I have the race exploder warmed up at the shop and doing last-minute loading up that should’ve been done days ago for what was to be the opening day of the 2025 cow elk hunt. Denise had drawn a tag, I had not so I would be her tour guide and hunting buddy.
As usual, we had a million things going on and really didn’t have time to do this, but we do enjoy getting out for the hunt and we really enjoy having elk meat in the freezer for the year so we did our best to fit this hunt in between work.
We had not had any time to scout, and had almost no data on if there were any elk anywhere, except for the dismal reports coming in from the people we had talked to who were telling us repeatedly they had not seen any elk whatsoever for at least a week.
With no better ideas in mind, we drove the exploder to the top of a powerline hill that is only about an eighth of a mile from our house. It’s actually a very good scouting point with a good view of several mountains that have been known as good elk haunting grounds.
You can’t really expect much out of a hunt with that kind of lack of preparation or plan, but it was all that we could do at the time. As the predawn darkness slowly turned to grey then blue we were glassing the area not really expecting to see much, just hoping to get the lay of the land for the season.
Then, I about jumped out of my own skin as I panned my 10x Vortex binoculars past the main access road and a monster cow elk stepped out from behind a tree!
No way!
Sure enough, there she was-followed by another, and another…
“ I’ve got elk!” I croaked out hoarsely to Denise who was about 40 feet to my west side glassing up a different area.
“Are you serious?!” She asked me incredulously
“Yes I’m serious!”
I toggled the button on the binos to activate the laser rangefinder and put the red dot on the lead cow as best as I could-my arms were already shaking from adrenaline and I was struggling to keep my body steady, my voice calm, and my thoughts together.
One after another elk appeared as if by magic, magnified in the cold, clean air by my binoculars, they seemed to fill the entire field of view. They looked powerful, majestic, and beautiful as they lined out, making their way at a ground-eating fast walk in a southerly direction, their hot breath making visible little clouds in the cold pre-dawn light. It was one of those beautiful and surreal moments that just stands out and freezes in time.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget how they looked and the feeling I got seeing them like that.
“Looks to be about 1400 yards out, just south of the road and west of the airstrip. There’s four, five, six…Jesus, there’s at least a dozen of them! Come over here and get your binoculars on them, I’m getting the big glass!”
Denise moved into position to look them over while I scrambled back to the Exploder to get the big Kowa 20-60 spotting scope and its tripod.
Normally, we wait until she positively has glass on animals before I break visual contact to go get the big glass-but there were so many elk, so close, and so unexpectedly out in the open, we didn’t bother with that precaution.
These elk were on the move, and right now speed was our friend-we needed to figure out where we thought they were gonna go, and try and set up ahead of them in ambush. The only reason I was bothering with the big glass was our friends wife had a bull elk tag, and if there happened to be a bull in there, we wanted to let them know and possibly even hold off on our shot to give them a chance at a bull as they are much harder to find.
The elk herd really popped out at me through the 20 power optics as the light was gradually getting better. I carefully checked the herd for bone-none. Denise and I both counted 16 cows in the herd. That’s a large herd for this area.
The hunt was on!
The excitement was up and I was struggling even more to keep control of myself as nervous adrenaline had me all shaky.
The elk had already covered several hundred yards of ground, and it looked like they were going to continue on their southerly course.
My mind raced over everything I knew-where the elk were, the direction they were headed, where we were, where we could go, and how we could get there and how long it would take.
I kept coming back to one conclusion – as fast as they were moving in the direction they were moving in, we were going to have to bail off of this hill as fast as the explorer could go, park next to an adjacent hill about 400 yards away and a hike to the top of that hill in hopes for a clear shot. Again and again I mentally checked the distances. It was doable, but boy was it going to be tight timing wise. That was a tough hike and if they changed direction once we left this hill, we would be committed to a hill that may do us no good at all.
Damn it.
What to do?
Think!!
