The Season continues

Well it’s been a few weeks since we’ve dropped any new posts so it’s finally time to make an update.  It’s been a busy few weeks of school, work, and hunting.  Two weekends ago Travis and I were back in our spot from opening weekend.  We found tons of large rubs, hunters bugling their faces off constantly, but no elk.  After two days of no sign or sound of elk we moved camp about 5 miles to the west.

Again we little fresh sign and again week old rubs and scat but no elk were currently holding in the area.  We moved again.  Getting to our last spot of the weekend I spotted a cow in the bottom of a coulee.  We geared up and started a stalk.  After working to within 40 yards we saw they had bedded and that we would need to re-angle ourselves to get a broadside shot.  Soon we had backed out and were again moving close to what we thought were 2 cows.  The wind swirled at about 50 yards and one of the cows busted up and barked at us.  Soon 4 other cows and a bull poped up.  By the time Travis was ready and the bull stopped he was 85 yards out and his arrow sailed well left.

The next weekend we were back at the Missouri Breaks.  Conditions were very poor for elk hunting as the temps rose into the low 90s the whole weekend.

We soon found out that the elk were moving to bedding areas after only about 45 minutes of shooting light.  This made it very difficult to locate and set up in front of the elk.  With so many coulees and ridges for these elk to work up it was highly dependent on right place at the right time.  Calling to these elk often sends them running and generally only allow you to locate and then hope to cut them off so the conditions were by no means excellent.  The evening hunts were all but non-existent other than at most half an hour before dark.  The high temperature and moderate hunting pressure kept them clammed up and bedded down.

To make matters worse about 300 head of elk were on the refuge all weekend and a solid half mile of vehicles showed up for the nightly elk show.  The only upside was we got to see a bunch of bulls and got a few decent pictures.

Nonetheless we still had some action but it was pretty limited.  Our good friend Bryce had a few bulls show up on game camera but he wasn’t able to seal the deal either.

During the day we did spend some time honing our skills on some wary prairie dogs and it was a good way to kill the long wait between morning and evening hunts.  I smoke this guy at 52 yards.

We soon headed out empty handed and I won’t be filling my elk tag in the Breaks this year.

This weekend we’ll head home to Bigfork and see if we can’t get on some more elk.  A couple small but shootable whitetail bucks are frequenting our stands and hopefully we can get something on the ground.  The elk seem to be finally really rutting but only time will tell.

-Zack