Ollin Magnetic Digiscoping System

Winter cow hunt

p_ham

p_ham

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 6, 2017
Messages
2,559
Location
Fallon, NV
Leaving early tomorrow for eastern NV. Brother is down from Oregon, should be a good trip with him, my dad, and a friend from work. My old lab has been extra snuggly, he always knows when I'm leaving. I've been going nonstop all year and I'm looking forward to having a break!
 
p_ham said:
Leaving early tomorrow for eastern NV. Brother is down from Oregon, should be a good trip with him, my dad, and a friend from work. My old lab has been extra snuggly, he always knows when I'm leaving. I've been going nonstop all year and I'm looking forward to having a break!
Click to expand...
Have a great trip!
 
Got back this evening.

Not much action the 1st week, covered a lot of cool country, saw some really nice bucks, but no elk except on private. Wind and cold were the norm.

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One morning my buddy and I got up on a ridge and hiked about 6 miles. It was a cold foggy morning with a lot of pogonip down in the valley. We were able to get above the fog and it looked like an ocean as far as we could see with distant mountains jetting up like islands.

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My dad took my brother back to the airport after the first week. My friend and I scouted a couple glassing spots for the next day overlooking a new huge canyon.


The next morning at first light I spotted a herd of elk on skyline. They didn't pay any attention to us and fed around the face of the ridge they were on. We made a plan and started the 1000ft ascent. We got topside and found the herd taking refuge from the wind. We set up and took 2 cows. Then they slid down. A long ways down. The wrong way. One went all the way to the bottom of the wash, the other hung up about half way.. we tied that one off with some paracord and built a snow dam to hold it. The cord broke but the dam held. Lots of slipping and fighting that one..

We spent the rest of the day skinning, pulling quarters, and trying to stay warm. I don't know how cold it was but the fat on my knife was freezing almost instantly. The wind blew hard all day. I would estimate 30mph steady with 60mph gusts.. Unfortunately with the extreme slope, weather, and shear amount of work that lay ahead I didn't get any trophy photos. We decided not to take any of the meat out the 1st night and bagged and hung everything. Plenty cold and no big predators to worry about. We were completely spent after processing 2 elk in those conditions. The wind blew hard all night.


The next morning we headed back up, bumping into a herd of about 75 on the way. We were able to get about 50yds from them before they reluctantly headed to another saddle to bed back down. It was cool getting to see a larger group like that.

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We spent all day shuttling meat up to the ridge, and took 1 load to the truck. Miserable day. The wind seamed to have a grudge against us, snowing hard the whole day and peppering us with blasts of ice. We were glad to have face coverings to save from wind burn. I had snow freezing to the bottom side of my hat and eyebrows most of the day. Eyelashes had to be constantly melted with fingertips to keep from freezing shut. It was easy staying warm climbing up and down the mountain in the now foot deep snow. My emergency tarp shelter and mylar faced blanket provided some peace of mind in case things got bad. We bumped a herd of about 20 heading back to the truck. Seemed like the storm got everything moving.

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With the new snow we got a hair brained idea to drag some ice fishing sleds up to the top. Talk about a miserable climb! We loaded the remaining elk and a half into the sleds and looked down the mountain at the concerningly steep slope. This had to be a bad idea. My hope was that there was enough brush to help control our rate of decent.
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We started with the sleds backwards to plow snow instead of easily gliding over the top. Horrible amount of work fighting the brush and rocks. My monkey brain took over and I grabbed the back of the sled, kissed my ass goodbye and pushed off. It took some tuning but we were able to use our feet and legs as anchors/rudders and basically rode those sleds all the way down to the 2 track. Once the slope leveled off a bit we were able to sit on the meat a little.. It took an hour and a half to get an elk and a half to the truck. Way better than the 3 days we planned.. It was the most fun I've ever had on a pack out, dripping with sweat and completely exhausted. The truck said it was 17 degrees on the way back to camp that afternoon. Dad was back at camp by then and helped moved the now frozen solid meat.

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We took a day off to dry everything out and eat everything we could get our hands on.


We put a stalk on a small group with Dad the following day, they didn't cooperate. We spotted another 120 or so head up around 8k' but with no good way to get to them. The new snow made it hard to get around. We decided to call it and headed home.
 
Sounds like a fun/brutal adventure and some good thinking with those sleds. Congratulations on the cows.
 
BAKPAKR said:
Congrats on the elk and the innovative retrieval method. I would like to hear some specifics on the shot and how that new cartridge performed (other than a dead elk).
Click to expand...
"Dead elk" was the highlight of its performance. I'm going to do some extreme cold weather testing but I did not get the authoritive performance I should have. I'm pretty sure there's a bullet lodged in the shoulder so I'll be able to see if it expanded or not. I suspect not. Which is a bummer because it performed outstandingly well all fall. I think the LVR powder was just too cold for the load density and didn't get a good burn.

I'll be testing different bullet/ powder combos in the future.
 
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