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Since it's snowing out right now, I thought I'd finally put this story down...
So it all starts with drawing a license in a unit I hadn't hunted before. I settled on a reasonably accessible mountain to get to, which seemed like a fairly obvious place to hunt, and gave me room to hunt rather than a small drainage, and having to bounce place to place if I wasn't finding elk. I was worried about pressure on the mountain, but couldn't find any information on outfitters focusing on it, which made it seem like it would be more DIYers like me. Distance was a little under 5 miles with a bit over 2,000 feet of elevation gain for the most reasonable route.

As summer went on, things kept coming up and I wasn't able to get out like I had planned other than a brief bit of road familiarization. The goats didn't get nearly as much work in as they needed to stay in good shape either. I finally got out to scout in late August and planned for just a one nighter, so I took only three of my 7 goats. I grabbed my two largest, Thor and Ivar, who were definitely getting fat, plus my most aggressive with dogs, Ragnar, who was still big and in good shape. Knowing it was going to rain a bit, I packed a pretty generous amount of clothing and rain gear, plus peanut butter and bacon sandwiches on bagels, no stove, or much else. I left home about 2:00pm and got there a bit before dark at a trailhead along the river, with enough time to set up base camp for the goats and sleep in the truck.




At dawn, I repacked and weighed the packs. The goats hadn't worn their big boy packs yet, but didn't flinch at any of the newness. The initial stretch of trail was pretty easy, simply following the creek, but it only gained a few hundred feet before the main ascent to the top of Indian Mountain, which was a fairly flat topped mountain, gently sloping up from around 11,000 feet up past timberline, with steep sides and some burned timber on one side from a wild fire a couple years ago. I didn't see much for sign on the hike up, but thankfully wasn't seeing much bear sign either. It was nice to be able to hike with nothing on my back other than a water bladder. The only other things I carried was a leash, a knife, a handgun, and a phone. It was clear the lack of conditioning on the goats was a bit of a problem. They weren't panting particularly hard, they were just going so stinking slowly. Ragnar, who was in the best shape, in the back, and rightfully afraid to get in front of Ivar or Thor (who can be a real a-hole to anyone in front of him). After 500 feet of gain walking 100 feet, and waiting a couple minutes for goats to catch up, I needed to act as I could hear thunder, but wasn't seeing any really threatening clouds yet. I grabbed the leash and put it on Ragnar, forcing him up front with me, which put pressure on the other two to get it in gear. This worked a lot better, but the goats still needed breathers more than I did.






As soon as the mountain leveled off to the series of meadows and standing dead timber, there was elk sign everywhere. And no cattle sign.


The rain clouds were starting to come in, so I found a decent spot with a view of the main junction of meadows and started setting up camp by about 2:00PM. I heard my first couple of bugles while setting up camp and some of them sounded pretty close. As soon as I left camp to go scout some waterholes I had my eye on from remote scouting, I ran right into an outfitters camp. There was no one there, and only one tent set up, with all their gear inside of it. Another canvas tent was on the ground next to it, so it was clear someone was planning on using it during hunting season. Well, unless it was a summer camp that they were taking down. But there was so little indication of use this summer, I assumed it was for hunters. That was pretty disappointing, so I also looked around for small pockets that would make for a decent camp site in the same vicinity, but at least out sight so we didn't feel like we were crowding each other as much if they were up there for muzzleloader season. The goats were pretty tired, so anytime I sat down, they laid down with me and tried to cuddle.








As it started to rain, I could hear more and more elk bugling and the goats were getting pretty interested in the sights and smells of elk. They would sniff the wallows pretty intensely and alert to any major wind swirls and nearby bugles. The goats wanted out of the rain, so we marched back to camp and set up under a tarp, to see if anything would come out of the meadow. Within an hour of dark, the meadow really came alive. Bulls were screaming and playing in the mud, cows were filtering out of the timber from several directions and it was a grand time. I settled in, eating my sandwich, glassing the bulls, none of whom were worth writing home about, but still pretty pleased with the overall atmosphere. As it got dark, other bulls with better chuckles and deeper growls started to bugle nearby and I finally found a first day shooter bull. He was a nice six point and clearly larger in body and antlers than anything else in the meadow. I couldn't get much for video or photos of him as the light started to wane, but I could now go to sleep satisfied this was going to be a fun hunt.







The next morning, I got up and the elk were silent. I didn't see anything, so I took the goats down to water, but they weren't interested. We wandered around, checking out a few more internal meadow complexes and water holes before heading back to camp, packing up and heading home. All of which was uneventful until running into a few archers coming in a day or two before opening day, but they were headed further up the drainage and not onto my mountain.

more to come...