(no road hunting, though...) With a new mouth to feed and running a business, hunting time is scarce and precious and the elk are a few hours away. What I wouldn't give for a weeks vacation to hunt elk!.. (Appreciate your freedom boys!
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Bonzai Trip #1 - Day 1– Headed to our elk spot that we’ve been hunting for ~6 years and the only response that I got to my bugle was a pack of howling wolves! When I hooked up with my pards after the morning hunt, they said they saw a big black wolf ~300 yards from camp the night before I arrived… I didn’t want to compete with 'pro hunters',so I bailed to check out another spot that I’d scouted a bit last year with my bro.
Day 2 - I moved camp, arriving around midnight and hiked up ~an hour as it got light to a sweet saddle that I found the year before which is a well used crossing to the next drainage. After glassing the alpine for muleys and confirming they’d moved down into the timber already, I worked my way down a knife ridge to call into the steep drainages below. After ~ 15 min. I started getting responses and had ~3 bulls going for an hour in the exact same spot they were the year before…one was a growler! However, they were in a hell hole that would take several days to get the meat out, so it was back to the drawing board...
Here's the bottom 1/3 of the mountain (hell hole from the top):
Trip #2 - After a few bullsh!t sessions with a buddy that grew up in the area, I got him psyched and convinced him to hike in with me and go after those bulls. It was thick and steep but we knew very few were dumb enough to go up after them! Definitely not in 'sheep-shape' we were suckin’ wind, but made it up in a few hours.
Similar country:
Almost as soon as we got up to the quakies, we hit a game trail and I immediately found ~180 muley shed.Then I looked up and there were two huge elk rubs at the top of the small clearing. We had finally hit their territory… it was still steep and thick, but they were here! I considered just finding the elk in this new country a success. I wanted to get the big bench that I’d seen from above, so we kept climbin’… just as we hit the timber at the top of the patch, we heard a bugle over our panting...
>>>to be continued>>>
Elk territory - thick patches of cover:
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. The squealer was back and was even attempting some chuckles. One chirp as we packed up camp and he was coming. We wanted to get to on some bigger bulls, so we pushed him and headed down towards the distant bugles. When we got down there, there was a cow in heat that was going off with her estrous whining - first time I've heard a REAL sleazy cow. 
There were lanes in the timber that we could see up to 100 yards in various directions so we set up and got in there with our own horney cow calls and played tug-o-war with three bulls. We got a chuckler into about 60 yards but for almost an hour he hung up in a thickl patch. I was getting sick of this and made a move on him, but he backed off in the undergrowth with his cows. Then another chucker chimed in and I tried everything on him sending one guy forward, but he too backed off after ½ hour when I we got too close ~50 yards. I couldn't believe that with all these bulls NOT one stuck his head out! I thought they’d be brave in such a secluded little haven... 
