Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Thanks Montana (solo backpack elk) and 2013 season

That afternoon I drove back to the trailhead, hustled the few miles in and started up. I climbed and climbed and climbed. The tracks from other hunters petered out around an hour into it. At two hours they just stopped. Two more hours and I reached the first saddle, moving along to the east for another 45 minutes and spotted a couple of cows moving out of the timber slightly below me-


Further past them another 1k yards or so 6 or 7 more were in a small meadow. None of the elk that I had seen were visible at all until you got above them. And they were waaay up there...

I continued on trying to reach the spot where the herd from this morning had been. The snow was pretty deep-




And the mountain was very steep at times. It took two right at two more hours to reach the spot where the elk had been-


Unfortunately there were no elk. So I sat down, fired up the JetBoil, popped open a can of Venom that I carried for just that moment-



And even though the cold combined with the altitude tried to hamper my efforts of happiness...... They lost.



The sunset was spectacular, the Raspberry crumble was spot on, and the drink burned just right...




to be cont.....