Cav1
Well-known member
I hunted a lot of open, rolling sagebrush country.
Despite the long season extension and additional land, it was still not easy to bag an elk. This was no “park-at-the-stackyard-and-wait” hunt; you had to get out and slog through the snow to find them. Nevertheless, I usually encountered multiple other die-hards out hunting even when I went up there in the middle of the week. Previous snowfalls and constant winter winds had piled deep drifts in the low areas and blown everything down to bare gravel on the high points so a lot of the seasonal local gravel roads couldn’t be used with either wheeled vehicles or snow machines.
Of course, mere walking starts to become quite a chore when the snow gets over eight or ten inches deep on the flats and the drifts in the draws and on the lee slopes leave you “post-holing” up to your crotch with every step.
Two ways to beat such conditions are snowshoes and skis. You can learn to use snowshoes quickly and easily and they are handier in thick timber and brush, but they are slow and still require considerable physical effort just to move around on them.
I opted instead for cross-country skis. As I once explained to my wife, “Cross-country skiing is a sport; snowshoeing is merely an ordeal.” Take it from me, if you do decide to try cross-country skiing, do yourself a huge favor and go take a some lessons from a real instructor right off the bat. I spent two long, hard winters teaching myself before I got to the point where I ceased to crash and burn on every downhill. I also ski for fitness and pleasure now. I used to be a passionate long distance runner until I got busted up in a head-on collision, so x-country skiing (no impacts) became my substitute for running. When I finally got decent at it, I combined x-country skiing with hunting, mostly for coyote in mid-winter but sometimes for deer and elk if we got some decent snow during general season.
If the snow is not very deep and/or there are two-tracks or snow machine trails to run on I take my modern lightweight waxless “skinny skis”, supposedly “back country” models that are slightly wider than straight cross-country trail skis and have steel edges.
When it comes to deep powder, unbroken routes, drifts, and sagebrush, I revert to my big clunky old school Swiss Army surplus skis. They are fiberglass with steel edges, ridiculously heavy, and built solid enough that you could probably construct an emergency bridge sufficient to carry the weight of a deuce-and-a-half out of them. Despite the weight, their 3-1/8 inch width distributes my own (rather considerable) weight much better and I can slog through a couple of feet of powder without sinking all the way down in. Negotiating sagebrush and its ever-present associated snowdrifts, the Swiss monsters keep me afloat better, often riding atop a crust rather than crashing through it, and I don’t have too much issue with the tips getting bogged under either. Plus you can get a little rest while coasting down even moderate slopes.
I’m sure there are now nice lightweight modern Telemark skis on the market that would work better, but I’m too set in my ways to do the research and too cheap to buy new. Even with the Swiss slabs I can cover eight or even ten miles in a hunt now. The nicest part is that since the return trip is usually downhill and often in my own ski tracks, it generally requires less than half the time it took to go in to come back out.
Skis are still just a means of transportation to get where I want to hunt. I carry my rifle, chamber empty, slung diagonally across my back and protected by a Rapid Rifle Cover in case I do take a spill in deep snow. When I actually begin a stalk, I remove my skis and go afoot. I take the ski poles with me to aid in floundering through the snow and, by putting the handle through the wrist strap of the opposing ski pole, you can make a dandy little bipod out of them for shooting.
By looping the wrist straps around the handle of the opposite pole, ski poles make up into a dandy bipod.
I finally glassed a herd from my truck that was feeding on a BMA that no one else was hunting. It was only about two miles as the crow flies but it was wide open sagebrush country with some rolling hills so I had to ski about a three-mile zig-zag course up the bottoms of the draws to stay out of sight. I peeked over a couple of small rises and glassed a lot and only saw maybe forty elk total. I finally got close enough and bagged one of two nearly identical cows that were closest to me at around 300 yards. With the shot from the .30-’06, elk just started piling out of every draw, nook and cranny. Within five or ten minutes there were about 300 of them, and every last one of them jumped the section fence over onto non-huntable land before they stopped to stare at me.
