A GREAT COLORADO ROCKIES ELK HUNT-
COMPLETE WITH EVERYTHING BUT ELK!
Oct. 18, 2001
This is a story of the Rocky Mountain Elk Hunt of 2001-and if the question on the part of the non-hunter is "Did you catch anything?" the answer is quick and easy. No. If the question is whether the weather was pleasant and the going easy-the answer is also simple---No.
But, for the camaraderie and the experience, we had a great hunt. It was not a great shoot-and, in fact, I never touched off the .300 Win Mag BAR once again-but, the last four or five single shots of that same rifle have scored big, and I was under instructions-enjoy the hunt, but don't shoot anything, since you have already killed enough this year!
In fact, this was the year that the price for the out-of-state elk license increased dramatically, doubling in price from last year's rate to $450 for an elk cow permit-that, like all the others, went unused!
It was very frigidly harsh each morning, with the first clue as to what we could expect coming at the pre-dawn hour that I drove up through the Glenwood Springs Canyon after coming through the tunnels at the 10,000+ feet passes where I headed into a snowstorm. When we arrived in Basalt, Gene had been transferred over to drive for Tommy Thomas who was drowsy in his Saab because of his operating schedule, and I had Peter in the Suburban along with all the boxed groceries I had collected in Safeway the afternoon of my arrival. I am proud to say that I made the brief and expeditious grocery run alone without a list and with a good idea what I had wanted to have for breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks-expecting a bit of elk venison along with the supplies I was buying, and not quite certain of how many men we would have for just how long-but I had forgotten NOTHING, and had very little in excess-even without any venison to add to the larder.
It was a gastronomic success in what I call as the good French term: bricolage. A "bricoleur" is someone who makes things up of "found parts", and it seems to be that there were happy campers and diners-despite our shivering in our sleeping bags on the frozen ground with a strong wind ripping the tent and its tarps, mice running over the floor of the tent and scampering past my head between the "kitchen" food boxes in one corner of the windswept tent and the backpack I had stashed in the corner with a few snacks for lunch on the trails-and no shots fired-we all had a ripping good time!
For the first time in our history of carrying our whole kit in on horses (four) and a mule (the first one we have used ever) we had no major "rodeos". Yes, there were slippage of packs and required rebalancing of the loads, but all the goof-ups we had were our own fault and none were from recalcitrant packstock run amok. We had as good an experience as any amateur wranglers are entitled to expect. I usually led the mule with a pack frame on him and a pack saddle gear that was too big and which kept slipping forward onto his neck when we went downhill steeply, but the mule would not go ballistic as have so many of our horses in the past, and we never had to round up any of the big horses which had decided to go their own way at their own time. Despite conditions, which were snowy, and later muddy, the five packstock performed well.
When we first got up to the campsite, the younger kids of which there were three, and Harvey ("Dick") were in extremis because of the cold and the fact that they were not doing enough exertion to help set up the camp to generate any warmth. They clustered around the inside of the tent before it was even erected, and expected a heater to be turned on rather desperately since it was very cold on the frozen ground, and our homey tent is battered by high winds, and very uncomfortable conditions at the outset. Some of them crawled into sleeping bags and never emerged, applying the chemical hand warmers to all parts of their bodies while in the sleeping bags and making serious inroads into the kitchen of foodstock that would have to last the rest of us over a week as they scarfed up dozens of snack-sized food packets designed for the lunches to be eaten out on the trail. The newcomers all took off on the day after opening day, having been disillusioned that the hunt is simply a shoot from some position of comfort, and not a "hunter/gatherer" collaboration of shared feast or famine.
WE hiked far and wide up and over many mountains and concentrated on my favorite spot, Charity Basin, where I had seen the herd of elk on opening day morning, as they milled around on a hillside about 1,000 yards beyond my rock on which I sat shivering. That very long distance-at least three times any reasonable range-has been proven, first of all, right there in Charity Basin, as not beyond my consideration. But added to the long long distance was a cross wind howling through snow which obscured the herd and would have thrown any bullet a long way wide in the capriciously shifting windage. But, through the scope, when I could hold it steady with gloved shivering hands, I saw two bulls, two very enormous cows, and a bunch of yearlings in the herd and hoped they would move down toward me. But they sauntered off up and over the mountain rim we call the "Common Wall" of Charity Basin seeming oblivious of the freezing ferocity of the snowstorm wind. When Tommy and I went there later to see the large number of prints they had made by stomping all over the hillside in scraping the snow off some fodder they figured they could pull up at their ease when no one was bugging them on such a forbidding day.
So, we had a good hunt, which did not translate into a good shoot. The only
shots fired were from Reg's 30/06 when I had spotted some blue grouse sitting.
One of the five shots produced a very good "wok dinner." After leading
the mule and horses down the hill packed up to the Trailhead, I had a very good
ride in the fall splendor in leading the string of packstock back to the Monastery
to return them to our outfitter Rob Van Pelt.