This weekend (8/27/2016) was opening day for archery elk in Colorado. I just returned from my first hunt and scouting session. This is my recap of the weekend.

I fell asleep around 10pm after laying in the truck for about an hour. I was hot in my sleeping bag. It is rated for zero degrees. It was probably in the high 30s outside. Seabass, in his cage next to me, was being fairly quiet. The previous night he whimpered a lot and was generally annoying. I woke up several times through out the night. Mostly on my own accord, but I recall once being awoken by Seabass who was doing some sort of extra-audible licking. My alarm went off at 5:30am. I got out of my bag and put my clothes on. I was freezing. My roommate Bryon was in his tent. We decided to get up later today since our hike would be closer and less strenuous.

Yesterday, we woke up at 4am and hiked from camp about 3 miles up steep, rugged terrain. We gained nearly 2,000 feet of elevation, starting at around 10,000 feet and ending at around 12,000. Our hike began on a dirt road that is really more of a dry creek rock bed. We made this effort in the dark for about three quarters of a mile. Then the fun really started. Up into the bush we went, off trail, into thick timber. Tall grass and thick swampy bogs greet the traveler in this country. We used google maps on my phone to make our way up the first slope, in the direction of a saddle, were we could ascend a steep spine, to make our way to the peak of this particular mountain.

After an hour and a half, there was enough daylight to turn off our headlamps. This country is so steep that walking 100 yards makes you feel like you just sprinted a quarter mile. I had trained for this trip but my efforts were not nearly enough. My lungs were a rusted-out appliance, abandoned on the side of a dirt road. After much huffing and puffing on my part, we made it to the saddle. A saddle is a geo-term for a large depression of land that is relatively flat, between two ridge points. If you look at it from afar, it looks like a horseback saddle. It is generally a sag between two mountain peeks, but along the same ridge line. On this saddle, we followed some game trails, until we came to a confluence of four different trails. A flash went off. It was a game camera someone had fixed to a tree. I posed “thumbs up” and it took another picture of me. We moved on up the grueling spine to the main ridge.

Two thirds of the way up, we heard an elk bugle. A bugle is serious business when you are scouting for elk. We both looked at each other with silent excitement. Bryon said it had to be less than 100 yards away. We stood there listening and heard another. Bryon got out his cow call and made some female elk sounds. The bugle responded. We both nocked arrows and slowly crept toward the direction of the bugle, separating from each other. This bugle investigation lasted about 40 minutes. It ended up being some other hunters. They sounded pretty good. We eventually ran into them. We just waved and turned around and went back up, onward to the peak.

At the peak I was happy to be finished traveling upward. It was sunny, and the view was as breathtaking as you can imagine the Colorado wilderness. We sat and glassed the surrounding mountains with binoculars, every hillside, meadow, and timber patch. Unfortunately we didn’t see any animals. The 3 mile descent back down the mountain was grueling in a different way than before. This time instead of fatigue, a continual balancing act is the challenge for the several next hours. The thick timber seemed endless. Finally we made it back down. After a nap we struck camp and headed off to a different mountain.

We setup a new camp about an hour’s drive away. It was probably only a mile or two as the crow flies, but in this country, 5 miles per hour is about the fastest my truck could go and still have some ball joint left over for the return trip home. We set off again for another ridge, on another mountain, through more thick timber. This timber was different. It was all pole pine timber as opposed to the marshy bog and tall grass of the last mountain. It was also a lot more manageable terrain-wise. Not nearly as steep or demanding. We found a lot more sign in this area. Fresh elk scat, fresh rubbings, bedding areas. We checked out a few ridges and headed back to camp. We arrived back around 8pm, tired and ready for bed. We clocked 11 miles this day.



