Tish
Isabella
SteveWe spent 4 days hiking approximately 25 miles as we explored new country and bumped into elk every day but never saw them before they saw us so we never had a shooting opportunity. On Wednesday, Tish and Isabella had to head home so I stayed on for a few extra days to see if I could connect before I had to head home. On Wednesday afternoon, I headed up into some new country and found a way into the Crawfish Meadow area. It is a huge meadow complex and looked very promising, but I had seen on the map that a smaller more secluded meadow was hidden up behind it to the west.
I eventually found the meadow and settled in for an evening hunt to get an idea if any animals would come out before it turned too dark to shoot. Sure enough about a half hour before sunset, two nice 4x4 mule deer bucks came out and started feeding about 50 yards away. Try as I might, I was not able to get a shooting opportunity at them and had to watch them walk away. I thought they had returned a few minutes later but in my attempt to spot what was there I scared away a mule deer doe. I left the meadow in the dark and headed back to the truck rethinking my plan that possibly I should try for a mule deer buck instead of an elk.
The next morning I headed into the Antone Basin and bumped a cow and calf elk off the trail in the dark. So I headed down into the meadow areas and eventually ran into a bull elk who had the jump on me and as I heard him crash off, my mind was really thinking about those mule deer bucks. At least I had gotten to see them before they could see me. I eventually got back to the trail after exploring the bull's "honey hole". I marked the location on the trail on where to head back into the bull's domain for a future hunt. I then decided to head up the trail to see where it went and get a view of Dutch Flat Saddle. I had a good morning hike and headed back to camp around 11 am. On the way down while exploring another new spot I accidentally knocked the string off the rear cam and sprung the bow so that I could not shoot it anymore until I fixed it. Things were not looking up for me at this point in time.
Back at camp , I fixed the bow problems and shot it to make sure the arrows were still flying where they were supposed to fly. Even though I had hiked 7 miles in the morning I decided to head back into the secluded meadow to see if the mule deer bucks would show up again. I got in there and set up and began to hear pine squirrels dropping cones to the ground. Some of the sounds seemed to big for a cone and sure enough out sticks a cow elk head from the tree line. As she grazed a little bit I started to remove an arrow from the quiver and accidentally tapped the arrow on the other arrows and the noise made the cow lift her head and look in my direction. After a few minutes she decided that she did not like the sound she had heard and turned and left. Now you can imagine the angst I was feeling at this point. Unbelievable. A minute later I see a mule deer doe feeding in the meadow and after a few minutes she eventually wanders back into the far side of the forest. About 10 minutes before shooting light would be gone, a cow elk appears from another portion of the forest and then another and another, until eventually there are 6 cows, 3 calfs and 2 yearlings (at least that is the number I remember seeing, but I had begun to focus only on the lead cow). I also heard some larger branches breaking but I could not remove my focus from the lead cow. As she began to feed into a shooting lane, another cow began to feed very close to my hidden position. In fact she was only 10 feet away when I pulled back the bow. She promptly raised her head along with all the other elk, and I had enough time to settle my sight pin where it needed to be on the lead cow who was now 15 yards away. I released the arrow and heard the string swack against my forearm. The arrow hit home and the cow ran off towards the far end of the meadow while the rest of the elk thundered into the forest directly in front of me. I watched the cow stop and wabble a little bit but then disappear into the forest. After a few minutes I heard two crashes as if she was breaking branches. A few minutes after that I went to see if I could see any blood or my arrow. The light was fading fast and I tried a quick survey of where she had gone but could not find any sign of her. I hiked back to the truck wondering what I would find in the morning.
At 7 am the next day, I hiked back into the meadow and began to search for the cow. After not finding any blood or my arrow (the grass was knee high) I began gridding the area where I last saw her. Forty-five minutes later and still no sign of her I decided to go back to the shoot location and start over. I realized that if she was standing broadside to me, I had been off about 15 degrees in my search area and when I re-did the search I found my arrow, which was covered in bright red blood. At that point I said "There is a dead elk out there I need to find". I went back to the far end of the meadow and after another 15 minutes of searching, I summoned the tracking skills of two of the best hunters I know, Josh Boyd and Paul Hooper. I began to remember that hurt elk usually like to go down hill but this elk had gone uphill, but on the other side of the short uphill there was a steep downhill into a burnt-over blowdown hell hole. As I was standing on the edge looking down into the mess, I looked up the ridge line and saw a patch of tan that looked out of place. It was the cow ! Finally I had found her. She had run approximately 100 yards even after a pass through, double lung shot. I began to process her and pack the loads down to a cooler location for storage, as I began the three trips to pack out all the meat. I made my final trip to the truck at 5 pm and went back to camp for a well earned supper.
I packed up camp the next morning and drove back home a tired but happy hunter !
Photos from the Hunt
Our camp setup, 10x12 wall tent and canopy, luxury accomadations !
This was the meadow and lake at our camping spot at Grande Ronde Lake. It was a nice little campground and had 4 resident ospery who liked to fish in the lake. I of course did not even think to bring a fishing pole.....next time. There were elk in the meadow every night. It was a full moon so they would come out around 11 pm and leave around 3 am. We never were able to track the herd down, so we just enjoyed their romping around at night waking us up !
This is Hoffer Lake, a popular spot for hikers but not to much elk sign.
The secluded meadow is to the left and uphill from the big meadow (Crawfish meadow) in the center of the picture. It is just under the burnt looking peak in the middle of the photo.
The secluded meadow is just over the burnt knob in the center foreground about 2 miles from the trailhead.
The hunting crew, Tish, Isabella, and Steve.
Antone basin on the other side of the divide trail where we chased some elk around too.
This is a view of the basin I was hunting where I got my elk, very pretty country !
This is the hidden meadow where I got my cow elk. It is about 3 acres in size and can really only be seen from the ridge system in the distance. It was very secluded and had a lot of animal use. I was set up in a clump of trees at the far end of the meadow and the herd of elk came out from behind me. My shot was 15 yards and this is the end of the meadow where the cow ran to after I shot her.
And her she is, two more steps and she would have dropped off a ledge that was 12 feet down. The way she ended up after I got all the meat off the exposed side when I turned her over (thankfully she was stiff !) she dropped down between the downed trees and I was not able to move her again. The only meat I could not get was the tenderloins which are on the inside next to the spine. Oh well, the scavengers had a feast, and we will too.
Another view
This was my staging area for packing the meat. I got all the meat moved down to this location from the kill site so that it would be in a cooler location as it took the entire day to pack out to the truck.
Well this is a pretty sight, all the meat packed to the truck. This part of the "hunt" took from 7 in the morning until 5 at night. A very long day but totally worth it. We will be back next year looking for the bull of the woods !
