This past November marked the 67th year that the men in my family made the annual trek to the mountains of Colorado for hunting season. It has been and continues to be an amazing adventure every single year though sadly I believe it may be winding down.
The plan started off in grand fashion, we bought groceries and made arrangements for a camp 14 strong. As the excitement built as it always does as we ready our gear we had our first letdown when Grandad, the founder of our camp and the last surviving original member caught a chest cold and decided he’d best stay home. Soon after one of my uncles decided he wasn’t going to make it as his daughter is expecting his first grandchild any time now and he wanted to stick close by to keep an eye on Grandad too. The next day a close family friend who I consider an uncle by association had to bow out due to farming duties that couldn’t wait. Then the calls from our cousins in NM who come up to meet us started with different maladies for them causing their attendance to be cut by half.
So the five of us decided we’d soldier on and do the best we could and we headed out the Wednesday before the start of CO’s 3rd rifle to go to camp. We left as soon as I got off work and drove until midnight before we decided to hang it up and turn in. Got a cheap motel room and discovered we had a trailer tire going flat so rather than get up early and deal with it we swapped the spare on at 12:30 in the parking lot. Of course in the morning we found out we’d somehow ruined a wheel even though the tire was fine. With no replacement available we had to go for broke and hope for the best, by some miracle we made it the second half of our trip on a junk spare that we couldn’t find a replacement for at any stop along the way.
Fooling around looking for a tire and or wheel in several towns had cost us valuable time so rather than making our usual stop in town for tags and last minute groceries before heading up to camp we decided to head on up and come back to town the next day.
As we left town we got a call from a NM cousin who was up at camp with more bad news. Someone had parked a Gooseneck full of gear right in the center of our usual camping spot claiming it for themselves. They were looking but hadn’t found a suitable spot for our big camp.
We continued on hoping to find a workable spot and get set up before dark. As we pulled off the pavement and onto our forest service road we were happy to find 4” of fresh snow from the night before and dad quickly slid his pickup into 4HI, just in case. Unfortunately my uncle following us didn’t do the same and at the first set of switchbacks he spun out and slid backward into the ditch and 4wd wasn’t any help by then. Not being able to be of any help pulling a 20’ deckover we just waved and continued on up the mountain to try and find our cousins.
We quickly found camp and powwowed with the New Mexicans about the stuck rig back down the way. One of them had a set of heavy chains for his truck and they chained her up and went and made the recovery while dad and I started unloading our stuff to get going on building camp.
After all the drama it was getting late and we had all hands on deck getting the tent up, bunks built, lights and stove plumbed, tables and counters assembled, and then supper cooked. Luckily we’ve all done this enough that it went up pretty smoothly with everyone doing their job that they’ve been assigned or adopted over the years. Pretty soon we were eating a bowl of homemade pozole and enjoying a cold beer as the wood burner crackled and the gas lights hissed. Home again.
Friday morning we cut and stacked wood, built a world class shiet palace out back, and finished any little loose ends we’d forgotten in the hustle the day before. A quick trip to town got us licensed up and the last of the groceries bought and put away. After supper we shook dominoes, caught up on current family events, and made plans for who would hunt where in the morning.
The opener found us up at 5:00 making coffee, bacon, 2 fried eggs apiece, and biscuits. Lunches packed and plans made we headed out with high hopes to our old familiar spots, a pair to the Big Green ridge, an uncle on the stump overlooking Three Cow Saddle, two boys up on Spike Camp ridge, a deer hunting cousin headed for The Burn, and Dad and I peeled out for Hubcap Junction where we’d park and make the two mile hike to the top of the Horsetrail ridge.
It took us 45 minutes or so to make the climb to the top of the old horsetrail. We eased up to peek off into a bowl that often has elk in it at first and last light only to find nothing. After a while we decided to go around the edge and look over in my favorite hellhole, affectionately known as The Okie Pocket. It was named this by the old man who cut the horse trail years back because it’s a steep and miserable canyon full of brush and twisted gnarled pinions and according to him us Okies were the only ones stupid enough to kill an elk in there and pack it out on our backs, my biggest bull came from the darkest steepest corner of this canyon years ago.
On our way in there we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a herd of elk not completely wildly blowing out of the country but definitely nervous and headed somewhere else. We could occasionally see flashes of color and a cow or calf through an opening but no bulls and no opportunities to shoot if there had been. It was an exciting few minutes being back in the mountains and in the elk 2 hours into opening day.
