Montana Elk 2010 - Big Game Hunting – Elk, Moose, Caribou - Big Game Hunting – Elk, Moose, Caribou

Well, my MT cow Elk season has come and gone. We headed to the Highwood Mountains on Friday the 22nd of Oct. We arrived at the Ranch and got settled in our cabin for the week. A quick hike up the mountain to do some glassing and see if we could locate any elk. That first night, I seen what I thought were 2 brown spots laying about 400 yards across the canyon. I told the brother in law where to look and as he was, he then seen a bunch of elk coming down the mountain, about 500 yards west of where I was looking… he told me to grab my backpack and we needed to move NOW !!! We basically got below the ridgeline and ran, sneaked about 1/4 mile to the west… when we got there and peeked over the ridge… they were gone… a few minutes of glassing and again I seen something, it was the elk and they were now headed the other way, where we came from another quick run, sneak back to the east… we got back and were ahead of them again… we began counting as they came out of the trees… 1…2……3……..4….. this went on until we got to 25 The brother in law looked at me and said, do you want to go after them ??? I told him quite honestly, I did not have my lungs or my legs yet…. we were there for about 2 hours I told him to go ahead & run down the draw and half way up the other side of the mountain to try to head them off and get into position.. I flat out told him “I will slow you down too much” he decided against trying to put a stalk on them, either he wasn’t ready yet either or he truely did not want to chance pushing them out of the area, as this was our first night and darkness was about 1 1/2 hours away. We watched until we couldn’t see any more, then headed back and found the other guys were watching our moves all night and figured we made the right call The next morning, the plan was to get back on that hill, before sun up and see if we can catch them going back up. This time we set up higher and about 3/4 of a mile more east. Let me tell you, I was with my brother in law who is in great shape and my nephew who is 28 years old (nuff said), for every step they took, I took 2… They also did not want to turn on any headlamps, as we were running a ridge the whole way and did not want to alert any animals… that was fun, in the dark Turns out, we didn’t see any elk that morning, but rather were welcomed by about 50 mph wind gusts, fog, then sleet, then snow…. this on top of a mountain. I took a picture when the snow started, there is a few flakes on my gun and sling… pic #1(got this idea from Johnsys pic, cool), within about 2 hours, the mountain was white pic#2. This is how the rest of my week went, it snowed on and off for the next 3 days… we couldn’t locate the herds anymore…. the weather really messed with any patterns they had I did do alot of glassing and walking and did end up taking a whitetail doe, on tuesday right before dark. My nephew and myslef were pushing some brushy valleys and whitetails were explodong everywhere…. problem is, it was during a wet fuzzy snowstorm we couldn’t even see through our hazy scopes… it did tail off and he kicked a few does out of draw, and they busted out, ran about 200 yards then stopped to look back. I was 178 yards away… I was in the middle of an alfalfa field I immediately went prone when they busted out… I had been drying my scope the whole time I was walking, so this time I could actually see I settled the crosshairs and “CRACK”… they took off… I didn’t know if I connected or not, they ran about 60 yards then jumped the barbed wire fence…. well she jumped it and then rolled head over heels I hit her perfectly The rest of the week, I wouldn’t see any more elk, but seen lots of muleys and whitetails. The last day, the weather cleared up somewhat and we went back to the mountian we went to the first day. I sat down and just glassed the hillside, a muley doe came of the pines about 30 yards to my right… that was pretty cool after about a minute a nice 4×4 muley buck also came out, this was my first close encounter with a muley buck with any size someday, I will have a tag for one of them Nobody ended up connecting with any elk, but everyone who wanted a whitetail got one. We went 3-4 on whitetails and one guy had a muley doe tag and he got his doe too Sorry I didn’t get any pictures of the deer, where we shoot them, there really isn’t an opportunity to set up to take pictures and once they were on the meatpole, I didn’t want to snap a picture of them there or have somebody help me pull them down to pose for pics We skin and cut them right where they hang. I took a few other pictures I thought were pretty cool. Hope you enjoy them and I am looking forward to next year already Oh yeah, picture 4 has a subject in it… can anybody see it ???