Well I’m home and back to work still daydreaming about the hunt last week. It started out really slow without even a doe under my stand for the first 3 days. On day 4 it was raining so I stayed in the stand longer. I got out for lunch and then got back in. I checked the camera and I had a 5x5 bull come in while I was eating lunch at camp. Day 5 and 6 it was pouring rain and hail . There was so much hail on the ground it looked like snow. One night I had 2 bulls fighting down the hill from me at last light. The next night I setup down that hill instead of my stand but nothing showed up but some turkeys. The hill is only 200 yards to the bottom but is at 10,000 ft elevation and I thought my heart was going to explode trying to climb back up. So I got back in the stand the next night only to see two 6x6’s down the hill again. Some afternoons I could hear them moving in the timber but only a few cow elk would step out. The next night I set up inside of the timber to catch them on the move but they didn’t show. With only one day left the old-timer camping next to us said he had some bulls in his spot and invited me to come along. This guy has killed over 30 elk in his lifetime and I had nothing to lose. We met up at 5 AM and took the quads down into a spot known on the mountain as the Meat-Hole. After an hour ride we got off and he blind folded me to walk in the last mile. (Not really, but we did have a gentleman’s agreement that this is his spot and I am a guest, and not to tell anyone or return to it) I agreed and will honor my word. We only knew each other’s first names and he was older that my Dad. I had some safety concerns if he was fit enough to make it in and back but he set a nice pace. We stopped to rest often and sometimes he would pull this device from his pocket to check it. It was a Wi-Fi device that talked to his pacemaker and then sent info back to the hospital every hour. I learned a lot about elk hunting from him that day and wished it wasn’t my last day. There was fresh elk sign everywhere. We did 5 sets and called in 3 cow elk. One ran up to just 5 yards away. We had bulls answer back about 10 times but couldn’t get them to leave their cows and come in.
On my last night I went back to my elk stand at the top of the mountain. With only 10 minutes of shooting light left I could hear an elk moving through the timber like a bull in a China shop, and he was coming my way. Closer ………. Closer………. When he finally stepped out of the dark timber and into my 40 yard meadow he was at just 20 yards from me and a beautiful 6x6 bull. He was behind tree branches and to my extreme right. Being a right handed shooter I can’t shoot to my far right without completely turning around in my tree stand. I waited patiently for him to walk into the little meadow and into my killing zone. It was dead quite. All I could hear was my heart pounding as buck fever kicked in. The excitement was awesome and I haven’t got that with deer in many years. I tried to catch my breath and was afraid he would hear my heavy breathing. He was just standing there shaking his head and scratching his butt with his antlers. I was looking for any possible shooting window but it was tight. Then he slowly walked down the trail and out of my life forever……………..
