I guess that the third time really is the charm.
2003 is my 11th hunting season. In that time, I’ve been drawn
for cow elk three times, the third being this season. I’ve never
been drawn to hunt bull elk.
My first was a four-day hunt in the second week of December in
Unit 1. Yes, there was plenty of snow on the ground. Overnight
lows got down to around 15° F. I was all alone, camping out of
the back of my truck. I lasted two days. I bailed out when a
snowstorm moved in on the evening of the second day of the hunt.
I had had enough.
My second cow elk hunt was another four-day hunt in 2001. This
one was a month earlier in the year, the second week of November
(I stopped applying for December elk hunts!). However, it was
not in a prime elk area. My area had a small band of forest in
the southern portion, but most was open prairie, with a juniper
transition zone between prairie and forest.
I did get an opportunity on the third day of the 2001 hunt, but
lost my chance when I could not positively determine the status
of the animal’s headgear. It bolted and I never took a shot.
Another factor in my hesitation was that I was not mentally
prepared to deal with a downed elk. An elk is a heck of a big
animal, and I really didn’t have a plan for what to do with it
after it was down. In fact, I was actually relieved that I
didn’t have to shoot!
The tag I got this year was for a full seven-day hunt in prime
elk habitat in mid-October. It just does not get any better than
that. In fact, last year’s hunt success statistic for this hunt
was 68%! I knew that there was an excellent chance that I would
have to deal with a very large, very dead animal laying on the
ground.
That’s why I started asking lots of questions, seeking advice
wherever I could -- since once again, I was hunting alone, and
there would be me and only me to get the critter out of the woods.
I received a number of flyers from various game processors in the
days leading up to the hunt. One flyer was from 4-Peaks Processing.
They are located at Bell Road and 19th Avenue, real close to work.
The flyer mentioned that they would have a refrigerated truck up at
Happy Jack Lodge during the hunts. That was about 25 miles from
where I would be hunting, half of that over 15 mph dirt road.
I decided to visit the shop beforehand and ask for a tour. He
explained the complete trip the meat took from coming in the back
door, to out through the front door. He is a hunter, so he makes
a point of advertising that he never “gang processes” any meat. I
was actually quite impressed with all the efforts he made to keep
the shop clean, frequently mopping down with bleach solution. I
was sold.
So now at least I knew that I would only be driving my elk from
camp to Happy Jack Lodge. I felt confident about the “red work”,
as Gerhard calls it – gutting out the elk. The biggest questions
remained about the time between gutting, and driving off for the
meat trailer. Fortunately, I received plenty of guidance on this
matter from my fellow club members as published in the pages of
this newsletter. I was as ready as I was ever going to be, so off
to woods I go!
I had first been to this particular hunt unit several years ago for
a spring turkey hunt, but had not been back since. On that hunt, I
did not see one turkey, but I had several close encounters with elk.
I don’t know what took me so long to apply for an elk hunt in this
unit.
Unlike Mark Snyder on his Idaho hunt, I was expecting to hunt
exclusively in the woods. Spot and stalk wasn’t a consideration.
I planned to “turkey hunt” for elk. After all, I’ve seen more elk
when turkey hunting than I’ve ever seen turkeys! The farthest you
could see in these woods is 100 yards, with 75 yards a more realistic
expectation for shot distance.
Over the first several days, I revisited the sites where I had run
into elk on that turkey hunt of at least five years ago. I don’t
know why I always do that. The animals of course are never at the
same spot when I revisit, but I bet that you do the same thing too.
It’s a ritual that must be followed. If I didn’t revisit those spots,
and the hunt ended unsuccessfully, I’m sure that I would just be stuck
second guessing myself, “what if I had checked out the old spots?”
