How 'bout this, my most memorable elk hunt:
We were tracking a herd of Roosevelts in thick timber higher and higher toward timberline on Afognak Island near Kodiak, aided by the first skiff of snow of the year that had fallen the night before. We KNEW the tracks were fresh, and no doubt about it.
Late in the morning the tracks approached a ridge line, and knowing the crest was bare rock with dense alders on the back side the four of us split into pairs, circling to come at the crest from either side. But before my partner and I reached the edge of the trees we heard two shots. Oh shucks, we were too late. Or words to that effect.
As we stood there in disappointment we heard distant thunder growing louder. Just as we realized it was flying hooves and the herd had spooked toward us, a river of dark bodies burst into the timber right on top of us, passing so close a 32" barrel was too long to raise into position even if it had occurred to us as we did our best not to be overrun. The elk were parting just uphill on either side of a large spruce tree an arms length away. My partner and I instinctively huddled closer to it for protection, whether we got shots or not.
Just as it occurred to us the stampede was thinning, two stragglers appeared and we both raise our rifles, pointed and fired. No swing to it when elk hair is less than a barrel length from the muzzle. He was shooting an 06 and I was shooting a 54 cal Lyman GPR. Both animals (mine a rag horn and his a large cow) collapsed and rolled at the shots, but in my minds eye I could swear I saw flames from my muzzle on hair, even if I couldn't find any char later.
But wait, there's more! It turns out our pards were successful too. So there we were, four rough miles from the boat in dense brown bear country with 4 Roosevelt elk down. Need I point out that they're lots larger than Rocky Mountain elk? It was well past midnight before we boned all that meat and packed it a half mile to a grove of spruce in a meadow downhill, where we hoisted each bag at least 20 feet of the ground. There was no question the brown bears would be on the kill site before the next day passed, but we judged half a mile of clearance was enough to save the meat.
It was early December with around 5 hours of daylight, so all we could manage was a single round trip to the meat cache per day. Four elk x five 100 pound packs each divided by four guys meant 5 days of packing, each day approaching the cache on high alert for bears. It turned out we had picked a neat cache, because we could circle that 5 acre grove of spruce and check all around for bear tracks pointed inwards.
It was about day 3 and I was carrying my 375 H&H in the certainty that bear issues were ever more likely. I had reached the bottom of the grove when we all hollered back and forth to confirm no bear tracks, so I shouldered the rifle and headed up the little draw through the grove to the cache.
Just as I could see the hanging bags and was rounding the last turn to reach the base of the tree, I almost plowed into this big expanse of dark brown fur right at waist height. Ah man, pass the Preparation H.
It took only a second or two to recognize it was elk hide rather than bear, but it cost me a year of life I'm sure. It turns out one of the pards decided he wanted a hide, so the night before he trekked up to the kill site and collected one, draping it over a log right at the base of the cache tree to drain and dry a little before packing it out. And of course, not telling anyone. I doubt either of us could reconstruct the language I used, but both remember clearly the tone of my remarks as I pointed out the errors in his ways.
