My 2017 Elk

[charlie_horse]

Monday, the day before opener, we decide to head back closer to the ocean for first light and start hiking timber and same routine. After the first couple hours I call it a morning and just say screw it, lets go bear hunt and catch some pinks and have another casual day. So we get to the river and just creeping along sitting around waiting for a big salmon bear to poke his head out as Joel was looking for a big big bear. We bear hunted for a few hours with no luck surprisingly with the amount of bear sign around I thought for sure we would be on a bear in no time. No luck with even bears. We have to head back early again to get Joel back to his truck so he can head back to Langley to watch his son. I decide I’m going to have a nap after that. I’m half asleep and I hear a bunch of commotion down the way and I just decide to ignore it and then I hear a couple dirt bikes stop outside the wall tent and apparently some guys decided to take their jeep “off roading”. I was warned that they would be heading my way soon to ask for help and that it was a hopeless venture and they would need a helicopter to get them out and not to waste my time. I go back to the cot and about 15 minutes later I hear a nervous “hello hello we need some help anybody in there”. Well shit, I hop out of bed and go see who is out there. Couple of high school kids who wanted to have some fun. So I throw in a big lip full of Copey Wintergreen and grumpily drive up to their jeep “which should be easy with a winch”. Jesus Christ the damn thing is sunk, have to crawl in through the windows or the cab will flood opening the door. Stock 90s jeep Cherokee with a jack all on the roof. Its a jeep so you can go anywhere. what in the hell were they thinking. They weren’t but we’ve all been there and I’ve got the winch so I’ve got to try and help them. They have the jack all on the top and they have no idea how to use it so there I am in the mud showing them how to run a jack all and trying to get just enough length of the winch to see if I can pull them out. I jacked up as much as I could and I slipped into the mud pit and sprained my ankle pretty good, hobble back to the truck pissed off and tried again to pull it out with the winch. Burn the winch out…shit. Well boys can’t help ya, use my inreach and get some help on the way and go hang out in the wall tent and stay warm until they get here I gotta go look for some elk. Again no elk just a seriously swollen ankle and a depressing night at camp until the wife to be decides she wants to come up with the pooch for the night. Fine. She gets lost and there I am at 10:30 on the quad going up the mamquam FSR looking for her because she’s missed the turn off to Indian Arm. I finally get through by texting and she says she’s going home and I’m heading back to camp. An hour later a car pulls up and she decided after all to come up anyways. I’m too tired at this point to be annoyed so make room for her and call it a night.


Hoping for elk on the gas line

[charlie_horse]

TUESDAY OCTOBER 10TH OPENING DAY:


4am rolls around and I’m up making bacon and eggs waiting for Russ and Joel (untilthelastbeat) to arrive. They both show up about an hour before first light, get the gear on the quads, throw in some chew and head down. Turns out the night before Joel did a bit of reconnasaince and talked to someone who I had previously been messaging and got a rough idea of where a good 7x7 bull and another were seen the week before. We get there as first light is quickly approaching and start hiking into where we think we need to cut in. Fresh sign from that morning about 5 minutes in!!! So we keep going until we cut a creek and start walking the creek tonnes of sign, all hours old we must have just missed a herd. We stop for a minute and hear a couple branches crack so we stop and get ourselves set up behind a stump. Now Joel and I never seen it but Russ says a bull walked out at about 25 yards from us in the thick, didn’t figure it was a real big bull but a bull nonetheless. We decide to carry on down the creek to meet up with the Indian river. The sign is getting more and more fresh, it reaks of elk, adrenaline is going any moment we could see our bull walk out. We find a good area with lots of visibility along the river and decide to just post up for the entire day. Talk about a long miserable day in the torrential downpour, thank god for rubber. Now Joel and I haven’t ever actually hunted with Russ before so you know what its like when your not sure. “Like how much does he actually like hunting” or “Is he a friggin tool in the field” or “is he having a good time”. Nothing worse than being with people that are miserable. I look over and russ has made himself a bed under a log and has gone to bed while Joel and I keep watch. We stay here till dark, no elk were spotted after the morning bull. Quad back to camp, doubling Joel and listening to him whine…”its so bumpy” “my shoulders hurrrrttttt” “they should pave this” non-stop I tell ya

[charlie_horse]