Back to Seabass and his licking. I got out of the truck and took him for a walk. The sun was already coming up, having slept an extra hour and a half. After the usually morning rituals, we hit the trail again, this time in a different direction, hoping to get as much recon done this weekend as possible. As we transversed a great clear cut field, littered with pine poles and enormous piles of collected felled wood, I couldn’t help have some reservations about this unit. We had hiked 11 miles and staked out a bunch of ridges yesterday without seeing a single animal. I questioned the quality of this unit, quietly to myself. Bryon has hunted this unit the last several years and feels confident the animals are here. We stepped over endless fallen pine poles until we arrived at a logging road. We noticed lots of moose tracks in the mud. We checked out a few meadows and found several abandoned spots in the grass where animals had bedded. We walked further down the logging road, mostly downhill this time. Bryon pointed out various features and anecdotes from other hunts, other years.

After an hour or so we got to a gate that Bryon announced was the end of Forest Service Land and the beginning of BLM land. Usually there was a gate there, he said, but this time it was just a break in a fence line, where a gate used to be. We walked about 10 yards into BLM land, still on the dirt logging road, and Bryon stopped and stood still. He whispered to me that he heard a cow elk call. We stood in silence. We both heard it again. On both sides of the logging road at this point, was “new growth.” Small conifers or pines that were densely packed and only about 8 feet tall. They lined the logging road and went back about 100 yards deep off the road. Beyond the new growth on both sides were old growth pines, 100 feet tall, not quite as dense, but extending beyond what you could see.

(The above pic is the logging road, but not the new growth section. I forget to take a pic of that area.)

We stood frozen, listening, and waiting. A horrible groaning could be heard in the distance. A staccato moan with a noticeable wheezing that bookended each note. We heard bouts of this that would go on for up to 10 seconds at a time. It sounded like a mentally challenged donkey trying to reprimand an inanimate object. It was a moose, unseen, considerably far away. But not far away was the mewing call of a cow elk that could only have been 20 yards into the new growth. On the opposite side of the road we could hear twigs snapping. We both nocked arrows. Bryon was about 15 yards ahead of me on the trail. He got out his cow call and made some mews of his own. We heard twig snapping on the right side of the road. I turned my head back and looked behind me down the trail. As I turned back toward Bryon, a large brown elk busted not 10 feet to his right. It made a great commotion as it realized Bryon wasn’t a cow elk as well. It reared up and turned and dusted off back into the pine. I couldn’t believe it. It had been so close. We stood like statues, holding our bows at the ready. Again, I looked behind me. This time I saw a mule deer doe off to my right. She cautiously made her way toward the logging road. I stood and watched her. After a few moments a beautiful mule buck showed up behind her. He looked still in velvet, and had an impressive 5x5 rack, or something close. This buck was only 20 yards from me. Had I had a deer tag I could’ve shot it. I was hidden behind the roots of a fallen tree. The buck hadn’t noticed me, and I had a good lane over the root mass. The doe moved and stood in the middle of the road and stared at me, and I at her. She looked like she was ready to walk right up to me. At the last moment she bounced away, hopping, all fours off the ground together. A few seconds later the buck casually followed her across the road.



We stood around a bit longer before rejoining to whisper about what had happened. Bryon said the cow elk was standing right in front of him. As it looked away he went to attach the mechanical release to his bow string. It looked up and saw him moving and then freaked out. He had seen the mule deer as well. He said there was a bull in there with the cow, he saw both of them. He was jonesing to stalk the elk, so we made a plan to split up. He would hike up the ridge and flank the new growth patch. I would stay on the road to see if anything came out the other side. We would meet again in one hour.

Bryon went off up the ridge, and I slowly made my way down the logging road. The moose made more noises far off, and I could hear more twig snapping on the left side in the brush. I moved so slowly that 20 yards took me ten minutes. I took two steps and then listened, two steps, listened. I saw a rock about 40 yards ahead of me, tucked into the bush, that looked good for sitting and watching. I decided to go to the rock. It took 10 more minutes and I was halfway to the rock. Suddenly, 100 yards in front of me, a cow elk emerged from the right side. She cautiously crossed the road, pausing before entering the new growth on the other side. It was so big compared to the mule deer I had just witnessed. At least twice as big if not three times as large as the mule doe. I was in awe. I was too far away to take any reasonable shot. I just stood there in admiration, then out of no where, a bull elk appeared from the same spot as the cow, even bigger than his female counterpart. He was massive compared to the mule buck. I didn’t get a good count on his antlers, but I’m guessing he was a 4x4. Not even a large bull by sporting standards, but enormous when it’s the first bull you’ve seen in person, not from inside a car or on T.V. He crossed the road, paused and stared at me. He seemed indifferent to my presence, and then slipped into the pine after his cow. I thought “Well there’s Bryon’s cow and bull.” I couldn’t believe all the action I just experienced in a time frame of 20 minutes, when the day before I didn’t see any animals at all.

