CO 2nd rifle elk recap

[njdoxie]

Things seems a little slow, so I thought I'd throw this out there. (come on Indian summer, cough up a few good stories from your years of outfitting)

My friend picks me up at the Alamosa airport Friday, no luggage lost, and we stop by Wendys on the way to the trailhead. So far, so good.
We get to the trailhead and there are no vehicles there...YEAH!I spend about an hour getting my gear sorted and packed. I weigh my pack, it's 60 lbs, last year it was
40 lbs....not good....I weigh a bag that I carry, it's 20lbs, last year it was 10 lbs...not good...my gun is 10 lbs. Oh and I weigh 188 lbs, 10 lbs more than last
year...not good. I'm carrying 40lbs more this year....very bad. But I'm feeling confident as I'm in better shape than last year when I marched to my base camp in 2.5
hours, no problem. I figure I'd bring a few more things.....bad idea.

I head out solo about 7pm for the flat 6 mile hike to my base camp spot, praying no one is there.

About 2 miles in, I can no longer carry the bag, so I swing and set it down between steps....this has me concerned as I have a ways to go....and my pack is feeling real
heavy, I'm stopping every 5 minutes to rest. After another mile, I can no longer swing the bag and proceed to start dragging it down the road. I'm stopping every
minute to rest. I've been hiking for 3 hours and I'm halfway there....I decide I can't continue carrying the bag, so I set it beside the road and continue on, I make it
to my base camp in another 1.5 hours, shed my pack and go back to get the bag I left at the side of the road. It took me 7 hours in all and I was spent. Bad. Sweet
Jesus was I glad to be done with that hike, easily one of my painful ever, top 5. After another hour of setting up camp, I was crawling in my sleeping bag when my alarm
went off to get up and hunt. I stopped it and tried to sleep, no way I can hunt now. But since I left my sleep meds back in NJ, there would be no sleeping. AAAHHHH!
Not a good time to go cold turkey on the sleep meds! Zero sleep that night, I'm way too old for this.

The next day, I called my wife, she located the closet pharmacy in CO and put in an emergency call to the Dr, who responded immediately and called in meds to Alamosa
Walmart. The next day my fried picked up the meds and met me at the trailhead, where I gladly unloaded some excess gear like a 65mm swaro spotter with tripod and
insulated coveralls and body warmers. Because of my lack of sleep and general exhaustion, the hike in and out to get meds was not pleasant in the least. Two days into
my 8 day hunt and I hadn't hunted a lick. I will never bring a spotter/tripod again, it felt like a hunk of lead, my 12X binocs are just fine.
I notice a LOT of horse tracks.....must have been during last of archery and 1st rifle....hope they haven't disturbed my spot. I never saw anyone else during my hunt, that's the way I like it.

On day 3 I start hunting by glassing this hillside where I've always seen elk, fingers crossed. In the morning, I see nothing, I never do. In the evening, I see a raghorn, a cow and a calf come out right before dark. I want to see where they're coming out on the hillside before I hike up and hunt. I'm a mile away from them and make the short hike to camp, feeling great that I've found the elk again and hunters during previous seasons didn't spook them.

There was a lot of bear crap around camp, so I was glad I packed in a bear proof food container (very lightweight, very expensive). I was a little nervous at night, I
kept waiting for a bear to appear out of the dark snooping around, or to stick his head in my tent looking for food. My campfires were a little bigger than normal .

I have something of a honey hole, this year there were only 3 elk on that hillside, a raghorn, a cow and a calf. Normally there are 9 or 10 elk, but all I need is one
legal bull....and there are less prying eyes this way, so I was grateful for it. It's difficult to hunt because the elk are never there in the morning when I have about
2 hours of downhill breeze in my favor. They only show up about 20 - 30 min before dark and the breeze goes uphill from me to them until about 20-30 min before dark
when it reverses. And it's too hard to come in from the sides because of canyons and near vertical hillsides.

The next morning I'm sitting in camp eating breakfast about 8am, I know this is lazy, but I almost never see elk anywhere, except in the evening on that hillside, and
I've looked hard elsewhere. Out of the blue an elk bugles on a cliff above camp about 80 yards away...I look up dumbfounded and sure enough there is a raghorn bugling.
He doesn't see me as I scramble for my gun, ammo and ear plugs....while I'm doing this he bugles again and casually walks away. Even if I was ready, I never had a shot,
he was standing behind a snag. I get on his trail, hoping he'll pause...he bugles intensely to my every cow call, but he keeps moving and loses me heading right to the
hillside I hunt.

That evening I waited until the breeze flowed downhill before making the final push to try to get close enough for a shot. They were there, but no way I could close the
gap to 300 yards before dark, and I didn't want to take a chance spooking them, so I hiked back to camp. Next evening, the same thing happened.
I finally decided the next evening to close the gap to 300 yards while the breeze was still blowing from me to where they come out, very risky, but I felt I had no
choice. So I get setup, about 45 minutes before dark, with a nice rest, 300 yards from where they appear, hoping they don't smell me first. Twenty minutes before dark,
the cow, calf and raghorn appear in the edge of the timber. I can't see the raghorns head but I have a clear shot to the chest, a very good broadside shot. I decide to wait for the perfect shot, unitl he comes out completely in the open like they do every evening. He takes another few steps and all I can see is his head up in the air smelling. Both the bull and cow have their heads up smelling. They smell me and fade back into the timber and I never saw them again the rest of the hunt. I should have taken
the shot, and not waited for the perfect shot, but I'm ok with not taking it too. I never saw another elk while hunting, I did see a couple spikes and a cow on the hike
out to the trailhead a few days later.

The hike out took 4 hours, I was taking my time and resting a lot, I never fully recovered from the hellish hike in. It took a
full week back in NJ, before I felt fully rested.

I took some liberties with my pack weight this year, because the previous years hike in was so easy.....I brought in a minus 20 sleeping bag because I'm never warm, plus a lightweight air mattress as the foam pad I was using just wasn't comfortable, plus a lightweight camp chair from REI, plus a spotting scope/tripod, plus a jetboil
stove/fuel, plus too many air activated body warmers for sleeping, plus a bear proof food container. In 2015, I'll still bring in the minus 20 sleeping bag (first time
ever I was really warm at night), the air mattress (first time ever I could sleep on my side), the jetboil, the bear proof food container...everything else will be scrutinized to bring my pack weight down. No way in hell I could ever hunt with my camp on my back, I don't know how folks do that, carrying around 40-50 lbs on my back all day in steep country would wear me down to nothing. And there's no water up high, I would have to keep coming down for it.

[ElkNut1]

Wow, what a roller coaster ride that was! (grin) I think you need to stay within 2-3 miles of a road! Stay within a doable distance, not sure what you would have done with an elk down?

ElkNut1

[njdoxie]

Should've mentioned, for elk down, I had 3 different packers with horses on speed dial....and I'll be right back there next year ....one packer said his horses could go anywhere an elk can go, I really wanted to see that. ...the elk I'm hunting are in a bad spot, there's only one way in, parts of it are a steep goat trail