Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting An accounting of 4 Idaho bulls

continued….

A buck interrupts the elk hunt

Matt (IDnative on this thread) and I loaded up the groceries and headed north to camp once again. There was just enough daylight left when we arrived to make a wood run for the storm that would be arriving sometime the next day.
A couple of beers followed a couple of hamburgers, and soon my eyelids grew heavy. I managed to stay awake long enough to stuff the wood stove as full as I could and turned down the damper to get a long burn for the night. I crawled into my sleeping bag with visions of big bulls in the morning. Matt said I was snoring in about 30 seconds. I’ll have to take his word for it of course.

I knew something wasn’t right when Matt’s alarms when off, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. We had a quick breakfast of banana bread and fruit and grabbed a coffee for the short ride to the same trailhead we’d chased Tim’s bull on a few days prior. I was 50 yards down the road before I realized the clock in my pickup said it was nearing 7…we were an hour behind schedule! Matt had accidentally set the daily alarm on his phone instead of the hunting alarm (to go off at 5). Ironically, I had done the same thing a year prior on the morning my son killed his big bull. I immediately started backing the truck up.

“I’m going to take the dirtbike and hunt the low country below camp” I told Matt. He understood, and said he’d slow hunt his way towards our usual haunts above me. I hate to be late to a hunting spot. I know people take animals mid-morning all over the world,…but it simply never happens for me. I swear that 95% of the game I’ve killed over the years was taken in the first 30 minutes of shooting light. If I rode hard on the dirtbike, I figured I could juuust make it into a spot down low I’d scouted the month prior, before daylight broke. I kicked the bike over and took off as fast as I dare in the direction I wanted to hunt.

The spot I was headed to really wasn’t that far off the main road, but it was down about 2,000’ vertical feet. Most folks simply don’t want to get that deep, knowing that will have to pack anything they might shoot back up the same, steep face. Thirty minutes later I parked the bike and headed out at a brisk pace for my intended location, still a mile distant. It was dark enough I needed the headlamp when I left the bike, but the night soon gave way to a grey dawn and I put the headlamp in my pocket as I continued on. Just as I broke through a thick stand of brush, the country started opening up a bit. I stopped for a second to catch my breath, and looked directly downhill from my location to see a pretty fair buck staring up at me. The second our eyes met, he wheeled around and started across the hillside. One way or another, I could see this was going to be over rather quickly. There was about 150 yards of real-estate between him and permanent escape over a finger-ridge.

In a fortuitus turn of events, I noticed there was a beautiful old Ponderosa Pine about three steps from me. In more or less one motion, several events occurred. I popped the security strap on my Kifaru Gun Bearer and pulled my .280 free. I ripped the scope cover off, and I blindly turned the vertical turret a couple of clicks. He was at about 200 yards now, and moving away at a rapid pace. I braced the rifle off the tree and picked him up in the scope. Just as I flipped the safety off, he paused for just a second to look back over his shoulder. He was already turning his head to leave when I squeezed the trigger. I was greeted with the unmistakable sound of a bullet striking meat, as he turned on the jets and steepened his retreat down and away from me. I lost visual on him as he went into a patch of brush, but I should have been able to see him come out the other side. I waited with my pulse still pounding in my ears for just a second, and then began my own descent towards where I had last seen him. I’d covered about 200 yards when I noticed a leg sticking up over the top of a downed log below me. He had only made it about 45 yards before piling up.

He wasn’t my best buck ever, but he was better than average and I was quite pleased with him, especially given it was an OTC unit with a fair amount of pressure in it.




Further inspection revealed the entrance was exactly where I had hoped it would be. I’ve connected on much further shots over the years, but I don’t know that I’ve ever made a better shot in my life all things considered. I might not be able to make that shot with a hundred more tries in that window of opportunity, but I made it the one time that it mattered most and that's good enough. The entrance is just off the tip of the knife.





