Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Camping out for elk

BS. You just have to be smart where you drink. Giardia is one of the most overblown fears out there. We're not drinking from low lying ag streams, we're drinking the finest water on the planet from mountain streams.

A dry cabin with a stove and no electricity or satellite TV is about as far towards roughing it camping as I’ll go these days! Best of luck on your hunt. Happy Trails

Yes grizzlies could definitely be active in early to mid November. And no I would not set up camp anywhere near an elk that you have killed.

The risk of drinking unfiltered water from mountain streams is quite low but if you lose the roulette game, the penalty is a bitch. There's more than just giardia out there. There are quite a few bacteria gut bugs besides parasites.

Mountain streams can indeed be infected with giardia. Might want to check where the term Beaver Fever originated.That clear cold mountain stream that looks like some thing out of a COORS commercial might very well have dead elk deer or another animal laying dead 100 yards up stream, or a series of beaver dams in the next meadow, or a previous hiker might have taken a dump right near the stream a few yards up.Springs flowing right out of a mountain inside might be safe, but once you have had giardiosis, you about want to give up drinking any water.

"the finest water on the planet from mountain streams" yea flavored with with elk piss.

Many springs have been on the surface somewhere up the hill and then went down again. An intermittent creek can come and go any number of times before it finally stays on the surface. Animals up high know where those little wet spots are. Some of them are elk wallows.

Major areas in NW Colorado run 3-4000 sheep in the mountains or I should say on the side of mountains. Those pasture maggots get in every nook and cranny where there is anything edible. Drier years best grass is along one of those a clear mountain streams.I am sure all of them walk off 100 yards before they drop all their pellets.Then you have cattle grazing allotments. One are I hunted was allowed 600 cow calf pairs and they drive them clean up to the ramparts, 10,000-11,000 feet, as soon as the snow melts to get that grass. Every small seep or spring coming out of the rocks will have cow patties all about. By the time elk season rolls around, the cattle are gone and you think you have found a pristine mountain meadow.

Having a keen interest in range management (I’m an arborist with a forestry degree), I always shake my head seeing land get torn up by overgrazing and poor range management.

Again, I appreciate all of your responses and take them all as good advice. Brad, I don’t doubt for once second that you’ve been drinking water straight from the stream with no issues. I can also see how even the clearest of streams could harbor some bad stuff. If it comes down to it, I’m sure me and the guys could drink some water straight from the stream if we have to. With that said, we’ll take the heat precautions that we can to protect ourselves.

Thanks again everyone. Y’all have been great.

Don't count on bears hibernating mid- Nov. all likelihood they will not be.

If you're in trouble, a gross, slimy, muddy stock tank is better than nothing. Doctors can fix gut bugs. They can't fix death from dehydration.
Most springs and creeks are perfectly safe. However, modern filters are so easy to use and work so well that it's not worth taking a chance. It only takes 1 infected spring and the filter will pay for itself many times over. With some, you can just fill your bottle, screw the filter on top and drink right through it.

Might be a reason not to camp close to kill site.

Montana Grizzly Rips Woman From Tent
65-year-old Leah Davis Lokan, a registered nurse from Chico, California was ripped from her tent and killed by a grizzly bear earlier this week in Ovando, Montana. The bear had awakened Lokan and others earlier in the night and returned later when it killed her. Fellow campers rushed to her aide with bear spray and ran the grizzly off but their efforts were in vain as Ms. Lokan had already passed.
This news is eerily reminiscent of the stories of man eating lions and tigers in the late 20th century. The bear’s behavior earlier in the night raises eyebrows as to its intentions as it appears to have “stalked” Lokan before killing her. Man eating grizzly bears are rare indeed and even though the bear in question didn’t appear to feed on its victim one can speculate that the only reason is due to not having the chance as other campers chased the grizzly away before it could begin consuming Ms. Lokan.
This tragic event is a stark reminder that there are no safe spaces in grizzly country as it appears this event happened in or very close to a town. Please follow bear safety protocols at all times in grizzly country and we encourage the training in and use of both lethal and non-lethal self defense measures.

I’ve been following that thread on the campfire forum. We will be packing sidearms it sounds like. But still, a big damn Grizz gets a hold of you, probably wouldn’t take much time to do you in. I’m not overly worried about the bears, kind of like lightning or a shark attack. Just curious though. Our guide last year (young and inexperienced) is where we heard that they were already hibernating. I took that with a grain of salt. He was a good hardworking dude, but the first day I got the sense I had a lot more hunting experience than he did. That was our first guided hunt.

That's been my experience as well living in Idaho and your area. I'd never drink the lower stuff in canyons and valleys but high up in the springs I drink up and have never come to regret it.

Grizz in unit 270? Please tell us if you see one.

Buy a wolf tag. If you are in an area you need to camp to kill a bull, you'll likely have some wolves nearby.

Giardia is not a get sick and get better thing. It will stay with you sort of dormant and then come back later. If you get it you are in for multiple rounds of sickness.

You don't want giardia but any of boiling, iodine, or filtration will deal with it.

