I went back out last Saturday and Sunday with a friend that I'm introducing to hunting in the area, and while the trip wasn't productive meat-wise, we sure did get an eyefull and earful.
On Saturday morning we hiked into an area that I helped a friend pack his bull out of last year. While creeping through the mountainside timber, I suddenly got a strong wiff of elky stank. Scanning through the trees up wind with my binoculars I was able to see a spike bull peeking out of his bed about 90 yds away. I wasn't able to get a decent picture, but he was kind of in our way, so after staring at each other for a few minutes, we started hiking again and he cleared out, along with a bigger bull that had apparently been obscured from view.
About 1.5 miles in we came upon the kill site from last year. It's interesting to see what a year does to the remenants if such a large animal.... Not much left.
After setting up camp in mid day, we went to check out another area I've seen activity in previous years. The whole place went up in a fire 4 years ago, and as such had some tender and alluring undergrowth. Nothing much happening this day, but the view was still nice.
We hit another area in the evening, but not seeing any evidence of recent activity, headed on back to camp at dark to burn a few hot dogs and drain a few beers.
The next morning we hiked into an area very near our camp that I'd never looked at before. Right away the number of skinned trees along the trail suggested it might be an interesting day.
We followed the established trail along valley floor and wound up kicking a few bulls and at least two cows out of the lush underbrush next to a creek. Not too slick on my part, I'll probably skip the trail and hop up near the ridge next time.
Eventually we came to a clearing at the junction of two different valleys with a few very fresh wallows. After watching the area for a while i popped out to get a picture.
We decided to climb back up the hill a few hundred yards to a rock outcropping to see if anything showed up at the wallows. Sure enough we heard some bugling from down the valley to our right getting progressively louder and after a few minutes this guy came trotting around the corner towards the wallows.
I wish I could have gotten a decent picture of him in the wallow, he was really having a big time rolling around, stomping and tossing up globs of mud with his antlers. I've never seen a bull in a wallow in person before, it was pretty neat. He's tough to see, but just above the V in the rocks to the right.
After that bull had had enough and moseyed on, we kept hearing bugles echoing down the same valley he had come from. We decided to hike up and over the ridge to see what we could see down in the valley.
Down below us we saw a bull with seven cows bedded in the valley at 480 yds, another group of cows feeding a near them at about 350 yds, and yet another group with three bulls and probably 20-30 cows meandering through the timber a few hundred yards up the opposite mountain.
I had the brilliant idea of using my cell phone to take pictures through my binoculars and managed to snap a few crappy close ups of the first two groups.
I wasn't ever able to find the elk in the timber through my fancy telephoto lens setup.
While watching the grazing cows I saw a cow elk-sized grey blob that turned out to be huge 5x5 muley working his way down the valley!
Unfortunately there was no route for me to sneak in and set up within crossbow range of any of the cows or the muley without getting busted, so we watched them all for a while then worked our way back to camp. No meat on the ground, but a really fun trip none the less.
