Day 5
We woke up early and went straight back to the cut where we had the bull the night before, arriving just before shooting light.
Over the next hour or so, Thomas let out a number of locator bugles, but all we got in return was silence.
We did eventually spot a few cows feeding in the bottom of a different cut, but couldn't turn up a bull with them and they eventually fed into the timber.
With not much activity, we decided to make a run into town to get some groceries and fuel up on gas.
The afternoon proved to be equally uneventful and our trend of being on elk one day and seeing nothing the next continued to hold true.
Around 3:20am or so, I woke up to the sound of elk moving out of the timber behind camp, across the road, and into the clear cut. It was too dark for me to see anything, but they were maybe 50-75 yards or so from camp.
I laid there listening to the sounds of elk feeding until about 5am.
Day 6
It sounded like the elk had moved back across the road into the dark timber. Around 5:30am we got out of the trucks and geared up.
With the activity overnight, we decided we'd try to locate this bull on the backside of camp. We made our way down to the landing of an older cut, and Thomas tried out some cow calls.
After a few minutes, we heard some branches breaking down in the bottom so we pushed into the reprod a bit to close some distance.
After about an hour and no action, we ended up backing out of there and moving locations. This time we went to the backside of the cut where we had the second 5x5 stalk.
After no responses to Thomas's locators, we decided to conduct a little experiment to see if we could tell how far the bugles were traveling. I stayed behind to listen, and Thomas went around the corner about 300 yards and bugled a few times.
I was quite surprised to learn just how hard it was to hear the bugle through the timber at that distance. We needed to be bugling more often at shorter distances to ensure we were getting proper coverage.
Not 15 minutes later, things went from zero to 100 real quick as the lesson learned paid off immediately.
Bugle.
And it was close... and then it was gone. 30 minutes and nothing. We decided to swing around to the other side towards the cut.
Sure enough, there he was down in the bottom with his cows. It looked like it may have been a different bull than the previous stalk, but he was in basically the same spot.
Go time.
We jumped off the road and into the cut. This time though we had a long, large ridge pretty close to the timberline and creek drainage to use as cover.
It was somewhat slow going due to all the brush and slash, but we kept pushing down while checking the wind every 50 yards or so. The wind was all over the place. It seemed liked it was constantly switching directions or swirling as we moved down the ridge towards the bottom of the cut.
When we had visibility of the bottom again, the elk had moved off into the timber on the back side of the cut. We decided to keep pushing down thinking that if we could get all the way to the bottom along the timber edge, perhaps the bull would come across the small opening to our side.
Once in the bottom, Thomas ripped a bugle. We got a response and it sounded like the bull might be 300 yards or so into the timber.
After some time, we decided to cross the open cut to the skid road on the other side to see if we could use it to cut some distance towards the creek drainage behind the cut.
Unfortunately, the wind was sucking right down the drainage towards the elk and we figured it would be best to back out and not blow the whole place out more than we already had.
That meant a long climb back up a ridge to the top.
We had only been back up top a minute or so when Thomas spotted some movement back down in the bottom of the cut. Sure enough, that bull had come back out! WTF!!
As quick as he was out, he went back into the timber. Frustrated and out of options, we left the bull there and decided we'd try again the next day.
Stay tuned for the final stalk!
