Dipsnort

Thoughts of impending elk hunting season makes me lose sleep for weeks each fall. I can’t seem to dismiss the strategic thought processes that play over and over in my head. Am I remembering to bring all the right gear? Will everything be organized enough to be able to find the right item when I need it? At what range am I proficient enough with my weapon for a clean kill? Where will I be as light gathers in the early morning of opening day? What is my step by step hunting strategy? What specific areas will I hunt to find animals?

I am not a casual hunter. I don’t cook a hearty breakfast or come in for lunch and I don’t while the afternoon away “shooting the bull” at the truck; and I stay out until dark. I hike into places my body doesn’t want to go, and when my legs are sore I keep going because I know I might see a “shooter” just around the corner or over the next hill. My eyes, ears, and nose are on high alert every second of the day. For me, hunting is serious business and my goal is nothing short of filling the freezer with meat.

Rifle hunting for elk in Wyoming has been good to me the one time I held that tag, taking my animal within 3 hours on opening morning. I knew exactly where I was going based on watching a small herd exactly one year beforehand from the next mountainside while deer hunting.

Rifle hunting for elk in Washington, on the other hand, has not been good to me. Oh sure, I’ve had my chances, but have only filled a single tag in 16 years. My frustration has mounted over the years as I’ve watched an incredible, relatively overlooked elk area that I discovered many years ago become so overrun with hunter orange that it is impossible to get away from the crowd. And yet one can always rely on the herd to be in the area when opening day arrives. For me, the worst part about the number of hunters is the inability to shake the feeling that the quick shot I may take could very well be in line with another human I can’t see through the forest beyond my target. This, more than anything, has made so many years of elk tags go unfilled. You see, hunting is hours and hours of relentless boredom within unpredictable, preciously short moments of opportunity. If you’re not fully alert and ready to shoulder the rifle at a moments notice with full confidence in a quick, clean kill, without putting other hunters in jeopardy, opportunity quickly disappears.

And then there was the year when the inevitable occurred. Standing in a spot on opening morning waiting in the dark as other hunters walked past my position one had apparently stopped and waited just over the hill less than 100 yards away and claimed “my” elk as his because he put the second shot into the breadbasket next to my first and quickly got to the dead animal and notched his tag before I. The entire event from my shot to the both of us standing over the dead animal lasted perhaps one minute, and yet I came up on the short end of the stick.

And so I have decided to take another direction for hunting elk by laying down the rifle and picking up the bow. After a lot of serious research, I found the right bow package, dusted off the credit card, and made my purchase. Although I was somewhat familiar with archery, having spent my first big game hunting year as the greenest archer on the face of the earth several years ago, I noted that technology in archery equipment has grown leaps and bounds in recent years and this time I bought real quality equipment. I can’t tell you how excited I was to get started, setting up a range in the back yard and packing countless hours adjusting and tuning the bow in a short amount of time late this Summer, as well as visiting the local archery range several times to make sure I was dead on. Eventually I found myself shooting tight groups up to 30 yards and consistently hitting the veritable “paper plate” at a full 70 yards! Surely I am confident enough to hit the sweet spot on an elk up to 50 yards.

But where to hunt? In my dreams I bow hunt my “rifle area” during the rut, when hunters number far fewer, animals are active and the bulls can be found much more readily than at other times of the year. But that area doesn’t even have an archery season. It dawns on me that I hunted an area in Southwest Washington perhaps 12 years ago for a weekend that not only held a good population of elk, but also had woods thick enough to remove most of the advantages of using a rifle and maybe, just maybe will be perfect for archery. To top it off, I recalled one particular spot that had a whole bunch of tree rubs that bulls had used to polish their antlers in preparation for the rut. With the new possibilities, this year would be worse than normal for not being able to sleep at night.

Fortunately my usual hunting partner, my older brother Brian was in for archery and he dragged out his seemingly ancient bow and knocked off the dust. Anticipation grew as we neared the area and I pointed out several other areas along the way that I had hunted over the years and described my success, or lack thereof. It’s a funny thing about memories of things you really enjoy doing, isn’t it? They are always neatly tucked away for future recall in the files of the brain and they always bring a smile.

The temperature was unseasonably warm as we arrived and set up camp. Jackets and thermal undies would not be required on this trip at any time. Mornings and evenings would be on the cool side of the thermometer, but overdressing would just mean having to haul around extra clothing all day, always an unwelcome burden.

