We were walking bright and early in the morning at a slow and steady pace, and a cold breeze rushed through our hair. We were cresting over a hillside when all of a sudden Dad, who was leading our group, stopped in his tracks. His face paled as he slowly turned his head to the left. He whispered the words we had been waiting to hear.
My dad and my brother Dallen joined me on this bull elk hunt. The weather was really good this year, nice and sunny. After a three-hour drive, we arrived at the spot we were hunting. The focus this year was on being more active and moving around, trying a variety of spots till we got more into the elk. We planned to drive and do day hikes.
The first spot we tried was the area we focused on a lot last year. My dad and brother Dallen were close to getting a bull elk in the previous year, but the timing was unfortunate, as some other hunters bumped some elk right to the meadow they were sitting at after Dad and Dallen had already left it. This area was also where Dad and Dallen hilariously spotted some cow elk right after they had parked the Jeep and were still inside. We arrived at the spot at night, set up a tent, and then woke up to hunt it in the morning. We hunted the area for the morning before deciding to leave after seeing no sign.
(Dad and Dallen are glassing.)
The next spot was an area about thirty minutes away, and it was an area that my dad and I should've gone to last year, as we had bumped some elk in this direction. This spot looked promising, as another hunter was already parked in a blue Jeep there. When we were getting our packs ready, we talked to the owner of the Jeep, for he had just arrived back from a day hike. We had a nice conversation, and he told us that he had seen a couple of cows in the area.
We hunted in this area for a couple of hours, and we saw multiple signs as we traveled across some meadows where we stopped to rest and watch for elk. When nightfall arrived, and we returned to the Jeep, we realized the hunter and the blue Jeep had disappeared. An ATV was parked close to our jeep. We decided that it would probably be smart to stick to our plan of continuing to move and trying more new spots. The next area we planned to hunt in had lakes we could fish at as we traveled. We played a card game called "Rummy" before we slept. The next morning, we brought our fly-fishing rods, spinner rods, and fished at a couple of lakes as we hiked. There weren't many signs of elk, but we did see some tracks around the lakes.
(Dad tying on a fly.)
The first lake we stopped at had some small brook trout we saw near the bank, but we believe there were little to no fish in this lake. We fished there for an hour before leaving, after nothing bit the rods. Our path back to the Jeep led us into some really bad deadfall, but eventually we got our way through. Even with us having Onx maps, we still got a little off track and missed out on one more lake we planned to fish at.
We moved to a new location where we could hunt for a couple of hours till dark, and this spot had the freshest sign we'd seen the entire trip. We were able to watch a big meadow before dark hit, but we knew we wanted to hunt this area pretty heavily for the next couple of days. There were many spots and openings with quaking aspens for the elk to travel through, with plenty of openings for us to check for them. When we woke up the next morning, and barely started hiking and were going around a corner, Dad stopped dead in his tracks and looked like he was doing a double-take."There's an elk," he whispered to me, and sure enough, there was a cow elk down the hill to the left of us. As we were watching the cow, we observed to see if there were any more elk with her. Unfortunately, a large tree had blocked our view of the hillside. So, I made my way to the right and saw two more cows, but they were bedded down.
(Dallen and I are traveling through deadfall.)
Unfortunately, right after I spotted the other cows, they and the rest of the herd got up about thirty yards away and started running straight away from us. There were about ten elk, which appeared to be all cows, but we did notice the last one was a small spike. We weren't able to get a comfortable shot off as they were running straight away from us. We definitely didn't expect there to be that many elk bedded down on the hillside in front of us. They were only about two hundred yards from where we set up our tent the previous night. We realized after reflecting upon the incident that we needed to react faster and instead have peeked over the hill with our muzzleloaders ready.
(Us hunting)
The rest of the hunt, we stayed in the same general area. Dallen found a paddle off a bull moose, but we didn't see any more elk. We saw a bunch of grouse and rabbits; however, it was one of the first times we hadn't seen a moose up in the Uintas. We learned a valuable lesson on this trip: You should always check along the hillsides for elk that are bedded down. Even though they are large animals, they are adept at hiding in plain sight.