Back to Montana for a High Country Bull

I left southern Colorado on a Thursday in early November in a blizzard that started just south of Denver and stayed with me all the way north of Cheyenne. I was tired of driving in it and found a cheap motel and an expensive steak dinner in a little Wyoming cow town between Cheyenne and Sheridan. The name of it eludes me now. All I remember is the steak wasn’t worth the price but the bartender was a good pour.

My friend Larry had taken a good bull in Colorado. A decent 6×6 up near the Continental Divide. But after helping a lot of friends take their elk this year I was ready to get back to Montana and put a bull on the ground. I was looking for a day or two of rest but when I called my brother Dan on Friday morning as I passed  Sheridan he was itching to head back into the mountains. That night.

I pulled into Bozeman around 2 PM and by 5 we were at the trailhead unloading horses and riding by 5:30. It was bitterly cold that night and we rode in the dark almost four hours before making camp at 9000 feet. It was around zero and the ground was covered in a foot of snow. Shivering from sitting so long in the saddle, I got a fire going as Dan began unsaddling horses. It was after 11 when we finally had the horses fed, tied on the high line, the tent up and our food hung behind camp. I had been up since five that morning and my head wasn’t even down before I was asleep.

Saturday broke clear and cold as we moved across a familiar saddle glassing parks and ridges for elk. We were rewarded about 9:00 when we spotted a herd of cows and a decent bull on a lower ridge across a drainage but far out of shooting range.

We decided to pull camp and move to a lower elevation where the snow was not so deep and the air not so brisk and try to get on that herd the next morning.  I wanted to hunt a flat where we had gotten into bulls during archery season so Dan graciously offered to drop me off along the trail so I could hunt while he set up camp in a meadow a couple of miles down the mountain. I found a lot of tracks but no bulls. Just before dark I came out of the trees to a welcoming campfire only to find the bottle of whiskey almost empty and Dan in a very good mood.  But the fire felt good and the remnants of whiskey did their part.

The next morning we rode a long circular route to get to the ridge where we had spotted the elk. I stayed glued to a high spot where I could see down into the drainage while Dan headed further down the ridge. We agreed to meet back at 10 AM along the ridge trail. Ten o’clock  came and went so I hiked to the horses to make sure I hadn’t missed something, and then headed back to the ridge top. Finally I saw him coming down the trail an hour later. He had gotten above a herd of cows and a good bull, likely the one we saw the day before.  The cows moved up and all around him as he waited for a shot. Finally the bull came into view, head down only 80 yards away. But all Dan had was a head or neck shot and the bull was heading his way so he waited. Then a cow spooked and the bull turned, followed her and was gone. We made it back to the trailhead around 5pm and didn’t stop until we hit the bar at Norris.

I spent Monday catching up with Tami, recharging my batteries and packing my gear for a solo hunt into the Taylor Hillgard range north of Hebgen Lake and just west of Yellowstone Park. I was hiking in about seven miles to a basin surrounded by the kind of high ridges that hold bulls far into winter. They survive by pawing the snow down to feed on the remnants of grass on south facing slopes. The first four miles of trail was steep and a combination of mud, ice, snow, horse piss and manure churned into a slick mess after opening week of rifle season. By the fifth mile the trail lay unmolested under a foot of snow. It took me almost four hours to make my way up the slick trail and steep switchbacks to the basin. I hunted my way to where I made camp without seeing an elk. The next morning I arose to a still and moonless night. Climbing slowly up toward the backbone of the ridge in the dark, I needed my headlamp to see in the inky blackness. I wanted to be high by first light, allowing me to see down the slopes into the parks and coulees below that fed up toward the patches of bristlecone pines that dotted the slope of the ridge. Ahead of me in the dim glow of the headlamp I could make out a set of large tracks punctuating the drifted snow. Another hunter,  I wondered ? Up here ? But as the footprints became clearer I saw the unmistakable claw marks of a grizzly adorning each track. I paused and stared at the deep tracks, longer than my size 12 boot. They were no more than a few hours old, the claw marks and prints still  sharp and free of blown snow and heading in the same direction I was.

