albravo2
01-21-2013, 08:35 PM
On Sunday my son and I wandered up a favourite deactivated logging road in the Squamish Valley. We spent many hours on this mountain this fall learning to hunt blacktails. We didn't put anything in the freezer but we did learn a bunch and became pretty familiar with the terrain.
The trail was easy walking. There was a couple of snowmobile tracks, probably one sled that went up then came down.
Mid way up we ran into a bunch of elk sign. Tracks and scat were on top of the sled so the elk came after the sleds. Tracks were in and out of the bush, but lots of tracks along the road and the skinny alders along the road's edge had been scraped hard. The scrapes were pretty fresh and the scat was not frozen through, so I'm thinking they were there within a day of our hike.
A hundred yards further along I noticed large blood drops, about 2" diameter. The blood trail got easier to follow as we went up the road because it became more frequent and the drops became larger. A couple hundred yards further up we found a couple fair sized (6" x 8") pools of blood and a splattering of blood all around it. Up to that point it was hard to match the tracks to the blood trail because there were so many tracks but I was able to see one clear set of fist-sized tracks from a mature elk leading into the pools of blood. There were no predator tracks. I followed the tracks back up into the woods where the animal had come from and didn't see any more blood. I did see another set of tracks with blood in the tracks but I'm pretty sure that was an animal bleeding from the hoof or hock, not necessarily related to the pools of blood. We also saw numerous clumps of hair up and down the road. No hide, just hair.
By the time we unravelled the above details it was getting dark so I never had the chance to follow the blood trail away from the point I originally saw it. We couldn't smell anything that would have indicated gut pile or carcass.
I'm guessing the animal was shot at the point where we saw the pools and splatters of blood. If so, is this a CO problem? I'm pretty sure the Squamish elk herd is protected. Crime Scene Investigator Squamish Valley Edition anyone?
The trail was easy walking. There was a couple of snowmobile tracks, probably one sled that went up then came down.
Mid way up we ran into a bunch of elk sign. Tracks and scat were on top of the sled so the elk came after the sleds. Tracks were in and out of the bush, but lots of tracks along the road and the skinny alders along the road's edge had been scraped hard. The scrapes were pretty fresh and the scat was not frozen through, so I'm thinking they were there within a day of our hike.
A hundred yards further along I noticed large blood drops, about 2" diameter. The blood trail got easier to follow as we went up the road because it became more frequent and the drops became larger. A couple hundred yards further up we found a couple fair sized (6" x 8") pools of blood and a splattering of blood all around it. Up to that point it was hard to match the tracks to the blood trail because there were so many tracks but I was able to see one clear set of fist-sized tracks from a mature elk leading into the pools of blood. There were no predator tracks. I followed the tracks back up into the woods where the animal had come from and didn't see any more blood. I did see another set of tracks with blood in the tracks but I'm pretty sure that was an animal bleeding from the hoof or hock, not necessarily related to the pools of blood. We also saw numerous clumps of hair up and down the road. No hide, just hair.
By the time we unravelled the above details it was getting dark so I never had the chance to follow the blood trail away from the point I originally saw it. We couldn't smell anything that would have indicated gut pile or carcass.
I'm guessing the animal was shot at the point where we saw the pools and splatters of blood. If so, is this a CO problem? I'm pretty sure the Squamish elk herd is protected. Crime Scene Investigator Squamish Valley Edition anyone?