Opening weekend fun

HuntnIdaho

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Went out last Friday/Saturday with my Dad and had a very busy couple of days. Best opening weekend for our family maybe ever.

Friday 6:45 am - While hiking in to where I wanted to look for an elk, I spooked a nice whitetail buck in a clear cut. He was picking his way out when he stopped for a brief second, quartering away at 100-110 yards. I let one fly and he disappeared into a clump of trees, I heard a couple sticks crack and then silence. I followed up after 20 minutes and found him piled up 35 yards away from where he stopped. Deer tag filled.

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After a brutal pack out, my Dad and I hunted together and had a very nice evening hunt watching a different clear cut as the sun went down. I almost fell asleep in the warm sun. I've never been so beat from getting a deer out of the woods. Totally worth it though.

Saturday 6:45am - I was hiking into the area I meant to get to on Friday morning and was within a couple hundred yards of the spot I wanted to watch for the morning when I hear a shot ring out from the direction of the area my Dad was in. I stopped and waited. A couple minutes go by and my Dad radios me and says he just dropped a really nice whitetail buck in the clear cut we hunted the previous evening which is about 1/3rd of a mile from where I am. I get excited for him - he's never shot a big whitetail buck and he's 57 years old. I then proceed to sneak toward my spot, thinking how awesome this trip has been already.

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Saturday 7:26am - I am within 100 yards or so of where I intend to sit for a bit when I look across the clear cut and spot an elk standing on the upper road. I put my scope on it and see it's a bull. He's looking right at me it seems. It's about 350 yards between us and I can't take that shot without a good rest so I just freeze. Eventually, he starts walking down the road and disappears behind some trees. I move a swift and quietly as I can up the road and down a skid trail, trying to cut the distance down. I get halfway down the skid trail when I see the bull emerge back into the clear cut below the road, he's moving pretty good and has no idea I'm there. I throw my bag down to use as a rest and the bull comes down to a lower road in the clear cut at around 250 yards. But he won't stop! He walks to the end of the road and off into the cut heading towards the tree line nearest me and goes out of sight. I figure he will either disappear into the trees, feed out of sight of my location or come up the tree line and potentially offer me a shot. I gambled that he would continue up the tree line so I grab my shooting sticks and setup watching the tree line 170 yards away and wait. A few minutes later I hear some sticks snap. He was coming! I see him coming up the tree line out of my periphery, I back my scope down to 6x and steady myself. I've only got a couple small openings to shoot through. He stops broadside in the last opening and I squeeze the trigger. The bull flinches and runs down and out of sight. My Dad radios and asks if that was me. I say, "yeah man! Just got a shot at a Bull Elk!" He says he's still boning out his buck so it will be awhile before he can come and help. I wait a half hour and brew some coffee before walking to where the bull was standing. 40 yards later..
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Not a very big-antlered bull- a "raghorn" 5x5, but man, what a rush! And only the 3rd elk tag I've notched ever.

Eventually, my Dad makes it over to help me finish the quartering and packing. Thank god for some rain that helped keep the flies away! We get everything back to camp, change some game bags and admire our crazy luck.

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I don't know if I'll have another weekend like this for the rest of my life. If not, that's OK. Out of my 21 seasons, this one has provided some epic memories. I do hope when my boys reach hunting age, they can experience something like this one year with their Dad :)
 
Congrats to you both! :D
You have the patience of Job!
If I would have shot that bull I would have been on his trail in a couple minutes not takin time out for coffee LOL!
 
Congrats! What unit, if you don't mind. We had similar luck in unit 8 over the opening week. Wife got her bull moose and I got a 6x1 bull elk and 4x3 muley. Sometimes ya get lucky!
 
>Congrats! What unit, if you don't
>mind. We had similar
>luck in unit 8 over
>the opening week. Wife got
>her bull moose and I
>got a 6x1 bull elk
>and 4x3 muley. Sometimes
>ya get lucky!


This was unit 6. Sounds like you did well too, that's awesome! A 6x1, wow. That's pretty unique.
 
And the fun continued on the 20th, in a different location. I had planned a hunt with a friend from work who missed out on his family elk hunt in a draw unit. We had planned to go on the 19th-21st to elk hunt together. My elk and deer tags were filled but I still had a bear tag and my wonderful wife allowed me to keep my plans and go out for a couple days with my friend. We arrived on Sunday afternoon, setup camp and had a nice dinner/fire.

The next morning we got up at 4:30 had breakfast and started out hike up which was to be a few miles back. We got to the corner of a large clear cut around 6:30am. In the dark we heard an elk bugle, moments later followed by another. We continued slowly until we started to break into the cut. Then we heard the sound of cows and calfs mewing and chiping to each other followed by some more bugling. We figured to have been within a couple hundred yards of this group of elk. We positioned ourselves to where my friend had the best vantage point of the corner clear cut as possible and waited for shooting light to arrive. As shooting light was getting near, all the sounds ceased and by the time I could begin glassing, no elk where there to be seen. daylight came and the elk appeared to have moved out of the cut into the timber.

We moved along the edge of an old logging road at the top of the cut slowly for 100-150 yards. We heard some sticks cracking on the ridge in the timber above us and froze. Our wind was good, blowing away from us and the ridge where we heard the elk. The sounds again ceased after awhile and we decided to slowly pick our way a bit further up the old road. We got around a corner when we heard some crashing above us, I looked up and saw some elk moving through the trees. We again stopped and listened, thinking we had possibly spooked the group we took a seat on a log and discussed what we could do. Once again we heard movement above us and off an on for about 20 minutes or so, but we could see nothing. My friend wanted to sneak up onto the ridge and try to get a shot. I disagreed, feeling we would surely be caught. We knew we could go no further up the road too, as we would lose our wind advantage. We were trapped in a sense.

Several minutes pass and some crashing rings down from the ridge above us, but this was not elk fleeing. We listened and for a second and wondered what the hell was going on. Soon, it was very apparent. This was a fight! 2 Bulls were going at it on the ridge no further than 100-150 yards from our location at the edge of the road. It went on for 4-5 minutes and was extremely loud. Then silence for a moment. My friend moved from the log to the nearby corner of the road so he could see around. A moment later the woods above us exploded! I stood as my buddy raised his rifle and froze, wondering if we were about to be run over. Just then a lone bull elk emerged from the ridge above down onto the old road at a dead run. He reached a the next corner of the road and stopped to look back up from where he had come. My friend fired and he went off the old road down into the clear cut about 40-50 yards and stopped again, my friend fired 2 more shots and the bull dropped!

More crashing ensued and we looked out ahead of us about 300 yards where the clear cut extended to above the old road we were on. The herd emerged, trotting slowly one after the other. Cow after cow after cow, over 20 of them and then another bull, a couple more cows and then the herd bull. He was a big 6x6. The other bull, a decent 5x5 like the one my friend had just dropped. We stood in shock. Half the group stopped and looked down at us, about 350 yards out. The herd bull was a dandy of an elk. I watched them walk off through my binoculars. After they disappeared another 2 cows and spike emerged from the same location and walked the same direction. Amazing. We were sitting 100-150 yards below a herd of 25-30 elk the whole morning! Our patience had paid off. My friend's bull was apparently a satellite bull that had lost a fight and got run off the ridge. What a crazy turn of events. I've never heard elk go at it like that, and surely have not seen this type of behavior this late into October. A 2014 season of hunts to remember!
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