The next bunch of scouting trips right through to pretty much September don’t bring anything of interest other than more old sign, while fighting smoke from all the fires in the province so I’ll leave those trips as is.
So the next time I get out its the weekend before Labor Day and my buddy Evan and I decide we will go check it out see if we can get any elk talking and hike around. So we head up first thing and check out different areas along the river and other side of the river where there aren’t any vehicles. Makes sense right? Bugling and cow calling brings us nothing, hardly any sign in areas where we’ve been told other than bear sign. Hiking km after km up and down the river before we would get bluffed or boulder fielded out and still nothing. We get to some areas in the middle of old growth where there is just serious boulder fields and it makes no sense, I slipped a couple times and nearly broke my leg and decide its time to hobble back to the truck and take a dip in the river and head home. At least it was hot out.
The next weekend is Labor Day and of course untilthelastbeat has MY goat draw so trying to go talk to the elk was out of the question as I had to hold his hand up the mountain, but it was an awesome hunt that took my mind off elk for a bit and its own thread.
Now after Labor Day I’m hitting Indian Arm hard. I’m going up every weekend obviously on top of 3 or 4 nights a week. I grew to hate that road, everyone says “oh its not that bad”. Well actually shut up it is. Now I’d like to point out that by this time, I had already made a thread here on hbc about the hunt and any helpful tips would be awesome. So my inbox was flooded with tonnes of great info, updates from people that were doing day trips out there and everything. I started off getting this draw telling myself I was going to be damn near willing to eat tag soup and hold out for a big bull. I say damn near because at the end of the day ifs the last few days of the hunt if need be a spike bull still puts an elk in the freezer. I was able to be confident like that because I was able to take a lot of time off work and living in Squamish. So by this point even though I haven’t seen a single living elk and nothing but mostly old sign and sheds and haven’t got a response to anything during what I would think would be peak rut (yes I can bugle properly and cow call) I’m still confident with my resolve to hold out for a big bull.