My 2017 Wyoming Hunt Report

I’ve been on this site for a couple of years now and have benefitted from advice received here. I figure it’s time I contribute a story (and it’s really cold outside). I’ve cropped out faces from the photos, I hope that doesn’t bother anyone; I just value our privacy online.
A buddy and I took a trip to Wyoming, in early October to hunt for cow elk and doe antelope. Antlers are cool, but what we really look for is good meat and the fun of open-country, western hunting. I live in the Adirondacks and he’s from Maine, so thick woods and ghost-like whitetails are what we’re used to. I really wanted my friend to have some success this trip. He’d come into hunting as an adult and while he’s put in a bunch of time over the last 5 or 6 years, he’s had limited success and his wife was starting to question the benefit of this new pastime… On our last western trip together, I’d shot an elk and he had not.
We hunted a unit with good numbers of elk, but not a lot of territory that ATV’s and trucks couldn’t reach. I was a bit worried that we’d be at a big disadvantage being on foot.
We arrived the evening before opener, with virtually no time to glass, so we picked a likely looking spot on the map, to glass in the morning and pitched our tents.

(To be continued in posts)...

DAY 1
The next morning was so foggy and windy, glassing was impossible, so we changed plans and drove around to the north side of the mountain and decided to check out some patches of thick, dark timber. We picked a nice patch, high on the mountain and I traversed the upper end of it, while my buddy traversed the lower end. Almost immediately, I spooked a bull, who crashed off down the hill. I continued on and 15 minutes later, I noticed a patch of light color up ahead in the woods. When I stopped and looked closer, it moved a bit and I knew that it was an elk. I crouched and waited, soon realizing that there were at least 3 elk in front of me, but I couldn’t see any heads. They were about 40-50 yards away, but the thick Lodgepole pines were obscuring most of my view. There was a 6” gap between the trees that gave me a head-on shot at one of them. After several minutes, that one moved its head enough for me to see that it had no antlers at all. I settled the crosshairs on the center of her chest and squeezed. At the shot, she stood completely still, just looking at me. The other two wheeled and angled down the hill. I cycled the bolt, thinking about a second shot, but she too wheeled then and headed straight down hill. I waited 20 minutes or so and called my buddy, then went over to where she’d been standing. I searched on hands and knees all over that spot, but could find no hair and no blood. When my buddy got up to me, we worked our way, methodically, down the hill, in the direction she went, going way out to the sides as well. We couldn’t find any sign of a hit elk. After we spent about an hour doing that, we returned to the site of the shot and started checking the trees along my shot opening. I couldn’t find any sign of a bullet hole in any of those trees. We spent a while doing that, checking different trees, but no luck, so we did another methodical search of the woods below us. Nothing. At this point, we’d been looking for 3or 4 hours. I returned to the spot and just concentrated on following the tracks of the elk I shot at. There was no snow, so it was not easy, but I did my best to stay on that set. It went straight down hill about 100 yards, then turned and headed right, toward where the other elk had gone. It soon joined up with their tracks and they all headed over to a ridge, where they’d be able to jump to another drainage. The whole way, I was meticulously checking the ground, but never saw so much as a hair, let alone blood. I did hear that bull down below me, bugling away.
I‘ve never had this experience before. I’m still a bit haunted by it, because I spent hours looking for any sign of a hit and couldn’t. At the same time, it was a shot I should have made and I couldn’t find any sign of having hit a tree instead. Eventually I was forced to accept that I’d probably missed and just couldn’t see the tree hole. However, there’s this little voice in my head that says, “why didn’t she run away when the others did? How could you have missed that shot? What if she just didn’t bleed at all for a long ways and she’s laying dead in some tangle of blowdown, at the bottom of the timber patch?” I really hope that voice is wrong. The fact that I couldn’t find anything after such a big search gives me hope, as does her reaction after running off (joining the group and not being dead along their trail). Anyway, I’m sure some of you have had this experience. It’s my first time and I didn’t enjoy it.