It was with a measure of pride that now I went about breaking him down into quarters. I loaded half of him on my pack, and left half for the return trip. The next few hours weren’t fun. It had started to rain and then snow about the time I finished up the quartering process. Even with good raingear I was soon wet through to my base-layer. Cold followed on the heels of wet, and the pack uphill towards the bike didn’t make any of it more pleasant. I’ve started taking pictures of the unpleasant packs the last couple of years, to remind myself of the misery at a later date thinking it might aid in my future decision-making about where I choose to hunt. Here is a picture of yours truly as I started up the hillside with the first load on my back….




After I had the entire deer back to the bike, I started shuttling quarters back to camp. Somewhere along the way I had a spectacular crash on a tight switchback I didn’t quite pull. I tumbled a good 20 yards down the hill and came to rest upside down with my feet facing uphill. After a few seconds to collect my thoughts, I was quite surprised to find both the buck and my limbs had made it through the crash unbroken. When I pulled into camp with the last load, I was relieved to see Matt was back and had started a fire. It was beginning to snow in earnest at that point, and I was eager to get warm again. He emerged from the tent with eyebrows raised and said, “You look like chit. You have blood AND mud on your face. Did you crash again?!” Sympathy from Matt was in short supply, especially given that he had seen nothing that day. I wiped most of the mud and blood from my face and he snapped this picture before I stepped into the warm embrace of the wall-tent.




To be continued….

good stuff.

You write well - you should consider submitting this "series" somewhere.

We need a picture of the dirt bike!

-Jake

Tagged..

Congratulations and great write up.

Been enjoying the entire account to this point. Thanks for posting.

tag

great summary and hunt.

that ankle needs to be rebuilt. it appears to either have too many parts, or perhaps a few pieces out of order.

Fantastic, thank you for taking time to share.

Great hunt. Congrats.

I remember, very distinctly, hearing Dave shoot, and thinking that at least he was able to see... I spent the better half of that day blinded by sideways snow and fog. I had a hunch Dave would be late back to camp as he doesn't miss... However, I know his propensity to riding hard and am always worried I'm going to have to come find him after he dumps it somewhere on that trail. He looked like hammered chit, but at least he was intact..

Great hunting stories! I look forward to the next installment!

Nice work Dave

[i]continued….

Matt and I double up

The night I returned from killing the buck it continued to snow. Every time I woke up to stoke the fire or take a leak, I could hear the unmistakable sound of snow hitting the tarp over the wall-tent. About 4 o’clock in the morning I rolled over to see Matt sitting on his bunk with a rather concerned look on his face. “What’s up bud” I asked? “Uuuhhhh….I think we might be snowed in back here” he replied. I poked my head out of the tent and was greeted with a foot of snow outside and still more coming down. We had about a 2,000’ pass to get over to get back to lower country and paved roads. While I wasn’t ready to hit the panic button just yet, it was indeed cause for concern. We both had chains for our tires if it came to that, but that’s always my last line of defense and I certainly didn’t want to have to go that route if I didn’t have to. “Let’s sleep in and assess the situation after the sun comes up” I said. Everything is better and easier in the light of day.

It was still snowing after a hearty breakfast and a few cups of coffee, but it seemed to be tapering off at least. Since we had missed the morning hunt anyway, we decided to run into town for a shower and pizza. A drive that normally takes a couple of hours stretched to almost four this time, but slipping and sliding we made our way back to town. It was a bit of a perilous trek, but worth the reward.



Our return drive later that afternoon revealed plenty of fresh tracks in the new snow. Critters were on the move, and we returned to camp with high hopes for the day that followed. It snowed a couple more inches in the night, but we had no problem getting to the ridgetop we wanted to hike out the following morning. It just felt “elky” as we made our way out the ridge towards the intended glassing area. My spider-senses were tingling and I told Matt I wanted to slow-hunt our way into the basin we were initially headed for. I had a hunch we might bump into something a little sooner that morning. Then again, the trail we were walking was covered in fresh tracks so it didn’t take a whole lot of smarts to connect the dots to that possibility.

