Ellen's Elk Hunt 2000

I have always loved going through Rabbit Ears pass in the very early moonless,  morning!  We, my hunting party and I, always stop at the top, get out in the crisp mountain air to stretch our legs and try to wake up, and look at the blanket of stars engulfing the sky.  My elk hunts have always started this way.  We leave on Friday, as soon as we can get off from work and load the truck.  That puts us at Rabbit Ears pass in the middle of the night.  Our hunting camp is a 14 hour drive from our home in the Midwest.  A long drive, but worth every minute!

After our truck climbs the steep and rutted mountain road to our hunting cabin our headlights sweep the meadow in front of the cabin.  To my surprise tan bodies fill the meadow!  About thirty elk are jostling to get out of our headlights!  We all gasp in surprise and instantly try to see if a bull is present in this heard.  Of course he is!  As they jump the fence and head off into the aspen and scrub oak, we are all excited about the possibilities of the coming week.  This has got to be a good sign!  As sleepy as I was 2 minutes ago, now my blood is pumping through my veins like a locomotive!  But my eyes are grainy from no sleep for 24 hours and I don’t have my archery tag yet.  My hunting buddies, my husband, son and a friend of my husbands, all put in for their muzzleloader tags way last March.  I never know if I can get off work that early so I have to use my bow (my preferred method anyway) and we have to go into town to purchase my tag before I can start my hunt.  Bummer.  The men, all dig out their camo and muzzleloaders and get ready to head out for their first morning of hunting.

They promise not to be gone too long, as I am whining about not getting to go.  Besides, I remind them, we have to get our equipment unloaded and the cabin opened up.
So like it or not, I am stuck in the truck. I grab a blanket and settle down.  I start to imagine what this week could be like as I listen to the early morning bugle of bull elk, my lullaby for the rest of the week.

I don’t even know the name of the mountain we are hunting on, I do know we are the only ones here this time.  The cabin is not ours, but a generous friends.  As soon as we unload, it’s off to town for my tag, and a few things we have decided we forgot to pack.

It is extremely dry here.  Dust is a fine powder two inches thick on the road and all the trails.  It just aggravates our already extremely dry noses.  We each have bloody noses at least once a day.  I am concerned for the whole state of Colorado.  It’s just a tinder box waiting.  I am glad we are not camping this time, I would be too afraid to use a fire to cook.

The whole cabin settles into the rhythm of hunting.  Up before light, quick breakfast of granola bars and hot coffee, arranging our equipment for the hunt.  Long quiet treks in the dark, into the bush, down the mountain into the valley.  Bugling to locate the bulls, more hiking, cow calling, waiting, waiting, waiting.  So many close opportunities, but not close enough.  Stubborn bulls not wanting to come to our cow calls.  Although we have hunted this same area for several years, each year the elk move to different spots that have become that years favorites.  But of course the weather warms up and we decide to try a couple of the wallows we know about.

The first wallow I try is where my son harvested his first bull elk the previous year with a muzzloader.  I find the perfect set up.  Down wind from the wallow but only 10 yards from a well used trail and only 15 yards from the first wallow and 20 from the second.  But no bulls need cooled this evening, I decide to try again in the morning. As I am about to finish the last leg of my hike to the wallow in the early morning star light I hear the deep grunt-then-bugle of a bull elk.  He is already at the wallow! I try to set up as close as I dare.  I cow call, and he answers but he skirts around me and heads to the valley, he might have already had cows with him.  I hear them pop the brush as they pass beneath me.

When I return to my pick up point the guys are already waiting.  I can tell they are excited about something.  When I reach the truck I find out.  Roger, my husband, called in a nice 5X6 for his friend, and we have our first bull to haul out! We are all excited and eager to get the work done.  They have already been to the cabin and have the pack boards and our cart and all the other equipment we will need to haul out the six to eight hundred pounds of meat.  It takes the four of us only 5 hours to quarter and haul the meat out.  Luckily the elk dropped in an area we could get the cart relatively close and only have to pack the meat on the pack boards a couple hundred yards.  The cart is much easier to use and holds all the meat and horns.  We push it through the sage brush on trails left by other elk and deer.  Then it’s off to town to have the meat quick froze.

It will be two more days before I finally get my chance.  Roger decides to come with me and call for me.  We choose an area not too far from where our friend got his 5X6.  It’s not long before we hear bugling.  The bull that sounds the closest is down in the valley, so we set up where we can get a good view and wait for the light of day to catch up with us.  As soon as it’s light we start glassing the valley and facing ridge.  Roger starts in on his cow calls.  It still amazes me that those huge cows make such a squeeky high pitched sound.  It does not take long before I see movement!  Yes!  It’s a bull grazing alone on the facing ridge.  He is not as big as the one our friend got the other day.  He must be a 4X4 or have 5 inch brow tines to be legal.  I let my husband take a look at him.  After a short look, my husband gives me the thumbs up!  He says he appears to have legal brow tines.  My husband has harvested enough elk that I trust his judgement.

