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Hooked on Elk!

Nick711

New member
Joined
Dec 3, 2015
Messages
20
Location
Sacramento, CA
Greetings Everyone!

First, thank you for the add (long overdue) to the site.

I'm from California and have been hunting pheasant, waterfowl and deer for the past 25 years. I've always had the itch to go on a DIY out-of-state hunt, but felt like I lacked the knowledge and budget to pull it off. That all changed thanks to the information gained from watching multiple fresh tracks episodes, Randy's Youtube "how-to-episodes" and reading advice from fellow hunters on this site. Last year I pulled the trigger and went on an OTC DIY hunt to Montana.

Prior to the hunt I did some research and elicited help from site members. To those that contributed - thank you! Upon setting off on a week long rifle season hunt to MT on an elk combo with my father-in-law - a late life newbie that I got hooked on hunting - we set our expectations to a reasonable standard: see wildlife, learn from observations and other hunters. We spent two days hunting the Gravelly range and three on the Snowcrest mountains. We encountered several mule deer and a bull moose near Black Butte, but decided to abandon the location after two days to do lack of elk presence and high hunter density. Our three days in the Snowcrest mountains yielded a different experience, no deer and lots of elk tracks. I'll get to the punch - we didn't see any elk, but encountered a group that shot a rag horn bull.

Lessons learned from the trip:
1) Boots on the ground scouting is not an option for us, so spend more time e-scouting and engaging available resources such as MT game biologist.
2) We jumped into hunting day one. Next time out I plan to spend our first day driving around to scout and get the lay of the land
3) While we are both reasonably fit, I completely agree with the statement - "you can never be fit enough for elk hunting." Since last season my FIL and I have stepped up our training by running half marathons during our harsh CA winters and hiking the Sierra's with loaded packs.
4) I'm sure you will all get a kick out of this. For gear, our layered systems performed flawlessly and we were dry and warm all day while in the filed. At night, we froze our tails off. Sleeping in a three season tent did us in. After the first night we woke up to a frost lined tent and after the third night we were well on our way to getting sick. We'll either be renting a trailer or walled canvas tent for our next hunt.

At the end of our hunt in MT we turned west and headed home to CA with unpunched tags, a camera filled with memories, a smile on our face and a new addiction - elk hunting! We've applied for the 2018 Big Game Combo and are looking forward to returning to MT for another great experience.

Thanks again for the ad - looking forward to learning from experienced hunters and sharing my journey to becoming a seasoned elk hunter.

Nick

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