Travis1984
WKR
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2012
- Messages
- 683
Team Bad Decision-OTC Public Land Elk Hunt-Colorado 2015
We jokingly refer to ourselves as Team Bad Decision.
That moniker comes countless decisions that seemed smart at the time...to us.
One more ridge...
I'll just free climb this ledge and find the pass...
That old book says the trail should be here somewhere...
One more shot of whiskey...
How much of a weight penalty would a 6 pack of tall cans be...
We don't need rain pants...
Anyways, I bring this up because what we had deemed a bad decision avoided in 2014, became a bad decision reality in 2015.
The trip started much as it did last year. We got up at 4 AM, and got on the road towards Colorado. Scott drives, and I pay for the hotel on the first night, to get
a good nights rest before the morning pack in. This arrangement seems to work well, and this year was no exception. We rolled into town around 9 pm local time, got our room keys, slammed a few Coors Lights and went to bed around 11 pm.
4 AM came pretty early, but with the hopes and dreams only a new season can bring, sleep was for the other eleven months of the year. By the time we dressed, loaded the truck, and finally pulled into the poor excuse for a parking lot at the trailhead, it was pushing 5:15.
We hit the trail with a fairly aggressive pace, eager to get to the top of the ridge and start hunting. We were meeting some guys at the top whom we'd met last year and nicknamed "California" (their state of residency). They were doing a little scouting for us in the basins we planned on hunting for at the first couple of days. An hour and a half later, we made the cutoff point where we had to venture off trail. Traversing the cliff bands, we followed elk trails more established than some human trails in Washington, towards our camp spot.
Our first issue became apparent rather rapidly, as the creek we expected to be gushing with water was bone dry. Which meant the run off creek on the other side of the nob closer to camp was most certainly gone. This wasn't the first time we'd encountered water issues, and we'd planned for this contingency by bringing enough water storage for about 15 liters between the two of us. Scott and I and would fill up at the first available crossing if needed.
Our camp spot came into view, and with it, what we call "The Bench," which was loaded with elk and elk sign the previous year. We dropped our gear and Scott started setting up the tent, meanwhile I wandered up to the ridge to see if there were any hidey hole water holes left over from the run off or the recent rain.
Luckily for us, I found a minor miracle in the form of a rain water hole. The little rock hole held about 20 liters of water, and should supply us for the first couple of days. It was about then that I got a text from "California," that they had spotted elk in Basin 5 and were backing out to let us hunt it. Before the trip, we had a gentleman's agreement that we would hunt the South Basins and they would hunt the North.
I sprinted back to camp, where Scott and I hurried to finish setting up camp, then headed towards Basin 5.
Basin 5 is the furthest basin possible from the trailhead, where in 2014 we got to within 90 yards on a 330 class bull and just couldn't get any closer. After that
encounter we joked that killing a bull in 5 would have probably topped the list of bad decisions made.
But that was 2014! We had a whole new list of bad decisions to make this year!
We slipped over the bench, and down through basin 4. Climbing the ridge to overlook basin 5, Scott immediately spots the elk bedded high on the far side of the basin, about a mile away. We count about 8-10 elk but can't tell if there are any bulls.
A note should be made here on a gear decision. Scott and I decided not to bring the spotting scopes on this trip. We wanted to cut the weight a little bit, and since we weren't trophy hunting, we didn't feel like we would need to identify if an elk was "worth it." If there was a legal bull, it was going to die. We felt like this
ended up being a good decision and will likely leave the spotters behind on elk trips in the future.
Scott and I slipped down the ridge into the drainage and started picking our way across the basin towards the bedded elk. We figured we could slip through some folds and come out behind them, chirp a few calls and get whatever bull was with this group to come gliding in to us on a string.
I mean...it's the end of September, there's a bull with a group of 10 elk...right?
I set up about 50 yards behind Scott while a cow fed in front of us at 60, and chirped a few mews followed by a chuckle with the tube facing away from the cows.
Apparently we found the only group of cows in all of Colorado who didn't have a bull tending them. I had a cow tag as well, and if we had known they were all cows, I likely would have been the shooter.
Scott almost shot a cow anyways as they all filed past him one at a time and up and over the hill, as he had an either sex tag.
Twelve cows. Twelve. By themselves. Late September. Ok.
