Idaho DIY Elk Hunt : Cosmic Dick and the Black Hole Elk

For the last few years Dick has traveled to Montana from his native Idaho to tag along while I chase elk and deer all over the state. He doesn’t carry a gun, (unless my shoulder gets tired) just our lunch and a lot of elk and deer parts when I get lucky. A lifetime of marathon running, mountain climbing, and backcountry packing has kept him in remarkable shape and I appreciate not only his company but his strong back when it comes time to get dead animals out of the steep and deep. The bug finally bit Dick after our great Missouri Breaks elk hunt during the fall of 2011. So when he called me last spring to ask my opinion about a rifle I knew my time in Idaho under a pack frame was coming.

For his elk gun, Dick picked up a Sako Finnlight rifle (he likes stuff from Europe) in 300 WSM  and stuck a Leupold VX3 3.5X10 scope on it. It makes a nice combination. Light and accurate. Dick put in a lot of time at the range and tried different loads before settling on Federal Premiums in 180 Accubonds.

As fall approached, Dick spent several days camping and scouting the backcountry of central Idaho. One night, while sleeping under the stars, he was awakened by a strange noise. It was a most unfamiliar sound which he ascertained must be either an agitated bear or a surly Sasquatch. Dick survived the long, sleepless night and called me when he got home. After hearing his description of the noise, I suggested it was probably only an elk barking in alarm. I’m not sure Dick was convinced.

After talking with several helpful fish and game folks and after a few more days of scouting, Dick announced that he had found “the spot”. The name of “the spot” I cannot divulge here, only to say that it was, according to Dick’s description, 1) in central Idaho, 2) very steep, and 3) loaded with Sasquatch.

If you have ever hunted elk in the northern Rockies, you know that it is generally done in areas that we hunters would proudly describe as “very steep”.  However, after a week in “the spot” I was re-calibrating my interpretation of the phrase. Central Idaho’s St Joe National Forest is a series of high ridges that skirt very steep slopes descending into very deep black holes. These “black holes” (like their celestial counterparts) suck in all loose objects, including hunters, that venture too close. These hunters are never to be seen again.. at least not in their original physical and mental state.

In addition to being very steep, these basins could also be described as “very thick”. As in vegetation. Unlike the beautiful meadows, parks and relatively open forests of Montana, Idaho’s St Joe National Forest is a nasty jungle of flora which cling stubbornly to the steep slopes as if they also fear slipping into the void. Think pith helmets and machetes. An elk safari. This, along with the siren calls of the bull elk bugling from the bottom of the black holes sucks you unwittingly downward in a gravitational spiral. If you want to know why a  Sasquatch has never actually been found, simply come and hunt in the Joe.

I recently read a delightful article in one of the popular hunting rags in which several elk experts were consulted about the secrets behind their elk hunting prowess. One of these “experts” cited his ability to stalk within close range of elk. His longest shot ever taken was around 200 yards. A “real hunter” he opinioned, would never take a 400 yard shot at an elk. Well, after hunting three days in “the spot” I concluded that this brilliant elk mensa was probably hunting somewhere nearby. A 200 yard shot in this stuff would be optimistic. By day three my rangefinder was keeping my sleeping bag company in the tent as its usefulness was about zippo in that Idaho jungle.

The season was set to open on Wednesday October 10th, so Tarzan and I headed over on Sunday to set up camp and begin scouting “the spot”. The first day found us descending from our camp on top of the ridge at 6350 feet elevation to the bowels of  the hole we named “el culo de diablo”. This translates roughly into “the devil’s anus”.  Somewhere around 3500 feet we hit bottom.  Not suprisingly, this is where all the elk in this part of the St Joe hang out.

