2021 failures, close calls, and lessons learned

[bluetick78]

Could also be a success that you made it off the mountain! I haven't had covid thankfully but I bet that 4 miles out was miserable.

It sucked for sure. It's been 4 days now, just feels like a medium strength cold with a low grade fever. 1st day was definitely the worst. I'll be hunting soon.

 

[ScottRK]

First year ever hunting elk. Watched a guy on a roadside overlook in WY sage area raise his arms getting out of his truck and swear I heard him whoop from almost a mile away while I was on a plateau ridge when he saw or heard the elk in a little trough I’d been glassing about 1/4 mi or less from him.The wind was blowing my way and he jumped on his bike out of his white trailer ,and he got upwind of them.I went down the hillside to get up and over the dry creek to get to the next flat and dry creek. Thought they’d head my way since they looked over towards where he was going. Well I got up there and have no idea where they went.He was the only guy I saw actually on the ground not riding around in 19 days hunting and 4 days scouting. 5th year in the unit CA hunter and a local couple camping said it was the worst year for sighting elk they’ve seen.

I kept getting 12 hr behind and 1mi away from a 2 bull 10 cow herd. I was cow calling and did see the one bull close up as we came around a junipers 50 yd apart. That didn’t last long and he took his 5 cows with him. I never heard another cow call.Saw them another time as I headed down a gully one morning -100 yd away and they caught me. Got a good pic of 6 elk looking right at me in pretty open country before they booked out of there.Some challenging hunting in sage juniper country.Some lessons learned-I really moved too fast a lot of the time, but man it’s a lot of area to cover out there. Keep looking for sign and springs- there’s so much to find if you just keep looking. I could find elk .Which other than getting one, and not getting spooked out of my mind while truck camping way out in BLM land was my main goal.I lost 10 pounds and went down 2 belt holes while out there.