I decided to move toward the spot where I saw the elk duo slip into. Very slowly I tip towed toward that opening. I made a mental note of a burned log near the couple’s entry point. As I crept, I could hear twig snapping very close to my left side. It sound like it was 10 yards away, just behind the first set of pines. I stood and listened and could definitely hear a large animal, moving parallel to me. It had to be the elk I had just seen, or maybe some other members of their herd. I quietly two stepped my way along the road, in tandem with the animal on the other side of the pine row. I had an arrow nocked. I had my mechanical release attached, I was ready to draw back and kill my first elk at the first opportunity. I was facing the animal’s direction at this point, crab stepping slowing. I could see a break in the trees ahead. There was a clearing, where if the animal continued it path, I could stay behind a pine on my side, draw my bow, wait for it to continue forward and take a shot. My heart was pumping. I was about to kill an elk on the second day of the season, on the second day of my first hunt. We inched toward the clearing. As I got closer, I could see fur. I could see a big body, and a mouth eating grass at the base of the last pine before it would have to walk past the open space. I got into position behind the pine on my side. It was still mostly obscured by the tree row, but I could hear the twigs snapping and knew it was about to present itself broadside to me. It couldn’t be a better situation.

It felt like forever but it stepped forward and I prepared to draw my bow. And in one nano second, the dream was over. It was a common a bovine. What a ripoff. Of all the places cattle roam, this has to be one of them? At 10,000 feet in the rocky mountains? Apparently cattle just roam free range on BLM land. This particular cow just happened to be in the same exact locale as the first elk I had seen face to face and followed. I decided that in the future if I break a twig underfoot and an elk hears me, I’m going to make cow noises so it thinks I’m an idiot bovine in search of idiot bovine treasure.

I was disappointed but I could still hear more twig snapping north of the bovine. I could see the tops of the short trees moving as the beast crashed into them. I waited around to see if anything would reveal itself. It could be another bovine. It could be the elk I followed. At this point it could be a frigging circus seal for all I know. I debated moving into the clearing to see if I could see anything, but I was afraid of how the bovines might react to me. It was close to the time I was suppose to go back and meet Bryon. So I left and we hiked back to camp. I might have did more complaining than hiking, I can’t remember, but I do know that I’m ready to go back to this unit and spend more time poking around the new growth and logging road. This weekend was primarily for scouting, as our main elk hunt is 9/3-9/11. It just happened to also be opening weekend, so we took the bows along. I feel a lot more confident about the unit and also about my chances of bagging an elk this year. I don’t care if it’s a cow or a bull, my tag is good for either. Instead of 2 days, I will have 9, and I like those odds.

Many times throughout this weekend, I thought about the time 2 years ago, sitting in Orlando, when I decided I wanted to go elk hunting. I watched TV shows and watched hunters glass ridges and thought about how cool it would be to go do that. I spent countless hours thinking about it, thinking about what gear I need, and what moves I needed to make to make it happen. I sat on the ridge glassing the countryside and it occurred to me that here I was, everything had come together, and I’m up here at close to 12,000 feet looking through binoculars on the top of a mountain. I felt that way even more so after I watched the two elk cross the logging road and then followed them in, bow in hand. I often use the phrase “Living the Dream” facetiously to describe unpleasant activities, but this is one instance that I can genuinely use the expression. I’m livin the dream.

On the logging road. You can see the new growth section far behind me.





Beautiful morning in Northern Colorado.

Lots of elk tracks.

Some active wallows.

“Raspberry laced bear turds! New, from Dunkin Donuts!”



The Rawahs off in the distance. We shall return. Next Weekend!