First elk hunt, Colorado 2017

tddeangelo

Handloader
May 18, 2011
2,019
2
I still haven't gotten an image hosting setup figured out since Photobucket went the way it went, so this'll unfortunately be without pics for now. I'll correct that in the future.

I just got home this past Thurs. from my very first elk hunt, a 1st Rifle hunt for a cow in Colorado. This has been a long time coming, with lots of ideas and false starts here and there. From group hunt efforts that couldn't get going to talking to outfitters and many other twists and turns.

My hunting partner Dan and I met at his place in Kansas on 10/11. I left home in the dark hours of the morning on 10/10 and stayed that night in a hotel west of St. Louis. That first day's drive was 863 miles. I felt pretty good about the for a single day of solo driving. I got to Dan's the next day, and we got dinner and talked plans for the hunt. We left early out of his place on 10/12, and rolled into our lodging area around 7:30pm local time. We lit a fire and made some dinner and hit the rack.

The next day, Friday 10/13, we didn't do a lot. We fished, checked out the scenery. and just generally acclimated to life at 9500' (I live at 500'). I lost a super cutthroat and caught a great brookie, which seemed a good omen.

The next morning, Dan and I hit the trail head early....we were hiking at 4:15am, when most people in the cabins where we were staying were just starting to wake up. We went to a split in the trail about 3/4 mile in from the lot, then split up. He went north, I went south. We would generally work east into a large basin and meet in the back of it, or that was the plan, anyway.

When it got light, I crossed a creek and headed up a slope of burned timber. That stuff is miserable to cross, and I found that I should have gone a bit further before jumping off the trail. I have over a mile of this stuff to go through till I got to the basin, but there were islands of standing timber and lots of older elk sign, so I figured I'd hunt my way up. Each patch of timber showed lots of old elk sign, but nothing new, and no elk.

A snow squall rolled in and dumped snow on us for a few hours. This was a mood killer, but made for better tracking and visibility. After riding out the snow in the timber and eating lunch and them heading up the last butt-kicker climb to the last island of timber, I was headed for the timber when 4-6 cows busted from the timber and ran out into the burn. I dropped on my right knee, leaned off my left, and tracked them in the scope, murmuring "stop and look back, stop and look back..."

They stopped, but didn't turn. I saw a row of elk butts. Then I had a calf broadside. Mom wasn't turning. They milled about, and finally I saw a cow broadside. "300," I thought, and held just under the line of the back and let the 270 bark. My first thought was "I screwed up that one...no way I hit that elk." A horse of a cow stood close and broadside.....but I needed to check on that shot before taking another.

Then I saw an elk struggling in the deadfalls. I must have connected.

I walked down to a young cow with a Partition through the spine. Another through the lungs ended things. That was 3:15PM. At 5:30PM, I had her quartered, loins/straps out, and three quarters hanging in trees with one on the pack and the straps/loins nestled inside the pack. I headed out with a bit over an hour of daylight left. I needed every minute of it to get out of the burn and onto an established trail. I got to the trail head at 8:30 that night, dog tired.

Next day, I dropped Dan off super early. He'd had bulls bugling near him at daylight and he wanted to get setup good and early. It paid off...he was in them again, and he killed his first bull, a 4x4, at about 9:30am. I got back at 11am or so to go in for my remaining quarters and got Dan on the radio. Hearing the good news just was icing on the cake. I got out at 7:15 after picking my way through that vicious burned timber again and carrying out two fronts and a hind in one trip to avoid making two trips.

The next day, we went in to get Dan's remaining quarters. We were back in time to start cuttting. We finished cutting elk meat by lunch time on Tuesday (second to last day of the season). We rolled out that day for home, getting me home about 2 days earlier than planned (wife brownie points for me were a good thing!).

Back to Dan's by mid-afternoon on Wednesday 10/18, and I was home 10/19 at 11:30pm. Tired, sick of driving, but home in eastern PA and in my own bed.

I finished elk processing today, which involved grinding the trim meat and packing/freezing it. I got 25lbs of grind, and the trim meat was about 1/4 of my total, so I would have had about 100lbs of boned/trimmed meat till it was over. We had the tenderloins and a bit of backstrap tonight. Yum!

It was exhausting, but so worthwhile. Can't wait to do it again!
 
Super hunt, Tom. You did well. Elk stories are always a good read.
 
Had the tenderloins Sunday evening.

My picky family was concerned they wouldn’t like it. They like whitetail, but elk is something new.

They don’t do change well. Lol

I wasn’t worried, but I informed them that if they didn’t like it, I’d worked entirely too hard for them to be forced to eat it and they could have a hot dog if they didn’t like it. Wasn’t an issue, but I was emphatic that if people didn’t like it they weren’t allowed to eat it. :)

Turned out great and they gobbled it up. As I figured would happen.
 
Happy to hear you a great and successful hunt. Once you go elk hunting you'll never want to stop going. How did your gear do for you, any changes for future hunts?
 
For the most part, my gear was pretty good. Lowa boots did a great job....and my Cascade Mountain Tech carbon fiber trekking poles were lifesavers....literally. Those things were really affordable, well made, and really were invaluable working through downed timber down steep grades in snow with elk quarters on my back.

