First season Elk hunt

get hooked · 10-19-2002, 03:45 PM

This is wishing all you first season elk hunters the best of luck. May you have a safe and productive hunt.........

Bait O' Eggs · 10-20-2002, 02:37 PM

I spent the weekend with my 5 yr old boy hunting with my brother and dad and dads long time hunting partner. I figured not having a tag I could hold back and spend some quality time with my boy and expose him to some elk hunting.

They had been scouting for a couple days and had a large herd with a dandy 6 and a couple rag 4's and a couple spikes in it. Saturday morning the 3 guns are all hiking up the ridge to get into shooting position at various points. I got into camp late Friday night and got directions on where they were headed. I was going to be spotting from the road, and right after daylight I see about 35 elk feeding around the hill, all elk were accounted for except the big 6. My little brother is the only one in shooting position where the elk were and he lets the spikes go by, and he could only see one of the 4's and lets it go by :shocked: . He is looking for the big 6 and for some reason he didnt come out and play. :depressed: I am on the radio chattering up a storm on what I can see and where it is since I have the best view at a couple miles. Finally one of the 4's comes back out into the opening at 518yds and my brother dumped it with one shot. He didnt see it go down, but I was watching it and saw it doing cartwheels down the steep hill. :smile:

I rounded up their packboards and headed up the hill with my boy. We had trail for quite a ways which made it easy going then we had to do some steep rocky faces that I wasnt real happy with having my boy with me. Finally we get to the elk and we process the elk and pack it out. I really proud of my boy for making it all the way there and back without one complaint. I wasnt sure he could even make it when we took off, it was quite a hike. There was a couple spots I took my pack across and then came back to help him cross as a single slip would have been ugly.

I figured that night he would be sleeping in matter of minutes as he was really tired. We hop in bed and he starts asking me questions about the dead elk. :whazzup: Will its mommy miss it? Did the daddy elk that we shot have any kids? and will the kids miss its daddy? Will all the other elk in the herd know what happened to the daddy elk that we shot? Did the elk hurt when it was shot? He badgered me with tough questions for about 30 minutes, I think he had a lot of things going thru his head that he needed to work out. [img]graemlins/1zhelp.gif[/img] After he finally fell asleep, I lay there thinking back thru our conversation and wishing I would have been better prepared for these questions and hoped I had answered them in the right way. Sunday morning he is up before the crack of dawn waking me up and wanting to go hunting again, so I guess he wasnt to confused about it all.

I was really relieved he still wanted to go hunting. He did say we didnt have to walk so far today as he was still kind of tired from yesterdays long walk. I felt the same way.

Rip'N'Lips · 10-20-2002, 05:40 PM

BOE-

Where abouts were you hunting, (general area)? I am hunting the second season as I was too busy at work to take any time off. I would be glad to take one of those spikes in about 3 weeks....

Did you see any other successful hunters? I pulled the plug on our trip on Tuesday when it was 80 degrees and opted for the second season... I am sure I was wrong to do so, but I really was having problems getting time off work...

Good to see you got your son involved.... I did the same thing with my daughter last week, shot a grouse, my wife is still not talking to me because my daughter who is 6 wants to be a hunter...

Thanks,

Rip'N'Lips

Small Fry · 10-20-2002, 09:44 PM

Well our trip went as planned! :smile: The wife and I had cow tags for S Sumpter. Hunted on a privet ranch. Did some scouting Friday afternoon didn't see much coming out of the lower fields so we figured we would hunt up high the next morning. Didn't see anything in the morning. We decided to make a hunt to see if they any slipped by up higher. Nope none up there either. About 1:30 in the afternoon we crest a hill over looking were we had been watching in the morning. Here come about a dozen elk over the far ridge. They drop in to a bunch of trees and disappear. The same spot we had watched all morning. We sat and watched and waited for about 2 hours. I finally spotted a good size bull across the canyon come out of the trees 300+ yards. After what seemed forever a couple of cows show. Well after a whole bunch of shooting we finally got both of our cows by 4:00 that afternoon. After gutting both we were able to diver to the first one that day and after making a road the next morning we got the second one out. Every time we go over there it amazes me how big that country is. And how cold it can get 14 the first morning and 10 the next. Highs in the 60s

alwyze fishin · 10-21-2002, 02:51 PM

Got a spike in the Trask unit sunday morning

Now back to fishin

Rip'N'Lips · 10-21-2002, 04:27 PM

Alwyze-

I was supposed to hunt the Trask, but I had schedule conflicts (family stuff) and work has been difficult to get time off. Glad to hear you got an elk, but you were supposed to save the spikes for me.

How bad were the people? Last couple years we had problems getting away from the people to find a place to hunt.

We normally hunt the south Fork of the Trask area. What general area were you in, don't want your exact location, but I had some friends up there and haven't heard back from them yet.

Rip'N'Lips

batman · 10-21-2002, 05:13 PM

A friend and I hunted just SW of Santiam Pass - really warm and no animals.... beautiful country tho, great big canyons and meadows, but the timber was some of the toughest I have been in - LOTS of blowdown/snowdown trees and noisy - really hard to get thru - heard very few shots - saw one gut pile right on the road...... and one big six point in a truck - had to go back to work just as the weather was turning for the better..... oh well. Congrats on all who tagged out!

pdxkevin · 10-21-2002, 05:29 PM

A friend and I went out into the Trask and Wilson units Saturday, Sunday and most of today.

We saw fresh tracks, scat, rubs and even caught the scent a couple times. One set of tracks was HUGE and DEEP. They must a sunk 1-1/2" into the mud where the others were in the 1/2" to 3/4" range.

Some people we bumped into at various times had a 5x5, another had a 3x4, and two others got spikes with guards.

We got zip. Well, it was a great bunch of hikes and plenty of exercise! Now its back to work. So yet another tag goes unfilled. 8( Maybe next year?!?

The Trask area off of 6 was very busy. Not with hunters though. You could hardly turn around on an elk path and there was a bike racing up the hill right at you! I think I counted 8 bike camps out there.

willametteriveroutlaw · 10-21-2002, 06:20 PM

This was my first year hunting the Cascades unit after 3 years of hunting east. I thought I had a reasonable opportunity after watching a 5x6 and a 7x7 fighting the week before. We went in at o dartk thirty sat morning, saw another car there but didn't think much of it. At first light the buguling started. Appearantly the guy who came in decided that he was going to bugule them in. 30 bugles later in the first hour of light later he gave up. :whazzup: Me and my partner proceeded to start hunting the timber right after first light. I cow called in two bulls but couldn't get a shot. The big 7x7 almost took me out running from my partner. That was the extent of our morning excitement. That afternoon when we were getting ready head back out and hunt a large flat ridgeline, 2 idiots came flying by on 4wheelers, from the direction we were planning to hunt. I struck up a friendly conversation with them, took down there ATV liscense #'s, found out where they parked, and then kindly informed them that they were riding on weyhouser land that is closed to ATV's period. To which they repiled that I didn't know what I was talking about.. As they drove away one of them made an asinie remark about those two idiots. I then proceeded to call Weyhouser security and the linn county sherrif, loaded with info. We watched them get tagged and then went back to huntin. I then called in the idiot with the bugle with a cow call.
Right at dark we found some really promising area and plan to be back up there Wednesday morning.

Wak · 10-21-2002, 07:02 PM

Alwyze-
Congrats....How much did it weigh?? Ha ha ha