Over the years I have learned that elk hunting is one of those things that will provide a man, or woman, with some of their highest highs and lowest lows. Let me be the first to say that by no means do I have everything figured out when it comes to hunting elk, as at the young age of 32 and only 10 years of bow hunting experience, every single year seems to throw me a curve ball that I didn’t see coming. 2014 was no exception, and I learned some of the most valuable lessons during this season.
Every year it seems like I start to get the itch earlier and earlier when it comes to beginning the preparations for the next season. Inevitably it always starts in the winter with getting my bow dialed back in and shooting in the garage at 15 yards, waiting for the warmth of spring to motivate me to get back into the hills. As soon as April and May roll around I find myself in my honey hole, along with my 9 year old boy many times and my best friend that I hunt with, looking for those dropped bones. Spring of 2014 was a great year for shed hunting as we found around 30 elk sheds and 20 deer sheds in just a few days of hiking. The anticipation that builds every spring after finding those big matching sets of bone is almost too much to bare, and it makes the preparation that much more enjoyable, knowing what caliber of bulls made it through another year.
As the summer rolls along I start getting excited for antelope archery, as in MT it opens on August 15th, and this turns out to be some of the best scouting for elk that I do every year. I know, now you are asking yourself how can a guy hunt antelope, and scout elk at the same time. Let me explain how this came to fruition. Every year I find myself scouring Google Earth during the winter, always looking for that backup spot just in case other savvy hunters find the areas that I am hunting in. Three years ago this was the case, as I had drawn a rifle tag for a bull in the area that I live, and with the passing of my father I was unable to hunt very much that year. It was the last day of the rifle season, and I decided to try out an area that I had looked at on the map for a couple of years, and I was successful in shooting a rag horn bull right before dark. I still didn’t know anything about the area, but when I went in to retrieve my bull the next day I came across 7 bulls, with two being the type that a guy just doesn’t see every year. I knew right then that I had to spend the time to learn this area like the back of my hand. This area is one that when you drive by it, all you see is pretty much sage brush flat country and you would think that it could be good antelope hunting, which it is. But once you get in about 2 miles the sage brush gives way to breaking hills with large timber patches, AKA “elk heaven.” Trust me if I showed you the area in person you would probably call me crazy for claiming that there were large herds of elk out there. The wealth of elk has been apparent, as my hunting partner and I have pulled 5 bulls in three years out of this small area.
The 2014 archery season kicked off while I was able to be standing next to my hunting partner as he arrowed a great bull after I called out the yardage for him. The pack out was heavy, but it is always one of the labors of love, knowing that his family was going to eat well this winter. The area we hunt seemed to not have as many elk as it had in the past years, but we were still seeing elk every single day that we hunted, so I kept hunting hard. I took some vacation from work during the third week of September, as that seems to be a magic time of year, and this year there was no moon during this week which I thought would kick the rut off well. Little did I know that the third week of September was going to have record high temperatures all the way into the mid 90’s.
All of the preparation, scouting, practicing shooting had come down to the third week of September, and I now found myself sick to my stomach that the weather was not what I had expected. I have learned that the weather is one of those things that provide hunters with both elation, and disheartenment. I still tried to make the most of my time by hunting hard in the mornings, as the elk were rutting good early in the day, and then as soon as the sun was up and the heat started to ramp up the elk would find the deep timber and stay there until well after dark. September 24th was no exception and the mercury was predicted to hit around 95 degrees. The morning hunt was great, and we were able to call in a gorgeous bull to around 100 yards, but just couldn’t get him to commit to leaving his cows. We watched this bull take eight cows up the sage flats, into the timber around 8:00am, with three or four smaller bulls harassing him the whole way. Once he was onto a ridge that has thick timber, and that the elk often like to bed down on we worked our way to the base of the coulee and began to cow call, hoping one of the smaller bulls would come down to investigate. This never happened, and we decided to just sit and wait since the wind was good, hoping that the elk would move down to water.
We had been hunting hard for several days at this point, and those early mornings caught up with me, and the next thing you know I woke up and it was 1:00pm in the afternoon. It always amazes me how hard I can sleep, on the ground, in the woods but yet some nights in my own bed are miserable. Once we were up and awake we ate a quick lunch that we had with us, and decided to hike out of the area because the heat was brutal. We decided to hike about 1 mile around the area that we had last seen the elk so not to bump them, and then we could attempt to find them on the next morning. As we were walking up another ridge that elk often like to bed down on, I looked to my right and spotted a bull at about 50 yards feeding in the timber. It was 2:30pm. The wind was perfect and I thought that I could position myself to get a good shot at this bull.
