Continued...

Sorry for the delay. Got busy chasing ducks this weekend.

Much to my dismay, the best part of the season for our little group happened in my absence. Cadon has been chasing elk with us for the last 4 years to no avail, while Matt, Rowdy, and myself have been tagging bulls with varying success. It seemed like each year Cadon would show up and immediately get roped into packing the quarters of someone else's bull out. He'd had a couple of close calls but it just never quite came together.

Even this year had been marked with near-misses and misfortune. One morning he'd made a run on group of elk with a couple of bulls in it, only to have a couple of unseen hunters above him get a shot off seconds before he topped out over the ridge he was going to be shooting from. Another time he was laying prone waiting for a bull to take a couple of steps forward to get clear of a pine tree, only to have a freaking bobcat show up and blow out the bull.

Here is a picture of that bull seconds before the calamity ensued....

[Linked Image from i.ibb.co]

The consensus for our camp this season was for Cadon to get the first shot at any bull we spotted. I'd screwed that up by shooting a raghorn on the opener before Cadon arrived, and almost two weeks later nobody had managed to get a shot on another one.

The last night of our moose camp I received an InReach message that I'd waiting for years to hear...Cadon had killed his first bull. The details were sketchy, but I managed to gather that he'd killed the bull in the LAST hour of the season! Matt had stayed back to break camp while Jake and Cadon made one last run to an area they'd been seeing some recent sign in. Sure enough, in the waning minutes of the last evening a small band of elk had fed out of a timber-patch and crossed a ridge in front of them at no more than 80 yards. Cadon had somehow managed to let the first two spikes and a couple of cows pass as he'd previously caught sight of a broken-racked raghorn near the back of the group. A single, well-placed shot had finally put him in the ranks of successful elk hunters.

Here is Cadon's bull. He's not a world-record, but for our little group at least, it was the best animal of the year by a wide margin....

[Linked Image from i.ibb.co]

Matt finished breaking down camp and made a run back to their location via InReach. Those devices have been a Godsend in our group fwtw. Cadon, Jake, and Matt managed to get the entire bull out in one run. It made for a looong night as they had no choice but to hit the road at midnight with camp already down. They'd end up back in the closest town around 3 in the morning, at which point they decided to just sleep in the cab of their trucks for a couple of hours before pushing for home. It was a brutal 24 hours, but an adventure he will cherish for all his years.

To be continued....

If you're not burning through batteries in your headlamp,...you're doing it wrong.