I made it to a bench just below the ridge top at about 9500 feet just as daylight was breaking only to find the mountain encased in dense fog. Visibility was less than 300 yards and the top layer of the snow on the ridge had crusted after being warmed by the previous day’s sun. Each footfall seemed to break the stillness of the morning like a baseball thrown through a plate glass window. I winced at each crunchy step. I tried sitting for a while but grew frustrated at the ineffectiveness of watching a single little draw. I couldn’t even make out pine trees just a few hundred yards away. While moving seemed just as ineffective it kept me occupied and I climbed slowly higher on the ridge until I hit the scree slope that told me I was just below the ridge line. I had humped all the way in here and climbed to almost 10,000 feet to be defeated by fog and crunchy snow. I say down on a rock and contemplated what to do next. There was a flat of timber a couple miles away where I had almost walked into a huge bull during a snowstorm a year earlier. Perhaps I could drop down into that bedding area and cut some fresh tracks. Back in the timber the snow was still powdery and quiet. I hated to give up the elevation though, and couldn’t will myself to get up. Minutes passed and suddenly the trees around me illuminated a bit. I looked up to see a spot of blue sky pass in the fog. It was only gone a moment when another appeared and soon the deep blue sky of a Montana morning was spreading through the clouds as the sun and wind burned the fog off the mountain. A vast vista spread before me as the snow covered parks and clumps of pines in the basin below me emerged from the clouds and broke into view. I grew excited again. The slope was pocketed with small stands of pine and I knew the bulls bedded in those knots of timber. I would move through them with quick, staccato steps, trying to sound like an elk, not the slow, methodical two step cadence of a human. I pointed my toes and drove my foot down through the crust, taking two to five quick steps at a time and then pausing. It sure sounded more like an elk. It was only twenty minutes later as I paused for the tenth time or so when I heard the snow crunchy just above me and a bull stepped out from the trees and began moving away from me. I flipped my bi-pod out and flopped down in the snow and got into position. But the bull was still moving away and a tree between us blocked my view. I cow called as I lifted my rifle and pushed off with my up hill boot, sliding down the steep slope on my belly. I came to a stop in about ten feet, cow called again and planted my bi-pod just as the bull strode into view, looking down the mountain toward me and the cow he thought was there. He stood broadside at 100 yards, illuminated by the morning sun rising behind me. Through the fourteen power scope it looked as if I could touch him. Now mid-November, he had on his thick winter coat which danced in the breeze. I could see every hair moving. He and I were frozen in a moment of time. His rack was narrow but heavy and I could see from the back of his main beam that he sported five tines on each side. He was a good five point but not what I had came this far for. I still had some elk in the freezer and if I ended the season empty handed I would remember this moment and this bull and let the season pass without a regret for having not shot him.  For now, I just wanted to enjoy this moment. He turned his head suddenly and looked up the hill. Branches snapped in the pines above me and the snow crunched. I could see another bull moving through the trees. I lifted the rifle, swung it uphill and replanted the bipod as the bull’s head came into view only 125 yards above me. The bull stared at the five point in front of me then swung his head downhill to see what was holding his attention. It gave me a better look at his rack. Oh man, he was wide. This was a much bigger bull but all I could see was his head and neck. I kept the crosshair pinned to where I thought his shoulder was and waited. He turned and looked back at the smaller bull, then looked back at me and took a step forward. The crosshairs found his  shoulder and at the shot the bull buckled and began kicking and sliding down the slope toward me. He came to a stop just fifty yards away. Through it all the young bull hadn’t moved. I watched him for a bit more, not in a hurry to lose this moment and then slowly stood up. He looked at me a second longer before turning, throwing his head back and high stepping across the open slope and into the trees.

I made my way over to the bull and found a place to sit next to him.  A light wind whipped down the slope stirring the snow and the long hair on the bull’s neck. Its soft whistle as it passed over the rocks was the only sound to break the mountain’s deep silence in winter.

It was my 38th day spent in the pursuit of elk that year and I had ended my season like I started it,  alone on a mountain deep in Montana’s wilderness. In between it had been an amazing year spent with people also impassioned about elk, elk country and elk hunting. But there would have to be time to reflect on that later. Right now I had a lot of work ahead of me and a grizzly bear somewhere nearby.

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