My 2010 Montana Elk Hunt

[petey]

Now I’m in a “honey hole”…I just know it. About an hour into my rest and watching along come two guys on horseback from higher up, they are coming down! Oh man…so I’m thinking I’m the only dude here and here are these guys even further in than me. Another 2 hr hike out, got me back to the truck at dark. After discussing the matter, I decided I need a horse if I’m going to cover some land, so Bill was gracious enough to lend me one the next day and off I went after the morning hunt. That day I spent 10 hrs on horseback, found a nice advantage point to glass about 6 or so parks. Here I have a gorgeous view of Paradise Valley. I ended up riding back to our mountain and that was when I encountered several large herds of deer filtering off our mountain to the farm fields below. It was like the mountain was moving there were so many critters coming off that hill. By now I’m enjoying everything about this hunt. I’m kind of spoiled because I get to do the guided thing in the mornings and evenings and I get to hunt public by myself during the day.

The next day one of our spotters saw “elk” so we headed up the draw to get in on them. As we snuck up the ridge line, Ryan my guide spotted him. I was on my shooting sticks and told him to give me a range from his Geovids. 539 he said, I’m like “good, he’s toast”…then oh no! I see spikes. The only elk I’m not allowed to shoot and there he is, centered between my 3rd and 4th mildot. Ryan says, you could have smoked him right? I said oh yeah, this rig is good out to 690 yards with this scope and I just got done shooting at 550 yards not more than 9 days prior. Throughout the week we talked a lot about ballistics, and long range shooting. Ryan has several friends and clients that shoot and hunt long range also so it was cool getting to talk the language with someone who actually understands there’s validity in shooting animals beyond 200 yards with the proper equipment and person pulling the trigger. I showed him pictures in videos of how we do it back east and it made for good conversation during those glassing sessions.