*Larry Warning – Long post incoming*
Over the off-season, I finally got one of my closet friends to get into hunting. To his credit, he dove in headfirst and put in his dues training, shooting, and amassing gear. Wanting to get him on his first animal, I burned a few points so we could apply as a party and both draw WY antelope buck/doe tags and plan a proper out-of-state hunt. Original plan was a combo antelope + deer hunt, but we didn’t draw the Region D general deer tags we were hoping for so we ended up picking a couple Unit 7 cow elk tags in the leftover draw on a whim. I’ve hunted WY once before and have killed a couple antelope but this would be my first time chasing elk. We gave ourselves 8-days to fill 6-tags (2 elk, 2 buck antelope, and 2 doe antelope)… this trip all the makings of a good old fashioned bloodbath.
Day 1: Our antelope unit was essentially a leftover unit a couple years ago before the point creep in the last two years kicked in. By any measure its still a sub-par unit with limited public and limited access. Knowing we had four antelope tags and two cow elk tags burning a hole in our pockets, I told myself I’d shoot the first legal buck that stuck his head out rather than trying to hold out for a giant. The day started off pretty slow – we drove the unit and hit the few larger chunks of accessible public. Around mid-afternoon, we glassed up a big herd of maybe 60 lopes at about 1000 yards passing through some BLM onto a private Agg field. We closed the distance to a small rise and get set up on a group of does in the back of the herd at about 450 yrds. As I’m fiddling with my rest trying to get comfortable for a shot, my buddy pipes up “I have the shot, can I take it?” Impressed by the first time confidence, I tell him to go ahead and send it… Blouche! **Clean Miss**
Antelope bust out onto private, poor buddy is kicking himself for the rest of the afternoon.
Fast forward to an hour before last night and we’re working the last small piece of public we haven’t hit in the unit. We get into a small herd of antelope but we’re at 800 yards with essentially no cover to close the distance and they already have us made. We hatch a plan for him to drop back and work around a rise to a pinch point and for me to wait for him to get in position and walk right at them *hopefully* spooking them in his general direction. Somehow the plan unfolds almost exactly as we had drawn it up, I’m watching through the binos as the lopes work towards him at about 375 yrds, I see him get set up and then Blouche! Good hit, buck down – his first big game animal. Not sure whose more pumped at this point, him or me.
Then things got a little western. The herd immediately splits up and takes off and next thing I know I got two small dinks coming right at me…Honestly small enough that I was wondering if they bucks or does. 200-175-150 closing fast. F it lets double up, I pick out the bigger of the two dinks in the scope and Blouche! Two bucks down. Time to get to work. Ends up being a pretty late night getting these two quartered up and packed out to the car. As it turns out I also managed to loose my phone somewhere in the maylay. Doh!
Day 2: Took the morning off to recover from the late night packout, find my phone (which we did thanks to findmyphone), and head into Casper for some lunch. Hunted the afternoon and evening but didn’t get into any action. All the antelope we glassed up were herded up on private.
Day 3: Sidenote it's my birthday, and I killed an antelope on my birthday in UT last year so I'm looking to keep the streak alive. Returned to the same overlooked small chunk of public where we harvested our bucks. Hiked in about 2 miles from a different access point. We immediately got into some antelope. I get on a small group of 3 does and a buck working towards me slowly. Doe provides a nice shot opportunity at 375 yards and Blouche! Good hit, she’s down. 1 tag left to fill. We pack her out, cook up some lunch, and then get back after it. No sooner did we hike back in did we stumbled on a group of does, they were seemingly spooked by side-by-side in the distance and heading right at us. 300-275-250. Buddy gets set up, I'm calling ranges. He pops off a shot at around 200 and sails it and what you do know, these does have a death wish they continue to take a b-line straight at us. He regroups and then Blouche! throat punches the lead doe at 150. It's now mid-Day 3, 4 antelope tags filled in a sub-par unit with "limited access" and we're on to elk.
Day 4: Forecast called for 15” of snow. We tried to get a little road scouting in early but the roads were sketch AF so we had to had to tuck tale and head back to home base. Ending up spending the day getting our antelope meat squared away.
