Hunters have a self depreciating term for an unsuccessful hunt, they call it "hiking with a gun". It helps to have a sense of humor if you're going to take so much time sleeping in winter conditions, hiking at altitude in dense forests, day after day, often year after year, and come home with nothing. Fail. Zero. No meat. No horns.
I spent a few days up in the northwest portion of Colorado and then a couple more days in the front range above Denver in the early part of November, hiking with a gun.
My plan was to go to a state wildlife area I'd checked out last spring. It's on that map above the GOS squiggly. Purple is an easement that allows only horse and foot traffic, supposedly no commercial outfitters. Yellow is BLM, and the unmarked is private land. As you can see entering through the easement gives access to a fair amount of land via BLM.
I'd been there in the spring, it was empty, no one goes there, area was out in the middle of nowhere. Solid black line up top is Wyoming border.
When I drove up the afternoon before opening day there were maybe three of four private parties and also two very large wall tents, like forty feet long, with annexes and a regular ramada of horses and burrows tied behind. The wranglers hanging around didn't look to be on a busman's holiday but rather getting paid triple wages to ride herd on clients and guides. I've no idea what they were intent on doing with the small herd of elk at the top of the hills of the easement but I was sure it didn't include me.
I had no plan B, and worse no map.
I knew there was a road to Steamboat that came in out of Wyoming on the other side of the little snake river so I back-tracked and headed upriver until I saw a county road headed up the N side of the river. A sign warned that the road after so many miles wasn't county maintained in winter and anyone traveling it should be ready to have all 4 wheels chained. Winter has been late in coming this year, little snow everywhere but I'm aware that it's fully possible to get 4 feet anytime from early October on, early November is pushing it, usually snow is calf deep already, but I had 4 chains.
I also know the luxury resort, Three Forks, uses that road to shuttle clients to the airport in Steamboat, so despite the warnings I felt ok about driving and camping. I followed the long river valley trying not to dawdle. At the end of the valley the road crossed the large private land of the resort. All kinds of signs warning you about trespassing, then as the land entered National Forest and began to climb I saw widely scattered tents of hunters. Maybe six or ten camps over five miles.
At the top of a hill I found a spot. Downhill in both directions in case of snow and a fair bit of public land before being boxed in by private. I figured I'd covered about fifteen or twenty miles of dirt road. I set up my tent and had a fire going in the stove before dark.
For some reason I always get out before light opening day. I hiked up the small sagebrush covered hill behind my tent by headlamp. Watching the ground I noticed no sign, not even scat from the previous spring. From the top I watched the sun come up and glassed all the country I could see. There was plenty to look at, lots of aspen and lots of open, with patches of Doug Fir to keep you guessing. Even a fair sized permanent creek.
Daybreak
Before sunrise
After breakfast I cut across the road and stepped over a barbed wire fence, all the land around there was a grazing easement but National Forest. I have a GPS that identifies land ownership. I'd been seeing sign of cows. The thin grass that grows in clumps that elk and cattle and rabbits love to eat, was all eaten down to a couple inches. Many of the other grasses or forbes make little difference, I'm not sure why but some grazers are picky eaters.
A very gentle but persistent rain started falling, sometimes it was snow.
The other side of the road was deadfall. Thick growing Doug Fir with lots of downed trees criss crossing the hill. Often it takes an hour to cover a half mile in the stuff. the trees are always up off the ground, usually too high to step over, and deadly to walk on like a slick balance beam. Elk love the stuff to sleep and chew their cud. They spend a lot of their lives hiding out in Doug Fir stands, you can see the old discontinuous trails.
Elk don't often walk around in the same place enough to make real trails, under the doug fir there are trails, if short. I was seeing plenty of these old trails, but no recent sign of elk. A very small amount of scat from the spring green up, nothing from the summer and for sure nothing recent. Elk aren't hard to find, or rather it's not hard to find evidence of their recent passing, they weigh 600 to a thousand pounds, their hooves leave a mark. They eat a lot of grass and forbes, every day, and they leave the digested graze in the form of scat all over the place, especially after they get up from lying up sleeping and chewing their cud. I call them nuggets just like gold. Really fresh ones shine dark brown almost black and still wet. They smell like the barnyard.
The deadfall was tough going. Like figuring out a maze. Never step on something you can step over, never step over something you can step around. Elk love the security of deadfall, anything moving breaks branches, they hear you or any other predator long before you arrive and simply walk away before you get there. Elk are more steady stepping over high logs and branches than humans, they have four legs and a much higher crotch.
Besides good cover and escape, thick doug fir provide other benefits to elk. The needles pile up high and are often dry underneath the bows of the branches of old trees. Good place to sleep. Also the thick trees provide an even temperature, not too hot from the sun and a block for radiant heat loss up to the sky. Temperature regulation is very important for animals with over an inch of thick fur covering a thick layer of fat.
The trees thinned at the top of the hill but the rain came down harder out from under the shade of the trees. Also the high grasses and bushes were wetter. Walking was much easier. I had to force myself to go back into the deadfall. On the far side of the hill I cut straight down as much as possible. Great cover for elk, no elk. Down the bottom the trees were very large, elk sleeping heaven. Not even a hint of recent occupancy.
When the bottom opened up to spaced aspen there was even an irrigation pond someone had pushed up with a dozer a long time ago. The far side was washed out but it still held water. I did a complete circle around the pond bent at the waist, looking for not only elk but any tracks in the soft mud that ringed the hole. I'm curious. Always like to know what's around. All I saw were sign of a couple deer and coyotes. Maybe a bobcat but I didn't bother looking close, not much interest in small things with claws.
