- Joined
- Dec 20, 2022
- Messages
- 460
- Reaction score
- 887
Right behind my house there are about 650 acres of state land lying across a fairly steep mountain canyon. There are lots of deer, black bears, mountain lions, foxes, and three kinds of forest grouse on the state land year 'round. A herd of about 100 elk tend to cross the state land and maybe linger for a few days when they are moving between winter and summer range, but they are rarely present on the state land for extended periods of time. Several moose winter in the canyon too. I keep a pretty close eye on the state land because my two lab pups and I get out for a 1 to 2 hour exercise hike on it just about every day. I particularly enjoy hiking when there's some snow because you can really see what's been going on, but our hikes are necessarily a lot shorter when the snow is 24 inches deep everywhere, and waist deep in places! Last year I killed a small forkhorn "freezer buck" on the state land during the general season, but I only found two small groups of elk there while I was hunting during the general any-weapon season. Because I didn't draw a cow tag and there wasn't a bull in either group, I didn't get an elk during the general season last year. I spent a couple of days hunting with my Renegade during MT's 9-day December Heritage ML season, but winter hit us really early and really hard last year, and the elk were all down on their winter range, which is almost all private land. HIGH temperature on the days I hunted was about - 10 degrees F, and there were feet of snow on the ground already.
This year I drew a cow tag which allowed me to kill a cow in my home hunting district, and to use my general tag to kill another elk in any other hunting district if I filled my cow tag in my home hunting district. I didn't get out with my bow until the very end of MT's 6 week archery season, and despite hunting for 7 days, I didn't get an elk. However, I did find several hard-to-get-into areas in my home hunting district that the elk use very heavily for just that reason, so prospects for next year's archery season are brighter. Elk are constantly on the move between their favorite hiding places - to avoid wolves and to avoid humans - and they can smell your presence up to several days after you were in one of their favorite spots, so the key to success is to have a catalog of high use areas, and to rotate between them, allowing several days to pass until you revisit any one spot, until you and the elk cross paths. I've killed elk in CO, NM, MT, and OR, and have hunted them without killing one in several areas of WA and ID, and have found this to be generally true wherever I've hunted.
During Montana's general (any weapon) elk season, which ran from 15 October thru 27 November this year, we got 18 inches of snow at my house over roughly three days, starting on about the 23d of October. When the snow stopped the pups and I went for a hike, and found about 100 elk bedded in the snow on a saddle at the edge of the state land, about a third of a mile up the ridge behind my house. The next day I went out early with my .308, and tracked the elk around a big loop on the state land without finding them. On the way back to my house, though, I stumbled into a bunch of elk bedded on private land just across the fence from the state land. To my surprise they crossed the fence onto the state land, ran across the ridge we were on, and then decended into the main canyon. I hurried to the edge of the canyon, and then decided to continue up the rim of the canyon, stopping frequently to glass the canyon in hope of re-locating the herd.
On my second stop, I located the herd of about 20 elk, which included one pretty nice 5x6 bull, in a draw on the opposite side of the canyon. I continued up the rim until I was out of sight of the elk, then quickly decended to the bottom of the canyon, climbed the opposite side of the canyon to about the same elevation as the elk, and then crept up to the edge of the draw until I could just barely see over it to where I'd last seen the elk. They had bedded down among sparse trees all along the opposite side of the draw, about 200 yards away! Getting into a shooting position was a little tricky, because my edge of the draw was sparsely timbered and broadly rounded, and I would be moving and in full view of the elk, all of which were looking in my direction, if I moved far enough across the rounded edge of the draw to shoot from a sitting or prone position. So, I backed down from the edge until I was completely out of the elk's sight, then moved uphill until I located a log which offered a shooting position as well as concealment while I crawled up to it through the snow.
My next decision was which elk to shoot? At least 10 were bedded down in positions that offered a shot. I could see the bull, but wouldn't have a shot at him until he got up - which could be an hour or more, and a gentle breeze that could easily carry my scent to the elk was swirling around in the draw. I decided that since I have a bigger sent of antlers on my wall, and eating big bull taken at the end of the rut is more about discipline than fine dining, I would go for a cow. Besides the eating quality and antler considerations, if I shot a cow, I could continue hunting elk with both centerfire rifle and my Renegade in other MT hunting districts. With that settled, which cow? I kinda hate to shoot a cow that has a calf, because that means 3 less elk next year: The cow I shot, the unborn calf she is carrying, and the calf she already has, which is almost certain not to make it through the winter without her. There was one really big dark brown cow that was lying apart from the rest and didn't seem to have a calf with her, though, so I decided that she was the one. A few minutes later she got up, turned broadside, and I squeezed the trigger.
