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Colorado OTC Elk

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.30WCF:
The day before season opened we hiked about 4 miles to get from 8300 feet at base camp and set up at spike camp for a few nites at 11,000 feet. I have camped there before, and there is not much of a flat spot, so my brother and I had to move and compact enough snow to make a shelf large enough for two grown men to sleep on. The ice shelf we built dropped about 16 inches just past the edge of the floor-less shelter we had in place.




We saw lots of elk and mule deer the first day, but didn?t get any shot opportunities. The morning of the second day I hiked to 11,900, and on the way, I collected water at the last obtainable water source trickling from a rock near the peak of the mountain which topped out at 12,503 feet.




I side-hilled around the rocky cliffs that constructed the summit of the mountain, and ended up on a ridge running to the south with nice sun exposure. A nice spot to lay down for a minute mid-day after a hard climb.



After a while I decided to start poking around. I stood up and looked across the valley to the east and saw two cow elk feeding out of a spruce thicket atop the eastern-running ridge coming from the summit.

The cow elk were about 470 yards away across the bowl that separated the south-running and east-running ridge lines. As I watched them, a bull elk passed through an opening in the thicket and paused for a second in a clearing, then vanished again without a trace. I looked around, and it seemed I should be able to drop off the ridge and gain about 100 yards on their position if I lost some elevation.

I put in my earplugs as I slid down off the snowy ridge, moving closer to them. I tried to stay hidden best I could and slowly crossing the dappled sunny patches on the snow. Some spots I had to break cover and be even more carful to cut the 110yds.

I reached my comfort level for slipping in on them, and a was inside my confident shooting range when I found myself at 375yds to the edge of the spruce thicket, and only 330 yards to the cows feeding below the thicket.
I was stopped in the sun though, unable to move any farther, so I was being extra careful to move slowly as I pulled my tripod out of my pack and built my shooting position.



As I feared would happen, after dropping off a ridge that I would need to climb back up should I return to the spike camp, the cows fed down, then stopped feeding, quickly walked up the slope and re-entered the thicket. I watched them bed down. I took my earplugs out.

Ten-Twenty-Thirty minutes passed. The sun had shifted, and now I sat in the cool shadows.

If I was patient, the elk would indeed get back up, but they were bedded on a knife ridge. Which side would they bail off of? I only hoped that the horse camp that is traditionally on the back side of their ridge on would keep them feeding in my direction when they got to their feet again. Was the camp even occupied this year, or was it just another meadow for the elk to feed off into?

At about 3:45, a cow eventually started to feed back out. Then a second cow. All of a sudden, elk spilled out on the hill side that the two original cows were on. As if he couldn?t resist the action, a bull came running out of the thicket with his head down and antlers curled back. I never heard a bugle, but it looked like he was pushing the cows, or trying to pull them back in. He calmed down quickly and began to feed along side them. He was feeding away from me though. His range was 360 yds, slightly up hill from my position. I had the front of the rifle steadied on the tripod, the rear of the rifle resting in the wrist sling of my trekking pole. I put my earplugs back in.

360 yds.
No wind.
Now was my chance.

Crosshairs settled in and I squeezed off a single shot. The bulls knees buckled and he fell. He tumbled 200yds down the slope until he got hung on a young spruce tree growing well above the mature tree line.

I messaged my two brothers on the Garmin inreach, ?I rolled him up.?, and sent GPS coordinates to the bull?s location. One brother was at the spike camp on the opposite side of the ridge and 1000? below me. Derek, the other was at our base camp by the lake in the valley, some 3,500? below.

I packed up and headed across the bowl and steep slopes to find the reward for my efforts. Nowhere near done with the work, but a reward I could bask in for the moment.







(Elk in my background under tree)


Soon, several realizations set in. It was now 4:00pm. I was alone. It would be dark soon. I was on very unstable and steep terrain. I had a lot of work ahead of me. I had no direct proven way back to the trail, as I had found myself at a higher elevation and different slope that I had ever seen before. No time to waste.

I set up my phone and recorded some of the processes since I knew I would not have a photographer or any help to arrive for quite a while. I figured I could collect a few still photos from any video I would record. I just never imagined that I would see what I would see, when I watched the videos back. I thought that I would record a couple clips of video, that might run a couple minutes long each, but as I got involved and lost in my thoughts the camera kept filming.

The camera recorded me processing the information that I had before me, formulating, and then executing a plan to get the elk to a more stable location to process. Later I set it up again while I quartered the animal and cooled the meat.