Day 2
The next morning we decided to rest that area and check out some long fingers of timber that went up a big, grassy mountain. We’d seen an elk through binoculars, on that hillside, the day before and it looked good. We set off at first light and were just working towards the base of the forest when we heard a bugle from the other side of the road. Out came the binos and we soon spotted a bull with 6 or 7 cows on the opposite side of the road. They were feeding steadily along and so we came up with a plan of trying to cut them off along their route. What followed was a grueling up and down dash (as fast as two forty-something sea-level dwellers can go anyway). We had to go down and up several times and by the time we reached our last ridge, we couldn’t see them any more. We descended to the low spot below where the elk had been; a reasonably thick pine forest, with some blow down, but decent visibility. We thought the elk were still up above us, but we moved slowly. Unfortunately, it wasn’t slow enough. The elk had come down into the brushy bottom and unbeknownst to us, were 30 yards in front of us, hidden by some bushes. As soon as they got a good fix on us, they were gone in a crash of hooves and bodies. To add insult to injury, several minutes later, we heard a shot in the direction they’d gone.
A bit dejected, but really happy with how many elk seemed to be in the area, we decided to hike up to where the elk had been anyway. We went all the way to the top and confirmed that they were all gone. We could see and hear a spike bugling on the next ridge over, but with no cows visible, we decided to go back to our original plan.
We carefully hunted up one of those long forested drainages that we’d been heading for in the morning. Sign was everywhere, but we didn’t find any elk. As we reached the top, it started snowing hard and we skipped over to the next strip of forest to hunt it down. The ground was soon covered and halfway down, we came across a bed with a set of running tracks leaving it. While we knew it was likely a bull, we figured we’d better be safe and see if we could get a glimpse of it. My buddy stayed on the tracks down through the woods. I angled right, out onto a grassy strip that went most of the way down the mountain. My plan was to jog down and see if I could lay eyes on it. If it didn’t go that way, my friend would still be on the tracks. I descended rapidly, half walking/half jogging and all of a sudden, there were the tracks in front of me. Just then, I looked up and could see a nice bull standing 100 yards in front of me, broadside, just looking at me. I gave him a good look, said “pow” and then watched him trot off. It would have been really nice to have had a bull tag just then, especially because he was standing about 20 yards off the road our car was on… It was an exciting day, but things hadn’t come together yet.

Day 3
With snow on the ground now, we decided to start the next morning in the area we’d seen the herd the day before. We only had to walk about 300 yards from the truck before we came across the tracks of a herd of elk. Being from the big woods of the northeast, this was a game we understood well. The tracks were pretty fresh, so we followed them at a steady, but careful pace, expecting to see the herd ahead, every time we came to an opening. We followed those tracks up and over a ridge and through some beautiful meadows in the creek bottom (where we saw one of the most beautiful, healthy looking coyotes I’ve ever seen). We started up another ridge and I was beginning to think that these elk were moving faster than I’d thought and were probably further ahead. We picked up the pace a bit and were just coming up on the top of the ridge, when again, I saw that bright tan patch in the forest. There was the herd, about 60 or 70 yards away, in an opening, but mostly obscured by trees. We knelt and tried to find an opening to shoot through. Every time we had an opening, we couldn’t see the elk’s head to check for antlers and vice-versa. Then the wind switched and they bolted off to the right. There was a large opening over there, so we ran as fast as we could to the edge, hoping for a shot. However, the herd split and they made it through the open area just as we reached it. We saw them disappear into thick forest. One group had gone left, towards where we saw the bull the day before. The other, larger group headed right, back towards where we’d jumped them the day before. There was clearly a bull with the group, as we could hear him bellowing his displeasure as they moved away from us.
It’s funny, we were hunting only for cows, but bulls really made this hunt a lot easier for us. We continued to hear this one bugling as they reached the bottom, then started up the other side, into a forested bowl. The bugling stalled there and we could tell that they’d stopped. We decided to start up on them again. When we reached the bottom, we came up with a plan: I’d circle up on the ridge above them. My buddy would give me 20 minutes to get up there, then start carefully following the tracks, hoping to catch them in the woods. I’d be ready to cover their escape route. The snow was starting to disappear in the sun, so I hoofed it up as fast as I could. I was just reaching the high area where I’d want to sit when I thought I heard a cow call. I called back, just in case. A minute later, I heard it again and could see a calf trotting toward me, with an anxious look on its face. It stopped about 50 yards from me. I had a good neck shot, but hesitated. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to shoot a calf, especially when my friend was tracking the herd below. I think the wind shifted and that little calf ended my mental argument by reversing course and disappearing. I had just enough time to wonder if that was a mistake, when I heard a shot below me, then another one. Immediately, I started to see elk trotting away from the area, heading up the hill, through the trees. I watched one spike trip and falter, as he was walking and had a moment of panic, thinking that my friend had shot an elk with antlers, but a quick radio call confirmed that he’d not. His elk had only made it about 40 yards and was piled up on the ground. Whew! I was so happy for him, I think I ran down the whole hill and was standing next to his elk soon after. He’d spooked them at very close range. Most of the herd had headed up, but two cows walked toward him and he was able to shoot one of them at 10 yards (placing both bullets in essentially, the same hole. I could not have been happier for him! We spent the next several hours quartering and packing his elk out to the road. It was about 1.2 miles, most of which was downhill, though there was 300 yards of steep uphill, through the blowdown. We got her out in one trip, which made for heavy packs, but better than a second trip, in my opinion. The only bummer, was that in the quartering process, my friend cut his thumb badly. We were able to bandage it and finish the job, but it really needed to be seen, so we decided to head to Casper and forgo the next morning’s hunt and my last chance to get an elk. I was a little disappointed, but it was the right thing to do, I was determined to save a little time to hunt antelope and it felt sort of “right” given my experience on day 1. So, we packed everything up and went to Casper, dropping off the elk meat at the butchers and ending up at an urgent-care, which was good. It definitely needed care and he ended up with a huge bandage on his thumb.

