This story doesn’t start like most you read in Eastmans’ Hunting Journal, I wasn’t waiting for draw results or cashing in points for a long awaited tag.  Instead, I was filling a hole in my fall schedule with a second choice tag.  A Colorado unit that has left over tags available generally every year.  I usually use Colorado OTC archery elk as my filler hunt but a tag in another state I’d drawn would force me to change things up.  Plus I was looking for more rifle hunts to use my Snowy Mountain Rifle, something I find myself doing more of every year now.  

The unit I picked has a diverse landscape, it offers everything from high alpine country to low rolling junipers.  I spent a considerable amount of time researching the unit and decided I would hunt an area that had burned not long ago.  It consisted of a mix of aspens and pines that were very thick with few open meadows, this is where I suspected the burn would come into play.  There should be new vegetation and food in areas that had not previously offered much for a grazing elk.  Elk love burns!

My plan was to cover as much ground as needed until I found a bull I wanted.  I would be hunting alone and in order to hunt without having to worry about killing a bull too far from the truck, I made arrangements with a local horse packer to be on call.  This is actually something I do on just about every elk tag I hunt.  It’s better to have them on speed dial and not use them rather than need them and not have them expecting your text.  

A hunt that ran long immediately before the elk season in Colorado kept me from getting there early to scout.  It wasn’t how I wanted to start the hunt but I didn’t get to the unit until the afternoon before the opening day.  In my opinion, scouting is the most important part of being continuously successful.  

I got a surprise at the trailhead that I had chosen to hike in from.  I had never seen so many horse trailers at a trailhead in Colorado.  It felt like the opening day of the general season in Wyoming, everyone but me had horses!  It appeared that I wasn’t the only hunter that thought the burn might be a great place to search for a good bull.  With no intel from scouting and much more pressure from others than I expected, I didn’t have the best feeling about the next five days.  Regardless, I filled the Kifaru with enough food for the entire season and hit the trail.  I had close to two hours of daylight left and I wanted to get a look at what I’d be hunting come morning.  The trail looked like 100 horses had used it that day.  

With maybe 30 minutes of light left, I made it to where onX showed as the edge of the burn.  I was not seeing what I had hoped for, there were only a few trees burnt.  Certainly not the open & glassable terrain I was expecting to see.  Worse yet, there was no elk sign. This is what I get for not scouting the area ran through my head as I pondered my next move.  There was a moment when I actually stopped and turned around, I was going to relocate to a different area that might look more like what I hoped for but I only made it a few hundred yards.  It was now dark and I was five miles from the truck. I decided to make camp and get up extra early to search for elk in the dark before daybreak.  

In the middle of the night I got a visit from either a moose or an elk.  I rolled over in my sleeping bag and startled a very large hooved animal that must have been checking out my tent in the darkness.  As it scrambled away through the rocky terrain, I remembered thinking, well there’s at least one here.  I decided to get up and start covering ground in search of elk.  With still two hours of darkness, I was sneaking down a long ridge with multiple fingers coming off both sides.  After covering a couple miles and not hearing anything, I came across an area that was just slightly more burned.  It was now getting daylight enough to see that there was more visibility here and I started finding tracks and droppings.  A few minutes into glassing and I spotted my first elk, a small bull with a handful of cows.  They were several miles away and he wasn’t what I was looking for anyways, I kept moving down the ridge.  I hadn’t made it far when I came across a large bowl shaped canyon.  One side of it was burned enough to see into, the other was only partially burnt.  As I was looking into the section of what used to be dark timber, I heard a bugle.  It was coming from the bottom of the bowl and it sounded like a “real bull” not a human.  He continued to bugle every few minutes as he made his way up to me, I couldn’t believe my luck!  

Just as he was getting close enough that I figured I’d be able to see him, I heard another bugle.  This one came from the opposite side of the bowl and didn’t sound like a “real elk”.  A couple more human sounding bugles came from the ridge but the bull never responded to the caller, he actually never made another sound.  I waited an hour hoping he would continue up in my direction but I never laid eyes on him.  I decided to make my way over to where I heard what I suspected was another hunter calling and discovered horse tracks.  They had moved on after not getting a reply out of the bull.  

I found a spot to glass from and started picking the opposite hillside and bottom apart.  If that bull was in there, I’d find him. I wasn’t glassing long when I spotted a tawny colored butt moving up the bowl towards where I had originally been when I heard him.  If I had stayed put, he would have traversed directly under me.  It was close to a mile away and I had no play now.  The bull quickly moved out of the bowl, over a finger ridge and into a large patch of north facing timber that was not burned.  I had options, I could follow him and his cows  in or wait for them to come back out in the afternoon.  I chose to get closer and wait even though that meant another hunter might find them and mess it up.  I had no reason to believe they were spooked and I expected them to move back before dark, I’d be waiting when they did.  

I cut the distance to where they had disappeared and started looking for a suitable place to make camp off the backside of the main ridge.  I figured even if they didn’t come out that night, I would give them the next morning as well.  It was around noon and I was staking my tent into one of the only flat spots I could find when I heard a bugle.  I stood up and thought, no way that was a real elk, but before I could convince myself that it was another hunter, he did it again.  This time it sounded much more like a real bull and I wasted no more time pondering the source.  I tossed my pack over the still flat tent and grabbed my rifle.  I crept over the ridge and started glassing into the partially burnt timber.  They had bedded right after I saw them enter the timber.  I could see him through the small openings walking as he checked his cows.  After getting a good look at how big and old he appeared, I focused on finding an opening.  When he paused at 425 yards in a narrow gap, I squeezed the trigger and my Snowy Mountain Rifle proved its value again.  

A quick text to the horse packer, a few pics and I went to work.  I still had to get him to a trail that horses could use but that was a whole lot better than a seven mile pack out solo.