I took work off Friday and headed to the Ochoccos to look for that wall hanger.
My hunting partner and his 13 year old son and myself were planning on making a hike from point X to camp on Friday. Just after daylight I spotted about a dozen elk at a few miles and we couldnt see any horns in the bunch and stuck with the original plan. When we got to the parking spot we could see a pair of bulls (nice 5x5 and rag 4) standing out in the opening looking at us at about 400 yards. They headed into the same patch of timber we had to hike thru so we spent quite a bit of time looking for them. They wouldnt talk and we couldnt entice them. We went a couple miles without finding any more elk. We had a walo marked on the GPS and went to see if it has been getting any bull attention. The water was clear and not chewed up yet. While we were there doing a little calling we had a rag 4 come into about 70 yards and spot us about the same time we saw it.
he didnt hang around long.
We split up and headed to camp via 2 routes. I heard an elk bugle right behind camp on a cat road that several hunters hike. It is the classic power bugle, very flutey sounding. I kind of laugh and I say to myself, "keep practicing buddy". I bugle back trying to see if this hunter will leave the road and come the mile or so across the canyon to where I was. I hear a second bugle from the same spot, only this time it sounds like a primos terminator and I say to myself "your parter is a better bugler than you are". I bugle back still trying to suck these hunters off the road.
A couple minutes go by and I hear some cow calling. I call my buddy on the radio and tell him we got a couple guys on the road behind camp calling. I hike off to the side to avoid running into these guys. I keep listening to this cow calling that is becoming so frequent that there is no way a team of 5 callers could call so frequent. I was hearing 2 or 3 cow calls per second for about 5 minutes. I call my buddy and ask if he can see the road behind camp, I am in the brush and cant see across the canyon. He looks and tells me he can see 5 elk in the trees below the road. :shocked: :shocked: He was glassing more than a mile at his point.
I changed direction and headed straight for what would turn out to be one of the biggest herds I have ever crossed path with. I get in the creek just below the herd and every time I call with a hyper hot call a bull would bugle right above me about 100 yards. I am almost to them after 30 minutes of calling and them not coming to me. I get pinned down by a doe that was between me and the elk. I did not want the doe to run and take the herd so I just stood there while the herd fed off. After about 30 minutes of this doe staring at me I am trying to figure out if I should just shoot her at the 30 yards she is standing there looking at me from. I wouldnt do that, but it crossed my mind. Finally the elk had fed up the hill quite a ways and the doe walked off, it seemed forever. I get back into the herd in no time and I got bulls bugling like crazy all around me. I could not suck one of the bulls out of the herd to me. They keep going up the hill and I keep pushing at them, calling, bugling, sneaking...... it didnt matter they wanted no part of me. They just generally fed off nice and slow. It got all quite and I was having a hard time trying to figure out which way they went when my buddy called me on the radio and told me he has seen a 5x5, 4 rag 4's, a morphodite 5x4 bull with a drop eye guard, 6 spikes, and at least 50 or 60 cows. He had managed to get ahead of me and was on the elk. He pursued these elk for an hour or more while they traveled about 1/2 mile. He keeps radioing me the distance and bearing he is from camp on GPS and the direction the elk are traveling, while I beat feet around and get set up ahead of the elk at the same bearing from camp the elk are traveling, I am about 3/4 mile ahead and am waiting for them to feed to me. My buddy is cow calling and trying to sneak into the back of the herd. He keeps getting close only to get screwed up by a cow who wouldnt let him move in to get a shot on a bull. Just before the elk get to me, they dive off the ridge and head for the creek. We have pursued these elk for well over a mile at this point, and have crossed a major ridge into a second drainage. We drop into the creek with them and my buddy draws on a spike at 40 yards at it stands and faces him and wont give him anything to shoot at but its front. It turned and went into the brush before he could get the shot. We watch the elk feed up the other side of the creek in pines and firs that is very open. We encounted the elk around 11 am and it is now 6pm, and we are a 1.5 hour walk from camp. One of us have been within 200 yards of the elk the entire time. With 2 hours to dark and this hunt going no where productive we decide to just march right into the herd and let a cow look at us if she wants. It was really quite interesting, the cows that trailed would run and bark and the bull would bugle and the herd would round up but there were so many of them they didnt know which way to go. I got 62 yards (rangefinder) from a broadside spike. He looked a lot closer but it wasnt quite close enough.
I was probably 80 yards from the 5x5 as he was running around keeping his herd all balled up. They would run about 100 yards, we would hyper hot or cow call and they would all stop and look back. We would get within 40 or 50 yards from several of the cows and they would run. We would call and some of the elk would come back to us, thinking we were where they needed to be, they would see us and go the other way. We played this game several times. A couple of the rag 4's got within range but due to brush etc.... we couldnt get a shot. It was really interesting how confused these elk were and the mass confusion of elk all around us. We had elk actually circle around behind us and then back out front again to the herd.
It seemed like a good idea at the time to just sneak in as fast as we could and catch up with the elk as we were running out of light, as we had been getting spotted by cows all day that would stare at us, not quite sure what they were looking at, then feed off, for us to only get pinned down by a cow again. All in all we guess there were about 75 elk.
I guess one of those bulls had no reason to come check out our cow calls as he had 60 or so females right in front of him, and one lone cow call 100 yards behind him. Why walk all the way back there when I got more here than I can take care of. :whazzup: They were not rutting very hard as the bigger bull had not run any of the little bulls off yet, they were all like one big family.
Sunday I got with 40 yards of another spike who only gave me a shot at his head. I was at full draw and he wouldnt present himself, 2 more steps and I would have been tracking blood. We played a little cat and mouse till I got winded and it was all over.
We spent Sat, Sun and Mon trying to find our herd and they disappeared and we couldnt find them again. The armada of hunters that showed on Friday night to camp everywhere didnt help us any, as there were people everywhere.
My biggest dissapointment for the trip was in the evenings watching the trucks with 3 or 4 guys in the back driving the roads at 5 miles per hour and shooting the does that are almost tame enough to eat out of your hands. We saw at least a dozen does a day that would stand 10 to 20 yards off the road and look at you. These "hunters" (and I use that term loosely) had there rolling tree stand (a chevy truck) doing 5 mph while they had arrows nocked and waiting for the next doe to stand broadside for a shot. I am sure it is illegal to shoot from the back of a truck, let alone ride around with your arrows nocked. I watched 3 trucks do this both on sat. and sun. evening. :depressed:
My buddies 13 year old boy, didnt have a tag, and was just along for the experience, he is still talking about all the elk he saw and talked to. A very positive experience for the boy.
[ 09-02-2002, 08:41 PM: Message edited by: Bait O' Eggs ]
2nd weekend, almost but no cigar
Alligator
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