Gorp2007
WKR
My uncle organized a family-wide elk hunt this year in the White River National Forest near the Flat Tops Wilderness Area of Colorado. We had a group of 7 hunters ages 14 to 64 and all in various states of physical disrepair, so we went with a semi-guided hunt with River's Bend Outfitters in Meeker. I'm a relatively young man at 32 in pretty good shape and in the future I would love to venture into the world of unsupported backpack hunting, but I know that there's absolutely no way on earth I would have been able to spend a week out there with my dad, uncles, and cousins if we'd been packing all of our gear in ourselves. Then there's also the small fact that none of us actually know what the hell we're doing when it comes to elk hunting, while our guide (Tel Gates) took over the guiding company from his dad and has been running around those mountains since he was 2. Overall, semi- or fully-guided was the only way we were going to make that hunt work for our group and it turned out better than we could have ever hoped.
Tel was great at figuring out everyone's physical capabilities and working to put everyone in a position to be where the elk wanted to go. My older cousins and I were able to get a bit further out from camp and get ourselves into spots that increased our odds, but of all the spots on the map where Tel told us to go, people saw elk at least once during the week. On the second day, Tel was leading my cousin and me out to our spots before first light and we heard a bugle right in front of us. We got set up, but the elk winded us and headed off, so Tel gave my cousin directions to where he knew the elk would try to move if they got pushed. Then he took me and we went down the mountain and followed what looked like an elk Autobahn. He was able to get me into the right spot and I ended up filling my cow and bull tags within a span of about 5 minutes (and a quick sprint straight up the side of a hill). We were just getting ready to start cutting into my bull (a nice 5x5 if I do say so myself) when we heard a shot from my cousin's direction. Sure enough, after I took my 5x5 about 30 elk moseyed on over to my cousin's spot and he was able to take an absolute bruiser of a 6x6. That makes his second 6x6 on his second elk hunt at the ripe old age of 18. Not bad. We spent the rest of the morning getting the meat off of the first three elk and then headed back to camp. The next 3.5 days, my cousin and I helped sherpa the rest of the crowd around the mountain to help them get back into some of the better locations and by the end of the season we were able to fill six of our tags, three bulls and three cows, and every member of the group had a shot at a legal elk (one passed to let his son take the shot and another missed).
The whole trip was an absolute blast and we all had a great time out in the mountains, made possible in no small part to the hard work of our guides. Originally, we had planned to do a 1st season drop camp hunt through the same outfitters, but late in the game they opened up the 4th season as a guided option and gave our group the right of first refusal. Despite the fact that I didn't know anything about elk hunting besides a general physical description of the animals, I was pretty adamant about sticking to the first season. I'm glad the rest of the group was smarter than me and decided to go the guided route. I still want to start prepping for DIY trips in the future, but I feel like I was able to move up the learning curve a little faster having someone there with me who actually knows what elk habitat looks like, what elk smell like, and how they want to behave in a given situation depending on the time of year. I'm certain I wouldn't have learned as much hiking 20 miles around the backcountry with a rifle in my hand wondering where all the elk had gone.
Here's me and my bull.
Here are our guides with my cousin's bull (my cousin's feeling pretty good about his elk hunting prowess, he doesn't need any free publicity)
And here's my little girl enjoying her first taste of elk.
Tel was great at figuring out everyone's physical capabilities and working to put everyone in a position to be where the elk wanted to go. My older cousins and I were able to get a bit further out from camp and get ourselves into spots that increased our odds, but of all the spots on the map where Tel told us to go, people saw elk at least once during the week. On the second day, Tel was leading my cousin and me out to our spots before first light and we heard a bugle right in front of us. We got set up, but the elk winded us and headed off, so Tel gave my cousin directions to where he knew the elk would try to move if they got pushed. Then he took me and we went down the mountain and followed what looked like an elk Autobahn. He was able to get me into the right spot and I ended up filling my cow and bull tags within a span of about 5 minutes (and a quick sprint straight up the side of a hill). We were just getting ready to start cutting into my bull (a nice 5x5 if I do say so myself) when we heard a shot from my cousin's direction. Sure enough, after I took my 5x5 about 30 elk moseyed on over to my cousin's spot and he was able to take an absolute bruiser of a 6x6. That makes his second 6x6 on his second elk hunt at the ripe old age of 18. Not bad. We spent the rest of the morning getting the meat off of the first three elk and then headed back to camp. The next 3.5 days, my cousin and I helped sherpa the rest of the crowd around the mountain to help them get back into some of the better locations and by the end of the season we were able to fill six of our tags, three bulls and three cows, and every member of the group had a shot at a legal elk (one passed to let his son take the shot and another missed).
The whole trip was an absolute blast and we all had a great time out in the mountains, made possible in no small part to the hard work of our guides. Originally, we had planned to do a 1st season drop camp hunt through the same outfitters, but late in the game they opened up the 4th season as a guided option and gave our group the right of first refusal. Despite the fact that I didn't know anything about elk hunting besides a general physical description of the animals, I was pretty adamant about sticking to the first season. I'm glad the rest of the group was smarter than me and decided to go the guided route. I still want to start prepping for DIY trips in the future, but I feel like I was able to move up the learning curve a little faster having someone there with me who actually knows what elk habitat looks like, what elk smell like, and how they want to behave in a given situation depending on the time of year. I'm certain I wouldn't have learned as much hiking 20 miles around the backcountry with a rifle in my hand wondering where all the elk had gone.
Here's me and my bull.
Here are our guides with my cousin's bull (my cousin's feeling pretty good about his elk hunting prowess, he doesn't need any free publicity)
And here's my little girl enjoying her first taste of elk.