This was briefly proceeded with a few moments of awe and admiration of the magnitude of the situation I found myself in. This is when I felt just how small I was compared to the mountain, how easy it would be to have a mishap, that the afternoon would soon fade, and for the time being, I was on my own with my next tasks.

As much as I would like to wait for help, or sit and soak it in a bit longer, it was time to start my chores. But, as I watch the videos back and see the thoughts I?m having in the moment and re-live the experience in a way that a handful of still photos wouldn?t translate into. Even then, I may still be the only one that can see the events as I perceived them in the moment. When I watch them back, I can see and feel the initial onset of my observations, emotions, and thoughts. They begin to settle as I make a few attempts to move the elk to a more suitable location to begin my task of breaking the bull down.

Once I relocated him, I fell into a calmer, steady approach to break down the bull. I kept saying to myself, ?Don?t move the animal or try to shift its weight around with my knife in my hand.? I remember saying it so many times. All while taking in the experience, I just kept reminding myself where I was and how careful I needed to be up there alone.

Any time I needed to shift a front or rear quarter, I would lay the knife in the crevasse between the rib bones and spine from where I had removed the back strap. I see myself intentionally sheath and pocketing the knife as I attempt to roll the elk to begin work on the other side for the last two leg quarters. The guy in the video, seemed a lot more collected that I felt in the moment.

I didn?t yet know how we were going to get down, but I knew we could get down one step at at time, and if I kept moving in that direction, we would get there. Right now though, the most important thing was to get the meat cooling.

Now watching the videos back, it seems I listened to the incessant chatter in my head. I also don?t see a fellow that was in panic mode working on the elk. Just a dude slowly, methodically skinning out a large animal, taking the time to keep the blade sharp and safe. Looking on from the outside, you won?t hear the internal dialogue that eventually just became the manifested observable rhythm.




As I worked, I would occasionally watch the ridge line above me and to the west, the south-running ridge which hid me from Adam and our spike camp. There were moments when I could afford to stand up for a second to re-sharpen my blade, or roll up a game bag to prepare it to be slid over a leg quarter that I had made ready. I would take these moments to stand up and straighten my back, and scan the ridge line to see if I could find Adam?s silhouette sky-lined on the ridge above. Eventually I did find him as I was about half way done with the quartering process. He was so small and so far away, and he had a long ways to go. I would glance up and could see he was making progress, and other times I could not see him, whether it was due to him ducking below the ridge line or being obscured by some trees. He would eventually re-appear if I checked back in again later. At one point, I heard a faint shout from behind me. I turned shouted back unsure of what he had said. He was nearing the upper end of the ridge when he had shouted. Only a little more to go before he would begin his descent into the shale bowl that had been created by the crumbling cliff-walls of the mountain top just above us, but still, a long slow hike to get to me ahead of him. He had to be nearing the same spot that I originally spotted the cows from.





The sun was below the horizon by the time Adam reached me, and I was just removing and bagging the last quarter of the elk and about to place it in the patch of snow that a young tree had protected from the sunny, daytime, southern slope. When that last game bag hit the snow, we got to sit and rest a moment as the slope went dark. Some dotted lights and campfires became visible miles and thousands of feet below us.

Normally I would say that sitting back in the wilderness, as I?ve done before, on a cold night, looking down the valley at the distant happy warm campfires and truck headlights, and feeling the thermals shift as the even cooler nighttime air hits you in the back and rushes down the slopes, will let you know what loneliness feels like. Tonight it was different. Two brothers soaking it all in with fresh meat on the ground.

I had been so busy with the bull elk up to this point, that I had not been keeping up with any new messages coming in on my inreach. It wasn?t until now that I realized Derek was also on the mountain, and had been on the move for hours already. Once he reached the top of the switchbacks, Derek had navigated his way up to our tent, broke down the spike camp and staged it back at the main trail leading down to the lake.
We sent him the coordinates to where Adam and I expected to intersect with the trail once we bushwhacked our way off the top of the mountain with the meat.

Adam and I slowly started to move meat in the game bags by hand at first. The ground was steep and unstable. It seemed that until we dropped about the first 75 yards or so and hit the timber, our best bet would be, to be able to free ourselves of the meat if we started to slide or tip rather than to let a meat filled pack strapped to our backs carry us to the bottom. It probably took us an hour to get all four bags and the head from above tree-line into the edge of the timber. Maybe we were too cautious, but many aspects of this, the elevation, slope conditions, pack/meat weight and fatigue levels made us feel better to take our time as we worked the elk down the mountain.

