This Weekend's Scouting Trip

[POk3s]

Decided I'd take off Saturday and head up to my elk hunting spot just to see how everything looked and hopefully find some elk. Got up there about 2 PM but drove some roads I rarely get to take because of them being closed most of the year (found a good backup spot ). Decided I wanted to be up at one of my glassing spots by 7....well I was all set up and glassing by 6:30. Right off the bat I see an elks head, neck and shoulders quartering away at about 600 yards. I see it's a bull as it turns and then turns into the trees and gone. I continue glassing and see a few cows and calves are already out feeding. I check them out through the spotting scope for a few minutes then glass farther up the mountain. Skylined are four more elk. A couple cows and a couple spikes. Throughout the next half hour I checked out cows and calves through the spotting scope as I then saw 2 cows and 4 calves cut across a clearing. I was in heaven . All of the sudden in another little meadow there's another elk. I saw it was bigger bodied so I immediately forgot about all the cows I was watching. After a little bit of studying I noticed it was a little raghorn 4 point. A short time later another bull appeared and I saw it was another rag bull. Needless to say, between watching them and still checking up on where the cows were headed for the evening I had my hands full. Closer to dark the first bull I saw disappeared only to reappear in the same meadow....or so I thought. I put the glasses up and noticed this bull didn't have any velvet and was much bigger. I inspected him further and noticed he was a 5x6. HIs fifth and 6th points were only a couple inches long. Then another bull feeds out beside him and it's another 5x6. They almost looked like twins only this one was still in full velvet. A couple minutes later 2 more bulls feed out and they're both raghorn 3 or 4 points. One of which was also velvet free. Was a great evening to be in the elk woods. Seemed like it got dark really fast as I was having so much fun! It was hard to keep track of what elk I had already seen and which ones were "new" elk but I figure I saw about 20 elk last night as I spotted some more cows and other elk too far off for me to see what they were. I was even lucky enough to see the hard horned 5x6 and a hard horned raghorn spar around a little bit. The little dude would put his head down and act tough until the big boy would put his head down and take a step towards him. Wish I could've watched that a little longer!

I snapped a few pics of the two "twins" through the spotting scope. It looks like the hard horned bull is smaller just because of how the pic was taken, but I'm sure when the velvet bull strips his velvet they'll be real tough to tell apart.

The "twins" together


Hard Horned bull by himself.


This morning I went a little farther down the ridge to where I shot my bull last year. I immediately saw 3 elk but by the time I got the spotting scope out they were gone. They looked like bulls but I'll never know I guess. I then spotted one hard horned 5x5 down in the creek bottom and he was soon joined by 2 other raghorn bulls. I watched them for a while and then also spotted a spike farther up the canyon. I had searched every clearing and little opening about 10 times and got up and moved around a little bit trying to uncover a few pieces of ground I couldn't previously see. With nothing seen in these "new spots" I started heading back to where I left my truck and spotting scope when I looked straight across from me and immediately knew, "there he is!" The meadow I'd seen the majority of the elk in during previous hunting trips had been vacant all morning and I couldn't believe it......until now that is. I got the binoculars up and he was already locked onto me. He was 500+ yards away and down in the creek bottom where seemingly all of the bulls had been. As soon as I got the binoculars on him he turned his head and I saw 6 solid points. He could be 280 or he could be 330....he just didn't give me enough time to look. He started running straight away and I noticed something off his right ear. It didn't take me long to notice it was a giant drop tine club! Never seen a bull with a big club like that coming off his antler. I didn't even get to see him through the spotting scope so I never got a picture....but regardless I'd love to see him again in a month!!!! It was 37 degrees when I left the truck this morning to scout . Got me extremely pumped up....and seeing all the elk didn't help either!

[dotman]

Awesome and your killin me the next 2 weeks are going to drag!

[slim9300]

Nice work. Sounds like a great time.

[Spike elk]

That is cool that you are already seeing hard antler!

[easeup]

you are killing me.

[POk3s]

hahahaha! Sorry guys. I figured everyone should know they're stripping velvet as we speak. The big 6x6 CLUB looked to be hard horned and already browned up....but it could've been his velvet. Like I said I didn't get to see him long! I had the itch so bad I had to get into my elk spot! 25 elk in about 12 hours can't be a bad thing!

[JohnFitzgerald]

Trent, you have just become my dealer. Just as I was learning to cope with my elk hunting addiction you go and give me another fix! Damn you Trent, damn youuuuuuuuu!

Serious: Nice job scouting! Thanks for sharing.

[elkaholic]

Awesome! Sounds like you are going to have a great fall! Cant wait till this weekend when I get to hit the hills.

[elkoholic]

That's awesome man!! Sounds like there are more addicts out there, I love it!! good luck this season!!