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

My guess is eyeball has not spent much time outdoors here in the west.

ps- I'm not the only one.

I didn't read the details but it looks like a fun time. Should retitle the topic, Beast mode raghorn.

Creasy, I live in the west. I have killed moose in BC, deer in Montana and bow hunted there for elk unsuccessfully, hunted colorado probably 12 seasons archery elk, killed 2 cows and 2 bulls there with bow, while camped out and hunting with no guide. I have killed many deer in New Mexico with bow and muzzle loader.

Often I have camped by myself for 5-7 days at a time in the Sacramento mts south of Cloudcroft, and hunted the national forest or camped on land controlled by the Circle Cross ranch north of Timberon. Many years I have hunted alone 7-8 days from my solo camp on Stoner Mesa north of Delores. I quit when I got to the age I couldn't pack an elk out myself. I have killed many cow elk for meat on the Mescalaro Apache Reservation out of Ruidoso NM.

In the early Sept archery season I can't get an elk out for spoilage. From camp it takes an hour to get to Delores and normally a couple hours from elk to camp. Getting the packer east of town to get horses loaded and hauled up the mountain and then back in to the elk before dark, if it was killed that AM is almost impossible. If elk is killed in the PM then you have to get up early the next am and go to town and get horses. You can't make it back in to the elk till after lunch. This, along with the costs involved when my son has left home and he and his buds aren't having big dinners of venison has my freezer running over from the white tails or mule deer I kill in WEST Texas, central Texas, or East Texas.

When my brother and I used to hunt together north of Delores we would rent horses from there, until the owner got killed in the mountains by having one of his notorious green stock rear back and fall on him where his head hit a rock.

I have taken a couple of mulies with spreads over 30 in. While hunting by myself. One would have made Leatherstocking class I took with a muzzle loader from west of Chama.

I have passed on several mulies with near 30 in spreads since they had a white tail rack on one side and a back fork on the other. When I get out on a 25,000 to 100,000 acre ranch In west Texas by myself it I'm pretty much on my own.

I have spent many days hunting thousands of acres of BLM in south east NM with my GSP.

My time spent in the outdoors is rivaled by few. I figured two years ago I hunted DEER 30 days.

Normally, I am hunting something EVERY weekend from Sept (dove) to the last of March (coyote). Now, working every other week I hunt even more. After lunch to day I will go to McCamey to deer hunt, or to south of Ozona, or Sheffield, or to Amistad, though they are threatening to close I-20.

Unless I find a huge buck I won't shoot as I hunt for the challenge of finding a big buck. I can get does for the freezer in the late doe season in Jan.

Precisely because I have spent so much time hunting in frigid conditions is why I know not to spend time in semi- blizzards hunting in un insulated leather gloves.

I spent my summers as a kid growing up on my granddads farm and cattle operation in Polk County of east Texas or on my other grandads cattle operation in the coastal bend of Texas near ElCampo.

You've just passed bigsqueeze and ohkok in the bullshit catergory.

Congratulations?

It's a freaking miracle that Formid isn't dead. Next time hopefully he'll read this internet thread and learn from it.

how much you want to bet, Rancho?

Dude 30 days of deer, I am just getting warmed up. Here we have 6 weeks or archery, followed by 5 weeks of rifle. Archery whitetail from Labor day till Jan 15th. Just sayin you pegged the BS meter.

Texas isn't Montana,

Well, 17 pages and we don't know what the rifle dope was.

Just going off your posting record, the only thing you've killed recently were keyboards and
bottles.

LOL!

You're welcome to come buy the house and look at the pics, hold the racks, talk to ranchers and friends, some of which are from Minnesota, and Oklahoma who would camp nearby or the rancher from colorado who held the cattle allotment at the upper end of Stoner Mesa and below Eagle Peak. I can get you the name of the guy East of Deloris who has packed elk out for us, if you wish.

Aren't you dead?

Rancho, you're young and tough. If you had a month off and Montana elk tags and were from God knows where would you throw a dart at the map, find someone who recs the same spot, drive all night (10 hours) to get home, through stuff together, sight your gun, take your bud to lunch, go SOMEWHERE ELSE and pick up your tags and head out for another 30 hour drive without sleeping at home?

Would you bivy out in the rain and leave your boots out to soak it up? I think you have an idea about how long it takes climbing steep chit in a foot of snow to get thin leather gloves soaked and worthless.

We have a month of archery -October. Then, regular rifle is about nov 4 to jan 6. Late doe lasts two more weeks. If ranches are involved with the state game management program they get to manage their own harvest on bucks and does up to feb. That means some ranches have rifle season from early Oct to Feb. that's 4 months.

RL, you're barkin' up the wrong tree here. I've hunted with eyeball, and seen some of his horns collection, and he ain't a bullshitter. The man has done a LOT of hunting.

Just 'cause some of us old farts have been forced by age and circumstance to hunt a bit less ferociously nowadays than we used to don't mean we haven't BTDT.

Laffin'

Remember our bear hunt in Wyoming three years ago?.....We were in "Mini-Beast Mode". When I grow up, I want to do a real Beast Mode hunt.

See any yotes out there?

Today was a day.. clear, and still only a light wind.

Nailed one....too much wind up north to stay out all day. 40 below chill factor. They say 30 below tonight, but less wind.

After dropping the meat off I headed east to where I hoped to find an old beat up mule deer buck and shoot him in his bed.

I stopped and had a great meal at-



And arrived at a piece of BM property in time for a quick afternoon jaunt.


Not ten minutes in I had spotted 4 or 5 does feeding and then jumped this baby fork horn and a doe-


Be advised that if you think you're going to be cute and lay down to snap a picture... there are cactuses.... grin



Walked in around 1.5 miles and stayed till dark glassing. In total I think I think it was 15 or 20 deer that afternoon.

Hard to tell from the pic, but this was a pretty decent buck with good mass..... on private ground-




Headed back to the truck at dark. And so it went for the next five or six days. Walk in, in the morning and out at night sleeping in the truck.

One morning it snowed-





And as I snuck through a creek bottom I busted up 6 or 7 does and this 5x5-




This dummy didn't walk away like the does he walked towards me from about 100 yards to less than 60.


I saw quite a few 4x4's like this-






But nothing I wanted to smoke until the next to last day. Just made it to the only fence on the place when I spotted 10 or 12 does being chased out of a creek by a couple bucks. Those two were the same size little 4x4's I had been seeing, but probably 30 seconds later another buck came up out and I saw immediately that I would shoot him. All the bucks so far had been narrow and save for the one on private land, young. This one wasn't very tall but was quite a bit wider, had good mass and was older.

I ranged him at 450 something, and while he pushed off the other two bucks sat the rifle on a fence post and dialed the scope as the grass was too tall for prone. He paused briefly and while the reticles movement was within his chest, I just didn't like it. I figured that when he walked out onto the flat above the creek where the does were he would pause and give me a shot, so I quickly climbed over and got prone. As it were, when he came out he went straight to dogging the does and didn't stop at all until he was at almost 700 and partly hidden by grass. I wasn't taking that one and he pushed the chicks off onto the private land. Thought he might come back out later that day, but instead he just bedded down in the field with a doe and mocked me all afternoon.

Hunted the next morning and it went from 40 something degrees and sunny to single digits and blowing snow with nearly 50mph winds. Had planned to hunt one more day, but the weatherman called for a pretty decent snow storm. Saw one smaller buck, until the weather just drove me in.

With that I said goodby to Montana and headed back home.

I did stop at Cabelas and thought this was fitting.... grin

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