When we made it to the trees we rested a moment longer and then decided to drop a little more weight by de-boning the meat before we made the nearly 600 yard decent to the trail, each of us with a rear quarter on our backs now. We followed game trails where we could, and switch-backed as we needed on the steeper terrain, and hugged the edge of the steep creek drainage as much as we could to avoid the tangled blow-downs to the east.



Oddly and fortuitous enough, right at midnight, as we stepped out onto the trail, Derek was also just approaching from where he had dropped our camping gear about a mile down the trail, where our camp?s drainage spilled out. We were all glad to hit the dirt on a little earthen bench just above where the trail and creek intersected each other and the canopy opened up to expose the star studded sky. With only a moment of silence behind us, Derek called out, ?Hey, You the guys that ordered a pizza??, and produced a few bags of cold pizza and some bottled Pepsis from his pack. Now there were three brothers sitting there in the dark, covered in blood, staring at the sky. All the less lonely this time, even still with the cold air bearing down on us.

Fueled up, we shifted things around. Derek took my rifle, tripod and binoculars, and a few of Adam?s clothing layers and headed back to where he had dropped our other gear. Adam and I started the climb back up to the edge of the timber where we had left the two bags containing the front shoulder meat and back straps, and the head. This second trip up and back down for the last of the elk took us three hours, and probably another 30 minutes to hide the head off the side of the trail, and pack the meat in the snow for the night.



When we rounded the last bend in the trail before our descent down onto the switchbacks began, we saw dancing orange light bouncing off the trees. It was an inviting glow of a fire where Derek had been waiting with all our camp and gear on the over-run of the first switchback. It was about 4:00AM or so, and we sat a while. I warmed my feet by the fire put on dry socks for the last 4 mile push down to base camp.



Dry feet, fire extinguished with snow stirred in until all signs of life were gone from it, and our rest-time over, we divided up the gear once more and headed down. The two cripples nursed their way down the mountain while I pushed ahead to try to catch some wranglers and mules before they all left out for their morning hunts.

At 6:42 AM I sent back an inreach message letting them know I made the dirt road.

It was still dark out as I drive the truck into the horse camp. Hunters, Guides and Wranglers were busy readying themselves for their departures. I spotted a fellow in the dark in-font of his wall tent casually cooking breakfast. I pulled up to his camp and stepped out and stated my intentions. As he directed me to the next tent over, another fellow walked out of the tent and said he would go with me to introduce me. This guy recognized me and said, ? I think I?ve helped you before.? I asked if his name was Darren. He nodded, and we briefly revisited three years ago when Darren and some of his friends pulled Adam?s bull off the mountain with his mules and horses. Darren didn?t have any mounts or pack animals this year himself, but took me to another man and introduced me. At 7:23 I sent a second message, ?Horses Secured?. Royce was a horseman who had already tagged out himself and was happy to take his horse and mule for another ride. The whiskey and cigars we gifted him the next day were just a bonus I suppose, as he would take no cash for the 10 mile round trip at the time he went to retrieve my elk from where we had left it.

I had a fire going in the tent?s wood stove and a pot of water heating. I had just begun to warm some bags of vacuum sealed loaded potato soup that was made at home when Derek and Adam walked into camp about 8:00 am.

Bellies full in a warm tent, it was nap time




I napped restlessly as I kept checking down the dirt road as afternoon approached, while confident in my directions to the location of the cache, the forecasted 18? of snow for the afternoon at elevation could ruin the recovery mission if they couldn?t find my landmarks.

As I sat on the picnic table in camp resting in the sun, Darren came driving up to our camp and shouted out the side window that they had my elk at the horse camp when I was able to come and get it anytime.













Moving Elk
https://youtu.be/1El9Sn1rh_E

Processing Elk
https://youtu.be/QLNLYRkUTRw

Packing snow
https://youtu.be/GfO0K656S4g


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Terri Yaki:
Congratulations, nice job and good report. Even in my prime, I wouldn't work that hard for a hunt. The best I'd have ever done was that hiking if I had a Sikorski to pull my prey out.

Kathyp:
We don't have so many elk around here anymore. Most of my hunter friends have retired from it.  I used to get meat from them and elk chili, to this day, is one of my favorite dishes!

Thanks for sharing.

iddee:
Good hunt.......

The15thMember:
What a great story, Micah!  Thanks so much for sharing it with us.  I don't have time for the videos right now, but I'm looking forward to them. 

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