Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting An odd encounter in the elk woods

I was hunting my way up a steep creek on a North facing slope. I came upon a flat open space with only a few aspens. The grasses had been grazed down, elk [bleep] and elk tracks there, and some recent return visits by elk. I thought great!, started looking for a place to post, but I began to find a bunch of stuff scattered around. Bears had dug up buried caches of Mexican food, pieces of poly irrigation pipes, someone had topped several spruces to let in more sun. This was an illegal marijuana grow and a pretty big one. When I recovered from the terror of what I had wandered into the story began to become clear. The growers had irrigated this little clearing and even built a cistern higher up. The water system for the weed had also stimulated a nice pasture of native grasses. The herd came in and enjoyed the grasses at this sheltered location and trampled, or possibly ate, the weed.