Alarm went off @ 430am, got dressed and off to meet the guys for a day of elk hunting=nothing too unusual.
Get to Tysons just after Recoil got there. Who's driving? Well my chev 98 3/4 ton ext cab gets by far the best mileage and chains but is ruff and has the least amount of room. Recoils Chev o2 crew cab gets no mileage, is ruff and no chains. Tyson just bought a 3/4 ton mega cab Power Wagon with factory winch and lockers all around, mileage is not great but he gets the vote= This is one nice 4 wheelin unit!
We get to our favorite lookout just as it get light enough to see and it don't take long to find elk. They are of coarse probably on privet land but we move to a different lookout to get a better look. They ( I will not pay a trespass fee to fill a meat tag!) had just decided to pay the $250 trespass fee to go after them when I start laughing and told them to look west, through the binoculars we see two trucks heading for the elk=Game over as they chased the elk into the next county before they ever saw them!
Plan B
Head up 33 mile road to see what we can find. This is one nasty piece of road and it gets worse the higher you go!!! We get 20 or so miles up it and take a 2 track that should take us to the back side of the Ed-O-Taylor. We only get in a little ways and Tyson decides he can run on top of the hard crusted snow=Wrong! Luckily the Power wagon comes with a factory winch and we have a tree volunteering to be the anchor. We get out easily and proceed up the trail, this time avoiding the crusted snow. About 8 miles in we get to a spot where the snow is wide but don't look too deep so he locks her up and tries again to cross it=WRONG again!! But this time there aint a tree within a mile and no big rocks within cable reach The truck is hung up on the front axle and nobody thought to throw a shovel in (both the other trucks don't leave home without them!!) So we start getting a little raveled as we are in the middle of BFE with little hope that any one else is crazy enough to be this high this late in the season. One thing leads to another and we finally find the jack under the passengers seat, the jack didn't do us much good but with a couple of tries I get the lug wrench pounded in the ground behind a small rock. We run the cable under the truck to the lug wrench and with a little help from the truck in reverse it backs out
Plan C
Well we are already there so we decide to check out what's over the hill on foot with the binoculars. A couple of hills later and we walk up on a few elk @ 350 yards. Problem is we have three tags but nobody remembered a gun Recoil stays to keep an eye on the elk and Tyson and I head back to the truck for a gun ......or three. Tyson found a way around the snow and picked me up 1/2 way between the truck and elk. We stopped a quarter mile from the elk and walked in with the guns and packs. The elk have not moved much but there are a lot more eyes, ears and noses than we thought. We sit there trying to devise a plan when Tyson asks what the noise is, recoil says its the cow chirping at each other?? I don't hear them at first but the wind switches a little and I hear my first elk conversation.
On the count of three we where going to take two and Tyson was going to put the finish shot if needed. I fire at the count of three and miss just high of the closest cow, Recoil forgot to take his safety off and fires just as I get back into the scope to see the Cow right beside the one I missed flop!!
Now the whole valley starts moving as there must have been a couple hundred head more than the 25 we could see Tyson takes off for the next ridge yelling at me to catch up, I figure they are long gone but follow anyway. We got to the next ridge and the elk are still only about 375 yards away. I get on the bipods and fire at another cow and miss again but this time I see the impact. I then see the herd is crossing the road and wait for one to hesitate, she drops right on the road but the shot is a little far back so I put another on in her.
With 2 elk down and the sun about to set Tyson runs back to get the truck while Recoil and I head to the cows to cut them up. I got to my cow and put a finishing shot into her. By the time she quit kicking so I could start boning her out I see Tyson is heading to pick up Recoils cow so I just started gutting her out. This being my first elk I find out in a hurry how much bigger they are than a deer or goat!! By the time they get to me I am pounding on my knife with a rock to get through the breast bone. It must have been a sight because they where laughing pretty hard when Recoil said he had a saw for that and it works good on the pelvic bone that I couldn't get through.
We load her up and punch home on the two GPS (the Power Wagon comes with a built in Garmin) Mine says its 128 miles back to Casper (and we can see the lights of Casper) but wants to send us down a road that has been closed to the public for over ten years and Tyson's cant even figure out where we are let alone how to get out of there. The track back feature on my LM50 really helped to get out of there as the road is tuff to keep track of in the dark.
Long way around the barn and I'm ashamed to say I didn't get any pics but long story short I finally filled my first elk tag and need to get the 7 mag to the range again to se what the hecks going on as I have never missed so much in my life !!
