First elk

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Way back during tag hunting season in February my friend Tom asked me if I’d be interested in going on an elk hunting trip with he and his two teenage daughters in the fall, it was to be their first elk hunt too. After my Idaho mule deer hunting trip last year I was up for an elk.  We both looked for outfitters and he finally found Hellander Outfitting in Craig, CO that had openings during the 3rd Rifle Season hunting out of Yellowjacket Ranch between Craig and Meeker.   I had to quickly go through Hunter’s Ed and take the Colorado opt-out test so I could put in for tags in time for the hunt and decided that for my first elk trip I would just target a cow figuring a cow elk would be plenty to feed Catherine and I for a year since it would have as much or more meat than the quarter cow we usually buy in the fall.   In July we found that we all drew tags, the girls and I for cows and Tom for a bull and it just became a matter of getting geared up fully and waiting until the end of October to roll around.

I started playing with bullets and loads immediately.  I felt that my 130 grain Hornady GMX was probably sufficient but decided to also try out the 140 grain Barnes TSX which was highly rated as an elk cartridge for the .270.  I spent time at the range with both and also a lot of hand loaded 130 grain SST (lead) cartridges to sharpen up my shooting.  By early October I was able to put three shots with the max load TSX bullets into a 1″ pattern at 200 yards so decided to go with a load of 55.6 grains of IMR 4831 and the 140 gr. TSX bullet which gave accuracy with a muzzle velocity just over 3000 fps and good stopping power out to 400 yards or even beyond if needed though I wasn’t about to shoot farther than that.

October rolled around and I decided there was no way I could sit in the car for 19 hours to get to Meeker so I chose to fly to SLC, spend the night there and meet up with Tom and the girls the next morning so we could all do the five and a half hour drive to the ranch together.  We arrived around noon, got settled in and unpacked, ate some lunch and then got geared up for the first evening of hunting.   The first night was going to be mostly stand hunting for much of the group that was out then with the exceptions being Tom and I.

View to the north of the ranch

View from the top of the knob I was glassing from.

I was dropped off around 3 pm at the bottom of a knob overlooking a power line opening and told to climb the knob, go to the far NE corner of it and find a good spot to set up where I was partially concealed and could glass the whole area below.   The first thing I did after finding a good spot was to pull out the rangefinder and start ranging a bunch of landmarks – the upper and lower power towers, some prominent rocks, etc… and mapped out shots from 100 yards up to 300 yards.  Then the waiting game began and I spent it glassing the edges for elk and the higher country around me for deer, elk or basically anything that was moving.

“Elk down”

I was thinking that nothing at all was going to happen as the sun set and the light was starting to drop.  Just about that time I saw a cow elk walking out of the draw to the north of the knob followed by 6-7 other cows.  They walked out of the oak scrub and into the open area under the power lines and began marching single file down the hill.  The front cows were moving constantly and quartering towards me so I started scanning down the line.  I finally found several in the middle holding broadside to me, a large cow with smaller ones on each side.  I remembered to chamber a round then took aim at the larger cow in the middle.  Slowed my breathing, squeezed the trigger and fired.  Most of the elk scattered either back up the hill or into the draw.  The one I fired at and another were standing there still but the larger cow had turned towards me.  I watched in the scope thinking maybe I had missed when suddenly her knees buckled and she hit the ground sending the other cow off.   I radio’ed “elk down” to Corey who was somewhere close by with another client at a stand site and then headed down to check on the elk.  By the time I had dropped the 90 yards down the hill and the the 50 yards over to the elk it was dead. I had just taken my first elk which I went up to, stroked the head and flanks and thanked for giving her life for us.

It was getting dark fast so I pulled out my headlamp, a warmer jacket and my kill kit. Just after dark Corey showed up in the Ranger with the other client and they decided to carry my rifle and his gear back to the ranch and come back so we could load up the elk.  I started the gutting process while they were gone.  Once back we finished up gutting the animal, I bagged the organs and then we lifted in into the back of the Ranger, no easy task as this cow was at least twice the size of the deer I got last year.   We rode back and unloaded the cow and hung it and that was it for the night, I could do the rest in the morning.

At the same time, Tom was onto a nice bull to the southwest of me and killed it in a very tough spot.  He and Bronc spent several hours after dark skinning and quartering the elk and getting the meat moved away  from the guts for the night so that it could be picked up by mules in the morning.    Of the hunters in stands Bailey had one shot which they thought hit but after a lot of empty searching decided to go back and look again in the morning.

My hunt was over at this point but I had a LOT of work to do.  The next morning I went out with Tom, Bailey and Kirk the head guide to look for Bailey’s elk.  We  covered a lot of ground searching but saw no signs of blood or an elk so we finally gave up and left Tom and Bailey to hunt the morning together.   I went back to the ranch with Kirk, pulled out my knives and got to work.  Last year Kreg skinned my deer while I watched, this time I got to skin a really big beast all by myself.  It wasn’t the prettiest skinning job in the world but I did manage to get the hide off and should be better the next time around.   I got off the front quarters pretty easily followed by the tenderloins, backstraps, flank and neck meat and finally the rear quarters.   I hung the rear quarters in the cold room and got to work on the rest of the pieces for the rest of the morning.   While I was doing this they recovered Tom’s bull which had been visited by a bear overnight but the meat was intact. When Tom came back and had lunch he joined me deboning and cutting up meat.

When the afternoon hunt started I took off to town to get ice and to drop the heads off at the CWD station for testing.  When I got back I deboned and cut some more until finally stopping in the late afternoon to clean up and make dinner so it would be ready when everyone returned after dark.   That night saw only one shot opportunity by Lucy but it was a long shot and she missed.

Nice buck outside of the cabin

Friday morning I slept in while everyone else left for the morning hunt, waking up at 7:30 which is probably the latest I’ve slept in in a long time.  It was COLD out, about 20 degrees and I was greeted at the door by a nice mule deer buck.  I took a few photos and then made coffee and a hot breakfast then headed back to deboning and cutting up meat.  I finished my elk off around  11 am and went back to grab some lunch.  Just after lunch I saw a Ranger roll by with an elk in the back so I headed up to see who got one.  Turned out that both Bailey and Lucy got a cow and from the same spot so we had two elk to take care of.

Some nice bucks

While everyone ate lunch I got on changing my flight since the plan was now to leave on Saturday morning instead of Sunday afternoon.  Once food was consumed and my flights arranged we all went on a butchering party and managed to somehow finish cleaning Tom’s elk and totally processing the two cows in about 6 hours of non-stop work and a lot of knife sharpening.   We were not 100% sure we’d fit it all into the trailer full of coolers but after dinner when we finished loading them we realized we had just enough space.   That evening one of the other hunters finally got his bull too which they had to go retrieve the following morning.    Tom and I took the Ranger out before dinner and looked at mule deer, there were bucks everywhere and many nice ones, makes me want to go back for a mule deer hunt.

Saturday we got up late, ate breakfast and left the ranch.  It was a long travel day to got home and Tom and the girls had an even longer trip back with the truck and trailer full of elk.  It was a very successful trip for everyone and we met some great Colorado guides.   My coolers should arrive in about an hour then I go back to work finishing up the meat cutting, packing and grinding that I’m sure will take me into tomorrow and maybe Tuesday but our meat crisis is over and we should have a pretty full freezer by the time I’m done.

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