That afternoon, we heard our first elk bugle.  Hoping to get a look at this denizen of the deep so we made our way along the slope of the mountain until we were just above the  wapiti. A mountain maple thrashed back and forth above the rest of the foliage, it’s adversary invisible to our eyes. At least three bulls were now vocalizing within a few hundred yards of us. I could see bits and pieces of several cows not more than 75 yards away. Moving quietly to a more open area we sat down by an ancient stump. I took out my cow call and mewed a few times. The forest erupted in bugles. While the big herd bull screamed up the hillside for the errant  cow to come join his herd, a satellite bull moved silently toward us. He was less than 40 yards away, but still almost invisible in the thick cover. Dick looked at me and whispered, “I see his legs !”. And then, not finding the cow, the bull drifted away as quietly as he had come.  I leftDick on the hillside and moved about 60 yards back up the slope. I called gently and again the three bulls screamed in response. As I watched a nice 5×5 bull emerged from the trees and walked just below Dick. He came within 20 yards of me but never made out my still form back. He was a very good bull, heavy and wide.  I waited until he too had drifted away and then made my way back to Dick. “He walked right by me !” Dick said. “I would have shot that one !” It was his first experience with close, rutting bulls and he was excited. Wow, I thought, its October 8th and these elk are still coming in to cow calls! This could be a fun hunt. As the sun set behind the ridge, another bull began bugling higher up the drainage. We moved toward him but darkness caught us before we were able to close the gap.

Dick checked his GPS when we made it back to the tent. We had covered 11 miles and 4500 feet in elevation gain. The next day was similar. We didn’t know the country and found ourselves sidehilling on steep, shrub choked slopes. The only clearings were overgrown in waist high ferns and head high weeds. Iif an elk was out in one of these openings you would be lucky to see anything but the top of the rack. On day two we tallied another 12 miles and another mile of elevation gain. We had now covered 23 miles in two days of scouting and all of the elk sign we were finding was at the bottom of the drainages, far from the roads that skirted the ridgetops. There was an old trail with ATV access about a half mile from camp that ran for two miles from the forest service road down into one of the drainages. It got us halfway to the bottom. The problem was, we didn’t have an ATV so we were forced to hike it before even starting down into the hole. We took notice of the number of trucks hauling campers and ATV trailers up and down the road. We hatched a plan for opening morning and hit the sack that night listening to the late night merriment of the other hunters in the camp across the road.

Opening day found us hiking in the dark down the ATV trail which now resembled the Indy 500 on race day. Four wheelers thundered by us and by the time we hit the trail that we had intended on using, several hunters were already ahead of us. Surely these guys weren’t going down into that hole ? We followed for a while and when it was apparent they were heading to the top of the butte, we abandoned our original plan of crossing the top of the butte and instead bailed off the trail into the dark. Big mistake. We spent the next two sweaty hours grabbing hold of anything with roots to keep our asses from sliding down the mountain into the abyss. Dawn found us skirting the top of a granite cliff on scree that skittered off our boots and plunged over the edge. It was somewhere around this point that I emitted a deluge of obscenities which not only failed to rid me of my current predicament but likely alerted every elk in the drainage of our location. We sat down on the cliff face to reassess our plan. Mist hung over the drainage obscuring any elk stupid enough to be actually standing in an open spot. We eventually made our way down to the bottom only to be greeted by a chorus of howling wolves. The baleful howls were coming from only a few hundreds yards away from the south and west. Dick had a wolf license so we were hopeful that one of the pack might come past. Or maybe the wolves would move some elk by us! But the morning ended and found us empty handed. Earlier, a single shot had echoed from higher in the drainage where we had heard the last bull bugle the night before. Scratch one available elk from the list. We hunkered down for a nap and waited for the afternoon activity to begin. Around 2 PM we heard the big bull start bugling from below us. We moved toward him and although he responded to my calls, he wouldn’t come in. The satellite bulls were now conspicuously absent, probably consumed by the wolves.

We headed back toward camp, missed the trail in the dark, and spent an hour climbing an impossibly steep slope covered with man-eating plants. Finally we popped out on the road not too far from the ridge top. We made it to camp, poured some whiskey and declared the next morning would be  a “rest day”.

Dick made his way across the road to see how the other hunters had done. Dick knew these guys and they were all deep into their libations. “Yeah, we saw you guys down in that hole” they told Dick. They had been hunting this ridge for thirty years. Before the wolves came, they had great success hunting along the higher slopes. The last few years had been tough and they were seeing almost no elk in the old usual places. It was obvious after talking to them that they weren’t about to make the bottom of the devil’s ass a new usual place. A man has his limits. We finished our drinks, said goodnight and hit the sack to the sound of their revelry which lingered longer than I did. The next morning we stayed in our sleeping bags long after the sound of the last atvs had died off in the distance.