The big cow turned and stumbled down her side of the draw towards me and into a clump of trees. As she was headed into the trees quartering towards me, I fired a second shot, which proved to have entered behind her near shoulder and into her paunch. At the shots, the rest of the herd jumped up and ran after her, and then just milled around in confusion. A few seconds later the cow reversed course, headed back towards where she had been bedded, and then went down. Her head was still up, though, so I fired a third shot, which dropped her head for good.
To my amazement, the rest of the herd followed the stricken cow back up her side of the draw, and continued to mill around after she went down! After the third shot most of them ran, but the big bull ran up to the cow, bent over and sniffed her, and then ran after the others. Based on her size and the others' behavior towards her, I think the cow I shot must have been the lead cow in this harem.
Elk can be relatively easy to kill - two adult elk that I've killed with single arrows through the chest went down for good within seconds - but they can also be incredibly tough: This cow was still on her feet at least 5 minutes after taking two high-quality .308 bullets through the chest. The biggest bull I've killed was quartering towards me at a range of 12 yards when I released a heavy arrow tipped with a huge 3-blade broadhead. That bull ran 800 yards after the broadhead entered just behind his near shoulder, took out the near lung, went through his diaphram, sliced his liver, went through his paunch, entered his far hip, and wound up just an inch from the hide on the far side of his far hip. It's simply incredible that any animal could run 800 yards with an arrow still lodged on a diagonal through its body like that.
I skinned and boned the cow where she fell. She wasn't lactating, and had inches of fat under her hide, so I think my initial assessment was right: She was a barren old cow, and was the lead cow of this little herd. After the cow was boned out, I cached the meat under a tree about 200 yards down the hill from the kill site, and because darkness was falling, I headed home for the night. The next morning I was back at the cache with my polyethylene ice fishing sled, and because it was all downhill through the bottom of the canyon to the bottom of my driveway, I was able to get all the meat onto the sled and drag it out in one trip. That's far and away the easiest elk pack-out that I've ever done!! The big bull mentioned above fell at 11,000 feet in a wilderness area north of Taos, NM - 3,000 vertical feet above my truck and 6 miles back in. I was a lot younger and tougher then....
A few days later Tina made an elk shank roast in her pressure cooker. Elk shank is normally tough and full of sinew, but after an hour in the pressure cooker with a blend of Tina's special spices, this one was so tender that it just fell apart, and had a wonderful, very mild flavor. Before eating we gave some very heartfelt thanks for getting out of the State of Insanity (FKA the State of Washington) successfully, and landing in such a wonderful place in Montana.
In Part 2 I'll describe last week's muzzle loader hunt in a different part of Montana.
This year I drew a cow tag which allowed me to kill a cow in my home hunting district, and to use my general tag to kill another elk in any other hunting district if I filled my cow tag in my home hunting district. I didn't get out with my bow until the very end of MT's 6 week archery season, and despite hunting for 7 days, I didn't get an elk. However, I did find several hard-to-get-into areas in my home hunting district that the elk use very heavily for just that reason, so prospects for next year's archery season are brighter. Elk are constantly on the move between their favorite hiding places - to avoid wolves and to avoid humans - and they can smell your presence up to several days after you were in one of their favorite spots, so the key to success is to have a catalog of high use areas, and to rotate between them, allowing several days to pass until you revisit any one spot, until you and the elk cross paths. I've killed elk in CO, NM, MT, and OR, and have hunted them without killing one in several areas of WA and ID, and have found this to be generally true wherever I've hunted.
During Montana's general (any weapon) elk season, which ran from 15 October thru 27 November this year, we got 18 inches of snow at my house over roughly three days, starting on about the 23d of October. When the snow stopped the pups and I went for a hike, and found about 100 elk bedded in the snow on a saddle at the edge of the state land, about a third of a mile up the ridge behind my house. The next day I went out early with my .308, and tracked the elk around a big loop on the state land without finding them. On the way back to my house, though, I stumbled into a bunch of elk bedded on private land just across the fence from the state land. To my surprise they crossed the fence onto the state land, ran across the ridge we were on, and then decended into the main canyon. I hurried to the edge of the canyon, and then decided to continue up the rim of the canyon, stopping frequently to glass the canyon in hope of re-locating the herd.
