What an epic hunt! we drove to the trailhead on Thursday night and arrived at 12am. We threw our sleeping bags on the ground that night, and I was thankful for a night of sleeping at elevation (7000')
the next morning we loaded the horses and headed up the trail. although it was only 3 miles, we gained 2500' of elevation. the horses earned their keep! we packed light and loaded up 16 gallons of extra water so we wouldn't be searching for water. It was nearly a full moon so we were a little concerned we wouldn't see much.
We got to camp and set up on top of the ridge we would be hunting for easy morning glassing. We had a few short minutes of relaxing before we decided it was time to glass the afternoon hunt. It didn't take us long to being spotting bucks. we almost immediately spotted a bachelor group of 5 on top of a ridge. however they quickly disappeared over the top of the ridge. instead of chasing them, by brother and I decided to sidehill around to a different bowl and do some glassing while my buddy stayed behind and continued to glass where we had been. We were side hilling around the edge, and I was going pretty slow, just admiring the scenery and taking it all in. (mind you, the wind was blowing across us at about 20 mph) As I was admiring the scenery I looked at a pine tree just down hill from us and this buck was bedded there just watching us! we were 175 yards uphill and the wind was blowing away from the buck. all I can figure is he couldn't quite figure out what we were as we blended well. since he couldn't smell or hear us, he decided we weren't worthy of sneaking away! simply sat down got a range and let the old 168 Barnes TTSX fly! He went about 50 yards and expired. I couldn't believe it! After 3 years of planning, 1100 miles of driving, thousands in equipment, and miles of hiking, my hunt ended in 30 minutes! He is big, but needed another 2 years to fully mature. 24" wide buck, and quite happy! another two years he would have been a true monster!
that night, the storm from hell rolled in and proved Mr weather man wrong! It had to be close to 70 mph wind with driving sideways rain. The next morning the storm continued and we couldn't see more than about 100 feet. we hunkered down for the day taking care of horses and just relaxing in the tent. the good thing about the storm was it drove away our annoying neighbor who had decided to camp about 500 yards from us. A massive, wild and empty country and this fool set up camp right next to us. He couldn't handled mother nature thought, and called it quits after one night!
about 3pm the fog lifted enough for glassing so we went back to it. immediately my brother spotted a monster 3 point on the same ridge as the afternoon before! It was 750 yards from camp, so we dropped down in the bowl to 650 yards. It was my buddies turn and he borrowed my brothers gun as he is the perfectionist and built his gun to where he is accurate beyond 1200 yards (300 win mag shooting 215 grain Berger.) I regretted leaving my spotting scope in camp, because it was amazing. 650 yards and the buck didn't know what hit him. he was at the top of the ridge and he fell about 250 yards down the steepest mountain you have ever seen! although it ended about 500 yards from camp, it was a mile hike through rough terrain! we hiked out in the dark leading the horses. at this point we had about 30 minutes of hunting in and two big bucks down!
We spent the next two days chasing elk with no success. they truly went nocturnal with the full moon and we would simply see glimpses in the morning and the evening.
oh and we had a near grizzly encounter! we had seen a porcupine shuffling around the hills several times. we had two days left and we were heading down to our glassing spot at about 630am, trying to get set up before the sun came up. I was following my brother who pulled up looking at something through his binocs. The porcupine he had seen was right next to where we had been glassing the night before, only he was dead and there was blood coming out of his mouth! I had my Colt 357 mag, and my brother quickly levered a 300 win mag into the chamber as we headed down to check him out. A bear ambushed him, and completely crushed his skull with a massive bite. it was hard dirt so we only found two tracks with massive claw marks. The quills on top of his head were all gone so there was a bear, and we assumed a grizzly bear, holed up nearby with a mouth full of quills! what made even less sense is that 100 yards away was the gut pile from my buck. I wish I had remembered to get pictures but we were more concerned with getting out of there and watching our backs! that made our decision that it was time to head out of the mountains since my brother has a whole month to fill his tag haha!
this was an absolutely amazing experience and worth all the time and money it took to plan it. I suggest every one of you plan a high county hunt and make it happen!
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