the rest of the bulls interested.  I had no idea where Curt or dad were by now but i kept working towards this small thicket of pine trees where I had the attention of a bull that sounded too good to not see with my own eyes!  I kept inching my way from sage brush to sage brush bugling each time I would move, getting within about 30 yards of where I knew the big boy was, and with no shooter anywhere near me!  To my surprise I then heard the unmistakable sound of Curt's cow call!  He was no farther than 50 yards to my right!  I thought this is it!  It was perfect, Curt cow called one more time and I moved about 20 feet closer to the bull and screamed a big challenge bugle at him, he immediately replied, almost covering me up and I thought I was going to see him come out of the trees any second.  He never came out though, only causing my heart to skip a few beats and the hair on my neck to stand on end.  I left him alone and worked my way over to Curt and by now it was dark enough I couldn't see him until he looked at me.  I bugled one more time to see what else was out there and a nice 5x5 came charging in right at Curt only to turn and head the other way when the wind switched directions!

     We turned on our head lamps and reconvened, Ryan never found any blood from his shot on the powdery white snow so we headed down the mountain.  Dad filled us all in on the way down of how good the bull I was tormenting was as he had a real good look at the bull and all the action from across the meadow, all we could do was shake our heads about what just happened.  By my count I had 6 different bulls respond to a call, all of them no farther than a 100 yards from each other!!!  I had never seen nor heard anything like it before in my life!  

     We got a good nights rest, all I could hear were bugles as I drifted to sleep, and then next morning we woke up to go try to find a mule near the camper while we waited for the evening hunt on the elk.  Ryan got a mule doe mid morning, made a fantastic shot on her from 43 yards, and once we had her hanging back at camp it was time to go in again. 

    

     We went to the same ridge as the night before because that afternoon we had spotted a huge 6 point feeding out into a meadow up high so we knew the elk were still up there!  This time we hiked to the top of the same meadow from a different angle and split up, dad and Curt went low and Ryan and I went high.  Dad and Curt saw no elk and three other hunters so they're hike was cut pretty short.  Ryan and i got up in the same meadow we'd seen the big bull earlier, I asked Ryan which way he thought the bull had fed, across the meadow or back into the timber.  He said he had a hunch he went back into the timber and his hunch was right cause we weren't 200 yards into the timber and we found him!  He was feeding his way down the mountain with two cows.  We glassed him for a minute, ranged him at 118 yards, and I bugled at him with nothing more than a look back!  I couldn't believe it, we knew this was the same bull I had all riled up the night before because he was exactly how Dad described him and in practically the same spot, and he wanted nothing to do with me tonight!  So we followed him and his cows down the hill, never getting any closer than we first were right up until dark.  

     As Ryan and I worked our way off the mountain I told him this was one of the best elk hunts of my life.  Ryan is a true bow hunter so no words were necessary to explain why the best hunt of my life didn't involve killing anything!

     We spent another good night in the wall tent and instead of still hunting timber after elk opted to rest our bodies and minds a little before tearing down camp and heading back home.  I've thought about that Friday night hunt every single night since then and no matter how many times I play it over in my head in an attempt to figure out what we should have done differently I keep coming up with the same answer, nothing.  God puts these majestic creatures on this planet not just to provide nourishment to our families, but also to allow us to feel as thought we are one of them, even if it's only for a second.  In my opinion there is not many things on this earth more humbling and spiritual than holding a conversation with a big bull elk on his turf, on his time!  These experiences make me feel both extremely large and yet very tiny.  That will only make sense to a few of you but for those of you who don't understand what I'm saying, trust me it is a very powerful experience!  So the book is closed on another bow season and once again my mind is filled with happy thoughts from both the hunts and the camp, now I just have 350 odd days to calm myself down until next season!

Remember, if looked at in the right way every hunt is successful, sometimes the ones where nothings brought home are the most successful!