Roger starts aggressively calling, every time he cow calls the bull raises his head, pauses, listening.  This goes on for about 30 minutes.  By now my heart is pounding in my chest.  Finally as the sun crest the brow of the ridge and fills the valley with shadows and light, Roger gives a call that sounds particularly alluring and the bull reaches a decision.  He turns and starts to trot down towards the valley.  My husband slaps my back and tells me to get set up, that the bull will be here looking for that cow in about 10 minutes.   I move down towards a well worn trail and set up about 20 yards from the trail on the edge of a scrub oak thicket.  Roger moves up the slope behind me about 40 yards.  He continues to call intermittently.  It is only a few minutes before we hear popping brush.  By now I am sure I am going to have a heart attack before he comes into view!  Although my heart is beating wildly, I become the hunter, a calm comes over me and I have a heightened awareness.  Suddenly I see movement coming up the trail to my right, antlers, dust, and a large tan animal appears.  He slows to a cautioned walk, pausing to smell.  I can see his nostrils expanding and his eyes scanning the slope above me.  He needs to continue up the trail a few more yards, pass behind a large aspen, before I can draw.  Time and the elk seem to move in super slow motion.  My muscles are tense, waiting. I repeat in my mind something I learned long ago on a deer hunt. “Patience is the hunter”, I say over and over to myself, almost as a chant.  The moment has come, he passes behind the aspen, I draw, quickly and silently.  I am ready when the elk walks past the aspen. But he is still walking and my husband gives a short call.  The bull pauses, scanning the slope and I release.  I don’t know if the elk saw my release or decided that something was fishy, but he whirled and my arrow took him in front of the shoulder.  My heart did triple time and a big rock settled in my stomach.  I was sure my shot was not a killing shot.  The elk thundered down the slope towards the valley snapping brush and sending up clouds of dust.  Then a CRASH and no more sound.  My husband moved down the slope and gave me a big bear hug.  I was confused!  That shot couldn’t have killed him.  My husband said that from where he was sitting and watching the arrow looked as if it got good penetration  because of the angle.

I am still not convinced.  But my husband assures me that we have another elk to haul out.  We go back to our meeting spot marking our passage with bits of toilet paper.  Great trail marker, that toilet paper!  That is one thing we have learned over the years.  No matter how much you are sure you will remember your hunting spot or trail, things often look much different from different angles.  It is much better to be safe and mark the trail!
We meet up with the rest of our hunting party and send them back for the cart and pack boards.  Then it’s back down the toilet paper trail to try and track my elk.

It’s not as hard to find the elk as I would have thought.  And I was sure we wouldn’t find anything!  But after only about 100 yards, straight down the slope of course, we found the bull piled up against two large aspens!  A nice 3x3, but with the legal brow tines of 7 ½”. He had apparently dropped and then rolled another 40 yards to this point!  Thank goodness the aspen stopped him from rolling any further.  Of course my husband has to give me another congratulatory bear hug, and I start to cry.  It is such a relief!  I am often this way after a successful hunt.  It’s an emotional mixture for sure!  I’m happy to have successful taken my first elk, but also saddened by the death of such a beautiful animal.  But then I try to picture the back straps, wrapped in bacon and sizzling on the grill, and I wipe my tears away!

Field dressing the animal is always one of my favorite parts.  It is very interesting and you can learn a lot about your shot placement and by looking at the contents of his stomach, where he had been feeding.  We find that my arrow cut through his jugular, wind pipe and one lung.  It found the small gap in front of his shoulder.  When he whirled, the way my arrow entered was almost like a frontal shot.  But because of the angle of the slope, (I compare it to the angle from a tree stand it was that steep!)  The arrow entered and traveled down but yet at an angle too.  Isn’t it amazing what can happen in only a few short seconds?  My husband seem to think that it was even a better and quicker kill than hitting both lungs because of cutting his wind pipe, he couldn’t even get air to his lungs.

It was difficult at best to dress out and quarter this large animal on this extremely steep slope.  Every time we shifted his weight he would start to roll.  But we managed and hauled 5 pack boards of meat out.  We got 7 from the first bull. It took us 6 hours to finish the job.  And my husband and son still had cow tags to fill! 

After taking the meat to town to be quick froze we all took a much needed nap!  Then it was up and back out to help my husband and son to get their cows.  Only my husband was successful, on the same day that I harvested my bull!  With 3 elk in the locker we decided to take the next day off.  We rested up, packed up and bid the golden aspen covered mountains and star filled nights good-bye.   I still miss the early morning treks, and the lullaby of the elk at night.  There is nothing that gets my blood boiling more than the bugling of a bull elk, but a close second is the mad gobbling of a tom turkey!  Well, that is another story for another day.