Of course we all know that when an elk finally hits the ground the real work is just beginning, but I had brought my cargo sled with me. On a morning hunt, unless the snow conditions make it too noisy, I just pull the empty sled along behind me. At other times, I have to return to the truck to retrieve it, but the extra trip on skis is nowhere near as exhausting as post-holing afoot and in the process you break and pack a decent trail for the sled to ride in.
All sleds, of course, are not created equal. The thin plastic children’s toy sleds from Wally World are usually cheap, brittle in extreme cold, and quickly disintegrate under the load of a dead elk. There are a number of different of cargo, utility or multi-purpose sleds on the market which are made of heavy duty plastic or fiberglass and are advertised for use in ice fishing, winter camping, etc., some designed to be pulled by ATVs or snowmobiles. Look for one with a fairly large surface area to better float on soft snow, fairly high sides to keep it from taking on snow, plenty of attachment points for straps, webbing or cordage, and molded ribs or runners on the bottom to allow the sled to “track” in your ski trail. I’ve retrieved game with my no-name-brand Army surplus sled and we’ve also used a black plastic Jet Sled. Developed in the Scandinavian countries, the boat-shaped cargo sleds known as an ahkios or pulks were designed to carry heavy loads in deep snow, and I’ve seen some fiberglass US Army surplus ahkios selling for around $150. On my wife's bighorn ewe hunt in steep country we even ran into another hunter who had inexpensively procured a beat-up old plastic kayak from a river guide service that he was using as a sled to haul out game.
When loading your sled, be sure to keep the heaviest weight on the very bottom, to keep the sled from becoming top-heavy and prone to tipping, and slightly to the rear of center to keep the nose from digging in when it is pulled forward. An antelope or deer can be easily enough pulled out whole, but even a cow elk is still a pretty big animal, so I quarter mine up.
A small cow quartered fits in my no-name surplus cargo sled and can still be pulled while on skis.
The real trick to pulling a sled is that once you get it in motion you never give up any of that momentum, even when moving at a literal snail’s pace. Keeping the sled going, even slowly, is much easier than getting a stationary sled started again. And again and again.
With proper technique and/or good waxing, on moderate terrain I have little trouble pulling a loaded sled while on skis. It is still a real work-out in the long run, but remains a great deal more pleasant than post-holing slowly forward one step and tug at a time afoot. If I have to ascend slopes where ski wax doesn’t provide enough traction I put on mohair climbing skins.
Naturally, I got my cow near last light and just as a nasty snowstorm was starting to blow in. Before leaving home, I had zoomed in on a point forecast for the exact area I was going to hunt on the National Weather Service website. It had called for only a 30% chance of snow with accumulation of less than a half an inch possible. By the time I was done field dressing the elk, we had a good two inches of fresh but heavy and wet snow on the ground and it was coming down so hard I couldn’t see or hear the rare traffic on the highway until I got back to within less than a quarter of a mile of it. I just had to follow my compass back because I couldn’t see anything but blackness and falling snow. Back at the truck there was probably close to four inches now and still snowing so hard I couldn’t use the high beams on the headlights as I limped home down the highway in 4x4 at 40-45 miles per hour.
I went back first thing in the morning, right on the heels of the snow plow and just as the sun was starting to burn through. The night before I had stuffed the elk’s body cavity full of snow, planted the sled vertically in the snow like a tombstone, and hung flagging on a couple of the tallest sagebrush I could find. I parked near some corrals and skied up a two-track right to the cow, which I quartered up to fit in the sled. The backstraps, tenderloins, rib and neck meat went into a garbage bag, then it and the four quarters, with the legs still attached as “handles”, were strapped down securely into the sled.
Skiing back out on my own packed trail went pretty well even with a heavy load on the sled and the whole retrieval, including the two-mile trip in and out, only took me about three hours total.