Day 4
After a lot of tough hiking and cold weather in the mountains, it was a fun treat to get up the next morning in a hotel room and set off in the truck, hot beverages in hand, to find some antelope. Our unit wasn’t far from Casper and we began looking at chunks of public land, trying to find a herd. It didn’t take too long. I spotted a herd of all does, feeding on a hillside. We made a big, circuitous stalk, but in the meantime, they’d bedded down in tall grass and were almost invisible. I got within range, but couldn’t get a shot. At some point, they winded us, or just had a bad feeling because they jumped up and ran over a rise and out of sight. We drove around to the other side of this chunk of land and spotted them again up on a hillside. We closed the distance to 250 yards and I was able to set up for a nice, prone shot. I picked the largest one and squeezed off a shot. She ran maybe 20 yards before piling up. When we walked over, we were surprised to see that it was a yearling. The herd must have been made up of all yearlings and she just looked big compared to the others. I’d never seen them next to an adult to get a good reference for their size. Oh well, I figured she’d probably taste REALLY good and I was happy to take my first antelope ever.
Now it was my friend’s turn. We drove around a bit more looking over the public land. We saw a VERY nice buck with a large herd of does, but other hunters scared them off before we could start a stalk. Soon after, as we drove past a ravine, we looked up it and could see a buck and a doe up there. We drove a bit further, pulled over and stalked up to the rise above them. We knew that they would be close when we crested the rise, so we did so very slowly, on our bellies. My friend took a prone shot, but his elbow slipped as he was shooting and he hit the dirt right in front of her chest. She bolted away, but in a stroke of very good luck (for us), the buck would not let her go. He herded her right back towards us and my buddy was able to shoot her at only 50 yards. At this point, the buck finally ran off and we set to work cleaning out this beautiful and mature doe (as well as picking out a few cactus thorns).

We had a great trip. Our agreement is always that we split the meat down the middle, no matter who shoots what, so we each came home with a nice supply! The country was beautiful and it was a treat to see so much game. I was not expecting to be into elk every day like that and it made things very fun. Antelope hunting was a blast and a perfect way to relax a bit after the rigors of chasing elk. We even got in a little fly fishing in the Laramie range, while we waited for the meat to freeze! I hope to get back again soon! We are incredibly lucky to have these public places to hunt and fish!

Nice write up and pics. Loved it and glad you filled the freezer.

Cool story, thanks for sharing.

Sounds like a successful hunt, thanks for the report..

Sounds like a fun trip congratulations.

Sounds like a great trip in my books. Thanks for posting your trip story.

Way to go!

Great work, and awesome write up! Thank you for sharing!

Thanks for sharing.

Very cool, thanks for sharing!

Great adventure!

Great story and congrats!

Awesome trip, thanks for sharing!

great story, congrats on the great adventure!
Matt

Great story. Thank you for the post!