Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Toughest Hunt You've Ever Had?

Mine was an elk hunt. We went in by foot, bugled in several bulls, and took one at last, last, LAST light. We worked on the carcass 'til midnight, then tried to hole-up nearby 'til daylight. As it got colder, we thought to build a fire, but wood was scarce. So, we did a forced march back to where we thought the road was. Our direction was good, but crossing 2 drainages with a mini maglight took quite a while, and was "adventurous", so say the least. Though I was too tired to worry about it, I was cognizant that I was wandering through grizzly country in the dark, having just had a prolonged meat-bath. We made the truck around 5 am, then headed back to camp to fetch the packhorses. At the end of a 30 hour day, We had the quarters hanging and the cape salted.

Had it only been a spike, it still would have been an exceptional trophy!

What's been your toughest outing?

FC

Went along with an outfitter friend on one of his clients' lion hunt. Chasing dogs from 3 in the morning til close to midnight through the rimrock canyons of Colorado. Up one canyon wall down the next and repeat for 16 hours. Not to mention it was bitter cold and 2-3 feet of snow. I was whooped and my legs were jello after two days of that.

A Montana elk hunt where the morning temps were as low as -18 degrees F. So cold the soles of my boots would freeze stiff and not clean out, leaving little traction. Breaking through the crust on top suddenly and hitting limbs, tree trunks, etc on the way down wreaked havoc on my old knees. Tough on a native Californian. I passed on a spike and it was the only bull I saw.

Elk hunt in Idaho. By myself. Just driving up and hiking out before daylight. Saw a nice 6x6 bull about a mile away and headed that way.
The clouds dropped down and visibility dropped to about 15 FEET. Temperatures weren't bad, about 40 but with NO visibility. Found myself in a herd of elk twice and never saw an antler. About 3 PM I headed back towards the truck and stumbled on the road (the only one on that hill) and walked another mile. Seems if I'd only dropped down about 750' in elevation I'd have been out of the fog (and the elk).
30 yards from the truck, in the tracks of the truck from when I drove in were the tracks of some 10-15 elk that had crossed right behind the truck.
Figures.

Had a deer hunt in Texas where I got my truck stuck in the mud. Walking back to camp I got chilled and hypothermia set in. Spent that afternoon in a sleeping bag drinking hot cocoa and warm water.

Tough hunts.

Mine was a solo Mt. goat in BC in mid Oct. Started climbing in the dark and by 9:00 was watching a pair of grizzlies from a ridge top. Climbed up a glacier past where I could climb down and trapped myself on an ice ledge above a cliff by noon. Chipped foot and hand holds with my pack saw to escape across an ice face. At 2:00 pm spotted a goat across a chasm canyon, and knew that if I went after it I would not get back to my vehicle that day, whether I got it or not.

Killed the B&C size billy in late afternoon. He fell 1000 feet off the wrong side of the mountain range. Spent the night with it above timberline with no sleeping bag or shelter. Packed hide & horns, left the meat cached in snow and at first light started climbing back up over the range, contouring to avoid the worst cliffs. Reached my vehicle before sundown so tired I fell down twice in the last 300 yards. Called my wife from the nearest pay phone just before she called search and rescue.

A friend retrieved the meat with me, approching from the other side of the mountain range.

Backpacked a buck 8 miles solo in the course of a 19 mile day hunt, a shared elk 12 miles and a shared sheep 14 miles but none were as hard as the solo goat.

ML elk in Colo. Just me and a buddy in tents. It rained, sleeted, hailed on us for 5 days straight. By then nothing we had was dry and we pulled out. I remember sitting under a sage brush watching the elk on the opposite side of the canyon with rain pelting down and lightning and thunder all around thinking I must be crazy.

Hunted 10 days with a bow for caribou. Very late in the year, missed the migration, and that mulchatna herd was on the decline anyway.

Moved and gave up on the bow and found one lone bull one morning. Took us most of the day to get to where he was. He was not.

But come late that afternoon he showed up, far enough that it would take us past dark to stalk close.

So I set up for a long shot, with a rangefinder and a good spotter in one of my former competitive 4H shooters, the first round was low and to the back of the lungs and caught liver also. Second shot was further forward and broke the back. 802 yards for both shots.

