I'll post up the hunt story in this thread when I get the chance, but here are some pics of my recent trip to Wyoming and Utah with my uncle and cousin. Hopefully they come through ok.
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Wyoming Mule Deer and Utah Elk
- Thread starter Wyoming Hart
- Start date
dirtclod Az.
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LCH
Very Active Member
Well, here it goes. I got back to PA on the 20th of October after spending 2 and a half weeks with my uncle and cousin in Wyoming and Utah. We flew out on the 3rd to Salt Lake City and went to the place we were staying in Utah. My cousin and their friend had Wyoming Region K deer tags and my uncle and cousin had Utah general elk tags. We left on the 4th from Utah, drove over the mountain to Wyoming with a camper and set it up in a public campground just inside of Utah. This gave us a half-hour drive roughly to the deer hunting grounds in Wyoming. We spent the rest of the 4th doing some road scouting in the unit and we turned up a couple of deer. The next morning we headed out and spent most of the day on a hillside trying to find a legal buck. After spooking a shooter, Chris went one way and we 3 went the other. Shortly after getting to a spot we spotted some deer in earlier, we get a call on the radio that Chris got a buck down. A little while later while watching a group of quakies, some shots ring out on the other side of the hill and it sends some deer running by us, but no bucks. Shortly after, we get up to head to help Chris with his pack out, a truck drives right past us after they had already drove by us earlier, they shoot a deer where we had walked past multiple times just earlier. Such is public ground hunting. On the way in the next morning, karma comes into our favor as I catch a glimpse of a deer crossing the road in front of us. As we get to where I saw it enter the sage brush, we frantically search the flat and hill that is right in front of us. Finally we see a shooter. After getting out of the suburban and getting off the road enough, my cousin gets setup and hits him good at around 150 yards. Another one in him after he runs a little and he is down for good. He is a 3x4. And just like that we are done in Wyoming for deer. I was surprised at the amount of deer that we saw in the area, being it was a well-traveled public area and the openness of the area. Just another example of getting away from the roads and putting the miles on, except for my cousin's buck! The rest of that day we pack up camp and head back to Utah and start butchering my cousin's buck. The next day, Sunday, is a down day to prepare for the big hike into elk camp on Monday. We get dropped off at the trailhead at around 9 AM on Monday and after a grueling 3 hour 36 minute, 7 mile hike in we are at camp. I did the hike in with just a t-shirt and shorts on even though it was only about 35 degrees, with snow flurries and a stiff breeze, so I hardly sweated any! We spent the rest of that day setting up the tent, getting firewood and water, and glassing in the evening. The next day, we glassed in the morning and evening. In the morning session, a cow and large Bull Moose came strolling past us at around 150 yards. Not only was he huge for a Shiras, but he also had a large strand of velvet hanging off of his right paddle. We also glassed up a moose on the one mountainside as well as some elk. It was getting colder and some snow was in the forecast for the next day or two. We woke up early, but later than planned time, on Wednesday morning to about 5 inches of snow. The plan was my uncle and cousin would head over to the top of the mountain where we saw the elk on Tuesday morning and I would go to the boulder field to glass. The boulder field was only about a third of a mile behind camp, so I didn’t need to leave until almost daylight. It was still snowing then and I couldn’t see any mountains to glass for the first few hours after daylight. With the added 15 mph wind blowing, the boulder field was very cold. A local gentlemen joined me and we started a fire and glassed and chatted for a couple of hours till he glassed up a nice bull that we had spotted the evening before, but he was just over the private boundary line. Around 3 PM I look over to the peak where the guys headed to in the morning and saw 2 moose on the top sky lined and 2 elk just down over the side with the one being a bull. I’m not sure on how far away it was, but I’m guessing around a mile away. They fed into the trees, but the group of trees are small, so they should come out at some point. About a half hour later an elk comes into a small park just below the top of the peak and fed. About another half hour later while tending the fire, I look up and the bull is out in the park. I get the binos up and shortly later BOOM and the bull just stands there but hunched up a little. A couple seconds later another shot and he tumbles to the ground. He tries to get up with his front end but another shot finishes him off. It is too late in the day for me to go up and help skin, so I go to the water spring and stock