Day 5: First day chasing elk and we totally overshot the mark. We traveled to one of the high points of the unit at around 8000-8500ft and then gained at least another 500-1000ft hiking in. The area had already got dumped on twice and had around 18” of fresh snow on the ground. Looked like great elk habitat for maybe Sept but we suspected any elk in the area would have moved down to lower elevations. Ran into a Game and Fish officer on our way out who confirmed our suspicions. Given the two early snowstorms they already got hit with, we needed to be looking at lower elevation in the more sage flat/ transition habitat.
Day 6: We're finally on elk. On the advice of our friend from Game and Fish, we head to the lower elevation portions of the unit. However, by mid-day temps warmed up and the roads were now an unmitigated disaster (more on that in a minute). We end up getting eyes on a big 100+ herd of Elk but it was bittersweet because they might as well been on private; they were on a HMA that doesn't open up for hunting until Nov 1st so they were safe and they weren't going anywhere any time soon.
Attempting to work the border of this HMA we ended up finding ourselves in a real tuff spot. The roads turned to strait clay gumbo and while trying to climb a small muddy mess of a hill I lost traction and back slid 100 yards horizontal and ended up stuck in a ditch 22 miles from pavement. Took every trick in the books to get her unstuck - traction boards, airing down, rear locker, floor mats as traction broads, stacking rocks, etc. It was a mess - but eventually we limped our way back to pavement no worse for the wear.
Day 7: Second to last hunt day, getting down to the wire.. We moved our focus to the other side of the Laramie Mountain range where they had been shielded from much of the snow. We spent the entire day working country that felt pretty "elky" but just weren't getting to sign. Just before last night, I look through binos and there it is, a raghorn elk on huntable public in our unit. Despite the fact we only had cow tags and couldn't shoot this guy this was a big moral booster. Finally getting on elk on huntable land.
Day 8: Much of same, we worked the same country. Got into some seemingly fresh elk sign, but just couldn't get into any animals. In the end we weren't able to close the deal on our cow tags, but learned alot and got into elk on huntable public so I'm calling it a success. Got to see some ridiculous country and had a blast doing it. 10/10 would do again.
Other assorted pics from the trip:
Over the off-season, I finally got one of my closet friends to get into hunting. To his credit, he dove in headfirst and put in his dues training, shooting, and amassing gear. Wanting to get him on his first animal, I burned a few points so we could apply as a party and both draw WY antelope buck/doe tags and plan a proper out-of-state hunt. Original plan was a combo antelope + deer hunt, but we didn’t draw the Region D general deer tags we were hoping for so we ended up picking a couple Unit 7 cow elk tags in the leftover draw on a whim. I’ve hunted WY once before and have killed a couple antelope but this would be my first time chasing elk. We gave ourselves 8-days to fill 6-tags (2 elk, 2 buck antelope, and 2 doe antelope)… this trip all the makings of a good old fashioned bloodbath.
Day 1: Our antelope unit was essentially a leftover unit a couple years ago before the point creep in the last two years kicked in. By any measure its still a sub-par unit with limited public and limited access. Knowing we had four antelope tags and two cow elk tags burning a hole in our pockets, I told myself I’d shoot the first legal buck that stuck his head out rather than trying to hold out for a giant. The day started off pretty slow – we drove the unit and hit the few larger chunks of accessible public. Around mid-afternoon, we glassed up a big herd of maybe 60 lopes at about 1000 yards passing through some BLM onto a private Agg field. We closed the distance to a small rise and get set up on a group of does in the back of the herd at about 450 yrds. As I’m fiddling with my rest trying to get comfortable for a shot, my buddy pipes up “I have the shot, can I take it?” Impressed by the first time confidence, I tell him to go ahead and send it… Blouche! **Clean Miss**
Antelope bust out onto private, poor buddy is kicking himself for the rest of the afternoon.Fast forward to an hour before last night and we’re working the last small piece of public we haven’t hit in the unit. We get into a small herd of antelope but we’re at 800 yards with essentially no cover to close the distance and they already have us made. We hatch a plan for him to drop back and work around a rise to a pinch point and for me to wait for him to get in position and walk right at them *hopefully* spooking them in his general direction. Somehow the plan unfolds almost exactly as we had drawn it up, I’m watching through the binos as the lopes work towards him at about 375 yrds, I see him get set up and then Blouche! Good hit, buck down – his first big game animal. Not sure whose more pumped at this point, him or me.