That wasn't the end either. Straight approach took us almost 2 hours and some alder hacking to get up to him. Then 2 grizz watched us. So we gutted him and then drug him WAY down the mountain whole. Until it flattened out and was getting dark.

Where we cut him up and bagged him and hung him in trees with orange tape where we could get to him and see from a distance. Back to the tent that night, and had managed to come down with the crud too... around 1 or 2am. Kinda slept. Up at light, and off to pack it back. Each of us had half of him in our packs by noonish, and were on teh way back. About 2 hours before dark we had made it to the end of the air strip almost, when we spot a bull for my buddy. He dropped it in a river... COLD river... and after dark we managed to get his cut up and out of the water, and in the alders, and then his and mine to the end of the airstrip, back to the tents about 11pm. Lucky two of his pilot buddies had flown in and put halibut on the fire and we had supper.

Lucky for me, it was fogged in and got to sleep in, the next morning.

But while I enjoyed every bit of it, I know its not nearly as tough as lots of other folks have done by far.

The trade off a few years later was a bull moose that we packed about 6 feet from the ground to the mule bed..... in pieces..... got lucky on that one.

Was on a nine day hunt in deep s.Texas about 40 miles as the crow would fly from Mexico. It had been a dry year and the rut was just trickling along...those kind you hate to see. Saw bucks all week but very few chasing does and no big ones. It was the perfect time for the rut but like I said there was just one here fooling with a doe and maybe one later in the day...but not anything real serious. I hunted all day back then during the rut and that week I paid my dues. On the eighth afternoon right before dark I peeked out my west window and there he was. A 21 1/2in 10pt that weighed close to 200lbs. He was w/5 does but was not horning any of them up. I slid the 7x57Ackley out the window and planted a 140gr BT right between his shoulder blades. The beer and steak tasted great that night. powdr

A backpack hunt for mule deer a few years ago. I physically dealt with everything and kept hunting hard until the last afternoon, but it was a mental beatdown. There were not enough deer and too many other hunters.

An elk, moose and mountain caribou hunt out of Toad River BC in 2008. Spent ten twelve hour days on a horse, something quite hard to train for unless you are riding horses. I had a great time and will return.













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Just quietly...how long into the trip did it take you to work out that horses make really good dog food?

Mine might have been last year. Solo elk hunt, killed a decent bull at 11,000 feet, and packed him (and my camp) out on my back 4 miles down to the truck.

2 day sheet hunt in Alaska range, 30 miles in 2 days, way to much for a rookie
Sheep hunter, lots of rocks,water, glacier climbing, once is enough.
Did get a ram I am very pleased with, no record book animal , wondered often
If I would make it out there.

Hardest and best all in the same moose hunt with my Dad, now passed, my brother, and a friend, also now passed. We hunted pretty hard for 6 days. We got two nice bulls and a cow moose. All lake and river hunting with small boat and canoe. The one bull had to be carried about a quarter of a mile through a swampy portage and then down river to a lake where the plane would fly in to pick up the meat. We made a stretcher out of spruce poles. We were tired by the time we got the 900 pound moose hung in a tree. Glad that was the small one. The big moose had to be quartered and loaded in a boat from waste deep water at the end of September in way north Ontario. Sang soprano for a month. The cow was the smallest and easiest. We could have shot another moose, but why?

That kind of hunt is not for old men.

Alaskan Dall sheep hunt. Definitely the hardest thing I have ever done. Gotta do it again!

Coues hunt and was solo. What made it difficult was passing kidney stones and the associated problems...pack out was interesting. I was happy to see the truck.

Red deer in the Brisbane valley.
Sambar in the Wannangatta.

Late October 1984, High country horse back hunt out of Colburn, Colo. 3rd day in weather went South, by the 5th day I was thinking I might be there until spring. We packed up and headed down. We got back into town somewhere around 2 AM and everything I owned was frozen.

It felt good to get back to Texas.

Waiting for dennisinaz to weigh in with his Sitka blacktail hunt on Kodiak. But, having seen how his luck runs sometimes, that may not have even been his toughest hunt!

My toughest hunt had nothing to do with physical agony.