TriggerTime426
Well-Known Member
Me and a buddy set out for a public land DIY first ever elk hunt in Colorado for the second rifle season that I had been planning for about 2 years, and thought I would share the experience for others thinking about tackling something like this. We drove 16 hours from Iowa and went to unit 12. I had our hunting area mapped out and were gonna walk about 3.5 4 miles to our spike camp and hunt from there. When we got there Friday we learned from the locals that the atv trails were impassible up in elevation due to feet of snow, even though multiple calls to the CPW said otherwise. So we had to scrap months of mapping and onx Escouting. We spent the next few hours making a quick backup plan checked some atv trails out and slept in the truck, and hit it hard in the morning. We drove the atvs a few miles and packed out about 1.5 miles to our spike camp, got set up and spent the afternoon scouting spots to hunt in the morning. We got to our first spot and ran into a group of hunters in a "elk camp" by a atv trail head we thought was closed so we moved to spot 2 and a hour or 2 into glassing started finding more orange but about 1500 yards away, so we stuck to it. The next day we went to the same spot and had 5 hunters "push" through the valley we were hunting multiple times 300 yards away from us. We moved and decided to hike out about 2 miles deeper away from the orange in a spot I had mentioned could be good if we were willing to hike 2 miles back and fourth from the spike camp. Now Monday we glassed that afternoon and at 6pm with about 10-15min of light left my buddy spotted a 5x4 bull about 1000yds out in beetle kill and after getting on him I also spotted a smaller bull. The rule we had was you spot it you shoot it, after a couple min of watching them my buddy said he didn't feel comfortable taking that shot. I told him this is what I built my gun for and had hours of practice shooting it at 800-1000yds and that I was comfortable and confident I could take him. I ranged him at 1006yds and my buddy spotted for me, I pulled the trigger shot felt great and my buddy reported HIT he rolled, hes down he died at the top of a small mudslide. I hit him in the liver quartering away a bit and it stopped in his back shoulder just under the skin going through his back lung. The shot was taken with a custom rem 700 6.5-06 with 156 berger I built ground up. This was my first elk hunt and first 1000yd plus kill and it was an amazing achievement that I'm very proud of. I don't know if me or my buddy was more excited. We got to him deboned and hung him up, and got back to camp at 1:30, and still had to boil water and prepare for the morning. We spent the rest of the week getting him out losing 1 day to rain and hunting Friday morningand leaving that afternoon back home. It was the hardest and most rewarding thing I have done to date especially since suffering a meniscus knee injury 3 month prior and having surgery to clean it up and bust my a** to get back to hunting shape in time.