up on water and stoke the camp fire stove. My uncle used my 7MM to take the 360 yard shots. It is a small on length but decent width 6 X 6. They pack the loins out that night and get in around 8 p.m. We sleep in a little the next morning and head out to pack him back to camp. On the way, a neighboring hunter is coming from the direction of the elk on the horseback and says he saw the carcass. Apparently he spotted a mountain lion on the carcass with a coyote watching from a distance. We confirmed his sighting with tracks around the carcass and it was cleaned off pretty good. Luckily none of the hinds or other edible meat was touched as they had hung them in nearby trees away from the carcass. Even though it was mostly downhill, the haul out was a grind. The next day we went to glass again and spotted some elk on another mountain. After some chores mid-day, my cousin and I head on out the mountain we are on and run into a moose hunter. After some discussion with him we tell him about the moose we have been seeing and he tells us that he knew of 3 bulls coming into “the ponds” and that a camp of elk hunters were heavily using the area and he didn’t want to get into any confrontations. Can you believe they wouldn’t let him try to harvest a moose? After we came out, we found out through Chris that he, assuming it was the same guy, had harvested a moose a day or 2 after we met him. Great to hear! So after we talked to him, we kept moving out and got at a good lookout point as far as we could go and be on public ground. We glassed the mountain across the canyon from us. We didn’t see much till late in the day and what we did see were all on private ground. As we were getting ready to leave, my cousin takes a pee and I look around at the ridge behind us and I see antlers running from right to left at around 300 yards. It is a mad scramble to get his gun and get in position to see. There are 3 small bulls going across the ridge and Zach doesn’t like them enough to shoot. So we start back the trail to camp and not far where we last saw them, they are on the trail about 100 yards in front of us and take off again. As we get to that spot, they are on top of the ridge at about 75 yards looking at us. Zach looks at them again through the scope and still passes. I’m hoping he don’t regret it. The next morning we glass from the boulder field, then head out the same way we did the night before to check out some bear proof boxes they might purchase to keep some things from camp in. During that time we run into a few other hunters from the one camp and they tell us they are headed out that day. From the Intel we get from them and from others earlier in the week, approximately 8 bull elk were harvested in the ponds area. It isn’t how we want to hunt, but we think it is worth a shot. We try to get there early in the afternoon, but we run onto 2 guys already in the spot. So we head to spot we were at the night before. The wind is howling and the temps are dropping as the afternoon goes on and we watch about 10 bulls on a ridge on the mountain we watched the night before and they are well onto public. It is too late in the day to head that way, so we continue glassing until about 2 hours before dark, when we radio my uncle and he says he is seeing about 30 bulls and some are very low on the mountain. As we are getting ready to head his direction, we spot 10 bulls straight across from us, about 1,000 yards away. There is only 1 that is a shooter, so we move up and down off the ridge as much as we can to close the distance. If they keep moving our way, about 550 yards is as close as they can come, but that would be very close to the private/public border. They don’t make it closer than 700 and they are still on private as it is getting dark and we head back to camp. Along the way we stop to see a few of the bulls that my uncle had seen earlier and they are low on the mountain. I am getting excited for the morning to come! After getting back to camp, they call the packer and set him up to come in to pack out my uncle’s elk the next day, Sunday. We are scheduled to fly home the next Saturday, but my uncle was ready to head out, so Sunday was spent closing up camp and hiking out. That was disappointing, but I was just along for the ride. I’m almost certain my cousin could have gotten a bull that day. Monday was spent butchering up the elk, Tuesday we did some yard work at our host’s house, Wednesday was the same and taking the elk and deer to the butcher shop for making burger, Thursday we went to the Uinta’s in the National Forests in Wyoming to get a load of firewood for out hosts and Friday we fished for a little and packed our stuff for the flight home on Saturday. This trip was a great time spent with family, meeting new people, and enjoying the public lands of Wyoming and Utah. That is a long, short story of it and I just hit on the major points. The amount of game that we saw was just awesome and seeing some new sites like Antelope Island and the Salt Lake City area made it a well-rounded and relaxing trip.
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