This year I asked a friend, Ralph to join me. Ralph enjoys the Colorado mountains, but due to knee joint issues is unable to hunt anymore. This turned out to be a real benefit for us as Ralph was our cook and what a great cook he was.
Ralph and I left the Cedar Rapids airport on Thursday afternoon and touched down in Montrose later that night.
Friday was spent getting acquainted with my sister and her family and sighting in our rifles. After lunch on the ranch we headed up to our home for the next 5 days, a cabin at 8,700 feet. On this trip, my brother-in-law, Robert and his sons, Jason and Nathan would join us. Nathan would stay back in the cabin with Ralph to keep him company, while Jason, Robert and I would hunt.
The next 5 days our routine never deviated much from this template: up at 4:00-4:30 with Ralph getting up first to start breakfast. At 5:45 we made our way out to where we would sit for our hunt that day. Usually we would sit for 3 hours in one spot to watch for any elk in that park (meadow) or at a watering hole. Then we would "still hunt", walking slowly for the next few hours. Robert and Jason would return to the cabin each day for lunch and then go back out hunting in the afternoon. I packed a lunch and stayed out hunting each day except for one day. Then we hunted until dark (7:00) and returned to the cabin for a late supper. After supper it we spent time reading or playing cards for 30-60 minutes and then it was time for lights out at 9:00.
The weather was unseasonably warm for this area in early October. The 7,000+ acre ranch had several sightings of elk in the weeks leading up to the 1st season, but during our 5 days hunting we never saw any elk and didn't really see any fresh sign.
On the next to the last day of the hunt the three of us made it up to BLM ground southeast of Buckhorn Lake and found an area that looked promising. I returned to this area on the last day and saw a lot of fresh sign and sighted (1) bull elk. It was perhaps an accidental sighting as I had a sage hen burst up in front of me and land in a tree nearby. After I stopped to get over the scare and watch the sage hen in the tree, I noticed something that caught my eye off to my left perhaps 200 yards away. I used my binoculars and discovered that an elk's 'butt" was sticking out from a clump of trees. Because of the dense cover I couldn't see the rest of the elk and I waited for about 5 minutes hoping it would move a little, but it didn't. So I decided to move slowly to my right about 5 feet so I could perhaps see the rest of the elk-body. When I did that the elk took off running and I could see it had antlers, but couldn't see how many points.
I waited another 5 minutes for the elk to settle down and blew my elk-cow call. Thinking the elk had left the immediate area I then slowly started walking ahead to see if I could make contact again with the elk. After about 5 steps I saw the butt of the elk running away from me in the distance and that was the last time I would see that elk.
Later the next day (the day after the season was over), we took a drive down to Telluride and on the way back we saw one group of (5) elk and later a large herd of around (50) elk. In the larger herd there were several bulls and (1) very large herd bull in the center of the cows. It looked like this herd bull was a 7x7.
Ralph and I had a great time and on our flight back home Thursday afternoon we recalled the last 6 days of our adventure and the experiences we lived.
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