Scoping... reminds me of an elk hunt where there was three hunters for two of us to take out. Plan was to ambush the elk coming out of a huge meadow, we weren't the only ones. 4 or 5 other groups were spread out around the edges. Not my way to hunt elk, more like dove hunting, but it's what they wanted to do. I met my hunter for the first time that morning in the dark, my plan was to hike into a big pond and wait till light.
My hunter was a nice guy, hadn't hunted much and his first elk hunt, small talked waiting for light.
I've got my 15s set up on the tripod and it starts getting grey. It gets lighter and the elk start moving. None are moving our way yet but headed towards our other hunters and more groups. There was a group of bulls a half mile out headed to all those hunters, we were the only ones at our location, I'm saying, 'they might hit those hunters and turn back to us'.
I'm locked on them and calling play by play... 'there's 6 bulls, 2 are decent 6s, 1 is broken on the left, they are headed for our guys, I can see our hunters and there's another group of hunters to their left and another over there, ect...
The guy say's, I can see our group and yep there's another, and the others... I can't see the elk very well it's too far... I glance over and he's scoping to see...
WHOA!!!!... I grab his barrel and jerk it up... he say's 'what the hell'... I ask, 'don't you have binos'? He say's yes and pulls out of his front pocket foldup tascos, but I can see better out of my scope. Now this guy had a brand new truck with a brand new side x side that never got unloaded, but had walmart tascos he probably used at football games.
What's the big deal?
You saw all those hunters... and they can see us... if they were looking at us while you were scoping them, they may come over and whoop our ass... and we would deserve it... I hiked him out.
One of our hunters killed a 4pt from that group of elk, I got my hunter an elk that afternoon in a hole of mine in the forest away from other hunters, our last hunter killed a 6 out of the meadow the next morning.
