Marshbanks12
FNG
- Joined
- May 22, 2021
- Messages
- 19
I thought I'd share the story of my first Elk hunt that me and my buddy went on last year.
This story takes place in an OTC unit in Colorado the first 6 days of the archery season of 2020.
My friend, Zach, and I arrived in Colorado two days before the opening day of archery elk season to scout the area we had planned on hunting. Our thought process was that we would camp out about 5 miles from the parking area and hunt for 5-6 days. Pretty ambitious for our first elk hunt but we thought we were up to the task.
After two days of scouting we realized we had a few problems. First there was no water to be found anywhere in the unit. As I am sure you all remember the terrible drought last year so we needed to come up with a way to have water for 5-6 days. Second there was literally thousands of sheep being grazed in the area we had selected to hunt.
To solve the first problem of water we drove to the local Walmart and bought two 8 gallon water jugs. We filled them to the brim with water and strapped them to our load shelfs of our packs. It was about 30 feet into our 5 mile hike in when we realized that 8 gallons of water weighs about 60 pounds. But being young and dumb we said "screw it" and death marched our way up the mountain with all the water you could ever want on our backs. It took us about 3 hours to get into our spot we wanted to camp.
The second problem of the sheep we decided wasn't a problem because they were much closer to the parking area than we were hunting.
We set up camp, and quickly fell asleep, dreaming of 300" bulls we could hunt the next morning. Well we woke up and the temperature had plummeted. All of the water had frozen in the containers. We began hunting and glassing, glassing and hunting.... generally trying to figure out a unit that was pretty much foreign to us.
We went to sleep that night at about 8pm. At 9pm we were awoken by about 2000 sheep, 5 sheep dogs and a Peruvian man on horseback riding through our camp. It was a long night to say the least.
The next morning we awoke and began glassing again. The sheep were quickly grazing through our glassing area. We decided to change spots. The sheepdogs were now hanging out with us and sleeping at our feet while we glassed. We did everything you could think of to get away from the sheep and sheep dogs and no matter what, they showed up.
We went to sleep that night wondering what else could possibly be in store for us. I woke up about an hour later to Zach yelling in his tent "Hey get out of here". I woke up grabbed my pistol and inexplicably yelled "What are you doing!" (Still don't know why). Zach proceeded to tell my from his tent that a bear had just stuck his head into his tent so he pistol whipped it and now it was standing on a log about 10 feet away. Zach tells me "Get out of your tent maybe it will run off". I got a good laugh out of that and eventually we heard the bear walk off into the night.
The next day we finally saw our first elk and got to about 35 yards before the wind swirled and they ran off. When we arrived back at camp we discovered that parts of our tents had been eaten by our sheep friends. As we sat in camp watching the sun go down laughing about the past few days one of the sheep dogs showed up and decided to hang out until we went to bed.
The final days of us hunting consisted of us getting lost in deadfall, making bets on how far away certain trees were, and wondering what the sheepdogs name was.
The trip was nothing like what I had imagined. We had been beaten down and seen two elk the whole time. Nothing went to plan.
It's one of the best hunting memories I have had and we will be back this year.
This story takes place in an OTC unit in Colorado the first 6 days of the archery season of 2020.
My friend, Zach, and I arrived in Colorado two days before the opening day of archery elk season to scout the area we had planned on hunting. Our thought process was that we would camp out about 5 miles from the parking area and hunt for 5-6 days. Pretty ambitious for our first elk hunt but we thought we were up to the task.
After two days of scouting we realized we had a few problems. First there was no water to be found anywhere in the unit. As I am sure you all remember the terrible drought last year so we needed to come up with a way to have water for 5-6 days. Second there was literally thousands of sheep being grazed in the area we had selected to hunt.
To solve the first problem of water we drove to the local Walmart and bought two 8 gallon water jugs. We filled them to the brim with water and strapped them to our load shelfs of our packs. It was about 30 feet into our 5 mile hike in when we realized that 8 gallons of water weighs about 60 pounds. But being young and dumb we said "screw it" and death marched our way up the mountain with all the water you could ever want on our backs. It took us about 3 hours to get into our spot we wanted to camp.
The second problem of the sheep we decided wasn't a problem because they were much closer to the parking area than we were hunting.
We set up camp, and quickly fell asleep, dreaming of 300" bulls we could hunt the next morning. Well we woke up and the temperature had plummeted. All of the water had frozen in the containers. We began hunting and glassing, glassing and hunting.... generally trying to figure out a unit that was pretty much foreign to us.
We went to sleep that night at about 8pm. At 9pm we were awoken by about 2000 sheep, 5 sheep dogs and a Peruvian man on horseback riding through our camp. It was a long night to say the least.
The next morning we awoke and began glassing again. The sheep were quickly grazing through our glassing area. We decided to change spots. The sheepdogs were now hanging out with us and sleeping at our feet while we glassed. We did everything you could think of to get away from the sheep and sheep dogs and no matter what, they showed up.
We went to sleep that night wondering what else could possibly be in store for us. I woke up about an hour later to Zach yelling in his tent "Hey get out of here". I woke up grabbed my pistol and inexplicably yelled "What are you doing!" (Still don't know why). Zach proceeded to tell my from his tent that a bear had just stuck his head into his tent so he pistol whipped it and now it was standing on a log about 10 feet away. Zach tells me "Get out of your tent maybe it will run off". I got a good laugh out of that and eventually we heard the bear walk off into the night.
The next day we finally saw our first elk and got to about 35 yards before the wind swirled and they ran off. When we arrived back at camp we discovered that parts of our tents had been eaten by our sheep friends. As we sat in camp watching the sun go down laughing about the past few days one of the sheep dogs showed up and decided to hang out until we went to bed.
The final days of us hunting consisted of us getting lost in deadfall, making bets on how far away certain trees were, and wondering what the sheepdogs name was.
The trip was nothing like what I had imagined. We had been beaten down and seen two elk the whole time. Nothing went to plan.
It's one of the best hunting memories I have had and we will be back this year.