We went ahead and looked around in the place we were headed, sitting and watching a trail for a couple hours with nothing but a few deer passing through. So we shouldered our packs and headed up the ridge toward the big bowl at the top.
We stopped on the edge of the bowl under a tree where my uncle once sat all day under a GI poncho in a snowstorm with a can of Sterno burning to keep him warm until a big old 6x7 bull circled the bowl and met his demise with a well placed Nosler from an old 270. We glasses the bowl and decided to eat lunch. Dad broke out a 1994 dated MRE he’d been saving for some reason or another and I had a dry lunch of crackers, smoked cheese, and leftover fried walleye chunks from the fish fry the night before. After carefully reading and following the instructions on the MRE dad found out the heater had gone bad and he had no way to heat his beef stew pouch. Bummer. At least he thought the heater had gone bad but an hour later he must have jostled it just right because as we packed up he put it in his backpack and it almost immediately went to sizzling and boiling!
After lunch and glassing the bowl for a while we decided it was time to move and I said I would head up to the very top before falling off the back side onto a hidden shelf that has been known to hold a bull or two to still hunt my way back around to the place he planned to sit. We parted ways and I made the climb. Just as I reached the saddle at the top I heard hoofbeats headed my way. I quickly squatted down by a pine as three big cows came into view. They slowed to a walk and eventually stopped about 30 yards from me. I watched them for 10 minutes hoping a bull was behind but they were alone. After a time they decided to head out and eased over into the big bowl I’d just come from and I watched in awe as they effortlessly crossed the half mile wide bowl in less than 5 minutes and disappeared into the timber below.
Continuing my still hunt I found elk sign everywhere, definitely plenty of animals using the area and easy to keep your eyes and ears sharp knowing that there could be a bull over the next little rise or through the next opening in the timber. As I crept into an opening that afforded a view of the surrounding ridges I happened to scan back down the ridge 2 miles or so to the first bowl we’d checked in the morning and was suddenly looking at a herd of elk out feeding in the snow.
I quickened my pace and headed down the way we’d come to try and catch dad so we could maybe make it back before we lost the light to look them over. I caught him sitting on a rock waiting for me and explained what I’d found. We double timed it back down to the bowl at the far end and slowly snuck over the edge to check them out. They were all scattered on the mountainside and we checked them off as we went, 11 cows. Then all the sudden one steps out of the oak brush and I see antlers, not very big antlers but antlers nonetheless. Then the scrutinizing begins, does he have 4 on a side, are his brows 5” long, hard to tell with his head in the oak brush with those little sticks around his antlers looking just like his points. Finally after 20 minutes of watching he swings his head around to scratch his side and I can clearly count points against the yellow background of his hide, 4 on his right side for sure and I’m 99% his brows are long enough too. Rangefinder shows 411, rifle over the pack, safety off. I hold in line with his leg and put the horizontal wire on his back before sending a 130Etip across the bowl and hearing a satisfying WHAP as it lands. He staggers a little so I hold in the same place and light another one off, WHAP as it lands and he stumbles and stands still. Once more because this is the fun part I hold in the same place and send another. This time he folds up and slides a few yards down onto a little bench before coming to rest.
About then a guy starts hollering below us in the trees. We grab our stuff and walk down to meet a couple young guys about my age. They had been trying to get a shot at the bull for half an hour not knowing we were there and us not knowing they were below us. I felt bad especially when they said they’d had a bigger bull they were stalking killed out from under them that morning but they assured me that it was no big deal and not like I’d done it on purpose. We shook their hands and headed over to take a picture and get to work with the 30 minutes of sun we had left.
We got down to business had him skinned and quartered in 37 minutes. We didn’t have bags or frames so we laid everything out in the snow and beat feet for camp. I did recycle the plastic outer bag from the ill fated MRE to have something to put the tenderloins in and packed them out. We made the hike out under the stars and a moon bright enough we didn’t need a flashlight for much of the trip. At the trailhead a local father and son we’ve become friends with over the years offered their congratulations and the boys in camp had a cold beer, and following Grandad’s tradition for first meat in camp, a shot of HotDamn. They also had the stove cranking and supper hot and ready. This is what we come for and things were looking up!
To be continued…..