The second day I already knew I was in a bad place. If I'd of had a plan C, D, or E, I'd of been following them. This day I hiked down from my camp into the creek bed of the permanent creek. I looked up and down for a crossing and finding none I eventually just stepped on the shallowest rocks and hoped for the best, I didn't get too wet. I did find old bones of what was the first of five different old skeletons from cows that had died out there. On the other side of the creek I walked steeply up through sage and into widely spaced aspens and more sage and more aspens again and again. I was mostly covering ground, not trying to be stealthy but just getting an idea of the lay of the land. Looking for sign. I was walking large loops through the countryside never re walking in the same place. I saw no recent sign of cows but plenty of evidence of them having been there. Grass eaten close to the ground and the cowpaths down to water.
Creek
Every day a couple cars drove down the road. In the evening more of them from dark to nine or ten. Maybe ten cars a day. I say cars but they were almost all pickups, and most of those diesels, not pretty ones but muddy. You could hear them using all the gears driving hard. The road might well be thirty miles of dirt between the end of Steamboat lake and Wyoming State Highway 70. Safer to drive at night as you can see oncoming headlights a long time before you meet them.
In many places the road is only a single lane wide, especially through the turns climbing hills. The road was graded and in quite a few places had ditches and even some culverts but mostly it was covered with a couple inches of mud. People were sliding around the corners. Driving slow is not an option if you want to do the trip in an hour or less.
Early the morning of the third day a tractor trailer with chains on came over the hill pulling an empty lowboy. I think the road is a shortcut to Baggs if you want to take it.
The third day also brought snow, falling steady but not real hard. Kinda wet. Easier to walk on than mud. I cut up past the old irrigation pond of the first day to where the canyon ended and followed my nose up the steep but open mountain behind. By noon the temperature was dropping and the snow became lighter. From the top of the hill I could see the many miles back to the resort and all the hills in between.
The snowy day. Distant hills Wyoming, resort in center of photo.
zoomed in on resort.
My rifle was getting wet every day, it's blued not stainless. I carried it horizontal so the water didn't get down inside the barrel but I could see water and snow on the barrel and bolt. It's a decent rifle, Remington CDL, I just couldn't cough up the extra for stainless. Every night in my tent I took the bolt out, opened the magazine, wiped everything down and set it close enough to the stove to get some heat but not close enough to warm up too quickly. Then I'd put a couple drops of oil on a dry clean paper towel and wipe it down again. Too much oil can get into the spring and the firing pin, and someday when the temps fall far below zero you pull the trigger and the pin fails to hit the primer.
That night the temperature finally dropped. Plus Nine degrees when I went out at ten.
Later when I went out in the middle of the night it was for real cold. I noticed a yote had walked up the road and he had taken a leak right in front of my tent.
She actually, don't know why we consider coyotes to be he.
I guess I could have started driving the road looking for other places to hunt. I'm not real big on driving around. It was late for anything up at eight thousand feet anyway but there was very little snow.
The last day I went for a walk down further to the creek where it got squeezed from both sides by an outcropping. There was no crossing and I followed the edge of the rock to where it sunk back into the hill again.
I'm not sure if the cattle keep the elk away or not. Half the number of cattle on the range as there were at the time I was born so I don't begrudge the multiple use of our forests. Probably better than a ski resort. I wouldn't call the area over grazed, the grass was eaten for sure but many many other plants were doing fine, thriving even. Creek had plankton, green stuff. Stream banks didn't seem especially eroded, no areas were denuded due to hooves or grazing.
Creek with snow.
My elk tag was also good at one specific unit along the front range. I've been there many times before and it was unchanged. Lots of sign from before the season in the form of scat, almost no recent tracks. Almost is an important difference. Elk did sometimes wander through, people do take animals from that unit. Unlike on the other side of the mountain public land comes in small doses and its surrounded by private.
The last day there was a brisk wind and I hiked up on top of the highest hill. While headed down the back side I smelled elk. They have an unmistakable odor that comes from their hide. I saw nothing but walking directly into the wind I came on the small pile of hay that used to be the contents of an elk's stomach. The only remains of a gut pile. It was just uphill from a large downed tree. Ten feet above it was a wide patch of dried blood from where someone had cleaned an elk. The lack of carcass had me guessing. How does one drag a 600lb animal off a steep tree covered hill like that. It wasn't until I continued walking downhill that I came on the remains of the ribs attached to the spine. A bear had been at it. No legs, no head.
As always I took a careful look. Slight saw mark at the top of the vertebrate. You need to take the head to prove you've taken a legal bull, four points one side or brow tine greater than 5"s. The lack of leg bones indicated the carcass had been quartered rather than deboned. The carcass was at least a couple weeks old.
It's an indicator of just how strong an elk's scent is that I could smell the scent from the hide a couple weeks after it had been rolled on the ground while cleaning. It's certainly not that I have a sensitive nose, I smoked heavily through my younger years. I'm familiar with the smell from skinning other elk and so forth. The smell isn't strong but it does have carrying power. It doesn't take much to leave a smell.
This is the part where I'm supposed to say how many intangible benefits I got from an unsuccessful hunt, but I won't. You get an animal or you don't. Failure is a familiar part of elk hunting, especially a new or heavily trafficked area. The average success throughout the Rocky Mountains is 20%, and it's not for lack of trying.