We decided to spare our tired legs and spent the morning in the truck scouting. In Idaho this is known as road hunting. Apparently, road hunting is far more popular in Idaho than black hole hunting as we met several truckloads of hunters creeping along the narrow forest service road. Pleasantries were exchanged. Elk stories, or lack of them, shared. Our scouting trip was quite productive however as we now knew exactly where most of the hunters were and where the elk were not.

That afternoon we decided to  hunt in a different drainage a little closer to the whiskey.  Dick sat over an elk wallow that we had found while scouting while I ventured deeper down the main trail. I found a side trail that skirted the butte’s eastern face through old growth forest. It was more open but the tall trees stole the sun and no browse grew among the towering trunks. Not surprisingly, no elk responded to my calls, so after a couple of hours I headed back toward the main trail and sat overlooking a fern filled meadow. I was enjoying the moment when, from the bottom of the pit far below me,  a bull bugled. I got out my cow call and the bull and I were soon serenading each other in a futile long distance relationship.

Crap, I thought. We had been down this trail on day two and it was steep. It plummeted down into a bottom scored deep by a rushing creek. I sat contemplating the situation. It was 430 PM and there was only another hour or so of light. The bull was at least a half mile away.  I knew if I killed him down there it will be a long night. He was at least 3.5 miles from the camp and it was all uphill. I shook all logical thinking and the fatigue out of my head, grabbed my gear and started down the trail.

The bull’s bugles were sporadic but I wanted to get close to him before I called again. I hustled down the trail moving easily with the black hole’s gravitational pull. The sun had dropped below the ridge and the shadows began to fill as darkness settled over the bottom. I slowed my pace when I reached the area where I thought I had last heard the bull. To my left, the mountain fell into a deep ravine and then climbed into a fern filled meadow on the opposite side. As I peered through the trees I saw an elk’s butt on the far side at the meadow’s edge.  I couldn’t tell if it was a cow or bull before it disappeared into the trees. Glancing quickly around I saw no other elk. It must have been the bull I thought, following his cows into the trees. Perhaps I could coax him back into the open. I sat down, steadied my rifle against a tree, and cow called. The bull roared back. From the ravine right below me. I heard him crashing through the brush, horns slamming into trees as he bulldozed his way up the steep slope, screaming the entire way. I stood up. Shit, shit, shit I thought. It was so steep and thick that I wouldn’t be able to see the bull until he was right on top of me and I could feel a draft on the back of my neck. The bull stopped no more than 40 yards below me and a total stillness settled over the moment. I could only hear the blood throbbing in my temples. I knew how this would end. And it did, with the bull crashing in panic back down the slope. I moved, hoping to find him in the open, but never saw him. I sat back down, realizing that my impatience had just cost me a bull. I should have waited after seeing the elk until I heard the bull bugle again and knew exactly where he was. I should have kept control of the situation. I needed to understand what had happened so I dropped down into the ravine and found a well worn elk trail strewn with fresh elk tracks. An entire herd had just passed through here. The trail traversed the ravine then rose into the meadow. When I cow called the bull was obviously moving along the trail toward the other elk I had seen. Undisturbed, he would have moved into the meadow for an easy shot. Hindsight for sure, but another tough lesson learned. It was almost dark when I started the climb back up the trail toward the wallow where Dick was waiting.

We hatched a strategy for day three. All of the bugling we heard was in the afternoon, so we decided to sit over a couple of heavily used trails near where we had called in the bulls on our first day of scouting. We would then set up and cow call during the afternoon. I left Dick sitting among the trees and descended a couple hundred yards deeper into the hole. Here in the deepest bottom of the drainage remnants of huge firs which had died in a fire in the early 1900s still stood like silent sentinels among the newer growth. Some of the fire scarred trees had fallen and were so massive that I could not climb over the trunks. I found an open area where several trails converged and passed my morning in silent appreciation of what the forest must have looked like so long ago.