Then things got a little western. The herd immediately splits up and takes off and next thing I know I got two small dinks coming right at me…Honestly small enough that I was wondering if they bucks or does. 200-175-150 closing fast. F it lets double up, I pick out the bigger of the two dinks in the scope and Blouche! Two bucks down. Time to get to work. Ends up being a pretty late night getting these two quartered up and packed out to the car. As it turns out I also managed to loose my phone somewhere in the maylay. Doh!
Day 2: Took the morning off to recover from the late night packout, find my phone (which we did thanks to findmyphone), and head into Casper for some lunch. Hunted the afternoon and evening but didn’t get into any action. All the antelope we glassed up were herded up on private.
Day 3: Sidenote it's my birthday, and I killed an antelope on my birthday in UT last year so I'm looking to keep the streak alive. Returned to the same overlooked small chunk of public where we harvested our bucks. Hiked in about 2 miles from a different access point. We immediately got into some antelope. I get on a small group of 3 does and a buck working towards me slowly. Doe provides a nice shot opportunity at 375 yards and Blouche! Good hit, she’s down. 1 tag left to fill. We pack her out, cook up some lunch, and then get back after it. No sooner did we hike back in did we stumbled on a group of does, they were seemingly spooked by side-by-side in the distance and heading right at us. 300-275-250. Buddy gets set up, I'm calling ranges. He pops off a shot at around 200 and sails it and what you do know, these does have a death wish they continue to take a b-line straight at us. He regroups and then Blouche! throat punches the lead doe at 150. It's now mid-Day 3, 4 antelope tags filled in a sub-par unit with "limited access" and we're on to elk.
Day 4: Forecast called for 15” of snow. We tried to get a little road scouting in early but the roads were sketch AF so we had to had to tuck tale and head back to home base. Ending up spending the day getting our antelope meat squared away.
Day 5: First day chasing elk and we totally overshot the mark. We traveled to one of the high points of the unit at around 8000-8500ft and then gained at least another 500-1000ft hiking in. The area had already got dumped on twice and had around 18” of fresh snow on the ground. Looked like great elk habitat for maybe Sept but we suspected any elk in the area would have moved down to lower elevations. Ran into a Game and Fish officer on our way out who confirmed our suspicions. Given the two early snowstorms they already got hit with, we needed to be looking at lower elevation in the more sage flat/ transition habitat.
Day 6: We're finally on elk. On the advice of our friend from Game and Fish, we head to the lower elevation portions of the unit. However, by mid-day temps warmed up and the roads were now an unmitigated disaster (more on that in a minute). We end up getting eyes on a big 100+ herd of Elk but it was bittersweet because they might as well been on private; they were on a HMA that doesn't open up for hunting until Nov 1st so they were safe and they weren't going anywhere any time soon.
Attempting to work the border of this HMA we ended up finding ourselves in a real tuff spot. The roads turned to strait clay gumbo and while trying to climb a small muddy mess of a hill I lost traction and back slid 100 yards horizontal and ended up stuck in a ditch 22 miles from pavement. Took every trick in the books to get her unstuck - traction boards, airing down, rear locker, floor mats as traction broads, stacking rocks, etc. It was a mess - but eventually we limped our way back to pavement no worse for the wear.
Day 7: Second to last hunt day, getting down to the wire.. We moved our focus to the other side of the Laramie Mountain range where they had been shielded from much of the snow. We spent the entire day working country that felt pretty "elky" but just weren't getting to sign. Just before last night, I look through binos and there it is, a raghorn elk on huntable public in our unit. Despite the fact we only had cow tags and couldn't shoot this guy this was a big moral booster. Finally getting on elk on huntable land.
Day 8: Much of same, we worked the same country. Got into some seemingly fresh elk sign, but just couldn't get into any animals. In the end we weren't able to close the deal on our cow tags, but learned alot and got into elk on huntable public so I'm calling it a success. Got to see some ridiculous country and had a blast doing it. 10/10 would do again.
Other assorted pics from the trip:
