Day 3:
Cold. The last night was the coldest of the trip and zero degree sleeping bags weren’t even close to enough. We headed back to the whitetail spot and this time we got there a half hour before shooting light. With the armada reporting a temperature of -10 at the hunting area I really appreciated my puffy layers and wool mittens. At first light, all we saw was fog or perhaps our eyes had just frozen and began forming frost.
A frigid half hour later we spotted our first deer of the morning. It was the 10 from yesterday and this time it looked like he was headed right for us. Then as the fog began to lift was saw another buck and he was WIDE. It was the same giant from yesterday and he was catching up with the 10. Walking together he made the other buck look puny. Seeing that same buck again made me reconsider holding out for a mule deer. A quick discussion and game of rock paper scissors had left me holding the rangefinder and my friend getting ready for a shot at redemption. As they crossed the ditch I knew they were in range. Moments later they stopped simultaneously at 216 yards. Did they somehow smell us? Maybe they heard me whispering the range? We’ll never know because a second later a bullet went thru the giant’s lungs and the other buck took off.
A quick fist bump and a 216 yard sprint later we were down there. He didn’t get any smaller in person. We just stood there looking at his massive rack in disbelief that he kept his same routine after being shot at the previous morning. He had 10 typical points with split brows later that night we scored him at 154 gross and 146 net.
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It took us an hour to get him caped, quartered, and loaded into our packs. Frozen and wet with meat in the cooler we headed into town to see if we could find a motel and a smaller cooler to put our recently displaced food. After checking into the local motel and a hot lunch we were back on the road heading to a new area. The new area was a next to a valley that fed out of the mountains. As we started walking to the ridge we saw 100+ elk in the private bottom. We booked it to the edge of the hill overlooking the valley. We noticed a group had broken off from the heard and was hopping the fence onto the public land. We got down the hill and moved thru the timber over towards their crossing point. When we got there, they were still crossing the fence. It was my turn to shoot so I was looking down a lane watching the elk file thru one by one. Cow, cow, spike, cow, cow… I didn’t want to shoot a cow after the whitetail from the morning.
My friend said he’d be happy shooting a cow so we headed back up the ridge. At the top, we saw a cow moving thru the timber and got setup. Boom City. Double lung shot at 100 yards. She took a few steps and was down. Elk are giant animals. As we walked up I realized just how big they are. This was going to take some work. Quartering took us into darkness and being in the timber had us checking our surroundings periodically. Fortunately, the wind was blowing down into the valley giving us a good view in that direction. We hung two quarters a few hundred yards or so from the kill site and then started the first leg of our trip. After three pack outs the motel was the best decision we had made all day. A hot shower and sleeping in a warm room let alone a bed was awesome.
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Lesson(s) learned: I need to find a solution for keeping my feet warm. I had uninsulated boots and while changing into dry socks on the hill helped my toes didn’t fare too well. The Gutless method is the way to go especially if you are going to be making multiple trips packing out meat and are worried about visitors.
Question(s): Would you try and move a downed elk to a more open area to quarter? We probably could have rolled the elk further down the hill and gotten into a more open area.