Remote Area Map Scouting #1

[WapitiTalk1]

So, you wanna get away from it all; the heck with sharing your hunting area with pesky humans . The only access into this particular area for many miles in any direction is the small trail I've marked on the right hand side of both the aerial photo and the 7.5 MIN topo (I know, the trails don't match up perfectly between the two maps but you get the gist). The old trail dead ends where you see it stop, and, from your research in talking with BIOs and FS personnel, there "are" elk in this area. To get to this point, it's a 2 1/2 mile hike which starts on a mile long gated road (no motorized vehicles allowed).

During the "map scouting" phase of your process to hunt this area, what do you see of interest (potential elk holding areas) in this region and how do you feel you may hunt it come September when you finally arrive? Where do you think you may set up your back country camp?

Reminder that if you save the picture to your desktop and open in MS Paint, you'll be able to mark up the picture and save it back to a png, jpg, whatever, and add the marked up pic with your post.

Spot1 Topo.png (1.05 MiB) Viewed 2373 times

Spot1 Aerial.png (988.68 KiB) Viewed 2373 times

[under H2O hunter]

I would look at these two spots.

[WapitiTalk1]

Anybody else? Bueller? Bueller? I thought you cats liked these

[Fridaythe13th]

I like across the valley from H20 a little south of the number 4 as well as the 2 ridges that H20 pointed out, north side the hill. Has far as spike camp maybe by the letter "L" in national those 2 creek meet there for water and the thermals well be right in the morning hunt. But if I read the map right it looks like a good base camp spot only a half mile from the trail head to the letter "L"
Sorry I don't have MS paint. And not a good map reader. But I do like this post's

[jmez]

Yellow dot is where I would camp. Steep country but not real high so that spot would give good access to anywhere I wanted to hunt, there is water, and I woudn't expect the elk to be down in that corner much. If they were, prevailing winds should be north/northwest, keeping my scent out of the areas I'm hunting.

Red X's are where I would expect them to bed. All N/NE slopes with steep stuff right above benches about 2/3 way up. They should be coming down toward the main drainage in the evening and feeding all along that drainage.

I like the entire ridge I made the black circle on. Where the circle is looks to be a small saddle and should be able to ambush them there. I'm guessing they cross there regularly. also likely some bedding just the the east of my circle on that slope.

[Rizzy]

The trail terminates at one of the best and highest glassing points, so I would glass from there the first day and really look the area over and see what I'm getting into. If I didn't see or hear anything then I would drop down the ridge that goes southwest to jmez's camp and up the other side to the little saddle at 3800 just west of his X and camp there the next night. From there I could probably glass the rest of that area. I would do location bugles from both vantage points and the bottom, especially if the timber is too thick to glass:)