On this trip, I made the most extensive use of high-tech mapping
systems I had ever done. I had a laptop in the truck running DeLorme’s
TopoQuads 3D version 2.0. In the field, I had a Garmin eTrex Summit
GPS receiver in my pocket, plus an iPaq Pocket PC loaded with
OziExplorerCE in my backpack. I took frequent waypoints of interesting
places such as other hunter’s camps, unmarked tanks, intersections with
unmarked roads, etc.
Then in the evening, I could upload the waypoints to the laptop from the
GPS. OziExplorer on the Pocket PC is also capable of receiving the
waypoints from the GPS, so whether I was in the field, or in camp, I
could examine exactly where I was on the topo map, in relation to other
points of interest. There were a lot of times when I asked myself, “OK,
where should I go now?” It was great to be able to analyze where I had
been, and what I had seen there, to help decide where to try next.
One example was when I wanted to go across a deep canyon to get to an
interesting looking place on the other side. I didn’t want to go down
into the canyon, so on the laptop map, I defined an intermediate
waypoint at the head of the canyon to go to first. Then I sent the
waypoints from the laptop to the GPS. The next day, I first navigated
to that intermediate spot, then turned and navigated to the spot I
wanted to go to in the first place; thus avoiding the climb down, then
out of the deep canyon.
I had camped on a tertiary dirt road, two miles back from it’s origin
at a secondary dirt road. I was driving the Polaris Ranger back to
camp on the evening of the second day, when I came up behind a pickup
cruising slowly down my camp road. About a minute after coming up on
the back of him, I saw his brake lights come on. I figured he was
gonna hop out to chat. I saw the door swing open and was startled
when the old man jumped out, crouched over with rifle in hand! “Holy
shit! I’m sorry I was following so close!”, I was thinking to myself.
But then he threw the rifle up to his shoulder and peered into the
trees through his scope. “Did you see her? She was right there,” he
said to me. I then realized that he was jumping out after an elk. At
that point, I was thinking to myself, “OK, now just get off the road
before you shoot. Sheesh!”
“She just ran off in a full gallop down that canyon.” “Are you going
after her?”, I said. “This old body can’t run after elk in canyons
anymore.” He hopped back into his truck and continued on.
Well hell, I’ll give it a try! I parked the Ranger and pulled the
rifle down from its case on top of the roll cage. I walked about 50
yards into the woods and saw nothing. And since I hadn’t seen
anything when the old man jumped out, I didn’t even know in which
direction to head. I walked back to the Ranger and putt-putted back
to camp for the evening.
It was the next night, the evening of the third day when I first laid
eyes on elk. I was running down a secondary dirt road in the Ranger,
coming back from hunting an area where I had sighted elk on that
turkey hunt. It was past sundown, but not quite dark. About 2 miles
from the turnoff to camp, there was a herd in the trees, right off the
road. I let off the gas as I passed them, my head swiveling around
watching them as I passed. Their heads too, swiveled after me as I
passed. There were at least 8 individuals in the herd with at least
one spike bull.
The comical picture of the old man the night before jumping out
crouched, with rifle in-hand flashed through my brain as I passed
the herd and parked about 150 yards beyond them. After getting the
rifle down, I walked into the woods, then turned back toward where
the elk were. This is not how I wanted to knock down my elk – just
one step removed from road hunting.
Guns & Loads
Finnish M39
I really wanted to take an elk with one of my WW2 relics.
I chose one of my Finnish M39’s, a specimen made in 1942 at
the Valmet armory to take to the woods with me. For hunting
purposes, I temporarily swapped out the standard straight bolt
with one that was turned down and lengthened -- a “sniper” bolt.
This rifle is iron-sighted though. Recognizing the short
distance opportunities likely on this hunt, I felt no handicap
with iron sights.
For an elk load, I worked up a recipe that included the .311”
Speer 180 gr. Round Nose bullet over 48.0 grains of IMR 4320
powder. This gave me a velocity of 2660 fps out of the M39’s
27” barrel. In the end, however, I just was not as confident
with the old battle rifle as I was with the rifle pictured below,
and only hunted the first day with the old Finn.
