brotherjack
09-03-2006, 10:11 PM
Sept 2, 2006
Slept in this morning. Alarm went off, but were too tired to make it. Then we spent the evening over at a friends property looking for a big mulie buck which never appeared.
Sept 3, 2006
Woke up long before daylight, and headed back to the elk hangout we showed up late to back on September first. Drove in, and had our blind setup and ready to go before the squirrels even started chattering in the forest. This might be the day!
About time same time we expected our elk to show up, we hear someone down on the road on a quad come driving up. Just great, a road hunter with a bow. Who decides to stop directly downhill from our stand of trees – about the direction we expect the elk to come in from. As we sighed and rolled our eyes for the next few minutes, our budding bow hunter with a quad honked a Hoochie-Mama five or ten times, and did a passable bull elk impersonation once with his Power Bugle before he cranked his toy up and drove off ten minutes later. His quad was still within ear shot when The Wife (tm) hisses quietly in my ear “Elk! Coming this way! Get ready quick!”
I brought the bow to bear on the well beaten elk trail we'd setup on, and waited. I spied the elk coming along out of the side window of the blind, and my hopes fell. They weren't coming down the well beaten trail 18 yards away, they were walking through open bush on a line that would take them by my shooting lane at about 35 yards away. Thirty five yards is too far for my cheap little crossbow, and all the wishing in the world won't change that. Besides the yardage problem, our buddy with the quad had spooked them, and they were traveling at a fairly brisk walk, which would have made shooting a no-go anyway, unless we could have got one to stop by making some elk-like noises.
So, the elk just walked on by, ten yards out of range, and a brisk walk too fast, and just like that, the morning hunt was all over by the packing and going home (which we didn't do till 3 hours later).
For the evening hunt, we returned to our waterhole by the road. Given that it's by the road, and the road has been pounded pretty hard over the long weekend by youth season and bow hunters alike, we weren't expecting much.
We saw a little button buck, and a couple of does that never offered a shot (not that we would likely have took it on any of them). There was our little 3x2 from the first night of the season who offered a slightly quartering-to shot that was close enough to broadside that it would have worked, but he still didn't look fat enough in the hindquarters for me to want to kill him this year (maybe in 3 years). Too many cars driving by for the last few days for there to be much action tonight (too many cars driving by tonight, for that matter). Probably won't be really good again till middle of the week when the long weekend traffic has dissipated. Oh well, that's why we call it “hunting”, right?
Slept in this morning. Alarm went off, but were too tired to make it. Then we spent the evening over at a friends property looking for a big mulie buck which never appeared.
Sept 3, 2006
Woke up long before daylight, and headed back to the elk hangout we showed up late to back on September first. Drove in, and had our blind setup and ready to go before the squirrels even started chattering in the forest. This might be the day!
About time same time we expected our elk to show up, we hear someone down on the road on a quad come driving up. Just great, a road hunter with a bow. Who decides to stop directly downhill from our stand of trees – about the direction we expect the elk to come in from. As we sighed and rolled our eyes for the next few minutes, our budding bow hunter with a quad honked a Hoochie-Mama five or ten times, and did a passable bull elk impersonation once with his Power Bugle before he cranked his toy up and drove off ten minutes later. His quad was still within ear shot when The Wife (tm) hisses quietly in my ear “Elk! Coming this way! Get ready quick!”
I brought the bow to bear on the well beaten elk trail we'd setup on, and waited. I spied the elk coming along out of the side window of the blind, and my hopes fell. They weren't coming down the well beaten trail 18 yards away, they were walking through open bush on a line that would take them by my shooting lane at about 35 yards away. Thirty five yards is too far for my cheap little crossbow, and all the wishing in the world won't change that. Besides the yardage problem, our buddy with the quad had spooked them, and they were traveling at a fairly brisk walk, which would have made shooting a no-go anyway, unless we could have got one to stop by making some elk-like noises.
So, the elk just walked on by, ten yards out of range, and a brisk walk too fast, and just like that, the morning hunt was all over by the packing and going home (which we didn't do till 3 hours later).
For the evening hunt, we returned to our waterhole by the road. Given that it's by the road, and the road has been pounded pretty hard over the long weekend by youth season and bow hunters alike, we weren't expecting much.
We saw a little button buck, and a couple of does that never offered a shot (not that we would likely have took it on any of them). There was our little 3x2 from the first night of the season who offered a slightly quartering-to shot that was close enough to broadside that it would have worked, but he still didn't look fat enough in the hindquarters for me to want to kill him this year (maybe in 3 years). Too many cars driving by for the last few days for there to be much action tonight (too many cars driving by tonight, for that matter). Probably won't be really good again till middle of the week when the long weekend traffic has dissipated. Oh well, that's why we call it “hunting”, right?