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[grainhog]

I frequently saw out roads and trails to get me safe access to remote drainages and ridges. Over time I find when things are there or how they travel through.

Many places have no elk until I cut a path to facilitate elk travel. That access can channel elk into places that they are fairly rare if the habitat exists. A 170 is good for trails for lodgepole and I have a 311 for areas of fir downfall where the logs tend to be 2-3 ft in diameter.

I tend to recon the areas during season and then come back in the summer to cut out the elk trails but only wide enough for elk and horses.

Thanks. I know few other people personally who cut their way into areas, so it's cool to hear you're perspective. Animals definitely began to use the trail in years 2 and 3. I have often wondered how it might change animal movement in the area generally.

I cut 3.5 miles of ridge that was impenetrable and never had a built trail on it before, so I have to believe it will have some impact. I intentionally made it tough to be found or traversed by horses.

 

[Read1t48]

Great story. I am definitely not a part of Oprah‘s book club but if you were ever a part of it I would consider joining.

I packed a bull out solo this year that was 27 miles in total. That was pretty stupid. Part of me didn’t want to let anyone know where the spot was. The other part of me was being merciful to my friends and not wanting to take them to the hell hole I shot it in. It sounds a lot like your spot.

 

[Speck1]

That’s a crazy amount of work. I tend to get that way as well and can’t make myself stop. How much do you charge per day? I have a few spots that would benefit from your trail blazing skills

 

[Jethro]

16 12-14 hour days cutting and 3 days hunting. That is dumb

 

[grainhog]

That’s a crazy amount of work. I tend to get that way as well and can’t make myself stop. How much do you charge per day? I have a few spots that would benefit from your trail blazing skill

Getting paid would take all the fun out!

 

[Pony Soldier]

Remember: If you cut it - they will come! It helps if you cut out their long term trails. They are a creature of habit - by generations.

 

[Billy Goat]

Starting a hunting website.

 

[Ryan Avery]

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Oh… I could put a stop to that real quick

 

[Coldtrail]

I could add a few dumb things I've done during my hunting pursuits, however I'm confident I haven't peaked just yet.....

 

[Northernpiker]

For some people, once you start you can’t stop...especially if you think it is Greener on the other side.

 

[5MilesBack]

Did you add it?

Of course not.

 

[87TT]

Does the first time I got married count?

 

[TheCougar]

Three years ago in May, a taxidermist uttered the name of a drainage in a hushed tone with a shifty glance during a conversation we had as he was ringing me up for a cow hide he tanned for me. I'll never know exactly why, but an irrepressible curiosity began to fester. For weeks thereafter I repeatedly muttered the name of the drainage to myself, like Tom Hanks talking to Wilson, squinting at a Google Earth tab, zooming in, panning, zooming out. The area appeared incapable of sustaining mammalian life. My fixation intensified.

A day in late June finally arrived when enough of the snow and ground water feeding the creek I had to cross to climb into the area had run off. I left town and eventually the highway, finally pointing my rig down the seemingly endless procession of pothole and washboard and fine particulate matter that led to a turnout not too terribly far from the bottom of the drainage. Then climb, or crawl, I did, pondering the few conceivable evolutionary functions of my morbid magnetism to the heinous and inhospitable.

Around 6 AM the next morning, from my sleeping bag through the door of my tent pitched about 5 miles in, I glassed two bulls feeding on a small open shelf about 3/4 miles straight line distance up drainage. I could see clearly enough through tripod mounted 12x50's that one of them was a big bodied, hump-backed creature accumulating substantial velvet.

The marshy clearing was a hole-punch in a several hundred acre island of residual live subalpine mixed conifer timber in the middle of what otherwise must be one of the most tempestuous seas of blowdown to be found on the crust of the earth. The haunting specter of that bull was the final impetus for perhaps the dumbest of the many dumb things I've done in my unnecessarily labor-intensive scouring of remote hellscapes for big bulls.

Two years ago in July, based on absolutely no information other than the taxidermist's whisper and that big solitary chocolate rhinoceros, I packed my pack. In particular, I somehow fit a full 5 gallon water jug, my rebuilt East German 044 with 28" bar (carb tuned for high and wide), a gallon of 93 octane two stroke mix, a gallon of bar oil, tools, chaps, ear pro and camping gear for two nights into my stone glacier pack. I then proceeded to hump the whole absurd 110+ lb spinal disc compression device across the thigh deep creek and halfway up the 35° rotten scree and wheatgrass-covered toe of the monstrous geologic detatchment that eventually leads most directly to that patch of live canopy.

Before the last of the cartilage at the ball ends of my femurs ground away under the load, I collapsed, rolled out from under the pack, tore it apart, and stashed half of its contents against the uphill side of a charred-black pistolbutt Doug-fir stem. Over the next three hours I shuttled my treasures in two loads the rest of the way, about a mile and 1.5k' vert, up to the first part of the ridge wide enough to puncture my Thermarest on. This is where the blowdown began.

I'll reserve some of the richer details of the sociopathy that followed for my no doubt Oprah-bound memoirs. But imagine, if you will, a sheer wall of cured-gray, sternum-high, jackstrawed lodgepole, spruce, and piss fir blowdown, each stem, for as far as the mind could concieve, positioned optimally to prevent any creature without wings from traversing the world beyond it. The only green vegetation forms are beargrass tussocks, grouse whortleberry, and sporadic thickets of impenetrable doghair lodgepole regeneration. Over the remainder of the summer, I spent sixteen 12-14 hr days (car to car, not counting windshield time) cutting wood like a beaver on growth hormones and acid.

