Where's that fricken music coming from? And why is it getting louder? "Ding, d'ding ding ding. D'ding d'ding ding ding..." Crap! It's my alarm. Didn't I just go to bed? "Ding, d'ding ding ding..."
I roll over to find my phone and touch the screen to send it into snooze mode. Even just rolling over, I feel my knee aching, my lower back wound up tight as the bow string on my Hoyt and hear the internal dialog of the guy on the right shoulder, (Hope,) telling me to get up while the guy on the left, (Doubt,) is saying, "Dude, it's just not worth it. Go back to sleep. There ain't any elk out there anyway. At least hit the snooze one more time."
I don't hit snooze again because the guy on the right keeps saying, "You can't shoot anything sitting on the couch and you only have one more day off this week. You have to GET UP!"
The clock reads 4:40am. I'm so tired but I drag my butt out of bed and hobble my way to the coffee pot where a fresh pot has already been brewed. I set the timer last night knowing it would be one more bit of leverage to get me up and moving. I wouldn't want to waste an entire pot of coffee by letting it sit for a couple hours on the burner while I sleep. So now I'm up.
With a couple sips of my caffeine concoction--coffee, cream and a ton of sugar just to make it taste a little like hot chocolate--and a trip down the stairs and then back up, my knee has lubed up a bit and my back has loosened just enough to start feeling like maybe another 6 mile hike up and down the mountain won't be so bad. Besides, I won't be able to get back to sleep now anyway so I might as well go. I throw my gear in the truck and head down the road.
It's still dark when I get to the trail head. It's also raining, which is something I haven't seen yet this season but it's definitely welcomed. I'm here. I'm still tired but I am here. I just need to get moving and in a couple hundred yards, my body will warm up and I'll be in hiking mode and life will be good and even though most of the elk have been down in the hay fields all season, maybe this rain and cool weather will push them into the hills. And maybe the bulls will be chasing the cows into this drainage and maybe, just maybe, they'll be talking today...maybe.
With the heavy cloud cover, it took a little longer for the light to break through the darkness. I was up in the parks on the top of the mountain by the time it was light enough to see through the peep site on my bow but the clouds were so socked in, I couldn't see more than a couple hundred yards. I cow call a few times with no response. I don't want to bugle yet because if there is a bull out in the park with some cows, I don't want to send him fleeing with his cows down into the timber. I slowly make my way around the edge of the park and into a drainage where I think a group of elk worked their way into a couple days ago. I saw them cross the road coming out of a hay field and spooked up the drainage while I was driving in.
"They had to have come up here, right? But what's the chance they'll still be here?" I ask myself. "And if they're not talking, there's absolutely no way I'm ever going to find them. This is ridiculous."
I work my way to the top of the drainage and cow called again. Immediately, I hear what sounds to be either a really old bull that can barely get out a bugle, which is really more of a moan, or it's a sick moo-cow. I walk my way through some trees and yep, "F@$##'n cattle."
I side-hill my way across the top of the drainage through some pretty thick timber. I haven't seen any fresh sign in this area this season, which I keep attributing to just being too dry and too early but I hadn't been in this drainage yet so maybe there is hope. I know that small herd came up here somewhere but they're not fricken talking so this is going to be that needle in a haystack scenario where the probability of finding those elk is next to nothing. Plus, with all these cattle in here, why the hell would any elk stick around anyway?
I keep walking and eventually look down to see what looks to be fresh elk droppings. Maybe they're not "fresh" but they're not all dried up and rock hard like the droppings I had been seeing. Or maybe, they're just droppings that have been rehydrated from the rain...I don't know. Doubt, (the guy on the left shoulder,) is telling me there's no way in hell those droppings are fresh but Hope tells me to cow call again so I take the reed in my mouth, purse my lips and blow while sliding the call deeper into my mouth creating the "mee-ewww," sound finishing with a fat, "blat" of the loose reed vibrating against the plastic mouth piece. No response.