We were tired, we had driven 18 hours the day before. Slept for a few hours, then packed in to elevation and humped it another couple miles to chase a couple of elk. Good first day so far. We decided to take an hour nap by the creek (Scott always wants to nap by the way. If you ever hunt with him, make sure he gets his naps or he gets grumpy).
It was about 4 pm at this point, and we figured we would work our way back towards camp while cold calling along the way. That should get us back to camp with about an hour of light left to finish setting up camp and get some dinner inside us.
We worked our way back up the hillside towards the ridge between basin 4 and 5, kicking steps and slipping around cliff bands. We had almost made it to the worst part. The last 150 ft of verticle gain is straight up and fairly treacherous to the only saddle which led back into Basin 4. I took a quick break and turned around to enjoy the view (and catch my breath--the elevation takes a day or two to get used to).
That's a funny looking rock.
Elk.
I pulled up my Bino's and started scanning. I counted 13 or 14 bodies feeding up through a meadow band a couple hundred feet below us.
Horns...horns...horns...find the horns.
A giant bugle rips off.
Then again.
Ok, there's a bull in this group.
I slip down a few feet to Scott who also has his Bino's up watching. I look down at my watch, 515 pm.
"Ready?" I asked Scott.
"Yup," Scott replied, unsurprisingly.
We bonzaid back down the slope nearly killing ourselves multiple times while we tried to conjure together a game plan. We decided we would cut through the bottom and then work our way through the timber to try and get above them at the top of the meadow. We slipped as quickly as we could through the timber and finally gained the 400 feet back up to the top of the meadow the elk were feeding in. We dumped our packs about 100 yards behind us on the elk trail we had followed up. It only took us 30 minutes.
Where did they go? There wasn't a single elk in the meadow. We waited a few minutes and decided to sound off a couple cow calls.
Scott notices a cow and a calf standing on the edge of the timber 500 yards below us. Well at least we could play with them a little bit. I let off a bugle and a chuckle, to be immediately rewarded with an aggressive bugle followed by angered grunts.
He's not quite happy there's another "bull" in his territory.
I happily oblige his attitude with a challenge bugle of my own. We proceed to yell at each other for 10 minutes, as I would cut him off to get him fired up. I then let off a few more cow calls and he responds with a chuckle.
Game on.
We decide that I would slip down the timber ridge staying out of sight, and cow call as far as I can to try and keep his interest while Scott runs back and grabs the packs. The plan works more or less and by the time Scott catches up with both packs, we've closed the distance to about a 150 yards. All of his cows are in the meadow now looking for us, and he's pissed that they've nearly abandoned him for some stud bull on the hill.
We couldn't go any further without exposing ourselves to the cows, so we decide to set up a threat scenario again. I cow call a few times and he fires back immediately with a chuckle, I turned the bugle tube behind me and let off a challenge bugle and grunts. He freaks out, grabs his cows and moves further into the
timber.
Dang. We weren't close enough. Lesson learned.
Sidebar: This offseason Scott and I worked our butts off, working with a friend of ours to really learn how to call elk. So now we were taking all these lessons and applying them in the real world, and we had some kinks to work out. But this friend has killed a ton of elk, and most of his success comes from getting close and using the threat. If you know what the elk are saying (see:ElkNut), you can use that to get close. I've come to the conclusion after this season that calling elk isn't Rocket Science. Be able to make the sounds effectively, and be confident in what you're doing, you can create opportunities.
Ok back to the hunt.
We decide that we aren't going to give up on this bull. We can still here him bugling a couple hundred yards in the timber, so we will try and cow call as close as we can and see what happens. We are already going to be hiking back in the dark at some point, might as well go until very last light.
We sprint across the open meadow to try and make up some ground and let off a couple more estrus calls. He immediately responds with a chuckle and he seems to be down in a little timbered flat below us.
We descend down onto the flat, letting off a few cow calls every 50 yards or so, and he obliges by letting us know exactly where he's at.
We are within a hundred yards now and Scott takes a trail one way, and I head the other. I'm still cow calling and not sure where Scott is going, but he can hear me and he can hear the bull so I am confident he knows what he's doing. 60 yards now. I see Scott on my right, slipping through the timber. This bull is quite happy that this wayward "cow" is finally within striking distance. I can see a few elk bodies through the timber, spiking my focus and adrenaline sky high.
I let off another cow call, letting the whine hang a little longer, and the bull responds again with a chuckle.
50 yards. It's taken us nearly an hour and a half to get here. I've positioned myself behind a tree so I can't really see which elk is the bull. Scott can see him
from where he's standing and he motions for me to use the threat.