Marlin .444
I’ve had this Marlin model 444SS since November of 1994. Truth
be told, it hasn’t seen much hunting action. It’s been out after
Arizona whitetail, before I knew how inappropriate it was for the
task. I also took it out on a long weekend bear hunt – didn’t see
any. It went with me on that first December cow elk hunt, but
that’s about it. It may be hard to believe, but I do love this
rifle. It’s just that it has some very specific duties that it is
well suited for here in Arizona, and cow elk hunting in the woods
is at the top of the list.
For sighting equipment, it is mounted with an inexpensive 4x32
Simmons 22 Mag scope (yes, it’s a .22 scope). It works fine and
has never given me any trouble mounted on this hard-kicking rifle.
The only other change I’ve made to the rifle is the addition of a
Pachmayr Decelerator to tame the recoil.
My .444 load for the hunt was the 265 gr. Hornady Flat Point bullet
over 46.0 grains of H4198 powder. This combination yields a
velocity of 2200 fps.
Except for the first day, I spent most of the hunt in the company
of this rifle. Since it had been a while since I’d hunted with it,
it was a pleasure to reacquaint myself with it’s fine field handling
qualities and the smooth and sure operation of this classic lever
action. When the moment of truth came, no doubts clouded my mind
because I knew I had the right tool in hand.
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They had already fled deeper into the woods. There were precious
few moments of hunting light left in the day. I spotted one
broadside toward me deep in the dark woods about 75 yards away.
Up went the rifle and the crosshairs locked on to the animal’s
boiler room. But just like 2001, I could not verify a lack of bone
matter jutting up out of the animal’s head. I tried moving out from
behind the tree I had chosen for cover, to get a different angle of
view on the elk. When I did, a crashing of hooves precipitated and
the opportunity evaporated.
Déjà vu all over again! In 2001, only one opportunity came my way.
Would I be replaying this scene in my head over and over again as my
one opportunity in 2003?
The season was from Friday through Thursday. Having been drawn for
three hunts this year, I had to carefully ration my remaining vacation
days. I took a half-day off from work on Thursday before opening day,
and planned to break camp after lunch on Wednesday at the latest. The
dark woods elk opportunity came on Sunday evening. Counting the
remaining time in half days, I had five half-days left. I spotted a
nice bull on Monday, but no cows. Except for a wild coyote serenade
that just went on and on and on, Tuesday morning was uneventful. As
of Tuesday lunch, I was down to two remaining half-days.
I ate my Tuesday lunch in the field at the Ranger. While eating, I
pulled out the Pocket PC to review the map with all the waypoints of
places I had tried. To my east was a great canyon beyond which I had
not explored. To the west of this great canyon were a great many dots
in a mainly north/south orientation representing waypoints I had
visited over the last couple of days. At the south end of the great
canyon was the Mogollon Rim and the canyon’s origin. I noticed that
there was a sort of “tongue” of flat, high land at the canyon head.
All around the periphery of this tongue, the canyon dropped off
steeply and deeply.
With only two half-day hunts left, I was starting to get into that
too-familiar frame of mind that, “It’s been a great hunt, but I’m
probably going home empty-handed.” On the other hand, I also knew
that the only way to be successful was to be out-there. Sitting
around camp, or hanging out with the Ranger would probably not get
me my elk. I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon making a
slow and lazy circuit of the periphery of that tongue. The tongue
was about a five mile ride from my present position, so I finished
lunch and motored over.
For the entire hunt, my biggest concern was, “Where would my elk go
down?” I did NOT want to knock down an elk at the bottom of a deep
canyon. I tried to avoid canyons exactly for that reason. I wanted
to be able to motor right up to the carcass with the Ranger. That’s
why the tongue looked so attractive to me. Since it was essentially
flat, even though there were no roads shown there, I could probably
go wherever I would need to with the Ranger.