Get to Tysons just after Recoil got there. Who's driving? Well my chev 98 3/4 ton ext cab gets by far the best mileage and chains but is ruff and has the least amount of room. Recoils Chev o2 crew cab gets no mileage, is ruff and no chains. Tyson just bought a 3/4 ton mega cab Power Wagon with factory winch and lockers all around, mileage is not great but he gets the vote= This is one nice 4 wheelin unit!
We get to our favorite lookout just as it get light enough to see and it don't take long to find elk. They are of coarse probably on privet land but we move to a different lookout to get a better look. They ( I will not pay a trespass fee to fill a meat tag!) had just decided to pay the $250 trespass fee to go after them when I start laughing and told them to look west, through the binoculars we see two trucks heading for the elk=Game over as they chased the elk into the next county before they ever saw them!
Plan B
Head up 33 mile road to see what we can find. This is one nasty piece of road and it gets worse the higher you go!!! We get 20 or so miles up it and take a 2 track that should take us to the back side of the Ed-O-Taylor. We only get in a little ways and Tyson decides he can run on top of the hard crusted snow=Wrong! Luckily the Power wagon comes with a factory winch and we have a tree volunteering to be the anchor. We get out easily and proceed up the trail, this time avoiding the crusted snow. About 8 miles in we get to a spot where the snow is wide but don't look too deep so he locks her up and tries again to cross it=WRONG again!! But this time there aint a tree within a mile and no big rocks within cable reach The truck is hung up on the front axle and nobody thought to throw a shovel in (both the other trucks don't leave home without them!!) So we start getting a little raveled as we are in the middle of BFE with little hope that any one else is crazy enough to be this high this late in the season. One thing leads to another and we finally find the jack under the passengers seat, the jack didn't do us much good but with a couple of tries I get the lug wrench pounded in the ground behind a small rock. We run the cable under the truck to the lug wrench and with a little help from the truck in reverse it backs out
Plan C
Well we are already there so we decide to check out what's over the hill on foot with the binoculars. A couple of hills later and we walk up on a few elk @ 350 yards. Problem is we have three tags but nobody remembered a gun Recoil stays to keep an eye on the elk and Tyson and I head back to the truck for a gun ......or three. Tyson found a way around the snow and picked me up 1/2 way between the truck and elk. We stopped a quarter mile from the elk and walked in with the guns and packs. The elk have not moved much but there are a lot more eyes, ears and noses than we thought. We sit there trying to devise a plan when Tyson asks what the noise is, recoil says its the cow chirping at each other?? I don't hear them at first but the wind switches a little and I hear my first elk conversation.
On the count of three we where going to take two and Tyson was going to put the finish shot if needed. I fire at the count of three and miss just high of the closest cow, Recoil forgot to take his safety off and fires just as I get back into the scope to see the Cow right beside the one I missed flop!!
Now the whole valley starts moving as there must have been a couple hundred head more than the 25 we could see Tyson takes off for the next ridge yelling at me to catch up, I figure they are long gone but follow anyway. We got to the next ridge and the elk are still only about 375 yards away. I get on the bipods and fire at another cow and miss again but this time I see the impact. I then see the herd is crossing the road and wait for one to hesitate, she drops right on the road but the shot is a little far back so I put another on in her.
With 2 elk down and the sun about to set Tyson runs back to get the truck while Recoil and I head to the cows to cut them up. I got to my cow and put a finishing shot into her. By the time she quit kicking so I could start boning her out I see Tyson is heading to pick up Recoils cow so I just started gutting her out. This being my first elk I find out in a hurry how much bigger they are than a deer or goat!! By the time they get to me I am pounding on my knife with a rock to get through the breast bone. It must have been a sight because they where laughing pretty hard when Recoil said he had a saw for that and it works good on the pelvic bone that I couldn't get through.
We load her up and punch home on the two GPS (the Power Wagon comes with a built in Garmin) Mine says its 128 miles back to Casper (and we can see the lights of Casper) but wants to send us down a road that has been closed to the public for over ten years and Tyson's cant even figure out where we are let alone how to get out of there. The track back feature on my LM50 really helped to get out of there as the road is tuff to keep track of in the dark.
Long way around the barn and I'm ashamed to say I didn't get any pics but long story short I finally filled my first elk tag and need to get the 7 mag to the range again to se what the hecks going on as I have never missed so much in my life !!