We jokingly refer to ourselves as Team Bad Decision.
That moniker comes countless decisions that seemed smart at the time...to us.
One more ridge...
I'll just free climb this ledge and find the pass...
That old book says the trail should be here somewhere...
One more shot of whiskey...
How much of a weight penalty would a 6 pack of tall cans be...
We don't need rain pants...
Anyways, I bring this up because what we had deemed a bad decision avoided in 2014, became a bad decision reality in 2015.
The trip started much as it did last year. We got up at 4 AM, and got on the road towards Colorado. Scott drives, and I pay for the hotel on the first night, to get
a good nights rest before the morning pack in. This arrangement seems to work well, and this year was no exception. We rolled into town around 9 pm local time, got our room keys, slammed a few Coors Lights and went to bed around 11 pm.
4 AM came pretty early, but with the hopes and dreams only a new season can bring, sleep was for the other eleven months of the year. By the time we dressed, loaded the truck, and finally pulled into the poor excuse for a parking lot at the trailhead, it was pushing 5:15.
We hit the trail with a fairly aggressive pace, eager to get to the top of the ridge and start hunting. We were meeting some guys at the top whom we'd met last year and nicknamed "California" (their state of residency). They were doing a little scouting for us in the basins we planned on hunting for at the first couple of days. An hour and a half later, we made the cutoff point where we had to venture off trail. Traversing the cliff bands, we followed elk trails more established than some human trails in Washington, towards our camp spot.
Our first issue became apparent rather rapidly, as the creek we expected to be gushing with water was bone dry. Which meant the run off creek on the other side of the nob closer to camp was most certainly gone. This wasn't the first time we'd encountered water issues, and we'd planned for this contingency by bringing enough water storage for about 15 liters between the two of us. Scott and I and would fill up at the first available crossing if needed.
Our camp spot came into view, and with it, what we call "The Bench," which was loaded with elk and elk sign the previous year. We dropped our gear and Scott started setting up the tent, meanwhile I wandered up to the ridge to see if there were any hidey hole water holes left over from the run off or the recent rain.
Luckily for us, I found a minor miracle in the form of a rain water hole. The little rock hole held about 20 liters of water, and should supply us for the first couple of days. It was about then that I got a text from "California," that they had spotted elk in Basin 5 and were backing out to let us hunt it. Before the trip, we had a gentleman's agreement that we would hunt the South Basins and they would hunt the North.
I sprinted back to camp, where Scott and I hurried to finish setting up camp, then headed towards Basin 5.
Basin 5 is the furthest basin possible from the trailhead, where in 2014 we got to within 90 yards on a 330 class bull and just couldn't get any closer. After that
encounter we joked that killing a bull in 5 would have probably topped the list of bad decisions made.
But that was 2014! We had a whole new list of bad decisions to make this year!
We slipped over the bench, and down through basin 4. Climbing the ridge to overlook basin 5, Scott immediately spots the elk bedded high on the far side of the basin, about a mile away. We count about 8-10 elk but can't tell if there are any bulls.
A note should be made here on a gear decision. Scott and I decided not to bring the spotting scopes on this trip. We wanted to cut the weight a little bit, and since we weren't trophy hunting, we didn't feel like we would need to identify if an elk was "worth it." If there was a legal bull, it was going to die. We felt like this
ended up being a good decision and will likely leave the spotters behind on elk trips in the future.
Scott and I slipped down the ridge into the drainage and started picking our way across the basin towards the bedded elk. We figured we could slip through some folds and come out behind them, chirp a few calls and get whatever bull was with this group to come gliding in to us on a string.
I mean...it's the end of September, there's a bull with a group of 10 elk...right?
I set up about 50 yards behind Scott while a cow fed in front of us at 60, and chirped a few mews followed by a chuckle with the tube facing away from the cows.
Apparently we found the only group of cows in all of Colorado who didn't have a bull tending them. I had a cow tag as well, and if we had known they were all cows, I likely would have been the shooter.
Scott almost shot a cow anyways as they all filed past him one at a time and up and over the hill, as he had an either sex tag.
Twelve cows. Twelve. By themselves. Late September. Ok.
We were tired, we had driven 18 hours the day before. Slept for a few hours, then packed in to elevation and humped it another couple miles to chase a couple of elk. Good first day so far. We decided to take an hour nap by the creek (Scott always wants to nap by the way. If you ever hunt with him, make sure he gets his naps or he gets grumpy).
