As usual, the Mud Taxi sauntered right up the nasty road without even trying hard.
As the sky began to lighten in the East, the pre dawn sky was painted with pretty pastel hues.
Nothing was stirring on our hill, but just after sunup, the local rancher, Scotty Dunton, called to tell us he’d spotted a nice cow elk going down a nearby road and it was very likely she was trying to catch up with her herd that was probably nearby.
We stashed our glass, fired up the Mud Taxi, and launched it down the steep hill and headed for the elk sighting area.
When we arrived at the area, sure enough there was a young cow at the end of the road.
We hopped out of the truck, grabbed the rifle, and started in her direction. She had been walking next to a fence, and about that time, the fence ended, and she hooked a hard right and headed into a clear cut, suddenly picking up her pace. She quickly out distanced us, but by her tracks, she had caught up with some other elk, and they were all jogging across the clear cut for a hill to our east.
Behind us, Scotty turned his truck over to a friend that was with him, and jumped in the Mud Taxi and they drove out to us to see if we could spot the herd.
As we glassed over the clearing, a bull elk bugled once! A rare thing indeed on a late hunt with the rut over.
About an hour later, we spotted the herd of 12 cows and one bull bringing up the rear, making their way up the mountain about a half mile to our east. It looked like they were going to scale the ridge and circle back on the high ground to the north and likely bed down on the mid slope there for the afternoon.
Now, they were way out of range for us at this point, but we happened to know that there’s a power line trail that would put us within about an eighth of a mile of where we thought they were headed. So we hatched a plan to loop around and see if we could reacquire them from the top of the mountain. We parted ways with Scotty and his friend, and once again got to hustling in the Mud Taxi.
As the crow flies, where we needed to be was under a mile away, but the roads to get us there loop around a good sized mountain, and we’d drive some 8-10 miles to get to that point, with the last mile being one of the roughest, nastiest, brush-choked roads there is. Even the Mud Taxi struggles with a couple sections of this trail, and it’s a good thing it’s not new, because the amount of desert pinstripes this trail hands out is seriously cringe worthy.
Finally, after bouncing and scratching our way over the the hump to the highest point of the road, we parked the truck once again, grabbed our backpacks, rifle and tripod, and began the steep hike to the summit.
The tricky part was to guess correctly where the herd was hopefully bedded down and cross over the ridge-which was less a ridge and more a rolling crest-in a place that would allow us to spot them before they spotted us.
Towards the summit, I could see that we were going to have a challenge -the slight breeze had shifted and was blowing from us directly to where we expected to find the elk. Crap!
Well, there was nothing to it but to do it, so we eased as slowly and quietly as we could over the crest, stopping and glassing every few feet, looking for a vantage point that would perhaps let us look through the trees down on the area we thought the elk would be.
Finally, we crept around a big juniper tree onto a rocky outcrop that offered some views into the area we hoped to find the herd. As I eased carefully around the tree, the bull elk of herd suddenly popped into view only a hundred yards away!
He stopped, did an abrupt about face, and disappeared into the vegetation to the West.
Damn!
That indicated to me-assuming the bull was still bringing up the rear of the herd-that we had landed about 200 yards too far to the west at the back of the herd instead of at the front of the herd in their direction of travel for an ambush.
Additionally, the bull’s behavior indicated that he very well might have winded us and if that was the case, this hunt was blown right there-a very likely possibility with the wind definitely not in our favor.
Crap!
We faded north back over the hump as silently as we could, and shifted position about 150 yards to the West in hopes of sighting them from a more favorable position-assuming we hadn’t somehow spooked them clear out of the area.
It took us about a half hour to cover that little patch of ground, choosing each step with care and stopping to listen and look every couple steps.
We finally emerged out a spot that allowed a reasonable view of our target area and we took up positions screened by trees and commenced to do some serious looking, listening and glassing for the next hour or so, remaining as quiet and as still as we could, with an occasional shift in position for a different view.
I swear that I heard some animal noises from our target area a couple times, but couldn’t confirm it, and we never actually saw another animal again.
It was possible that the herd was bedded down just under our noses, or they could be a couple hundred yards in either direction, or they could have cleared the area altogether and be nowhere near.
To go further down the hill into the thick vegetation was pointless-even if the herd was still present, they would know we were there and run long before we would ever see them.
It left us with little option other than to call this stalk blown and pull back for the day in hopes that they would still be in the area come evening time and we could reacquire them then.
I guess that’s why it’s called hunting and not grocery shopping!😄😄🤷♂️