In Idaho, you can buy 15 wolf tags a year. They're cheap, $32 for non-res, so stock up. You wouldn't want to run out when you walk into the mother lode of wolves.

I've hunted in Montana's general rifle wilderness hunting a few times now...Once with a 4-man tipi and a partner, once with a 2-man floorless alone, and twice with the tipi and stove alone (heavy pack). Nothing to show for it yet, but enough opportunity to keep me interested. Trailhead elevations are 6000 ish and camps are around 8000. Hike length varies: 4 to 7 miles. Bulls show up all over...woods, open ridgeline at 10000 feet, in the meadow 150 yards from your tent when you're on the hillside a mile away, etc and so on. Sometimes they scream at you from what sounds like right out the tent door in the valley bottom meadow in mid november, at 3:00 am.

Four times isn't a big sample, but enough to identify trends:
**At no point did I/we have any trouble staying dry. This isn't the Cascades, and the snow that falls isn't your typical Cascade Concrete that's more water than ice.
**You'll need to think through water acquisition and storage. Filtering is a bit of a non-starter when it's that cold, some of them are damaged by freezing, but all can simply freeze up. I've used aquamira drops in Alaska, WA, MT and ID with zero issues, including in cold water. Wait a half hour for it to have a chance to work in the cold. You have to make a concerted effort to hydrate; that's helped by warming water and downing a bunch of not-freezing water when you get a chance to do so. Your camelbak tube will freeze hard unless you route it where it's warmed by body heat.
**I sleep really, really well in a 15 degree down bag, covered with a primaloft blanket. The blanket is an extra pound or more, and worth every ounce. Good for packing around to don when sitting also. I store boots and water under the edge of the blanket and they stay thawed. Blanket makes it so you can tent it up around your head and breathe warm air, and you don't need to be so attentive and strict with the mummy hood and baffles. It's just easier and more comfortable.
**The stove is really, really good for morale, but isn't necessary. Nice to sit in a t-shirt and eat dinner at the end of the day. But then you gotta make lunch and go hang your food afterward anyway in the cold and dark. I sleep with my lunch packed and in my tent in grizzly country, alone. Don't tell KC.
**Some portion of your sleeping pad needs to be foam.
**White gas stove is nice...whisperlite or simmerlite. Zero issues in the cold.
**Beeswaxed full grain leather boots under gaiters do fine, no moisture.
**Gaiters go under your outer pants layer to shed deep snow. I know, I know, they don't look nearly as cool that way.

I figure that, compared to a really light AK sheep or WA deer overnighter, I have an extra pants layer (sporthill XC ski pants added to longjohns and kuiu attack pants), an extra insulation layer (light puffy vest in addition to montbell parka), a thicker head covering for sleeping, primaloft blanket, and an extra 3/8" light solid foam pad to go on top of the inflatable pad. Add the wood stove if I'm feeling my oats. And that's about it. Elk means three or more trips out for me, so I don't sweat a little extra weight.

The last time I was up that way, I hiked in to about 7600 ft and made my camp. Had to do a lot of boot-kick snowplow removal, but ended up with a tight tipi pitch with a nice snow fringe, wood stove set up, everything just hunky dory. Got camp up around 2:00 so was heading out for an evening stroll. I walked about 30 FEET away from the tent and the changed perspective allowed me to see a cow elk carcass down in the creek bottom meadow. It was a hunter's kill, a few days old. No bear prints around, but was about 100 yards from my tent. I sacked everything and moved it another couple miles up the trail to 8000 feet, and was thusly tired! That hiking at altitude is rough when I come from where I can throw a potato from my back porch into saltwater.

Make sure your comms are working. My SPOT locator bought the farm after the trailhead check-in, and my wife didn't hear from me for five days. On day six she called a friend that's local, and he indicated he'd ride in to check on me the next morning, or he and his local rescue chopper buddy could fly up there for a looksee within the hour (also said something along the lines of "there's an awful lot of grizzlies up that way"). Wife went for plan B, figuring that she didn't want to be the one responsible for me bleeding out on the trail somewhere. Meanwhile, I'd just finished up a nice conversation with a fellow at the trailhead, then got in the truck and drove to cell coverage, whereupon I called my wife, learned of the copter ride, looked up and saw them fly over me and head up the valley. We all got in touch right about then by text, and met a few hours later at Sir Scott's Oasis, so all's well that ends well, albeit $1000 helo charge later, and I got off easy. Getting feedback on the garmin helps to keep that from happening again.

If you get yourself in good enough shape to hike into wherever it is you intend to go, then you're in good enough shape to stash/hang some extra gear and walk out light through deep snow, I figure, if it comes to that. Maybe I'll get hosed by that someday, but if you don't bother to go, you don't get to go.

I blow the water from the tube back into the bladder when I'm done drinking. Then tuck the valve inside a pocket or zipper to keep it from freezing as residual water in the tube will end up in it. If it's real cold, you can wrap something around the bladder with a hand warmer in it but keeping the valve from freezing is the main thing.