2017 Elk Only Season- PIC HEAVY!!

[Logan T]

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.

 

[Logan T]

More from July-August

It’s here, finally!! Opening day of archery has finally arrived. Having seen a bunch of good bulls, I had only seen a few bulls (some not pictured here) I was really willing to cut my tag on. Justin came up the night before and was happy to stick any of the bigger bulls I was willing to pass on. We went out and saw a handful of good solid bulls, but nothing “crazy” I kept telling Justin we just had to be patient, big bulls will show up. Passing up stalking opportunities on 330-350 bulls opening weekend seemed crazy, but we did it. Then, the following weekend when Justin came back up we saw a lot of big bulls- like 8 bulls between 350- mid 370+. The elk weren’t rutting but the bulls were showing back up in a big way. “One more week” I told him. Lets see what happens in one more week. He agreed, as it was so hot and dry and the wind was everywhere, that you couldn’t sneak on anything, and with only a couple of good bulls actually looking for cows, it was still going to be difficult.

A couple bulls from the first 2 weeks.

 

[Logan T]

Finally “PrimeTime” was approaching. That third week to weekend of September. Bulls should be starting to chase hard, action should be really picking up. I went out several times to glass and each time I went out I saw fewer elk. Justin made it up and the weekend was basically a bust. Virtually no action. Elk were quiet, and the fog had been so bad that we really only got in one evening hunt that weekend. Not being able to glass, and definitely not wanting to hike into our spot blind and spook elk out of the area we remained patient. “I’ve seen even bigger bulls than what we’ve seen so far come mid-late rifle season” I told Justin.

A little down, we headed back. I was thinking to myself “I hope I didn’t just let him down these past couple weeks- by not going after those big bulls we did see”. I was worried. There should have been more elk that weekend. But at the same time, there was really no way to get to the elk we did see up to that point. It was way too dry and loud, and the bulls weren’t looking for cows yet- with the exception of a couple.

I decided that next day, Monday night, that I was going to go to one of our glassing spots since it had been foggy all weekend. There had to be something out there big and that we hadn’t seen yet. Sure enough elk were moving again and there were quite a few good bulls around, just not a monster. I was sitting there on the highest point around, wind blowing 25-35 mph, for almost two hours and scanned a bench with my binos again and BOOM, bull elk. As soon as I saw him- “Holy S---”. I got the spotter on him and there is what I was telling Justin about. A bull I wanted to chase. Too far and too close to dark to think about getting closer that night, but he was around!

I went out again Tuesday and Wednesday looking for that bull and didn’t see him. I went out again Thursday and found him again, not too far from where I had seen him Monday night.

I couldn’t skip out of work friday night to try to keep tabs on him so I had to wait till Saturday. It finally rained that weekend, and Justin and I trudged through the mud hoping to find the big one. We never did find him, but found several bulls back in that 340-360 range, including this goofy “crown” bull.

 

[Logan T]

I gave it my best effort that following week and into the weekend. I just couldn’t turn up that big guy. I did finally get my spotter on another big bull we had seen, and a whole lot closer this time- only 2/3 of a mile away.

I was guessing him right around 370”. It was all I could do to talk myself into sitting on that hill and not go down and get an arrow into him. He was in the perfect spot, with a perfect wind, with a perfect route to get to him. I knew where I thought they would be heading to feed right before dark, and I could kill him. But I passed. I watched him and his cows feed right past the spot I knew I could get to to kill him, at 33 yards. It was one of the hardest things I’ve done passing on that bull, but at the same time it was easy enough to do knowing the other bulls in the area. I wanted that BIG guy.

I had to work like crazy the rest of bow season. I didn’t get out to even glass for elk the last week and a half or most of the week between archery and rifle. But it was apparent that the elk were disappearing. They never did really rut like usual this year, and were just hard to find period. There aren’t very many in this area to begin with, just a great bull to cow ratio, so when they disappear it gets really tough to find elk in a hurry.

 

[Logan T]

Rifle season. Going to speed up the story here. It was a tough, slow rifle season with the exception of opening day. The elk were basically no where to be found on public land, and it seemed like every out of stater came here because there are no Grizzly Bears in this part of Montana (no offense to out of state hunters). Other than the beginning here, I think I’m just going to caption pictures, this is getting a little long, sorry!


Rifle season came and I couldn’t wait for Justin to get here Friday night. My slow time at work was now, and I was going to milk every second of it I could. I went out solo and camped that friday night and planned to catch up with Justin sometime over the weekend, depending on what happened.

