Making plans.

Dwight had hunted here the previous year, and in July he had scouted and packed two Summit Deer Deck treestands into the high country where he placed them overlooking springs for early-season hunting. He had manned one of the sites with a Stealth Cam trail camera.

While scouting, Dwight also had marked good places on topographic maps and had saved them as waypoints on his GPS, and we planned each day's outing around this background. From the beginning, hunting out of base camp, we probed marvelous elk country and found ourselves close to elk, but the bulls were not talking. We got within range of some small bulls but had no shooting opportunities.

So a few days into the hunt we packed up the llamas, hiked several miles onto a remote ridge, and set up camp near a gurgling mountain stream. Dwight was eager to show us the stand sites he'd located. We hoped the springs of summer would be converted into wreaking wallows by now.

The first afternoon in spike camp we hiked to a high meadow where Dwight had placed a stand and trail camera. Unfortunately, the spring contained very little water, and no bulls had wallowed there. However, the Stealth Cam showed a couple of bulls that had come in to drink a few days earlier. With that encouragement, Steven and I sat over that spring several evenings, and we hunted over a couple of fresh wallows higher on the mountain. A spike came in but did not give me a shot, and that's the only elk we saw on these springs. The Stealth Cam showed some movement at night but nothing during the day.

With this lack of activity, we decided if the bulls would not come to us, we would go to them, and we began to focus more on hiking long distances, glassing and calling. Every morning we rose well before first light to hike several miles up a ridge to glass high meadows at sunrise. We saw elk every day, but in the first week of hunting we never even heard a bugle. By then we were running low on grub and had to hike out to base camp to reconnoiter and resupply.

WHILE IN BASE CAMP we decided to check out some of the places we'd hunted the first couple of days, and that's when we'd climbed to the top of the ridge and Dwight called the big bull in only to have an errant wind blow the opportunity up in smoke. That evening we heard a couple of other bulls on the vast ridge but couldn't get on them before dark.

So we marked their position on Dwight's GPS and, early the next morning, headed straight back up there, and it wasn't long before a roaring bugle answered Dwight's calling. Once again the wind was switching badly, so we backed off, ate lunch, took a nap, and waited for the midday thermals to blow steadily uphill. This time we would do everything right.

Unfortunately, the wind and the elk didn't care. After waiting a solid two hours, we decided conditions were as good as they would ever get. Cautiously we moved toward the dense trees where we felt sure the bull and his cows were bedded. Move slowly. Listen. Look. Sniff. They're here. Do everything right!

Crash! The elk were blowing out right in front of us. Had they smelled us? Had we got too aggressive? It's hard to say. But, again, a great opportunity was going up in smoke. As we listened to the crashing of the escaping elk, I swear it suddenly got more difficult to breathe, as though one of those distant forest fires had sucked the air right out of our little hot spot.

Dwight seemed frustrated because he so badly wanted to be a good guide and help me get an elk. I was frustrated because I so badly wanted to get my first elk. What did we have to do to make this work?

Fortunately, bowhunters who chase elk have short memories, and by the time we reached the bottom of the mountain our eyes were once again fixed on spike camp and the hazy mountain range above it. The elk hunting over there is much better. The bulls are probably screaming up there right now.

Makeshift blind.

Continued -- click on page link below.