joshk-k
Member
Hi all,
I wanted to share my frustrations with my first elk hunt.
Rifle season for elk here was four days (Nov. 14-17). I went out to a friend's property near Tillamook, in the coast range. He has about 200 acres of former industrial timber-land, that was most recently logged about 15 years ago. It is bounded on essentially all sides by the Tillamook State Forest and BLM land. From spending time on the property before, looking at aerial and topo maps, and talking with others who had hunted there before, I had planned out a hunting strategy that relied on heavy pressure from the public land to push the elk down through a particular corner of the property and hopefully into a big bowl.
So Saturday morning, I wake at 4:30, get dressed and ready, and hike by headlamp for a bit over an hour up the old logging road towards the top of the property. I got into my spot about 6:15. There's an old logging road that covers most of the property, including ringing the bowl I mentioned. I was perched in the underbrush about 40-50 feet above the road, on a hillside with a clear view to the West. I could see others' headlights on the ridge above me on the public land.
The day got light, and in the early dawn I was able to see a pair of coyotes near the watering hole, and a little while later I saw a blacktail fawn ambling across the bowl. By 7-7:30 I could hear gunshots in the distance. At about 8:15, an hour after dawn, I was glassing the area and saw about 8-10 elk, including at least two with antlers, move around the ridge across from me. They were probably about 400 yards away, and I was downwind from them. They were foraging along, and it seemed likely that, if given 45 minutes or an hour, they might very likely move a lot closer towards me. I was giddy as could be (remember, this is my first elk hunt ever, and within a few hours my strategy seemed to be working).
Within five minutes, I hear large movement in the brush to my right, fairly close. I knew that there was a steep game trail in the area of the noise, and I could tell by the size that it was either an elk or a human. I slunk about 15-20 feet closer to the road so that I could see what was going to pop out onto the road. If it was an elk, I was going to clobber it, because it was going to be like 20 yards from me.
It was not an elk. It was two hunters who had descended the hill from the North and crossed from public land onto private. They stood there in the road, looking around before I whispered from the brush "Hey! This is private land!" They said, at normal volume, "Oh, we couldn't tell" and then walked right on over to stand in the road below me. I said that they had two options, they could either very quietly walk up the road and around the backside of the ridge I was on before cutting back into the brush, or they could go back the way they came.
They chose the road and walked off quietly. I was fuming, but hoped that everything would settle back down. Ten minutes later, they came walking back! They couldn't find a good trail back onto the public land and decided to retrace their steps. By the end of it, I had watched the elk turn around and go right back around the ridge, not to be seen again.
The weather that day was lovely, but the next few were awful. Winds reached up to 85 mph, and the rain was non-stop. I switched from a scoped .30-06 to a lever-action .30-30 and spent the next few days hunting down in the ravines and thicker brush, trying to find them bedded down. I saw lots of fairly fresh sign, but had no luck finding any more animals. I think they probably retreated to the bigger second-growth on the BLM land. I was reluctant to go there, both because of the increased likelihood of encountering other hunters and also the logistics of retrieving a downed animal potentially several miles off trail from home.
Anyway, I was disappointed to be foiled like that, but I learned a lot, I had a blast, and was encouraged tremendously for the my big-game hunting future. My friend is converting his land-owner tags to damage control, and designating me as an agent, so I can have until March to keep hunting. The damage-control tags are for an antler-less animal though, and I'm a bit worried later on about shooting a pregnant cow.
I hope your hunting never gets interrupted by trespassers.
Josh
I wanted to share my frustrations with my first elk hunt.
Rifle season for elk here was four days (Nov. 14-17). I went out to a friend's property near Tillamook, in the coast range. He has about 200 acres of former industrial timber-land, that was most recently logged about 15 years ago. It is bounded on essentially all sides by the Tillamook State Forest and BLM land. From spending time on the property before, looking at aerial and topo maps, and talking with others who had hunted there before, I had planned out a hunting strategy that relied on heavy pressure from the public land to push the elk down through a particular corner of the property and hopefully into a big bowl.
So Saturday morning, I wake at 4:30, get dressed and ready, and hike by headlamp for a bit over an hour up the old logging road towards the top of the property. I got into my spot about 6:15. There's an old logging road that covers most of the property, including ringing the bowl I mentioned. I was perched in the underbrush about 40-50 feet above the road, on a hillside with a clear view to the West. I could see others' headlights on the ridge above me on the public land.
The day got light, and in the early dawn I was able to see a pair of coyotes near the watering hole, and a little while later I saw a blacktail fawn ambling across the bowl. By 7-7:30 I could hear gunshots in the distance. At about 8:15, an hour after dawn, I was glassing the area and saw about 8-10 elk, including at least two with antlers, move around the ridge across from me. They were probably about 400 yards away, and I was downwind from them. They were foraging along, and it seemed likely that, if given 45 minutes or an hour, they might very likely move a lot closer towards me. I was giddy as could be (remember, this is my first elk hunt ever, and within a few hours my strategy seemed to be working).
Within five minutes, I hear large movement in the brush to my right, fairly close. I knew that there was a steep game trail in the area of the noise, and I could tell by the size that it was either an elk or a human. I slunk about 15-20 feet closer to the road so that I could see what was going to pop out onto the road. If it was an elk, I was going to clobber it, because it was going to be like 20 yards from me.
It was not an elk. It was two hunters who had descended the hill from the North and crossed from public land onto private. They stood there in the road, looking around before I whispered from the brush "Hey! This is private land!" They said, at normal volume, "Oh, we couldn't tell" and then walked right on over to stand in the road below me. I said that they had two options, they could either very quietly walk up the road and around the backside of the ridge I was on before cutting back into the brush, or they could go back the way they came.
They chose the road and walked off quietly. I was fuming, but hoped that everything would settle back down. Ten minutes later, they came walking back! They couldn't find a good trail back onto the public land and decided to retrace their steps. By the end of it, I had watched the elk turn around and go right back around the ridge, not to be seen again.
The weather that day was lovely, but the next few were awful. Winds reached up to 85 mph, and the rain was non-stop. I switched from a scoped .30-06 to a lever-action .30-30 and spent the next few days hunting down in the ravines and thicker brush, trying to find them bedded down. I saw lots of fairly fresh sign, but had no luck finding any more animals. I think they probably retreated to the bigger second-growth on the BLM land. I was reluctant to go there, both because of the increased likelihood of encountering other hunters and also the logistics of retrieving a downed animal potentially several miles off trail from home.
Anyway, I was disappointed to be foiled like that, but I learned a lot, I had a blast, and was encouraged tremendously for the my big-game hunting future. My friend is converting his land-owner tags to damage control, and designating me as an agent, so I can have until March to keep hunting. The damage-control tags are for an antler-less animal though, and I'm a bit worried later on about shooting a pregnant cow.
I hope your hunting never gets interrupted by trespassers.
Josh
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