Scouting Day – Up early, shove burrito down pie-hole, grab back-pack and get ready for lesson in saddling pony. Pony is not impressed with my timid behavior around the horses. I’m afraid he knows I think I’m better than him; he may try to get even with me later on today. 
Ride 17 miles scouting for elk, don’t see a single elk or fresh sign. Pony still hasn’t tried to take me yet. 
Arrive at trailer, never so happy to have my two feet on the ground. I’m fairly sure I won’t make 10 more days of this. Crack a cold beer and wish one of my buddies would massage my tooshy. 
Best friends for life, but no takers on the massage!! 
Summary for the day, waterfowler will be the “butt” of the jokes over the course of the next 10 days.
Day 1 – Up at the butt-crack of dawn. Stumble around, find clothes, shove a burrito down the pie-hole, attempt to saddle pony. Fail to put blankets on correctly, pull saddle off, start over(pony is not impressed). Starts raining(I’m not impressed), dig out rain gear, stick in saddle bag. Load pony on trailer, travel 1+ hour to parking area. Pull in, still dark, unload pony. Attempt to put bridle on pony, he really doesn’t care for me. As we ride off into the first squint of light, the rain turns to snow. Pony and I are not impressed at this point. Group gets 4 miles from truck, decides to camp out in some trees since we can’t see 75 yards in the fog. I’m fine, but the rest of the group is a bunch of sissies, not enough clothes along etc…. 11:00 am we decide to bag the day and head back to the truck to sit in the trailer, out of the elements. Arrive at the trailer at 12:30ish, skies clear, turns into beautiful day. Still haven’t spotted a single elk or fresh piece of sign. Day is a bust, learn some trails in the area from the vehicle.
Day 2 – Up late, felt good to sleep in a little. Shove burrito down pie-hole. Decide to give ponies a break, take the iron horses. We spend more time learning the area and find out there are trails and 4-wheelers everywhere. No wonder we are seeing any elk or sign. Pick a great spot for an evening sit, overlooking beautiful wooded valley. See no less than a dozen 4-wheelers buzz in and out of the valley. Can’t decide if it’s illegal to poach 4-wheelers in Wyoming, decide it must be since they are as thick a jet ski’s on the Croix on 4th of July. Day is complete bust, very happy to have cold beer in hand for ride home!!
Day 3 – Up very late, very pessimistic camp at this point, probably going to be coming home early. Shove burrito down pie-hole, saddle pony(we are now becoming one), load pony and head to the mountain. Decide to park truck closer to hunting area to save time in saddle(waterfowler is all for this idea). Local boy, true Wyoming cowboy says “Lived here my whole life, never seen a trailer up on that hill before”. Well, he hasn’t seen my sore toosh either. Take off from truck/trailer, spot first elk, heck first 150 elk. Its noon, we see a bunch of elk headed into a nasty steep draw, about a mile square, all state land. Verify land on map, tie up pony and head down into the trees. Hear first bull bugle, nearly wet pants, make some crude comments to buddy with the same problem as me. Get the range finder out, 800 + yards to elk. Take off busting down through the trees, need to get down to 400 yards. Stop 200 yards into the trek, need to catch breath; apparently the air at 8000 feet is much thinner. All of a sudden the trees start erupting, cows are whining, bulls are bugling. I’m a complete mess. We walked into the middle of about 50 + head. We let the cows walk past, waiting for the bulls. A 6×6 walks past at 50 yards. I miss!!!! My buddy dumps him! I was just getting ready for my second shot, he disappeared from the scope. We sit down, let the rest of the cows filter off. We decide to get busy gutting the bull after some high fives. About the time we get him rolled over, here comes 30 more head, with a shooter bull. Of course my rifle is no where to be found. I do the Chinese fire drill around the sage brush, I’m sure this was rather comical from a distance. I grab my rifle, but the elk disappear over the finger draw. I decide to put a sneak on them, now known as the kooty sneak. I hustle my tender toosh down to the very bottom of the steepest draw in our unit. I get to the bottom and see the elk are almost up the other side. I was ready to turn around and go back to helping my buddy. He waved me on, as if there were still elk there. I stepped up over the last little ridge to find about 10 head standing there feeding by a wallow. I sat down, tried to catch my breath(haha, that would have taken 2 hours). I waited for the bull to step clear of the cows. I squeezed one round off and had my elk. 5+ hours later we had our elk packed back to the truck .6 miles away.
Day 4 – Optimism is high in elk camp again. Shove two burritos down pie-hole, one just isn’t enough to keep your energy level high when packing out elk, even with horses. Party hunting isn’t allowed in Wyoming, so John and I are now without rifles. I decide the best thing for me to do is make sure the beer cooler doesn’t get too full, in case we need the room for elk meat…. I’m all about the team!!
Day 5 – Optimism is less, but still confident we will find elk. Again, another two burrito day. We decided to put some miles on the ponies, we ride 8 miles into state land to witness 500 + head of elk on a private ranch that is not open to hunting. Cool, but disheartening. We learn our luck on Sunday(day 3) was just that, luck. The game fish flew the private ranch to take a “survey” of how many elk are in the area. Optimism falls further. I decide to help the team even more with cooler space. Waterfowler can now be called Slurp.
Day 6 – Pessimism is now at an all time high. The group decides to split up, ponies for some, 4 wheeler for another. Troy heads off by himself, big mistake. Troy spotted a huge elk from a long distance. He made one heck of a stalk to 300 yards. Made one nice shot, but no help to get the elk out. Luckily for him he found us, and I of course had done my part on the cooler space. Luckily his elk was close to a trail, otherwise know as a two-track in Wyoming. Packing was a piece of cake, unfortunately his elk appeared to sick, meat locker recommended not processing the meat.
Day 7 – Optimism is back in elk camp. Last day, two burritos and a piece of breakfast pizza for Slurp. We get permission to hunt private ground this morning, so we take off making a drive. We are seeing lots of sign, but no elk. We come to the end of 1 + mile section. We spot what appears to be a cow and calf ¾ of a mile from the truck. We decide tag #4 doesn’t need horns, he is after meat today. Ken and I take off to sneak up on the pair of elk. We get into the bottom of a creek and were concealed perfectly. We stalked with 35 yards of the elk. Unfortunately the pair were both yearlings, neither a full grown cow. Ken decided we only had a couple hours of hunting left and some elk veal would be great in the freezer. He knelt down, steadied for the shot, twang, zing is all I hear. He shot the top wire of the fence off. I was in the process of watching through the binocs, coaching him on the problem. Of course he short stroked the second round in the chamber and all I hear is “click”. Do you know how loud the firing pin on a rifle is?? I continue to monitor the elk all the while coaching Ken to get another shell chambered. He does just this, then with one shot put the elk down. Two hours later we have elk in the cooler. Tag #5 had now left for an evening sit back by the private honey hole. He watched 6 very good bulls a mere 700 yards from him, but they were on the wrong side of the fence. That is how our hunt ended.
I’ve missed a lot of small details that truly made this hunt memorable, but the most important part of the hunt was doing something I’ve dreamed of for years. I got to spend 10 + days with some old high school buddies, can’t say how much that meant to me. One animal down, now all I have left to hunt/kill are caribou and black bear.
Great story.