On my second stop, I located the herd of about 20 elk, which included one pretty nice 5x6 bull, in a draw on the opposite side of the canyon. I continued up the rim until I was out of sight of the elk, then quickly decended to the bottom of the canyon, climbed the opposite side of the canyon to about the same elevation as the elk, and then crept up to the edge of the draw until I could just barely see over it to where I'd last seen the elk. They had bedded down among sparse trees all along the opposite side of the draw, about 200 yards away! Getting into a shooting position was a little tricky, because my edge of the draw was sparsely timbered and broadly rounded, and I would be moving and in full view of the elk, all of which were looking in my direction, if I moved far enough across the rounded edge of the draw to shoot from a sitting or prone position. So, I backed down from the edge until I was completely out of the elk's sight, then moved uphill until I located a log which offered a shooting position as well as concealment while I crawled up to it through the snow.
My next decision was which elk to shoot? At least 10 were bedded down in positions that offered a shot. I could see the bull, but wouldn't have a shot at him until he got up - which could be an hour or more, and a gentle breeze that could easily carry my scent to the elk was swirling around in the draw. I decided that since I have a bigger sent of antlers on my wall, and eating big bull taken at the end of the rut is more about discipline than fine dining, I would go for a cow. Besides the eating quality and antler considerations, if I shot a cow, I could continue hunting elk with both centerfire rifle and my Renegade in other MT hunting districts. With that settled, which cow? I kinda hate to shoot a cow that has a calf, because that means 3 less elk next year: The cow I shot, the unborn calf she is carrying, and the calf she already has, which is almost certain not to make it through the winter without her. There was one really big dark brown cow that was lying apart from the rest and didn't seem to have a calf with her, though, so I decided that she was the one. A few minutes later she got up, turned broadside, and I squeezed the trigger.
The big cow turned and stumbled down her side of the draw towards me and into a clump of trees. As she was headed into the trees quartering towards me, I fired a second shot, which proved to have entered behind her near shoulder and into her paunch. At the shots, the rest of the herd jumped up and ran after her, and then just milled around in confusion. A few seconds later the cow reversed course, headed back towards where she had been bedded, and then went down. Her head was still up, though, so I fired a third shot, which dropped her head for good.
To my amazement, the rest of the herd followed the stricken cow back up her side of the draw, and continued to mill around after she went down! After the third shot most of them ran, but the big bull ran up to the cow, bent over and sniffed her, and then ran after the others. Based on her size and the others' behavior towards her, I think the cow I shot must have been the lead cow in this harem.
Elk can be relatively easy to kill - two adult elk that I've killed with single arrows through the chest went down for good within seconds - but they can also be incredibly tough: This cow was still on her feet at least 5 minutes after taking two high-quality .308 bullets through the chest. The biggest bull I've killed was quartering towards me at a range of 12 yards when I released a heavy arrow tipped with a huge 3-blade broadhead. That bull ran 800 yards after the broadhead entered just behind his near shoulder, took out the near lung, went through his diaphram, sliced his liver, went through his paunch, entered his far hip, and wound up just an inch from the hide on the far side of his far hip. It's simply incredible that any animal could run 800 yards with an arrow still lodged on a diagonal through its body like that.
I skinned and boned the cow where she fell. She wasn't lactating, and had inches of fat under her hide, so I think my initial assessment was right: She was a barren old cow, and was the lead cow of this little herd. After the cow was boned out, I cached the meat under a tree about 200 yards down the hill from the kill site, and because darkness was falling, I headed home for the night. The next morning I was back at the cache with my polyethylene ice fishing sled, and because it was all downhill through the bottom of the canyon to the bottom of my driveway, I was able to get all the meat onto the sled and drag it out in one trip. That's far and away the easiest elk pack-out that I've ever done!! The big bull mentioned above fell at 11,000 feet in a wilderness area north of Taos, NM - 3,000 vertical feet above my truck and 6 miles back in. I was a lot younger and tougher then....
A few days later Tina made an elk shank roast in her pressure cooker. Elk shank is normally tough and full of sinew, but after an hour in the pressure cooker with a blend of Tina's special spices, this one was so tender that it just fell apart, and had a wonderful, very mild flavor. Before eating we gave some very heartfelt thanks for getting out of the State of Insanity (FKA the State of Washington) successfully, and landing in such a wonderful place in Montana.
In Part 2 I'll describe last week's muzzle loader hunt in a different part of Montana.
