The West Elk Wilderness produced for us again, as usual. We went three for three on cow elk. We had backpacked in about seven miles but shot the elk closer than that. That's the 3rd year in a row that elk have been in the same area. So next year we'll probably backpack in a shorter distance.
I thought that they might be found at high altitude so I climbed up into a little hollow at about 11,200' on opening morning. They had been there. I saw nine beds in the snow that had frozen solid so they were at least 1 1/2 days old but who knows how much older they were. They had probably hidden up there during the first and second season but all the tracks were leading down from there by the time that I got there. I saw six more frozen beds at 10,400' and tracks were going in every direction.
Ryan saw a nice bull on Saturday at about 9,600' elevation but couldn't get a decent shot, so he shot a cow, about 5 1/2 miles from the trailhead. It was pretty obvious that our camp seven miles in, was in the wrong location so on Sunday afternoon we moved camp. Along the way, Jason and I shot two cows out of a small herd that was lounging around in a small meadow as we came around a bend in the trail at about 4 1/4 miles from the trailhead.
We carried out most of the camp in backpacks on Monday morning. We had a rented horse boarded at a ranch near the trailhead and used her to go back in for the elk and the rest of our camp. We were done by Wednesday afternoon. The weather was fairly mild for elk hunting.
KC