My Mystery Ranch pack performed like a rockstar as well. Handled weight great, worked great as a day pack. was just a great piece of gear.

Also, my KT Akela Duty holster for my Glock 40 was very, very good. I carried the big 10mm Glock while packing out quarters the next day, and that holster on a duty belt made the gun feel like it wasn't there, was secure, and very accessible.

My Garmin 64ST gps was a good performer, too.

And of course, I can't forget about the centerpiece of it all...a 150gr Nosler Partition launched from my pre64 Model 70 in 270 Winchester, guided by a Cabela's Instinct HD (really a Meopta Meopro HD) scope.

My hunting partner is active military and brought MRE's for his lunches, so I bought the same. It was my first experience with them. It was actually pretty nice to have a warm meal mid day to kick up my energy and spirits. I can see where a steady diet of them would be tiresome, but they were easy to pack and tasted plenty good when I was super hungry up on the mountain.
 
Congratulations on your first elk Tom. As you found out Elk hunting can be a killer on a flatland hunter but I used to really enjoy it. I've passed the torch, it's a younger mans game now.
You don't need a hosting site to post photos. You can post them from your computer. Just go to Full Editor and scroll down to where it says "Upload Attachment", Click on "Choose File", this takes you to your computer, select the photo you want to download, click on it, click "open", then click "Add the file".
Try it, I want to see your photos.
 
Ok, I got a photo hosting solution I'm happy with. I like hosting them for use on other forums where I post, plus posting them native size always seems to blow out the forum because they post really big.

(http://www.postimg.org is what I'm using, for those interested. Seems simple and reliable so far.)

Here we go....

Dan's (my hunting partner) truck on the ride out to CO. I packed way, way, way too much stuff, but I went with "have it and not need it" over "need it and not have it." I can pare down my gear a TON for the next time around.
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Self-explanatory :)
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Our home for the hunt...
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The view from the cabin wasn't too shabby...
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Lake where we went fishing the day before the season...views there weren't bad, either.
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Lost a real nice cutthroat, but landed this brookie-
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Cooked it next to two rainbows that a friend in Monument CO graciously gave us when we stopped for a short visit on our way to the mountains.
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I took this just before it was light enough to start using optics and looking for elk.
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Daylight, a snow storm, and some climbing only made the views better. The lake in the distance is the same one where we were fishing.
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This burned timber was a bugger to navigate. In this pic, if you look at the highest trees you can see against the sky to the left of the rocks/mountain, that's somewhat near where I shot my elk.
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Grabbed a pic while I was working up along the edge of a knife-edge ridge top and headed for some promising timber. My vest had turned into my "stuff I need handy" carrying system, and it shows!
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Last climb I pulled up over before finding elk....There was a lot of cursing going on as I worked up that slope.
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But it was worth it...
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Not a big cow, for sure, but bigger than a calf. And her tenderloins were fantastic. :)

A little better view, but a little bloodier. I took the first pic for the family, as bloody game pics aren't their cup of tea.
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There wound up being bigger cows in the group. Being my first hunt, I had decided not to get picky and would take the first cow I had a chance to shoot. And I did!

First load out...a hind quarter, the straps/loins were in the pack, along with my hunting gear (wrapped them in plastic to control the mess...somewhat).
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Sunset of the first day. I was pretty happy to get to this point, because this was where I finally got down off the slopes and out of that cursed fallen timber.
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On my way back the next day, I stopped to glass the burned area and pick a new and hopefully better line up through it to my elk. I got a new line. Not sure if it was "better", but it worked. I had to go basically all the way up to the rock wall. It doesn't look too bad, till you do it! At this point, I was about a mile in from the trailhead, and that pic looks at, linear distance, about another 2 miles to go.
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Once I was at the quarters, I loaded my pack first and foremost. I wasn't doing this a third time, so I loaded the two front legs and one hind quarter onto the pack. I gotta say, the Mystery Ranch pack did a superb job. Couldn't have been happier with it.
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Stretched out in the sun, ate lunch, and let my feet and boots air dry from the sweat they had from walking up. Was pretty comfy there....it wouldn't have been hard to take a nap!
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Once it was all said and done, this was a shot that I just had to take. Pretty cool to have elk antlers in the truck for the ride home!
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So there you have it...stories and pics are now posted. :)
 
Well done. Those damn burns are great a year or so after but then the dead trees start falling every which way. Pain in the arse. Great photos great story.


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Great photos. Got to love blow downs :lol: I've hunted in the Cascades where you duck under/crawl under a log, stand up to climb on a log walk down the log only to repeat for what seems like forever.
 
congrats on your elk and a fine tale to tell. Sounds like you planned well, and got on the right side of luck too! Well done. CL (y)
 
Congratulations, Tom. Yeah, blow downs are no fun. However, you persevered and it paid off in spades for you. Now, to enjoy the harvest and relive some great memories.
 
Excellent! Congrats to both of you.

Ya worked for that one! Dang, that's a lot of fallen trees to climb over...

Guy
 
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