After setting up camp, I lead the expedition up the hill toward the “special” spot I had remembered and found it without much problem, but there was a problem indeed. The woods were thicker than I had remembered and threading the needle with an arrow without hitting an errant branch would be a very tall order. Not only that but the persistent dry weather this year made the forest floor unbearably crunchy at each step, a most unwelcome proposition while attempting to stalk quarry that have hearing far and away superior to ours! All of the confidence, all of the hope of success on the hunt began to fade away—particularly in light of the fact that we would need to be within about 40 yards of a legal animal, downwind, unaware of our presence, standing broadside, and hopefully looking the other way to give us the opportunity to make the necessary moves to take an arrow from the quiver, nock it to the string, pull back, aim true, and let it fly. No doubt about it, our plans and tactics would have to change.

‘0 dark thirty is always an unwelcome hour, but one has to do what one has to do to take advantage of first light in the hunting woods. We had decided to watch over two small adjacent clearings that surely served as local water holes, as evidenced by hoof prints in the mud. Nothing within 3 or 4 days, but in light of the alternatives, this seemed the most attractive option of catching an elk unaware of impending doom.

Having seen precious few elk prints that were fresh within a day anywhere, hope was further eroded as the hours passed. Finally, we hiked along a pack trail that we could navigate quietly up into the wilderness. Near the three mile mark I heard the familiar sound of elk crashing through the trees. Looking up the hill 50 yards away we could only make one out distinctly as a cow and thought there were probably 3 others with her. But they were spooked and on the move through the thick forest, giving no hope for a shot. The only way I know to stop a herd of elk and make them rethink the fact that they had detected the presence of humans is to give a sharp blow on the cow call, so fumbling the one I had hanging from my neck I did so and briefly stopped them somewhere in the thick forest canopy. Unfortunately, the wind was all wrong, blowing from us to them and their incredible sense of smell soon confirmed danger and they were on the move again. Unbelievably, it was late afternoon on opening day and we hadn’t yet seen a single hunter in the woods! What we did see in our vicinity on the trail were two sets of fresh boot prints, which probably explained the spookiness of those elk.

Day one and two passed without further incident. Although we begun to see fresher sign and numerous fresh deer prints, we didn’t see a single deer—even while sitting just inside the woods overlooking clear cuts for hours at a time. What we did see was a single, very small black bear—a very exciting viewing opportunity for both of us who had never seen a bear in Washington during our many years of hunting. And what a place to find one, huckleberries by the trillions among the mountains would serve as an obvious bear buffet. No wonder we had seen so many piles of bear scat and paw prints in various places.

Day 3 called for a different tactic. I spotted a north-facing bowl on the map that would require a short but vigorous 1 mile hike down the mountain. On paper it looked to be thick with trees and have a small creek running down its center, and it looked like a good place to find an elk or two. Having planned on hiking to the bottom and up a small hill on the other side, we eventually found ourselves at the end of our hike and ready to turn back to head home. While looking at the map and quietly discussing our plan for exiting the area, I hear a single crackle over the hill and put all my energy into my eyes and ears. A herd of elk walking along makes a lot of noise, but a single elk walking along a game trail is likely to be much quieter. This one, another cow appeared “out of nowhere” right in front of us, broadside at 30 yards and stared at us intently. A deer will sometimes stand perfectly still and hope you don’t see them, but a wild elk won’t stand for human presence under any conditions. When one of their senses detects human they are on full alert for confirmation from another sense. So here we stand, I in a staring contest with her, holding a map in my hand, and my brother turned to the side wondering why my senses are at full alert. I whisper “cow…take my map”. And as soon as he carefully began to reach to the map in my hand the cow bolted and crashed into the forest, not to be seen again. And just like that our trip was all but over.

Oh sure, we didn’t get one this year, but there is renewed hope in finding better areas to hunt with a bow, to go a little later in the season when the weather is more conducive for hunting and the elk are more active into the rut, and when rifle hunters don’t dot the landscape in every direction like a sea of hunter orange.

War Eagle

Enjoyable story. My crew and I go through the same thing every year. We are all avid waterfowl and deer hunters but we never loose sleep a week before the opener like we do for elk hunting.

Thanks for posting