Elk Season

Its been a while since I posted. Yes partly becasue its been boring for a while but also because I suck at regular blogging.

**Disclaimer** If you don't like hunting or are a little squeamish about blood, you might want to skip this one.

I had my hours in for the time period by early morning on Thursday. They were doing some wiring work in our building and the computers kept going out so I bailed on work and headed out to Steamboat Springs a little early. I made it into the Route National Forest okay but it was a little iffy with the mud. There was a lot of snow and the temps were around 35. This is when I realized that even with only about 35k on the tires, they were getting too close to bald for this area. Everywhere you drove packed down the snow and as the sun went down this all turned to ice. Out come the tire chains to the rescue!!! ( I have GOT to get a second set for the front)

Camp was my big Kelty Grand Canyon tent (12'x12'). Plenty big to fit my cot, lounge chair, all my gear, food and cooking gear. A lantern hanging from the top made it nice and cozy. Not exactly roughing it other than it being about5 degrees overnight. The biggest problem was that there was a full moon and all the snow lit everything up almost as bright as day. At one point I woke up and thought I over slept because it was so light. It was only 1 in the morning. Only thing to do was pull my hat down over my eyes and bury myself back in my sleeping bag.

At about 6:30 in the morning I headed east from the trailhead, straight into the woods. I climbed over a couple ridges to a high park and then started moving back down one more ridge. There was very little sign up high. One or two sets of tracks heading south to private land but not much else. It had snowed heavy about two days before so you could easily tell what was new vs old.

After I dropped a couple hundred feet, I started seeing groups of tracks all over. I kept going down and slowly checking the small parks and creek beds. I stopped to have a sandwich and drink a little. As a started to move on, I was stepping around a pine tree and suddenly there she was - a nice cow elk standing in the middle of a meadow. I stepped back and used my binoculars to verify that it was a cow. I only had a cow tag and didn't want to mistakenly shoot a small bull.

I dropped to one knee for a rest and put the crosshairs right behind the shoulder. Squeezed one off and knew it was a solid hit. The elk didn't even flinch. I racked another shell and put a second shot next to the first (a little fast forward to the post mortem exam - only 2 or 3 inches apart). The elk again didn't even flinch. I was getting ready to put number three into her when her front leg buckled and over she went. Never even took a step.

Now cleaning an elk is a whole different thing than cleaning a whitetail. I've done dozens of whitetails but never an elk. With a deer, you open up the guts, flip it over and dump it all out. Its a little harder to do this with 400 pounds of elk than it is with a 150 pound deer. And of course I was out in the middle of a field with no trees to tie a leg back while I worked on her.

Things did not start out well anyway. As I split the skin up the belly I went too deep and punctured the stomach or intestine - nasty! New plan. I skinned the top side of the elk and lay it back. Next come the front and rear quarters. I cut the legs off just above the knee/elbow joint. I did it to save weight when I carried out the quarters. (It was a bit of a mistake since that is what the butcher wanted to hang the quarters later). Next I took out the back meat and some of the other large pieces.

Next I pulled the elk over keeping the belly down so the split stomach wouldn't spoil anything. Skin the other side, remove the quarters and back meat. Then its done. Except for digging out the tenderloins. I had to pull the guts away from the back and reach into cut them out.

Now comes the hard part.
I loaded the back straps inside the hide and strapped it to the top of my pack. Then I put my orange vest over the top of everything - no sense getting shot at walking out after a successful hunt. The load had to be 60-80 pounds or more and it was a good mile plus to the road. I had to walk farther becasue I angled to make the walk mainly downhill. Once I found the road, I stashed to pack and walked up to get my truck and sled - my "meat wagon". The walk back in wasn't bad. I loaded the quarters and head onto the sled, tied it all down, and headed out. This load had to be way over a 100 pounds. One downhill stretch, the sled got away and took my legs out from under me, I rode the meat wagon about a hundred yards down the hill. The few times I had to pull it uphill out of a creek crossing, it really blew. The last quarter mile to the road was all uphill and I could only pull about 50 yards at a time.

As I go to the road, a guy stopped to talk to me. He ended up giving me a ride and pulled the sled with his truck up the road the last half mile to my truck. A few others also drove by. No one had seen anything all week. Probably because all they did was road hunt. None were to enthused about walking off into the woods to chase them down. As I explained where to look, the only comment was " you sure earned that elk!"