THE LAST ELK HUNT

I told you about my first elk hunt with my son, now I will tell you about the last.

            The early September morning was clear and chilly.  As Stephen drove up the road on the ranch where John worked, north of Livingston Montana, the dark sky was turning steely grey.  I directed Stephen to park overlooking a timbered ridge and I told him at one time we had seen the hillside below covered with elk.  Talking softly we waited for a little more daylight. 

            The large ranch, located so close to the east side of the Bridger mountains you couldn’t see the tall peaks, was mostly open country with deep coulees, pasture land and hay fields.  The property did run up into the timber, however, bordered with Forest Service, giving the elk and deer an excellent habitat of cover and nearby feed.  In the summer and fall the elk were abundant on the upper sections of the ranch.  I often drove the three miles to where the prairie met the timber to walk and would see elk most times.  Come rifle season most of the elk moved to a ranch that did not allow hunting.

            Just a few days before this I had been walking on the ridge we now looked at, only I had approached it from a different direction.  I decided to see if a bull was in the area, so I sat down in front of a small bushy fir tree and using my mouth only, let loose with a bull elk bugle.  Not having a grunt tube or diaphragm, the call was without volume so wouldn’t carry far.

            As soon as my high whistle call with low grunts at the end died off, an answering call rang through the timber.  I tried again and sure enough there was the spine-tingling answer winging its way up the mountain side.  My border collie, Happy, who was sitting beside me, growled low in his throat.  I knew a bark would follow, so I told him to lay behind me and admonished him to be quiet.  Then I tried a few cow-talk squeals and bull grunts. 

            Soon I heard crashing and twigs snapping and knew a bull was attacking a small tree to demonstrate his strength and intimidate the other bull who was trespassing on his territory.  I heard cows talking, then silence.  Below me about 40 yards I saw movement, light colored antlers turning.  He came into sight moving slowly, silently, not a large bull, a rag horn with four points.  

             Cautiously he moved closer peering through the timber, searching for the other bull.  He stood in the open facing me, dark, regal and completely wild.  Even though I held a camera instead of a bow, my heart tried to pound its way out of my chest.  Happy emitted a low growl and I laid my hand on his head, hushing him.  

            I held my breath and snapped a few pictures with my old 35mm film camera and its 300mm zoom lens.  The bull cautiously stalked closer to within 30 yards and turned sideways in the open presenting a perfect bow shot. I shot away with my camera. 

            Happy growled again and in glancing at him I saw he was looking to my side.  I peered through the trees and saw cows milling.  The bull moved around to join his cows and not wanting the “other bull” to steal them, he rounded them up and moved them out; quickly and silently.

I was ecstatic!  Not only was it a grand experience to be so close to Wapiti, the Ghost of the Timber, but to observe their natural behavior was a rare treat.  And I had found the place to take my son when he came bow hunting.

            So as the eastern sky lightened, Stephen and I quietly shut the pickup doors and moved out towards the very timber that bull had come out of.  We hiked down a sagebrush covered slope to the bottom of the coulee where we leaned against a couple of trees at the edge of the timber, waiting for more light.  In the silence of the dawn our ears strained for sound.  The snap of a twig, a high squeal of a cow or maybe a low grunt from a bull.  My nerves zinged with anticipation and my senses were on high alert.  The scent of fir, spruce and sage mingled in the nippy air.  Birds began to twitter, streaks of red and orange streaked the eastern sky, and soon we could make out tree trunks in the gloom of the forest. 

            I motioned with my head and we moved higher on the slope, stepping quietly and soundlessly in the forest duff.  I thought I heard the cat-like call of a cow elk and grabbed Stephen’s arm. 

            “Did you hear that?” I hissed.

            “Yeah,” he whispered back, “A cow, but not sure where.”

            I made the cow call and waited.  No answer.  We moved through the timber, farther up the slope. 

            Suddenly a high whistle split the silence, followed by a guttural growl and low grunts.  My heart pounded and Stephen looked at me his eyes wide. Adrenaline flooded my veins and I instinctively raised my camera.  Stephen took an arrow out of his quiver on his bow and knocked it.  The bull was above us and slightly to the left, perfect for the wind which was coming down the slope.          

Putting my mouth right up to his ear, I said in a low whisper,  “I think they’re in a meadow about hundred yards.” I pointed up the hill, “You go ahead, when you reach the edge of the meadow and are set up against a tree, give me the signal and I’ll bugle.”