Opening morning came and the first elk I found was that big 6x7. It took until almost 9:00am but I finally found him. I just so happened to see Justin and his girlfriend Kari park the pickup at the parking area at the same time. It was 1.5 miles to the elk and almost 3 to Justin, in a big triangle. Still wanting that big bull with the giant 3rd and droptine I saw during bow season, I busted my butt over towards Justin and Kari. They never did see me and I never did catch up with them, but luckily they saw that bull too. They passed 9 people that morning on their way over towards that bull he said, and they were the only ones who saw him, other than me. Justin ended up shooting that bull at 1pm. I was only 900 yards from him, in a relatively flat spot in that area, but with the wind I never did hear the gunshot. I packed up my stuff and packed out to the truck and drove home. I got a call that night when they started hiking meat out to the truck letting me know they got him. I was stoked for Justin. There’s not a more deserving guy to get a bull like that. That beast had a body the size of a 4 year old angus bull and ended up taping 373” even.

 

[dreamingbig]

You passed that 370” bull?!? Gulp.


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[Logan T]

We got the rest of his bull out that weekend and then it was all me the rest of season. I busted my butt trying to find that monster from bow season. I ended up seeing him again briefly one time, 49 days after the last time I saw him in bow season. I hunted him hard, but just couldn’t make it happen. I had a buddy who comes out every year from Vermont to hunt with us land in Helena and Justin brought him out for the last week of season. We worked trying to find elk, and saw very few. He said he wasn’t going to shoot a deer or elk until I shot a bull.

Thanksgiving day came and David and I went out again. David spotted a group of bulls about 2 miles away right at daylight. I decided that there was one bull in there I would shoot since there was only 3 days left in the season and away we went. After a 4 mile fish-hook pattern we finally had the wind right and were on the bench we saw the bulls leaving a couple hours earlier. We still hunted those timbered cuts and benches for almost two hours when finally I caught a glimpse of antler moving. Less than 100 yards in front of us were the bulls- bedded down- and the bull I said I’d shoot was on the edge of them, but only had the tops of his antlers visible. We got set up, I crawled up a little higher elevation, laid down and made a few cow calls to get the bull to stand. It worked perfect, I touched off the 300wsm and they took off. I got another shot off into the bull while he was trotting quartering away. I thought I missed, David thought I missed, and I was pissed. But we stayed quiet and calm and started tracking the bulls and 40 yards later there he was. Both bullets hit exactly where they were supposed to. Not the giant I hunted so hard for, but I was more than happy to have this guy as my “backup bull”.

Time for pics!

 

[Logan T]

More Fun.

David and I packed out just over half of the bull that night and got back just in time to throw some backstrap on the Traeger for Thanksgiving dinner with my wife, Justin and Kari. That poor soul (David) had the experience of packing a hind quarter and some neck meat in his badlands 2200. Having done that with the same pack before too, I can say it’s not fun! The next morning we went out to find David a cow. Sure enough he got one right away, and luckily close to the truck! We got her taken care, went back and got the two remaining quarters of my bull, and went to try to find him a deer the next day.

It was a rough season to find elk here. The only reason for the lower numbers I can think of is the lack of water and quality water at that. I was fortunate enough to have an extremely slow time at work this fall, and was able to hunt in some form or another (lots of afternoon and evening hunts) approximately 60-65 days of the 80 day season. Lucky is an understatement! And super lucky that I only have a 15-30 minute drive to park and start hunting. I’m even more lucky my wife put up with all of this for 3 months, but she probably forgot how ugly I am since she has rarely seen me in the daylight for the last 90 days.

Hopefully some of you made it through this whole thing without falling asleep, and hopefully some of you take some time to put your hunts down on paper (or computer) as well!!

-Logan

 

[prconnection]

Awesome bulls......and awesome write up. Congratulations!

 

[slick]

Wow. An incredible season, whatever tag you had you did justice. Those are some amazing photos. Always love reading about places I've stomped around. Wonder if our boot tracks have ever crossed paths?

Both bulls are fine examples of what hard work can do for a guy on public land. Congrats on a great season and writing this up. Appreciate stories like these on here.


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[Ross]

Great write up, great bull and that bull with the backs.....wow.....nicely done and way to keep at it Elkoholic wives get a thumbs up as well

 

[Jon Boy]

Awesome season Logan!

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[elkguide]

Thanks for taking us along.
Great season and great "back up" bull.

 

[cnelk]

Awesome!

 

[Art Vandeley]

Wow, awesome pictures and story.

 

[Logan T]

You passed that 370” bull?!? Gulp.


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I really did..... still can't believe it looking back now. But I did get to attempt a stalk on that even bigger bull only two days before that, so I was almost in the mode of that bull or tag soup.... until the last few days of season. It was incredible seeing the bulls I did.

 

[realunlucky]

Truly enjoyed your photos and write up congratulations on an epic adventure

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[coloyooper]

That was an awesome write up. Great story and congrats to you and your bud!

 

[Redside]

Great story thanks for a taking the time to put it up for us.

 

[Agross]

Great write up and pics. Congrats to you and your buddy on great trophies. I am so envious if you guys that get to live out west within reach of that amazing country.