We waited until 2 PM to start hunting again. Putting the wind in our face we moved along a trail on the mountain face which paralled the creek below us hoping to call in a bull. Dick would move out front 60 yards, I would cow call for 15 minutes. Wait a while, then move ahead a few hundred yards and do it again. On our fifth or sixth attempt I heard crashing in the foliage below and behind me. Great. Dick is ahead of me and an elk is coming from behind me and the wind is blowing in the wrong direction for this to turn out in a good way. Sure enough, when the bull reached the trail he scented me and went crashing up the slope. Toward Dick. I cow called and the bull stopped. It was so thick that I couldn’t see him although he was standing only 50 or 60 yards above me on the slope. Surely Dick must see the elk. It couldn’t be more than 40 or 5o yards from him and he was on the same level as the bull. I waited for the shot. It never came. Finally the bull broke the silence and began moving along the slope right towards Dick. And then he coughed. Not the bull… Dick. It’s amazing how quietly an 800 lb animal can move when it doesn’t want to be heard. The bull just melted away. I waited a few minutes before heading down the trail and climbing up to where Dick was sitting. He looked unfazed and totally unaware. “Did you see that bull?” I asked.  “What bull?” he replied. Maybe its time for Dick to consider a hearing enhancement device.

We moved across the face a few hundred yards and came upon a bench with good visibility. I left Dick leaning against the remains of one of the ancient firs and backed up 50 yards out of sight and began to call. My mind drifted a bit and I almost missed the faint grunt of a bull in the distance ahead. I hoped that Dick had heard that. I waited a few minutes and called again. At first I heard nothing, and then the sound of sticks breaking as an elk moved on the trail  towards Dick. I froze, straining my ears for any noise that my reveal the elk’s movement. Suddenly all hell broke loose and I could hear the elk crashing through the underbrush. “Mew, mew, mew I called frantically and the crashing stopped and the Sako roared.

I grabbed my gear and headed over to Dick who was walking in circles. “He was right here.. ” he was saying. “Calm down, calm down.. where exactly was he?” I asked. From below us there was a huge crash and then everything grew quiet. “Congratulations Dick”.. you just killed your first elk !”. The bull had come down the trail and stopped at the edge of the bench staring at Dick who had decided that this was the perfect moment to count the number of points on the rack. The bull didn’t waste any time figuring out that Dick was not a cow elk and started to trot through the brush toward the slope. That’s when I cow called and stopped him. At this point Dick figured that he should probably shoot this bull and made a perfect heart shot at less than 30 yards.  We found him about 70 yards down the slope hung up on a clump of mountain maple. It was so steep we had to tie his rear legs onto trees to keep him from sliding further down the mountain before cutting him free of the maple.

It was a couple hours later and dark when we headed back to camp, tired but overjoyed with our success. The bull was a nice 5×5. These elk feed well in here and he seemed heavier than a comparable Montana bull of his age. That night we carried out the backstraps and tenderloins, the skull and our gear. It was late when we made it back to the tent and it had started to rain. The guys next door were still up so we headed over to ask if  we could borrow an ATV to haul the quarters up the two mile long four wheeler trail. The bull was about a mile and a half and 1500 feet in elevation below that point. They told us they were watching the weather and might pull out, but if they were still here, sure, we could use one of their machines.

The next morning we left early, the hunter’s camp next door was quiet. We trotted down the ATV road and dropped down into the wet foliage of the black hole. We made two trips hauling the quarters up to the road. By the second trip, I was questioning our decision  to not bone out the quarters. We left them hidden along the old road and climbed the 2 1/2 miles back to camp soaked and freezing. Our neighbors were packed up and ready to go, the ATVs already loaded on trailers. This is one of those moments when you put pride aside and beg. Fortunately, being friends and fellow hunters, they unloaded one of the four wheelers and I jumped on it and headed back down the trail to retrieve Dick’s elk.

It’s March 2013 and we are already making plans for this year’s Idaho hunt. Like having a baby, you swear you will never do it again, but time passes and you forget the pain and discomfort and once again feel the draw of the screaming black hole bulls of Idaho’s St Joe.