DAY 2, WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 11TH

The day starts off much of the same as opener, minus Joel who had to be back to work. Russ and I start checking out the area from the day before and no fresh sign. We start making our way up river slowly, still hunting timber as we go covering ground very slowly. Fairly boring day but at lunch time we find all the fresh sign again. Blood, scat, stink everything. The elk are moving up river right now we realize so we feel like were going to catch them sooner than later. We decide to walk back to the packs and get the quads and head back to this area for the evening hunt. Now this area where we seen all this sign had one part of it that was completely bluffed out so if the elk wanted to move through this opening they had to come out in the open. It was away from the mainline and sheltered it just felt right. We get back there and hunker down around 4pm and once again it’s been pissing relentlessly all day. At about 530 the first animal of the day walks by, a black bear and we watch it come through a tiny patch of gravel, walk through the timber and walk right through the bluffs like we thought the elk would have to. Perfect. Now we just need elk.


10 minutes go by and I look the opposite direction on a tiny patch of gravel that comes out to the river. Is that….Can’t be…wtf. ELK. Two monstrous cows, now I’m not trying to exaggerate but these two cows specifically were enormous. I’ll get more into them in a bit. Out walks a bull perfectly broadside. Huge body in all his glory just standing there. Horns…those can’t be real can they? “Russ is that thing for real”…”Yup”…”Russ that bull dies”. So what do you do when you see the biggest bull elk you’re probably ever going to see in your life and its standing perfectly broadside at a cool 300 yards for 5 minutes with a perfect rest in front of you? I’ll tell you what you do. PANIC. I still don’t really know what happened but I experienced the most severe case of buck fever I think I’ve ever heard of, I’m a pretty patient and calm hunter this was definitely out of character. There I am running up and down the river (I had enough sense to stay out of sight) trying to find the most magical of shooting spots I could find. 100 yards. Perfect. Put the scope up….No elk. Gone. So I creep my way back to Russ and absolutely disgusted with myself to see if they walk through the patch of timber to the bluffs. After 15 minutes of nothing out walk a couple more cows in the same spot, this time I throw in a lip full of Copenhagen, settle down and get set up. If he walks out again, he dies. Just a few cows and a couple spikes hanging out poking their heads out. Then up river about half a click there is a bunch of cows and a really nice bull in the middle of the river. Binos up, its not my guy but still a very, very respectable bull. They walk into the timber up river. Nothing exciting happens for a little bit I’m just praying for my big bull to walk out while Russ is keeping an eye on the pinch point. Out comes the other big bull, turns out he is a really heavy, beautiful typical 7x7. Just standing there, but no way was I pulling the trigger after what I had just seen. Off he goes and nothing other than spikes and cows are peaking out and the herd sets up their sentinels and bed down right across from us so we have to sit there until dark now. We wait for pitch black and were about to start quietly leaving and then splash splash splash…Elk running across the river to us in the dark. Dammit, so we have to stay silent and still until they bed down and we can crawl out of there, we leave a bunch of gear there overnight not to make any noise on our evacuation. We head back to camp, have dinner and beers, go over our plan in the morning. I had a tough time sleeping that night knowing how bad I royally effed the chance on the bull of a lifetime and then passing on another very respectable bull, thinking those crowns would haunt me forever.

[RShields]

This foreplay is torture! Keep it coming.

[tomahawk]

This is an epic effort Kyle, more then most and maybe more then all would make. The effort put into this hunt is amazing and is only topped by the result.

[Pinewood]

Great read man. Keep it up.

[srupp]

Hmmm onto my second bucket of popcorn..great read..thank you
Steven

[DeepJeep]

Damn it.

U r still online. I hope u r typing the rest of the story..hehe. By the way, Thanks for putting in this much effort in writing the story. LOVE IT.

[835]

Wholly fack...... lol seriously riveted..... like scrolling down slowly to not see a pic before I read...... making sure to memorize where I left off and for frick sakes don't hit " go to last post" ....

Though I have generated 2 questions....
1) why no pic of the jeep???? that would have been awesome!
2) more importantly WHY THE EFF DIDNT YOU DRILL IT AT 300!!!!!!

you probably asked yourself that question a lot as well....... but since all the hype of this,,, im thinkin you got him!

[Blainer]

Many waited months for this thread, and you are proving it was worth the wait. Well written, don't be hasty bringing this thread home. This will be an epic HBC thread. Cheers