[petey]

On the 3rd day, I had asked if the other hunters and if Bill and my guide minded that I pass the afternoon by taking advantage of my general tag and hunting some of the high country on the other public land. Something was always calling me to hunt hard, as that’s what I’m used to doing. As the days got warmer and the morning hunts progressed, I could tell the boys were out of their element. That is, not having hundreds of head of elk on their property to just pick from. Granted we saw bulls EVERY day, 9 here in a herd or 5 there…just not right on our little piece of heaven. I assured the other hunters….they would be there, it just takes patience. I’ve too often been that public hunter looking over into private land saying, darn wish I could be there now. They would come, we just needed a break in the weather was all.
Now here I go, a guy that’s got 10,000 acres to himself, seeing over 1000 deer a day, some elk and I’m going to head to public land where no one would be stupid enough to go. I assure you, it was the snow capped peaks that were calling me. Thar’s snow and elk in those hills and I’m going after them, on my own. Because Bill had this lease, it was the only place he could outfit or guide, so having the tag I had and the freedom, I chose to just break up the day and put on some miles.
That 3rd day I started the hike up a draw of snow with many drainages. The terrain was a nasty vertical, burn that I knew I would find elk, the deeper I went in. Snow was only 4-6” deep at this point. About 2 hrs into my hike I spotted an elk in the farthest hole of this mountain, so obviously I need to go investigate and see if there are more. An hour later I’m able to spot into the hole a little better and I run into a nice bunch of tracks about 20 head of elk in the snow. Of course they go up, so I go up and up. I would hit drifts of snow and go into my rear-deep of it. Meanwhile, still heading up and out of the burn and into a nice open park. The tracks led into heavy timber and I’m thinking this is the spot I want to stay until dark, to catch these elk coming out to grab a bite. Now to this point, I figured I put on about 8-9 miles on foot in snow ranging from 4” to 3 feet. It wasn’t the easiest of travelling to say the least.