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Elk hunting adventures with my father......

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Elk hunting adventures with my father......

Postby WapitiTalk1 » 08 10, 2022 •  [Post 1]

Ahh, the times I've had hunting with my pop over the years. Had to take a break from shooting arrows to get this going after I read Vince/Saddlesore's post in John/Swedes "The Old Days" thread. I think for the most part, my dad was teaching me the ins and outs of elk hunting but sometimes, I think he had a bit of fun at this mission to ensure it "stuck" in my adolescent head. I'll get to the skunk story later :-). Please, share a story of how your pop mentored you in the delicate art of Wapiti hunting.
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Re: Elk hunting adventures with my father......

Postby Swede » 08 10, 2022 •  [Post 2]

I had a lot of great deer hunting experiences with my dad. I can't say the same about our elk hunts. I really don't think he wanted to mess with butchering and packing one out.
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Re: Elk hunting adventures with my father......

Postby Lefty » 08 11, 2022 •  [Post 3]

I was raised in Minnesota. And only the old timers will know this, but there was a very limited deer population and only a couple of Minnesota elk tags.
Whitetails and walleyes were our dad's big thing.

My father-in-law, an Idaho boy, While big into deer hunting, he put together an elk hunt for all the sons-in-law and grandsons. Elk camp was unlike anything I had ever done.

We shared the trailhead with some incredible hunters. A big family who had the most amazing camp you've ever seen. Huge tents, bunk beds, carpeting, bedroom, dining rooms, kitchen. When they moved in they came in with Semi-trucks and a forklift to make camp.
Then a couple of Minnesota gentlemen. They had hunted this part of Montana for over 30 years. Their wall tent looked like grandma's bedroom. Hardcore elk hunters. At that time the one fellow had been in Cabela's catalog for killing the world's largest elk( in Russia). I actually killed my bull at the tree they had told me to go sit and watch over the big meadow.
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Re: Elk hunting adventures with my father......

Postby 7mmfan » 08 11, 2022 •  [Post 4]

My Dad and I learned to elk hunt together. He had elk hunted a few times in his younger adult years but admitted it was mainly a drinking game with his brothers and no one ever killed anything or even saw any elk.

We started out elk hunting with archery, specifically late archery seasons here in WA that allowed us to target cows. I was 15 the first year we went and I vividly remember walking up an old spur road and looking across the canyon and seeing a lone cow standing on the edge of the timber feeding. It was the first elk I'd ever seen while out hunting.

We never killed any elk while archery hunting. I took a couple of shots but I was young and very inexperienced. Luckily everything I shot at pranced away unharmed. What all those years of archery hunting that area did for us though was create a very intimate knowledge of the landscape and how the elk used it. The year we decided to rifle hunt we killed elk, and killed elk pretty frequently after that.

A couple of my favorite stories from late elk camp with Dad.

- Deer was open during this late archery season as well. It was at the tail end of the rut, starting the Wedensday before Thanksgiving. We often encountered very rutted up bucks, just never killed any of them. One day I had left to go hunting and Dad decided to stay in camp and listen to the football game on the radio. He said he kept hearing branches breaking and general commotion behind the screen of reprod we were camped next too. He even hollered at me to stop messing with him a couple times. He finally walked around the end of the line of trees to let me know the gig was up only to find a beautiful 4 pt mule deer terrorizing a small tree. He was close, inside 20 yards. He told me the buck looked at him for a good 10 seconds before turning and sauntering off up the hill. He could have easily shot it many times over.

Dad also had a stand he liked to sit on this narrow finger ridge on the backside of the ridge we camped near. It really was a great spot, that we frequently saw elk. Dad's hearing even then wasn't that great. In his younger years he was a union carpenter and while he still won't admit that his hearing has decayed, years of saws and hammers as well as shooting without hearing protection had taken their toll on his hearing. I remember coming down the ridge above him where I could look down and see his stand from a couple hundred yards away. I immediately saw a line of elk passing within 30 yards uphill of his stand. There must have been a dozen of them walking single file. They were on a frozen hillside of grass and mixed timber. There were some small branches on the ground, so while I'm sure they weren't making a lot of noise, it should have been noticeable. I brought up my binos to watch the inevitable shot from Dad, and could see him in his blind of branches sitting on his cut round looking down the hill eating his candy bar. He never heard or saw those elk. He absolutely didn't believe me when I told him a while later until I was able to show him the tracks. Even then I think he was suspicious.

Dad also had (has) an affinity for the Cadbury chocolate bars, Fruit and Nut specifically. They are very aromatic. Multiple times while hunting I've been clued into his presence by passing downwind of him and smelling his chocolate bars while he sat and ate one.

Dad always made sure that we had the best camp possible. I don't ever remember being really uncomfortable. We hunted out of a 10x12 Rainier Tent that my grandpa had for several years. It had an old fold up wood stove with lots of rust holes. At night laying in my sleeping bag on a squeaky old Coleman cot I can remember looking at the stove and seeing lots of fire through all the holes. You could easily move around the tent with no flashlight because of all the exposed fire. When I was about 19 or 20, Dad passed his 30 year anniversary with the company he worked for and his boss called me to ask what they should do for him. They wanted to spend a couple of thousand dollars on something he would really like. After significant thought I recommended a wall tent setup for him. I did the research and settled on a Davis Tent 15x18 package with a big stove. Dad was absolutely thrilled. That was 18 or 19 years ago and that tent looks essentially brand new despite spending somewhere close to 3 or 4 weeks a year out in the woods for almost 2 decades.

Dad is now retired, 65 years old and still gets around in the mountains like a goat. Because of Idaho's new ridiculous tag system, I was the only one in our group to get an elk tag this year in our chosen area. He is going to go spend 10 days in the Idaho mountains with me just to be there and help out. I hope to work him like a rented mule hauling meat out of the deep hole we will be hunting. I doubt I'll hear a word of complaint from him. I never have.
I hunt therefore I am. I fish therefore I lie.
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Re: Elk hunting adventures with my father......

Postby Jhg » 08 11, 2022 •  [Post 5]

7mmfan wrote: I doubt I'll hear a word of complaint from him. I never have.



My dad was that way too.
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