My hunt area was South Slope-Vernal-Bonanza. My friend Bill had this same hunt earlier and killed a cow elk from his tree stand. He took me up there Monday, October 26, at 8700 feet elevation.
On Wednesday I drove the 15 miles in my Park Avenue Buick. Bob followed in his pickup to see where I would hunt in case I phoned him for help should I kill an elk. My daughter Linda walked in with me. She has a cell phone, I do not. I was in the tree stand at daylight, 12 feet above ground, for two hours. Then I came down and we hunted through the woods until 2 pm. Not a good way to hunt elk, but we enjoyed the day.
Next day Bob drove me into the forest. We climbed up a steep hillside, a nightmare of downed timber for about 300 yards, to get to a ridge he knew about. Stalked along that for an hour or so, no elk. It began to rain lightly, so I was OK with driving around. Friday and Saturday I recovered. Sunday I went to a .22 shoot and came in sixth in the 50-shot trail walk. Got home about 2:30pm and drove up to my hunt area. Was on the stand till 5:10 pm, then stalked out through some regrowth. Saw an elk about 50 feet away, the legs and body but not the head, so no shot there. Got to my car at 6:00 pm, home 30 minutes later.
Monday I drove up again and walked in about half a mile to a crossing. No elk. Had to come home at noon and play guitar at the Care Center. Tuesday I took my wife and Linda to the Election Day Dinner and played guitar at the Beehive home. Wednesday it was raining when Bob picked me up, snow on the mountain. He wanted to drive roads, and we saw about a dozen elk a half mile away, headed east. He dropped me off to walk in and find them, but they were gone. Tracked them bout a half mile into a steep canyon and gave up on them.
I wanted back at the area I knew, and when we got there a Quad (?) was driving out with three guys in it and a calf elk. They said three or four elk ran north, into my hunt area. Bob unloaded the ATV and gave me my first ride on such a thing. We circled my area, found no tracks out but those going in. I dropped off to walk east the quarter mile where he was to go and wait. Found three elk beds in the snow, tracked them to the trail. They crossed where I expected they would but kept going east. I followed the tracks to the main road, then gave up on them. We called it a hunt.
I have hunted elk in Oregon, Idaho, Colorado and Utah and know a lot about looking for them, little about finding them and less about shooting them, having killed only two spike bulls. But I had a good hunt. Walked about seven miles . (Google Earth has a ruler where you can measure distances on the ground, or trace a path that tells you how far you travel). That Hawken rifle is heavy, 10 3/4 pounds, and hard to hold with wool gloves. I don't think I could have held it to shoot seated in that tree stand, so I propped a pole up against it that I could have rested the rifle against.
I pulled one ball after a couple days hunt and had to dig the packed powder out. Won't do that again. After hunting in the snow the last day, the rifle fired normally on the way home. I won't hunt elk again, too unrewarding. I hope to draw an antelope tag next year.
We knew of only two calves killed, both by people in ATVs. The success rate for this ML hunt last year was 27.8 percent for an average of 5.2 days hunted.
