The hunt

On the first day we hiked in about 3 miles. About an hour into it we spotted some cows and a young bull on the ridge line. We actually got him to bugle back but he wasn't too interested and moved over the ridge with his cows. Most of our hunting was in open aspens. It was beautiful. The perfect place to imagine a giant bull barreling in. 

On the 2nd day of the hunt we climbed off our horses and heard and elk bugle immediately. We set up and a cow and spike came in but no bull. We started down the aspen quaky and then my dad slipped down some rocks. Literally the entire sole came off his boot. Luckily we had some paracord and backwoods engineering. We did enough to make it back to the horses and camp to grab a 2nd pair of boots.

The third day was raining most of the time. It started about 10 PM the night before and rained until 4PM the next day. Continuos rain.

Once it slacked off we made it out for a short hike from camp into the dark timber. Saw a mule deer but that was about it for the day. It was cold and windy so I am sure most of the elk were smarter and decided to lay down.

On the last day we topped a ridge and glassed a really nice 6x6 bull making his way across the side of the mountain headed down directly for the area we spent most of our first day. There was a huge wallow down there with lots of elk sign and we were sure he was headed there, or would at least pass through. He didn't have any cows with him so we thought there was a pretty good chance we could call him in.

We headed off as fast as we could but we had about 1,000 yards to cover on rough terrain. Throw in a little swirling wind and it made it pretty difficult. We got as close as possible and then set up to call. He immediately answered back, along with 3 other bulls. We had a total of 4 different bulls answering our call. I kept shifting in circles because I wasn't sure what direction he would come. After about 45 minutes they finally moved off and we broke loose. We set up for the rest of the midday and ate lunch and caught a good nap in the shade. Later that afternoon a bull across the canyon started bugling and he was pretty hot. He would answer to anything. Unfortunately was almost impossible to get over to him. It was like he was almost taunting us. We got into the elk pretty good on that last day.

There was lots of bear sign also, everywhere. Some of the other hunters saw a bear. It seemed that almost every aspen had some kind of claw marks on them from the bears. Some as high up as 20 feet or so.