Just got back from Unit 10 Archery elk after ten days of hunting. I still have a few mornings left to try and get it done! Overall it's been a fun hunt with a lot of interesting and bad situations along the way!
Here's the unlucky experiences we've had during our hunt.
1.) Brother hits bull, other hunter finds it and cuts the head off. Don't know who has the head. It's a bull with really good bottoms and royal with slightly shorter 5ths. Not many bulls were harvested during the 5 day rain storm and horrible rut for the first week of the hunt on the west side of the unit. If anybody knows who has this bull I would really appreciate some info by pm message or on here. Game and fish was called, if anything shows up of it.--More detail posted on this after the next two situations.
2.) Friday evening, the 8th day of the hunt. We glass four bulls up, two exceptional 380+ type bulls. Also an awesome 360 and 350 type bulls rutting and bugling good with only one cow between them. Saturday morning I set up perfectly on them. The bull is coming in extremely hot. Crosses a meadow and is now coming into archery range and on a direct path to me. All the sudden I hear somebody on the ridge next to me YELLING trying to scare the bull. Bull stops coming in and shuts up. Cow crosses the clearing scared to death. Guy slams his door, starts his truck and goes full speed away and onto the next spot. This guy was also going full speed in his truck that same morning just farther away from me, making noise with his truck and trying to shut the bulls up.
I'm assuming this is a guy out scouting for the upcoming EARLY RIFLE UNIT 10 elk hunt this Friday. I'm also assuming he has these bulls picked out for his clients and didn't want me to have a chance at one of them. So yes he saved that bull on Saturday morning but I'm LOOKING FOR A UNIT 10 EARLY RIFLE BULL ELK HUNTER TO HUNT THESE FOUR BULLS. It's going to have to be somebody who's serious and can be able to scout these bulls from a glassing spot days prior to the hunt. My brother will still likely be hunting these bulls on the archery hunt, but these bulls seem to be staying in the same isolated spot so I'm confident they will be in there on Friday morning. I'm not the type that like to cause conflict, but these guys that are messing other people's hunt up need to be taken care of; especially after I possibly could have had an opportunity of a lifetime. I hope the guy that did this will also read this and understand that this crap needs to end!!
3.) If I sit a tank I'll usually put a sign saying I'm at the tank ahead just to let other hunters know I'm on the tank. I don't mind if people drive by the tank, they have places to go hunt also. What I didn't like about this hunt and in unit 10 is the guy who drives past my sign at 5:00 p.m. on a dead end road. Then he drives back by the tank at 5:40. Then he comes back by my sign at 6:30 p.m. and drives back by at 7:00 p.m. Not only that but he decides on his last trip to slam his door just after passing my tank. Just a lot of careless disrespectful people in unit 10, and I hope the people doing this will read this and start respecting the archery hunters in the field. I know you've got the early rifle tag coming up, but the archery hunters have a tag also and they don't come that often either!!
Here's more detail on how the tracking and finding of the bull went. 1.) Brother hits bull at 20 yards in the chest. After 1 1/2 hours of waiting we track blood trail with a ton of blood. Blood starts to fade to drops after .30 of a mile. It's now getting dark so we decide to come back in the morning to finish tracking. Next morning we track blood to two beds where he bleed a pool of blood in each. Continue tracking with good blood and then to drops again. Finally after .50 of a mile drops and tracks had run out, with no sign of a trail. We looked hard in the direction of travel and everywhere we could but the bull had just stopped bleeding. End up finding the bull with it's head cut off by another hunter several days later 1.60 miles from where he had shot it. Same ridge and direction of last blood trail we had, We just missed getting to it before someone else found it. Good luck to whoever has the antlers, I'm sure you have a good story of how you harvested a dead bull!
Other than that I had a great time even with all the rain. Usually I wouldn't post, but after all that's happened in that unit I'm was pretty diss-appointed with how other hunters are acting these days!
Here's the unlucky experiences we've had during our hunt.
1.) Brother hits bull, other hunter finds it and cuts the head off. Don't know who has the head. It's a bull with really good bottoms and royal with slightly shorter 5ths. Not many bulls were harvested during the 5 day rain storm and horrible rut for the first week of the hunt on the west side of the unit. If anybody knows who has this bull I would really appreciate some info by pm message or on here. Game and fish was called, if anything shows up of it.--More detail posted on this after the next two situations.
2.) Friday evening, the 8th day of the hunt. We glass four bulls up, two exceptional 380+ type bulls. Also an awesome 360 and 350 type bulls rutting and bugling good with only one cow between them. Saturday morning I set up perfectly on them. The bull is coming in extremely hot. Crosses a meadow and is now coming into archery range and on a direct path to me. All the sudden I hear somebody on the ridge next to me YELLING trying to scare the bull. Bull stops coming in and shuts up. Cow crosses the clearing scared to death. Guy slams his door, starts his truck and goes full speed away and onto the next spot. This guy was also going full speed in his truck that same morning just farther away from me, making noise with his truck and trying to shut the bulls up.
I'm assuming this is a guy out scouting for the upcoming EARLY RIFLE UNIT 10 elk hunt this Friday. I'm also assuming he has these bulls picked out for his clients and didn't want me to have a chance at one of them. So yes he saved that bull on Saturday morning but I'm LOOKING FOR A UNIT 10 EARLY RIFLE BULL ELK HUNTER TO HUNT THESE FOUR BULLS. It's going to have to be somebody who's serious and can be able to scout these bulls from a glassing spot days prior to the hunt. My brother will still likely be hunting these bulls on the archery hunt, but these bulls seem to be staying in the same isolated spot so I'm confident they will be in there on Friday morning. I'm not the type that like to cause conflict, but these guys that are messing other people's hunt up need to be taken care of; especially after I possibly could have had an opportunity of a lifetime. I hope the guy that did this will also read this and understand that this crap needs to end!!
3.) If I sit a tank I'll usually put a sign saying I'm at the tank ahead just to let other hunters know I'm on the tank. I don't mind if people drive by the tank, they have places to go hunt also. What I didn't like about this hunt and in unit 10 is the guy who drives past my sign at 5:00 p.m. on a dead end road. Then he drives back by the tank at 5:40. Then he comes back by my sign at 6:30 p.m. and drives back by at 7:00 p.m. Not only that but he decides on his last trip to slam his door just after passing my tank. Just a lot of careless disrespectful people in unit 10, and I hope the people doing this will read this and start respecting the archery hunters in the field. I know you've got the early rifle tag coming up, but the archery hunters have a tag also and they don't come that often either!!
Here's more detail on how the tracking and finding of the bull went. 1.) Brother hits bull at 20 yards in the chest. After 1 1/2 hours of waiting we track blood trail with a ton of blood. Blood starts to fade to drops after .30 of a mile. It's now getting dark so we decide to come back in the morning to finish tracking. Next morning we track blood to two beds where he bleed a pool of blood in each. Continue tracking with good blood and then to drops again. Finally after .50 of a mile drops and tracks had run out, with no sign of a trail. We looked hard in the direction of travel and everywhere we could but the bull had just stopped bleeding. End up finding the bull with it's head cut off by another hunter several days later 1.60 miles from where he had shot it. Same ridge and direction of last blood trail we had, We just missed getting to it before someone else found it. Good luck to whoever has the antlers, I'm sure you have a good story of how you harvested a dead bull!
Other than that I had a great time even with all the rain. Usually I wouldn't post, but after all that's happened in that unit I'm was pretty diss-appointed with how other hunters are acting these days!
