Anschutz
Lil-Rokslider
Thursday night after work I drove out with a group of four for a last ditch effort to get some meat for the freezer before the Fortymile hunt closed. We parked at the trailhead around 11 and slept in the trucks for the night. Friday was uneventful but Saturday morning, I got up early and hiked over to a saddle that looked promising. I talked to another hunter that said the day prior Caribou were coming through the saddle he was hunting and hooking around to where I'd have a shot. I got in place around 645 and started grabbing a few ranges. I noticed the bushes in this saddle provided a lot of cover.
I'm not sure if they were bedded down there or if they just snuck in but around 730 I looked up and saw a caribou. I scanned with my binos and picked up a few more. There was a small bull, a good bull in velvet, and good hard horned bull. There was so much cover that as soon as I'd identify a bull I could shoot and got on them with my rifle they'd move. They started to move so I went to cut them off and hopefully get a shot. After a long game of cat and mouse I stopped with a clear shooting lane. The cow crossed and I waited for the first bull to step out and then saw the hard horned bull was third. He stopped no more than 30 yards away and looked at me over the brush. I settled my crosshairs on the lowest part of his neck I could see and squeezed the shot off. At the shot, I saw a puff of steam and hair and he went down. I had left everything at my sit location so I started to head up there.
I heard a machine right after and a side by side came into view. A hunter got out and took aim so I said "Don't shoot me, I'm not a Bou". He looked and said "Are you going to shoot?" thinking I had said "That's my caribou". I said "No, I've got one down." He shot the smaller bull (his first), and they offered to give me a ride to my camp. I met up with my folks and we finished quartering him out. The ELDX from my 270 did significant damage to the arteries in his neck and airway. His lungs were also torn up some.
At the trailhead, ADFG checked my tag and license and said I had the only caribou he'd seen all day. I finished processing the meat yesterday and gave some to friends and gave the scraps to a musher that lives nearby.
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I'm not sure if they were bedded down there or if they just snuck in but around 730 I looked up and saw a caribou. I scanned with my binos and picked up a few more. There was a small bull, a good bull in velvet, and good hard horned bull. There was so much cover that as soon as I'd identify a bull I could shoot and got on them with my rifle they'd move. They started to move so I went to cut them off and hopefully get a shot. After a long game of cat and mouse I stopped with a clear shooting lane. The cow crossed and I waited for the first bull to step out and then saw the hard horned bull was third. He stopped no more than 30 yards away and looked at me over the brush. I settled my crosshairs on the lowest part of his neck I could see and squeezed the shot off. At the shot, I saw a puff of steam and hair and he went down. I had left everything at my sit location so I started to head up there.
I heard a machine right after and a side by side came into view. A hunter got out and took aim so I said "Don't shoot me, I'm not a Bou". He looked and said "Are you going to shoot?" thinking I had said "That's my caribou". I said "No, I've got one down." He shot the smaller bull (his first), and they offered to give me a ride to my camp. I met up with my folks and we finished quartering him out. The ELDX from my 270 did significant damage to the arteries in his neck and airway. His lungs were also torn up some.
At the trailhead, ADFG checked my tag and license and said I had the only caribou he'd seen all day. I finished processing the meat yesterday and gave some to friends and gave the scraps to a musher that lives nearby.
Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk
