Some photos from this past weekend.
Right out of the shoot on Saturday morning, three of us walked up on a nice 5x5 and 6x6 mule deer. Sadly, none of us had deer tags. Then this little fella graced us for several minutes. We were hunting above treeline (about 12,700 feet in elevation). Up there, you feel like you are on top of the world, at least I do.
Ten minutes later, young Tom Hill dropped his first elk. It's a bull calve but counts as an anterless elk. Tom picked this one out of a herd of 20 (three bulls and 17 cows). It was so cool. I stopped the herd with a sharp loud whistle. The three bulls were buried among cows (no shots whatsoever). The herd bull spent three minutes bulging back to me. When Tom had a solo animal without others behind it, he dropped the hammer. Check out the world below in the background. We spent most of the day packing meat back to the truck...
We saw a lot of ptarmigan while walking about, what a cool bird.
On Sunday, our first sit was a bust. I took Steel Sullivan and Michele Marks to a spot that either holds elk or not. When they are there, the hunting is good...you usually get a 500 yard or closer shot from a mere 13,500 feet above sea level. We moved back down below treeline for the afternoon hunt. Kudos go out to Michele. As a cancer survivor, she passed her hunter education exam with a perfect 100%. She wants to learn the art of hunting, I'm obliged to teach her. She hung with Steel and I for the entire weekend as an observer. Next year, She'll have her own elk tag! I look forward to the day I can help her call the shot.
Michele, Steel, and I cut a fresh set of tracks around 2:00pm (there was about an inch of old snow on the north side of the mountain). We followed the five elk back up the mountain towards timberline-about a half mile. It was obivious a bull was among the mix. At 4:00pm, the three of us landed this young bull, we caught out feeding above the trees.
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With additional help, we had the meat stored back at camp by 8:00pm.