With rifle season only a couple months away, how about sharing some of last year's stories and photos? I don't have any antlers to show but we did get some meat in the freezer.

It was my second season hunting elk in Colorado, having recently relocated for a job, but I was able to draw a fourth season either sex tag with only one point. Not having ever killed a bull before that was naturally my ultimate objective. However, I knew my wife and two children at home would rather eat elk than a single serving of tag soup, so a cow was definitely not off the table as an option.

By the time fourth season rolled around I had already broken new ground by punching my tag on a young muley buck. I grew up in southern AZ in a prime coues deer unit so I hadn't hunted a mule deer up to this point. The 140 nosler accubonds I had loaded up for my .270 worked perfectly and I was sure a Southwest Colorado bull would follow shortly.

The tag I had drawn covered multiple units from treeline through sagebrush high desert. I had been in the field the whole season prior with family members who had bought otc bull tags, but had only seen one glimpse at a legal bull, so I was hoping for some cold weather to bring the herds down to lower elevations. With no weather in the forecast fourth season arrived.

I had made a plan of four to five places to hunt depending on the amount of elk activity and primarily other hunter activity. So about a n hour before legal shooting light I began hiking to my first destination, a small strip of forest bordering a private ranch where I had seen elk holding up the week before. there was a small bowl like structure at the base of a small ridge with a couple cattle tanks for water. I moved from the back side up and over the ridge so I could get a vantage from the top looking down on what would hopefully be a sleepy group of elk. Well after glassing the bowl for a couple of hours and waving at several late rising, orange clad fellow hunters I worked my way back to the truck and drove to the next spot. The rest of the day followed suit.

Day two found me riding shotgun with my wife's older brother to try one of his spots. He had drawn the same tag but had worked the previous day. So together we hunted his honey holes with similar success as the first day. He did stumble onto a nice dead head from the year before, a young five point bull. It would have been a trophy for either of us if he'd only lived another year.

It wasn't until the middle of the afternoon after climbing switchbacks for a mile and a half to get to a secluded section of forest that once again bordered a private ranch that we saw our first bull. We had found a great vantage point overlooking a pinch point canyon where we had seen elk funnel down to water below. We'd eaten out lunches of pb and j's and maybe caught a short siesta when I finally spotted some brown through my 10X50's. Two cows, a spike and a barely legal four point sat in a small draw just 50 yards the private side of the fence. They didn't get any closer that day. Right at sundown a different group of cows crossed right into the pinch point and made there way to the water. I couldn't shoot because I knew there would be a bull in the back. Of course I was wrong.

Fourth season in Colorado is five days long and because the fifth day falls on Sunday (as it does again this year for my cow hunt) it would be a four day season for me since I don't hunt on Sundays, personal preference of course. So this would be the final day. By sun-up I was shivering on the same overlook that we had seen the bull from the evening before. Just as I was starting to get restless leg syndrome I looked straight across the canyon at a cow looking right back at me. "Oh crap, she's got me," I thought, just as she turned and kept coming right down the well worn path that crossed the fence onto the forest. She was followed by about a dozen other cows who all crossed too. No bull. Well I'm sure most of you would have waited out the day to see if that bull showed up, I didn't. That last cow stopped in an opening right at 300 yards and I put an accubond right behind the shoulder.

Remember that nonexistent weather? Well it became very existent(is that a word) 4" of snow fell on my trips hauling that thing out.
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