Over the last several days I had tried sitting for several hours at
likely spots and waiting. I also had tried slowly, but steadily
covering ground. This is what I was doing for about the first
half-way around the edge of the tongue. Then I found a log and
decided to take a load off my feet for a few minutes. I sat thinking
for about 15 minutes when it occurred to me that what I had not tried
was classic still-hunting. Truly a cross between the sitting and the
walking I had been doing, I decided to give still-hunting a try,
something I really had never done much of before.
I got up from the log and strapped my backpack back on. I took five
steps, settled my feet, then stopped. For the next minute or two, I
just stood there and slowly swiveled my head all around. Then I took
five more steps, settled my feet, and did it all over again. Repeat
again. And again.
I had traveled probably 100 yards from the log in this manner when I
had to say to myself, “Holy smokes, it works!” For there in front of
me, about another 100 yards off, was a cow elk filtering through the
trees, browsing and walking. She had no idea of my presence. This
time I could definitely verify that this elk wore no headgear. It was
2:15 in the afternoon.
My heart rate immediately doubled as I tried to move a little closer.
There was a low rise between her and me and more than a few trees. It
had been a warm and dry hunt. Daytime highs were just under 80°. The
ground cover of oak leaves, pine needles and cones was dry and crackly.
I tiptoed as quietly as I could, but to me, each footfall sounded like
a cymbal crash.
I reached a point about 75 yards from her when I decided that I was
close enough. She was still behind a tree, but in front of her was an
opening in the forest that she would next step into. I raised the rifle
as she took the step into the clear. I pulled back the hammer, then
dropped it with the trigger.
Her head was up, but there was no apparent reaction to the shot. It was
as if she was saying, “Huh? Something going on?” I flicked the lever
to chamber another round. No, unfortunately I haven’t developed a natural
instinct to reload a round immedately after firing. A little more
carefully this time, I centered the crosshair on the animal’s chest and
released a second slug.
This time, she crumpled immediately. I cycled the lever again, then bent
down to pick up my empties. As I approached her, it was apparent that
she still wasn’t done. She strained to raise her head and neck. I put
one more slug into her neck at the base of the skull. Now she was done.
A hundred thoughts were racing through my mind. I was shaking like an
aspen leaf in the wind. The moment had come. What do I do now?
After snapping a couple of pictures, I proceeded with the red work.
She had graciously chosen to expire with her back to a large log with a
number of protruding branch stumps. These made excellent places to tie
back her legs to, giving me excellent access to her underside. I was
done with the red work about 45 minutes after she went down. I was
amazed at the huge size and weight of her gut pile. But what’s next?
My plan was to get her back to camp where I could hang, skin and bag
her, but first I had to get her there. Actually, I had given some
thought about how to get her into the Ranger. The bed of the Ranger
is capable of tilting back. When tilted, the tailgate of the bed is
within a foot of the ground. I had conjured up the idea of tying a
block and tackle to the top of the roll cage. The pulling-end of the
rope would then be tied off to a tree, with the bottom block tied to
the elk. Then all I would have to do is slowly drive forward, which
would first drag the elk a short way across the ground, but as the
block and tackle would be taken up, the elk would be pulled up into
the bed.
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And this system worked, but not without some trouble. The main problem
was that my block and tackle was really meant for nothing bigger than a
deer. It has worked great for a whitetail, and two javelina, but it was
really overmatched for pulling up an elk. In attempting to hoist the elk
into the bed of the Ranger, the rope broke on me three times! I was
finally successful, but I had to get out behind the animal and push with
all my force until I got her forward enough, past the bed’s tipping point.
I was now exhausted, and knew that my hoist was not capable of pulling
the animal into a tree. The rope was so stretched out that I no longer
trusted its integrity. So I drove to camp, and with the elk still in
the Ranger, I drove right up into the trailer.
It was finally around 6:30 when I arrived at Happy Jack Lodge and was
happy to pay the guy an extra $35 fee to skin her. We found that the
second shot dropped her so decisively because the bullet had clipped
her spinal column.