He nodded and moved up the slope.  I watched him go, he was silent, no sound what so ever.  His every movement was slow, every step precision, he moved from tree to tree like a spirit, his eyes roving the dark timber.  The military had trained him well.  He was a hunting machine.

I stayed about 40 feet behind him and tried to move as carefully and silently as he did.  When he stopped at the edge of the meadow, I stood behind a tree.  At his signal I put the diaphragm in my mouth and tipping up the grunt tube, I sent the high toned call winging through the morning air.

            Two breaths after my low grunts died off, an answering whistle sailed into the sky.  Before I could answer another bugle sounded farther up the mountain.  My heart kicked into triple time.  Two bulls!  For awhile we stood there and listened with held breaths while the two bulls blasted intimidating calls to each other. In between the bugling, we could hear cows mewing and talking to each other.  I cow talked now and then.

            I saw movement to the left and a shadow appeared out of the gloom.  A cow elk stalked on silent feet. How an animal that size can move, even run through the timber silently I have no idea, but I’ve seen it many times.  The cow slowly moved in closer, stopped and peered at Stephen.  Then she turned sideways, stopped and watched him some more, searching for that bull.  I waited for the twang of the bow, since it was legal to take a cow with a bow, but none came.  I knew why.  When you hear bulls bugling near by, no way will you settle for shooting a cow!  The cow turned away and slowly melted back into the timber.

            Stephen was glassing the meadow and I wondered if he could see the elk.  I sent up a call now and then, but soon it became apparent the bulls were not coming closer to our location.  In fact the closer bull was moving farther up the mountain.  Knowing this country, I knew as the morning warmed up, the wind would begin to blow uphill, taking our scent right to the elk.  I moved up to Stephen.

            “We have to move, get above them or at least to the side,” I whispered and explained about the wind.  I could see dark forms at the edge of the timber across the meadow and glassed them for horns.  They were all cows, but Stephen told me excitedly, he had seen a rag horn bull when he first came up.  He’d watched the bull bugle and rub his horns on brush.

            We started moving around the herd, but as we moved the bulls moved farther up the hill.  We could tell their location from the bugling they still did now and then.  If they stopped bugling I would send a call out and one would answer.  After about an hour or so of hiking, stopping to listen and glass, we were at the same altitude as the elk and four hundred yards across a draw from them. 

            We sat side by side on a log with binoculars to our eyes, glassing the thinly timbered mountainside.  The elk seemed unaware of our presence, but since I had bugled some, they evidently were staying a distance from what they thought was the new bull in the woods.  The herd bull evidently did not want to fight and was moving his cows away from the interloper.

            “I see a bull,” I whispered.  “There’s another one.  Second one’s bigger, probably the herd bull. They’re not far from each other.”

            I explained where they were and Stephen soon spotted them.  “Yep,” he whispered back, “big enough to go after.  What do you think is the best approach?”

            The breeze by this time was funneling straight up the mountainside so the best thing to do was to keep circling above them. So we tried to do that, but the wily Wapiti just kept moving ahead of us, keeping several hundred yards away.  I could see that I was not going to be able to get around them, but I knew Stephen could move much faster and quieter than I could.  So I suggested he go on by himself and move up through the thicker timber until he was above them. 

            So he moved out while I bugled and cow talked trying to fool the elk into thinking the “bull” and his herd were staying put.  I prayed Stephen would get a bull, and watched the mountainside through my glasses.  I caught glimpses of elk as they fed on the sparsely timbered slope.  Once I saw a spike and once again a bigger bull.  After quite awhile I heard a bugle farther up the mountain and figured it was Stephen letting me know he was above them. 

            I sat for awhile longer then made my way to the pickup and waited until Stephen came back.  He didn’t get a bull, he had a spike come into his cow talk and had a good shot, but he chose not to shoot a spike.  Later that evening we went up another drainage where we bugled until dusk without hearing one answer. 

That was our last elk hunt together.  We did have other adventures hunting antelope and pheasants and camping with John and the kids. 

Even though no animal was taken it was a successful hunt.  In bow hunting success is not, in my book anyway, measured by how many elk you stick, but by the spine-tingling adventure you experience.

            Also for my son and me it was successful because of the memories.  Every detail, every stalk, every turn of the head, every word, I will remember for this life time.  Both of us, I believe, will have the memories for eternity.  I thank my God for that last great elk hunt together and for the memories.

small rag horn

These photos did not scan well since it was a film camera, but they are of the bull in the story.