My father-in-law and I both got our first elk on opening day this year. Central Colorado...not going to share any more than that about the location. I wrote up a little recap:

About a year and a half ago my father in law tells me about this rifle he had won in a raffle, and asks if I think it might help me get an elk that year. He brought this up knowing that I had been hunting (unsuccessfully) for the previous 3 years with either a 100 year old mosin-nagant (7.62x54R being a fine caliber, and the 91-30 being the finest rifle $75 can buy…but heavy, and open sights) or a 20 year old bow. Of course I say yes and he ends up giving me a beautiful new Remington 700.

Fast forward to application time this year, I ask if he’d be interested in coming out for an elk hunt. We decide on dates, I researched units and preference point requirements and we drew a group hunt for an area I was familiar (but so far unsuccessful) with. A couple of short scouting trips later, I pick him up from the airport, am pleasantly surprised to find the he had done “a little shakedown trip” of 110 miles of the Appalachian Trail a week earlier and is in great hiking shape. And we hit the trailhead.

Now my scouting of this area involved more talking with people and miles on the truck than actually looking for elk sign. It’s an area where I knew there were elk, but hunter success rates are pretty low, and my previous hunts in this area had been foiled by showing up opening day and the trailheads (and woods) are packed with outfitter camps and makeshift corrals where I had not seen a single person in the weeks prior. So this year I was fortunate (?) enough to find a trail that was absolutely nasty, in a pretty rugged area overall, and for which the next nearest horse-friendly trail and trailhead were many many miles (and several fine hunting areas) away. The hike in ended up being only 4-ish miles, but with a weeks worth of gear (and later, full loads of venison) it was a haul.

My scouting paid off, and the day before open there was only one other car at the trailhead. Without much time to acclimate, and crushing pack weights, we took the hike slowly and made camp a little before dark. The area is beautiful, the weather was beautiful (I worried that combined with a nearly full moon it might be a little too nice), and we settled in for a week of relaxation in the high country, if nothing else. Saturday morning we woke in the dark, dressed, grabbed our rifles and head up the trail to see what we could see. We found some fresh tracks in snow left over from the previous Wednesday, we split off for a half hour or so to cover more ground, but didn’t do a lot of real hunting. We regrouped at camp for breakfast and decide to each go our own way for the day, with Bob following tracks through the dark timber and myself walking ridges to glass. I started up an avy chute behind camp and immediately got on game trails with fresh (day-old) piles of “milk duds.” So rather than cruising up to the ridge per my previous plan, I spent a couple hours sneaking up as quietly as I could, but no elk.



I gained the ridge and walked it for a while, glassing meadows and treelines on both sides frequently, but still no elk, I continue walking up the ridge and see some movement below me…it’s a nanny mountain goat with a kid (the cutest thing you’ve ever seen, like a cotton ball on toothpicks in his full winter coat), but it occurs to me that if I am walking around on talus, and looking down to see mountain goats, I am probably not in good elk habitat, so I started working my way down a different slide path. Again, tons of elk sign, and this time it seems to be this morning’s! The chute is beautiful, one bench stacked on top of another and I sneak to the edge of each lower bench, hoping to find a herd bedded down in one, but alas, I reach the valley and still no elk (I did run across a cool old miner’s camp and entrance though). I decided to get down in the dark timber and start following the creek back to camp, and not ten minutes later I glass up an avy chute and see what appears to be something elk-colored. I’ll be damned…I watch it for a minute and sure enough, it moves and disappears behind some trees. Well at this point I’m pretty exhausted from the day’s walk, but I range the spot I had seen the critter at and its 600-ish yards straight up a slide path. Luckily, there’s a small ridge down the middle of the chute and it looks to be a pretty easy stalk if I can cover 3 or 400 yards then sneak over that ridge. I decide to go for it, as it’s the only elk I’ve seen today, and may be the only one I see all week! I gain the elevation quickly and am soon creeping over the edge of the ridge. The wind is in my favor and as I get a look at the spot where I had seen the elk color, I see what appears to be a huge elk-colored boulder. Damn. I got excited about a rock. Damn…but that sure is a weird looking rock…and then it picked its head up. Antlers everywhere. This is in a point restricted unit (must be 4 points on one side or one brow tine 6” or longer) but I didn’t even count…I just knew this was a nice bull. I rested my gun on a dead tree and tried to get steady but just couldn’t get confident enough to take the shot. I’ve got the jitters bad and my rest is too high, so I pull the rangefinder out to get a reading on him just to make sure it’s a shot I should be taking in less than ideal position. He’s about 150yds out so I can feel like I can shake a bit and still put one in the boiler room, but as I’m putting the rangefinder away he walks up the hill a little more and behind some more trees. I ducked back below the ridge and crept up another 20 or 30 yards, popped back up behind a row of small firs and there he is, much closer than before. I rest the gun on a branch that was just the perfect level, think of every diagram I’ve ever seen of elk shot placement, exhale, and…pow! His right shoulder collapses and he digs those antlers in the dirt. Tries to get up one time and again falls right back down and he’s out. Clean shot, he’s dead within about ten feet and 15 seconds. I’m so excited I can hardly stand it. I drop my pack and pull out the radio (we planned to turn on the radios and wait for contact if we heard the other person shoot). ‘Bob, I’ve got a big bull elk down’ he responds ‘well we’ve got a lot of meat then’ it turns out he shot a cow at about 1 pm but I hadn’t heard the shot due to wind on the ridge (his shot spooked 3 bulls that ran into his view just as his cow went down!) and it was now 5pm. We were pretty close to camp, so he came up and helped me dress it, and we finally made it back to the tent at 10pm.



We spent the next 3 days packing out. Sunday to get both animals boned out, in bags and down to camp (then it snowed 8 inches so we were glad to have gotten all the cross-country travel done by then)



1 day to move the meat about 2 1/2 miles down the hill to our next staging spot, then another full day to pack up camp and get the packs emptied at the car, then ferry all the meat down to the trailhead anywhere from 200yds to 1mi at a time. Each leg took us each 3 trips for the meat and then another trip for the camping gear...45-65 lbs on each load. Freakin hard work!









Then most of a day of processing and vacuum sealing, and we still had 100lbs left to take to the butcher!

Anyway, that’s the story of my first elk, putting in the miles really paid off and we only saw 3 other people the whole time we were up there, until we got close to the trailhead, and we were the only hunters. Great trip, already looking forward to next year!