My 2014 Season

[under H2O hunter]

I was hoping to give a play by play during archery however my ability to access the internet went down during the 3rd week of archery so I wasn't able to keep my blog updated during the final week of archery. With my rifle season being so close to archery season. It was a whirl wind of things to get done and cleaned up before heading back up to my spot for 1st rifle season here in Colorado. My girlfriend and I spent all 30 days archery hunting. The season was long and pretty quite for the most part. The bulls finally started to fire up during the last week. All the elk that I had with in killing range were either cows,spikes, or non-legal bull. I did get several legal bulls to come in as well but when they did they managed to stay out of my shooting lane or just outside my comfort zone. Our archery season ended with no elk hitting the ground, however my son who had broke his wrist early in the season managed to put a doe deer down on his last day while wearing a cast on his arm. My girlfriend did get one shot at 26 yards at a doe as well however she missed high over her back. I passed on lots of does hoping to put a buck down but ended up eating my tag instead.

Our rifle hunt was a much different story. My girlfriend and I only managed one legal minute of hunting as we both filled our tags opening morning during the first minute of legal shooting light. My son also managed to fill his 2nd elk tag with a nice calf on the second day of hunting after I spotted a large herd and calling the calf into him. As a group we managed 4 elk in two days. The best part of our rifle season was all the vocal elk that were pretty much silent during archery season. It's amazing how late the rut was for us in our area... I sure was glad that we spent the archery season patterning the elk and getting to know their movements. All the hiking we did also got us in peak shape to haul all the elk out. Humping three elk out in one day and a fourth the fallowing day was pretty taxing but well worth it.

Here is the story of our rifle season:
We left camp early and headed up the mountain in the dark. We arrived at our ATV parking spot well before sun up. We started walking down the backside of the mountain to a rock I have had some success from. About 50 yards from the rock we wanted to get to I spotted several deer feeding. I held my girlfriend up and explained that we would be best to let them settle down and continue feeding along. Just incase there was any elk below the rock out of sight. While we were waiting a nice mature bull bugled out about 400 yards below the rock. Having had this same situation play out several years ago I knew it was important to get to the rock and get set up before starting to call. The deer that were feeding moved out and allowed us to quietly slip into our rocky perch. I spotted a cow and a calf feeding about 250 yards below us next to some pine trees. After getting my girlfriend situated and comfortable the bull that bugled earlier let out another bugle which was answered quickly by a nice mature 6x5 that was out of sight behind the trees where the cow and calf were feeding. The bull stepped out and now positioned himself between the cow and the bugle. My girlfriend settled her cross hairs on his shoulder and put the smack down on him. After seeing her make a great shot on the bull I managed to drop the cow in her tracks. My son and buddy made their way from 1000 yards away and my buddy put the calf down. While we were gutting and quartering the elk out the original bull that first bugled continued to bugle for an hour or so making his way up the mountain. Three elk opening morning was a great start to our rifle season. The next day my buddy and I headed down the mountain to refuel and do some glassing. I spotted a sizable herd up on the mountain. After contacting my son and getting him to meet us we all headed up the mountain. We were able to locate the herd with about 10 minutes of light left in the day. After making a couple of bugles a nice size calf came in and presented an easy 50 yard shot. After gutting it out we left it lay there for the night. We came back in the morning to pack it out but first we set up on a point over looking a secluded drainage to see if we could locate the herd we had the night before. We spotted 5 bulls but no cows. The largest bull being a nice 6x6 with no cows with him. After taking a bunch of photos we headed over to the calf and managed to drag it downhill 700 yards to the trail. We packed up and headed for home.

[zpd307]

nice job!!!