No, I don't qualify for a resident tag for another handful of months, and I'm not paying for out of state tags! Season hasn't started yet either. The ~9 minutes of video I shot will be the only relic of this season. Sure made the pack out easy though.
It was windy enough up there that noise and scent weren't an issue. All it took was sitting still. The Mountain Serape may have helped with breaking up my outline as I sat in the middle of a grassy field, and it may not have. The fact that it was multicam may have helped, and it may not have. What is for sure is that the elk never even had an inkling I was anything but another bull. He was still screaming at me from a pocket of timber as I headed down the mountain after an evening and a morning of messing with him.
Elk and deer are funny animals, time and again I've seen them not able to figure out what I was wearing street clothes, then simply raise my hand and they run off.
I think it has a lot more to do with how a person is acting, are you acting like a predator or are you behaving yourself.
Beautiful country there Even, nicely done video.
"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." - Abraham Lincoln, the Rail Splitter from Illinois.
What smoke, casting around for someplace to go this weekend? ;-)
Foretrex used to do everything I needed to - give me a UTM coordinate I can plot on a paper map. Now I'm addicted to the mapping app on my smart phone with a gorgeous full color display and good usgs topo coverage I've loaded on there of most of the western united states. The Foretrex is now backup for times like this past week when my smartphone didn't survive the night and I lost the old ghost trail I was following down the mountain and got quite a ways off line.
Nice job on the vid. I just found out you guys were here in Bend and I never knew it. I would have enjoyed meeting you guys. Hope life is good in col. My wife and I have thought of going there to check it out for a retirement location. Bend is nice but kind of limited. I have a good job here so I need to stay for awhile but retirement is only 7 years out.
Smoke, my initial thought was that I should always try to get you to come along so I can learn from a man of your... um... wisdom. Then it occurred to me that the best way for me to get an equal complement of wisdom is to make mistakes. Lots and lots and lots of mistakes :-)
GWL - My favorite fringe benefit of this new line of work is all of the great folks that I wouldn't have met otherwise. Sorry we missed you when we were local. If you head out this way, don't hesitate to drop a line. That goes for anyone passing by the Western Slope of CO.
As to missing Oregon. The parts of Oregon I liked the most were those that reminded me of Colorado -- but they tend to pale in comparison now that I'm back home. I think over time the things I'll miss are the ones that are for me exotic. The coastal range, fishing for (not catching) salmon and steelhead, occasional visits to the coast, the Columbia river gorge. The Owyhee country is really something too. Reminds me of West Texas. Now it's probably a toss up which of those two is closer.
I've got about 9 minutes of good footage of just the elk. I'll post it up later this week once I've had a chance to get it spliced together. If you like watching elk, you might appreciate it.
Evan, when I was there last, and almost got turned around, I was six years old and had been drinking beer all day. Back then I didn't drink beer often, but when I did, it was Dos Equis.