I call again and then grab the plunger-type call, the "Hoochie mamma," and hit it. Still nothing. This is pointless. Doubt is starting to gain momentum.
I've been out now 4 or 5 times and although I've seen a lot of elk in the hay fields, I've only seen one group in an area I could hunt and with the swirling winds, they busted me. I've probably hiked a good 25 miles this season already going up and down these mountains and nothing has really got me all that excited. It's actually starting to get a little frustrating but I keep going back to my experiences over the past few years and I know things can change in an instant. Everything can seem to be going wrong or at least, you see no sign of elk or that elk had been in an area for days and then bam! There they are.
"Just keep walking, Russ," says the guy on the right. "And watch your step...but keep your head up and keep scanning the timber."
"Crack," says the little twig under my left foot.
"Watch your step!"
I pull my cow call to my lips again and call as though I'm disguising the sound I made with that of a cow elk. Right, as if an elk is going to hear me stumbling around and then hear me cow call and think. "Huh, I think that's just another elk." Ya, right.
Elk hunting is one of those activities that kind of puts you into this mode of reflection and contemplation where one second you're thinking of all these random things like relationships, work, my Costco list, or what I'm going to write about in this blog or talk about on the podcast tonight and then in a second, all those thoughts and mental notes get blown up, like driving down the road in some hypnotic trance and then someone pulls out in front of you, almost clipping your front corner panel and your entire being shifts from modus contemplation to some kind of "go-mode" where you have to react in a self-preservationist act by first; swerving, then hitting the brakes, and then of course, flipping off the other driver and mouthing the words, "What the f@#$!" in such a manner that you know they know what you're saying. It's in that moment where all these other thoughts leave and you become ultra-focused on the one task at hand.
I put my head down as to not step on another twig and walk a few yards. I lift my head up to scan the timber again and as my eyes train up-hill to the left, my thoughts disappear and I go, "go-mode" as I see the body of an elk literally only 25 yards away.
"Shit. Did it see me? Which way is it looking? Where's the wind coming from?" All these thoughts are now replacing the deep thoughts that occupied my brain for the past hour or so and let me tell you, these thoughts are causing some serious excitement and also a little anxiety. I'm not going to lie. When it happens, there's a bit of stress and those hunters that are successful have the ability to mitigate that stress. Those that can't, write off their failings to "buck fever." The thing about elk hunting for me, is that it often happens so quick, I don't have that much time to think about failure so I don't get too worked up.
Like I said, I saw the body of the elk. It was standing behind some trees and I thought it was looking away from me so I pulled an arrow from my quiver and nocked it. I was wrong. The elk was looking directly at me and as I nocked the arrow, she caught my movement and cocked her head to the side to get a better look and I found myself in a stare-down.
It only took a couple seconds for her to turn and start off down the ravine heading away from me. I cow called and she stopped. She then turned and walked towards me. I heard a short bark from another elk that was behind her, which happened to be a small bull and then another elk, which was her calf. She walked closer and then I felt me heart pounding just a little heavier.
She came to within about 15 yards before she stopped to get a better look at me. She was staring directly at me. Her calf was standing right behind her and the bull was still about 30 yards out, behind some trees. Doubt chimed in, "You're busted."
Hope responded, "Duh."
She turned, he turned, the calf turned and I watched them lumber down the ravine and out of sight.
I've felt that feeling before of being busted by an elk and I have to say, sometimes I'm wrong. Sometimes, for whatever reason, they flick their ears and move on as if they figure there's nothing wrong here and you get the shot. That wasn't the case this time but I still feel like this was a small victory. I snuck up to well within shooting range of three elk in the timber and although I didn't shoot, and I wouldn't have shot the cow with the calf anyway, I was pretty damn close and in the past, I've had it go completely the other way where I do get the shot and then I'm scrambling to find buddies that can get off work to help me pack out. I was "that" close and what that does is gives Hope a little louder voice and Doubt can kiss my ass.
Keep 'em where they live...
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