My 2017 elk season started back in April this year. With 15 points going into the draw I finally came out with my first choice of an elk permit. Not only did I, but so did my best friend Justin. With a couple years of watching elk in this area, I was ecstatic to say the least. Phone calls to Justin happened immediately and never really stopped between that day in April and now.
This year was going to be a lot different, not only because of the tag we drew but also because of the area. We had both hunted mule deer in areas like this but all of our elk hunting had always been done back in some of the nastiest mountains Montana has to offer. We were looking forward to not having to climb 3500-4500 vertical feet just to get into elk this year.
Onto the fun part. There will be a lot of pics here in this thread. A couple of them (right in the middle) you WILL want to see, I promise!
To get started, I hung some trail cameras. I couldn’t always find a tree where I wanted to put a camera, so I improvised and made some stands, trying to keep them discreet enough that if someone else happened to stumble into them they hopefully wouldn’t see the cam or take it. I also decided sometime back in the spring/early summer to upgrade my spotter and get a phoneskope. I should also say that lot of the phoneskope pics are blurry, and that is due to a few things- the heat we had this year was insane. Long hot days, and less than 1 and 1/2 inches of rain made this summer one for the books and heat waves were crazy. The other thing making them a little blurry is most of the pics were taken 2-4 miles away and are still frames from video instead of picture shots. The poor quality in some of them are in no way due to the quality of the Swarovski or phone. Anyways...... here we go!
Here are some pre-season/scouting pics.
First trail cam action in June- a club bull. And a couple other pics- nice to see such a high cow/calf ratio.
After the first 10 days in July the bulls really started showing up. I placed trail cams at the best waterholes I could find. Some more trail cam pics and some phoneskope pics.
Early July- August.
This year was going to be a lot different, not only because of the tag we drew but also because of the area. We had both hunted mule deer in areas like this but all of our elk hunting had always been done back in some of the nastiest mountains Montana has to offer. We were looking forward to not having to climb 3500-4500 vertical feet just to get into elk this year.
Onto the fun part. There will be a lot of pics here in this thread. A couple of them (right in the middle) you WILL want to see, I promise!
To get started, I hung some trail cameras. I couldn’t always find a tree where I wanted to put a camera, so I improvised and made some stands, trying to keep them discreet enough that if someone else happened to stumble into them they hopefully wouldn’t see the cam or take it. I also decided sometime back in the spring/early summer to upgrade my spotter and get a phoneskope. I should also say that lot of the phoneskope pics are blurry, and that is due to a few things- the heat we had this year was insane. Long hot days, and less than 1 and 1/2 inches of rain made this summer one for the books and heat waves were crazy. The other thing making them a little blurry is most of the pics were taken 2-4 miles away and are still frames from video instead of picture shots. The poor quality in some of them are in no way due to the quality of the Swarovski or phone. Anyways...... here we go!
Here are some pre-season/scouting pics.
First trail cam action in June- a club bull. And a couple other pics- nice to see such a high cow/calf ratio.
After the first 10 days in July the bulls really started showing up. I placed trail cams at the best waterholes I could find. Some more trail cam pics and some phoneskope pics.
Early July- August.