I stalled, unsure.
And it was well I did, because just as I was about to move and start hauling ass off our current hilltop, the herd suddenly changed direction and angled west!
Shit!
Now what?
But this time I was sure-they had just lined out for a track that I knew elk ran all the time. I knew almost exactly where they were headed, and where they would go.
There was a wide flat between the hill we were on and the hill to the north-which, incidentally, is the hill Joel and Amy live on-that has good cover and the elk often use this corridor to either skirt the west side of the hill, or climb its south face.
For the elk, it’s a fairly safe passage-except there are a couple low, steep rock piles that offer a good field of fire down into the flat and to south side of the big hill. And those rock piles have ready access to a road that runs right next to them. The trick was to pick the correct rock pile and get there ahead of the elk in time to be settled in undetected. Once again the timing was tight – very tight. I looked at the elk one last time looked at the rock outcropping, decided I knew where they were going to go, picked which outcropping we needed to get to and it was go time!
We ran to the Exploder, jumped in and bombed down the incredibly rough goat trail at breakneck speed.
Good thing the Exploder is tough and nimble.
I got as close as I reasonably could to the selected rock pile on its west side, killed the engine, and we both bailed out.
Denise grabbed the rifle and I started leading the way as quickly and quietly as I could.
We got near the top of the rock pile, and I began peering over the boulders to see if the elk were anywhere close.
BAM!! Hell yes they were close! Actually too close! The tail end of the herd was right where we wanted them exactly 200 yards away according to my laser rangefinder! So close that with the rifle we had we don’t even have to touch the scope. All I had to do was just get Denise in position and it was a done deal.
We almost could not miss at that range.
Then, hunting did what hunting often does. Nothing is assured or guaranteed. What should’ve been an easy shot turned out to be impossible due to Denise‘s short stature.
She’s only five feet tall. All these rocks were also five feet tall.
Perfect for me-I could have put the rifle on any one of the boulders we stood behind, but Denise couldn’t even see over the top of them!
Shit.
We spent a couple seconds trying to quietly scramble into a better position for her, but those precious moments and the little sound we made cost us-the last four or five elk glanced in our direction nervously, and trotted after the rest of the herd that had already disappeared into a shallow tree choked ravine that offered them perfect cover for the next thousand yards. They were all lost to us. It was agonizing to have gotten so close and yet still so far.
And yet it was a thrill to have gotten to see so many beautiful animals and to have have gotten so close.
I guess that’s hunting.🤷♂️
Spoiler alert: we were unable to bag an elk this year. The above story was similarly reenacted probably half a dozen times over the course of the next two weeks of the unusually long late cow hunting season. Never have I ever been able to see so many elk on so many different days, and never have I ever been able to get so close so many times. We had to sit almost an entire week out shortly after this due to a rain storm that turned the whole area into a mud hole. Almost every day we saw or got on elk, but could never quite get imposition to get a shot. They were almost constantly on the move. To be fair, they had become brush wise and leery – people had been throwing arrows and bullets at them for two months straight at this point.
We did have one mishap where Denise fell in the rocks and landed on the rifle. She was a little dinged up, but OK – however the scope had a big scratch on the flip up cover, which actually got knocked clear off of the scope despite being clamped on, and the elevation turret showed signs of rock contact, and the rifle had some new scratches and now the question was – did the scope get jarred? Could the rifle still shoot straight?
We had to take some time out from the hunt and find a place where hopefully there were no elk to spook and test the rifle. We shot it at 100 200 and 320 yards which was the biggest space we could conveniently find. Fortunately the shot the rifle still shot spot on.👍
Once we figured out that Denise was OK, the joke for the rest of the trip was that if she fell again, she needed to get between the rifle and the rocks and act as a cushion because she would heal, but broken scopes don’t.😄😄
And while we were unable to bag an elk, we did bag a lot of cool pictures and some cool experiences.
To be continued…