We were about two miles in when it became possible to glass the open, snowy hillsides for game. It was still too dark to shoot, but there was enough light that a deer or elk standing in an open area could be detected with glass for the light (snowy) background. I was looking at a hillside below us when Matt said, “I’ve got a couple of cows”. I didn’t even know he had his glass out, and I turned around to see where he was looking. As it happens, he was looking straight ahead at our elevation, where the trail wrapped around a small finger-ridge. Sure enough in the darkness of some brush, I could make out a few elk milling around seemingly unaware of our presence only a couple of hundred yards away. We both took a seat in the snow, and I got set up on the sticks as quickly as possible. We watched them for a good five minutes before I was finally able to identify a bull. It was getting lighter by the minute and I could tell we were going to get a shot if they didn’t bust us during the wait.

After a few minutes I could finally see the bull sufficiently well enough to get a shot, but he was absolutely blanketed by cows. He wasn’t a monster, but we was approaching 300” and it was a bull I really, really wanted to shoot. Ten minutes later and he still hadn’t cleared the cows he was bunched up with. Worse still, we were both shivering at this point. We had been hiking in just our baselayer shirts. That was fine on the move, but sitting in a foot of snow for 15-20 minutes had us both freezing our giblets off. Matt whispered that he was going to try and pull his coat out of the bag. The second he started reaching for it, a cow began staring holes through us and I hissed at him to stop. She finally went back to feeding and he started moving again only to have her lift her head and stare at us again. We played this cat and mouse game for another five minutes until he finally had his coat out and on. I was happy he was going to keep hypothermia at bay, but it was clear to me I had to get a shot off and soon, or they were going to bust us for real.

The bigger bull still wasn’t clear of the cows, and my frustration was growing by the second. I was (foolishly) considering trying to thread the needle with a shot to the base of the head, when a smaller 4x5 emerged from a hidden cut below and began walking directly at us. I turned and asked Matt if he wanted to shoot him, but he graciously declined and told me to “go ahead”. It wasn’t the bull I had been dreaming about for 12 months, but it was a bull…on public land…in an OTC unit with low success rates that I was confident I could get a good shot on. Finally, it was only two miles from the truck, which would make it the easiest bull to extract I have ever killed in that country. I flipped the safety off and slowly squeezed the trigger. I lost sight of him at the recoil, and elk began scattering like a covey of quail.

I rolled out of the way and told Matt to take the gun. He had his own rifle at hand of course, but I knew he hadn’t chambered a round or even taken the scope covers off during the Mexican stand-off we had just endured. He quickly slid behind my .280 and began trying to pick up the now, moving 6x. Unfortunately, that bull stayed tight to the cows as the herd began retreating in earnest down the hill. I pointed out a spike standing all alone just below the first bull I had shot at. Matt drew a bead and let one go in short order. The spike collapsed at the shot and just that quickly it was over.

We hustled over towards where my bull was standing at the shot, and quickly found him down the hill about 80 yards piled up against a log. I am eternally grateful he hit that downed snag, or he might still be sliding down the hill and my hopes for an easy pack out gone with him. Here is a photo of Matt laughing at our good fortune and wondering how we’re going to get him turned for processing…



Matt’s spike was below my bull straight down the hill another 100 yards. Packing quarters is never an easy task, but all things considered I was giddy about the relative ease by which we’d be getting these two out. Matt’s spike isn’t quite as small as it looks in this photo I swear. No spike is huge of course, but this one is a lot more “average” than it appears. Matt is 6’4” and about 240 pounds, so everything looks small next to him. I sent the picture to a mutual friend of ours that replied with, “Does this Sasquatch make my elk look small?”…



My bull was a hard quartering-to shot, and I was thrilled to find the remnants of the 160 Accubond just forward of the offside, rear quarter when we started breaking him down. It had penetrated 3-4’ of elk and held together nicely at a range of 250 yards.





It was a steep hike back up the hill to the trail, but a relatively flat two miles back to the truck from there. We’d make two trips that first day, and two the day that followed. The snow had us stepping with care, but we extracted both bulls without incident.



to be continued….
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Always a good read...Congrats!

Thank you for the story and pictures and .... Congratulations. Meat in the freezer.

L.W.

Man, Big congrats! Great story as well..

love it!

And now I can’t wait for the 4th!