Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Solo elk hunters on foot

So this bull came about in a weird way as a solo hunt, on foot and fairly new to the state. I spent the summer scouting, and when leftovers came out, I was out of town and didn't end up getting the unit I was scouting. So ended up with a neighboring unit, and spent most of my off time learning it and finding a few elk here and there. I settled on a spot that was an hour and a half hike uphill through black timber, and across a beaver pond. Saw moose there the evening before the opener, but still liked the spot to head back on opening morning. Spent the night in my solo "base camp" consisting of a Suburban. On opening morning, I saw this bull at what I thought was reasonable range and shot him about 20 minutes after shooting light.
When I got over to him, it was intimidating as hell to deal with by myself and with no one to call for help. It took some time to figure out how to get a decent picture with a self timed camera, then a couple hours to quarter and hang. I had a hatchet with me, but took it down on the first trip with a small load of meat to get a saw to skull cap the bull. Came back up with the saw and struggled mightily to get through the skull with a decent, new hacksaw. I said "f" this, and took another load of meat down and brought the hatchet back up to skull cap him. That third load was my toughest load because I took a rear plus some additional and strapped the antlers to my pack. In all that blow down and thick timber I was constantly trying to step over down logs or squeeze through tight spots to get around a downed log. It sucked, then I got down to the beaver pond, and slipped when crossing the dam.
When I slipped, I damn near went head first into the deep end with the antlers sticking me into the pond. If I fell in bad enough, my body would have been found strapped to a frame pack with 80 pounds of meat, feet up in the air, head and torso in the water, antlers sticking into the mud and sticks below the dam. But, instead I caught myself and just soaked my torso and arms and lived to tell the tale of what might have been.
After that I decided to take a break, so I drove 2 plus hours into Jelm, and ate and drank with another hunter until the bar closed. At that point I was kinda drunk and it was snowing pretty hard, so I pulled the Suburban over somewhere below the state line on a County Road and slept it off. Woke up around dawn with a wicked headache, then drove back to "camp" and humped up the mountain again for one last load before calling it a wrap.