I established a fairly maniacal routine. Drive to my turnout before sunrise. Hike food, a few liters of water to add to the jug, saw fuel, and bar oil up the gnarled Mars-scape landform and along my trail to the end of last cutting. Retrieve the stashed saw, fill er up, cut through a tank of gas. Retrace steps to shuttle water tank and gear up to the saw. Sharpen. Repeat. Clip a rock. F**k. Sharpen. Repeat. Run out of gas, or hit 1:00 PM during Stage 2 Fire Restrictions. Stumble back to tent and pass out. Or, stash saw, hike down, drive home in the dark, work paying job for 3-4 days. Repeat. I cut stems numbering in the thousands.

One day up there, at around 7.5k', when it was forecast to be 101° F in town, I got a useful experiential learning opportunity: heat stroke. I simply could not consume enough water and electrolytes that day. I could feel the exertion and the bone dry soil and the wind like a heatgun just hydraulically pumping the moisture and salt out of every pore of my skin. By the time I felt my shoulders twitching it was too late. Face down in the dirt, full body muscle contractions, writhing, bleating like a lamb. Probably in my top three "I might not make it out of here" moments. It was an hour before I could stand without collapsing under my convulsing calves and quads. The next weekend, 1/2 mile short of the timber oasis, I packed the saw off the mountain.

I didn't see no sign that summer, but I sure as shit didn't see a lot of sign. Some bull scat, confined to a pretty small area, and a 15' spruce that was so violently laid over and mangled that I searched it for grizzly hair. One might ask, could you have devised an actually strategically valid plan, in a district with at least moderate elk numbers, to make better use of the time and effort? To which I would respond, what kind of question is that?

I hunted that area one day that year. One day. Out of at least 15 archery and rifle days each that season. I saw sparse deer and elk tracks that day in November, including what I suspect was a pretty good mule deer buck. I torched a stump and sat next to it in sustained 25 mph wind in the teens, contemplating the slow motion train wreck of terminally late stage humanity. I said aloud to my lone viewer, a Clark's nutcracker, be sure to like comment subscribe and follow.

I went in there again last year, with my 14" topper this time, because unless I get llamas, I think I'd rather pack an anvil up that mountain than the 044 mag again. I retrieved three cameras I'd hung the previous November day. They were an unfamiliar model, with apparently much more sensitive motion sensors than I'd ever experienced. All 3 had filled with 5,000+ wind pictures each in the first two weeks and then stopped recording, 16 GB cards full. Not a single animal. Gut punch. Did not rehang.

That day I cut intermittently the rest of the way to water, sort of. I admit I have a passionate love for spraying 6' fountains of spruce chips and huffing 50:1 two-stroke fumes alone in the lower-
case-w wilderness. Not sure where the inclination originated, but not a behavior learned through observation. I love searching for elk at least as much, but it is often not the way I want it to be.

Sometimes some observation or revelation from the woods leads me to modify my strategy. Other times I say **** it and lean face first even further into the dumb way. Both categories of approach have yielded 'successes' and 'failures'. Clearly if you define success as killing an animal, the effort described above was a failure. I think the underlying truth of the matter may be more complex. But maybe not. Didn't hunt it a single day this year. May never again.

If I hadn't done it, I'd always have wondered. I did it, and I maybe still always will wonder. Dumbest thing I've ever done.

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So, I’ve got to ask… why go to all that work, but not hunt it? To me, that’s crazier than all the work you did. Great story, but I may be too dense to find the moral of the story about a brutal march through a blow down forest in pursuit of a bull, only to not pursue the bull.

 

[Agross]

Wondered the same

 

[TheCougar]

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[MallardSX2]

I have followed old pack trails for years. Most are blown shut. I like seeing those old trails to keep my bearings because I'm just not a "look at my phone every 30 yards to see where I am at kind of guy". I'm too busy trying to kill something.

I am glad that those pack trails never got re-opened either. I don't think the FS allows people to do that in Colorado anymore. But I could be wrong.

 

[TreeWalking]

Ever see how power companies trim the swath through a forest zone where power lines exist? Involves a helicopter and several large diameter radial saw blades. Those could make quick work of deadfall or make for a spectacular video. Or, both. Hold my beer.

 

[CAElkhunter]

Booked a hunt with an outfitter that I didn't properly vett....that did not work out well. Won't make that mistake
again.......

 

[Howdy Partner]

Having spent countless hours cutting out wilderness trails with a crosscut and non wilderness areas with a Stihl there is only one thing that confuses me about this escapade.................................

It will come to mind here in a minute.
Give me a second.

 

[grainhog]

So, I’ve got to ask… why go to all that work, but not hunt it? To me, that’s crazier than all the work you did. Great story, but I may be too dense to find the moral of the story about a brutal march through a blow down forest in pursuit of a bull, only to not pursue the bull.

I think it was for these reasons:

• It ended up being much more difficult to day-hunt than I anticipated because of travel time and an unreliable vehicle I have yet to upgrade. So I've tended toward more highway or at leat mainline accessible spots.
• But, when I have time for multi-day hunts, there are usually other places I'd rather go.
• The blowdown is so vast and so bad that, even though I can hunt 3+ miles lineal distance, I can't hunt very far off the trail. Add 1/10" precip and it's a death sentence with vibram soles.
• I kinda just burnt myself out on the area during the cutting.

At one point I started to design lightweight modified mountaineering crampons which, instead of ice spikes, would have threaded inserts for logging caulks. However, the diameter and thread pitch of the common Champs replacement spikes turned out to be proprietary, and I gave up trying to get a tap tooled.

It's possible I could get a second wind for the area, for at leat one more effort. I think if I do, I should maybe just plan a 3-5 day trip where I get 3-4 miles back and just literally glass from one spot the whole time. Might seem obvious to others, but I'm not usually one for sitting.