It was about 4 pm at this point, and we figured we would work our way back towards camp while cold calling along the way. That should get us back to camp with about an hour of light left to finish setting up camp and get some dinner inside us.
We worked our way back up the hillside towards the ridge between basin 4 and 5, kicking steps and slipping around cliff bands. We had almost made it to the worst part. The last 150 ft of verticle gain is straight up and fairly treacherous to the only saddle which led back into Basin 4. I took a quick break and turned around to enjoy the view (and catch my breath--the elevation takes a day or two to get used to).
That's a funny looking rock.
Elk.
I pulled up my Bino's and started scanning. I counted 13 or 14 bodies feeding up through a meadow band a couple hundred feet below us.
Horns...horns...horns...find the horns.
A giant bugle rips off.
Then again.
Ok, there's a bull in this group.
I slip down a few feet to Scott who also has his Bino's up watching. I look down at my watch, 515 pm.
"Ready?" I asked Scott.
"Yup," Scott replied, unsurprisingly.
We bonzaid back down the slope nearly killing ourselves multiple times while we tried to conjure together a game plan. We decided we would cut through the bottom and then work our way through the timber to try and get above them at the top of the meadow. We slipped as quickly as we could through the timber and finally gained the 400 feet back up to the top of the meadow the elk were feeding in. We dumped our packs about 100 yards behind us on the elk trail we had followed up. It only took us 30 minutes.
Where did they go? There wasn't a single elk in the meadow. We waited a few minutes and decided to sound off a couple cow calls.
Scott notices a cow and a calf standing on the edge of the timber 500 yards below us. Well at least we could play with them a little bit. I let off a bugle and a chuckle, to be immediately rewarded with an aggressive bugle followed by angered grunts.
He's not quite happy there's another "bull" in his territory.
I happily oblige his attitude with a challenge bugle of my own. We proceed to yell at each other for 10 minutes, as I would cut him off to get him fired up. I then let off a few more cow calls and he responds with a chuckle.
Game on.
We decide that I would slip down the timber ridge staying out of sight, and cow call as far as I can to try and keep his interest while Scott runs back and grabs the packs. The plan works more or less and by the time Scott catches up with both packs, we've closed the distance to about a 150 yards. All of his cows are in the meadow now looking for us, and he's pissed that they've nearly abandoned him for some stud bull on the hill.
We couldn't go any further without exposing ourselves to the cows, so we decide to set up a threat scenario again. I cow call a few times and he fires back immediately with a chuckle, I turned the bugle tube behind me and let off a challenge bugle and grunts. He freaks out, grabs his cows and moves further into the
timber.
Dang. We weren't close enough. Lesson learned.
Sidebar: This offseason Scott and I worked our butts off, working with a friend of ours to really learn how to call elk. So now we were taking all these lessons and applying them in the real world, and we had some kinks to work out. But this friend has killed a ton of elk, and most of his success comes from getting close and using the threat. If you know what the elk are saying (see:ElkNut), you can use that to get close. I've come to the conclusion after this season that calling elk isn't Rocket Science. Be able to make the sounds effectively, and be confident in what you're doing, you can create opportunities.
Ok back to the hunt.
We decide that we aren't going to give up on this bull. We can still here him bugling a couple hundred yards in the timber, so we will try and cow call as close as we can and see what happens. We are already going to be hiking back in the dark at some point, might as well go until very last light.
We sprint across the open meadow to try and make up some ground and let off a couple more estrus calls. He immediately responds with a chuckle and he seems to be down in a little timbered flat below us.
We descend down onto the flat, letting off a few cow calls every 50 yards or so, and he obliges by letting us know exactly where he's at.
We are within a hundred yards now and Scott takes a trail one way, and I head the other. I'm still cow calling and not sure where Scott is going, but he can hear me and he can hear the bull so I am confident he knows what he's doing. 60 yards now. I see Scott on my right, slipping through the timber. This bull is quite happy that this wayward "cow" is finally within striking distance. I can see a few elk bodies through the timber, spiking my focus and adrenaline sky high.
I let off another cow call, letting the whine hang a little longer, and the bull responds again with a chuckle.
50 yards. It's taken us nearly an hour and a half to get here. I've positioned myself behind a tree so I can't really see which elk is the bull. Scott can see him
from where he's standing and he motions for me to use the threat.
