A hunting we will go

Chris and I spent the day hunting in Butte on Saturday. All camo-ed out.

The gear

We figure it is about a 5 mile walk into where the watering hole was. Not really a hard walk so that was nice. So we each sat next to different trees, which were 3 feet apart from each other for about an hour. We had to make sure we were quiet

Then I decided it kinda of sucked being not right next to him, so I moved over and sat next to him and we waited for about another hour. We heard a random bugle off in the mountains, so Chris would respond, but then nothing. So at six, we decided to get up and head in the direction we heard the bugle.

We had to walk through this weird used-to-be-a-bog area and crossed the river and found some game trails. Headed up the hill a bit and heard another distant bugle. We waited there for a time, but couldn't get him to bugle back so headed back down towards the river. We both had to use the bathroom, so went went behind our respective bushes to go. Just then, we heard a fairly loud bugle, and to me he sounded really close. I had just found a beehive (wasn't sure what it was at first until I touched it and then I KNEW) and was running away from it when I asked Chris if that was a real bugle or another hunter. Yeah, it was real folks. Real and loud. So we cross the river again, and try to get behind these trees to have a good cover. Then we hear a super loud crack of a tree and rocks falling and see a cow elk coming down out of the trees. In the few minutes it took to get to this point, Chris and the bull were having a bugling war and this elk was pissed. It sounded so cool. Well, the cow came down super fast and caught us not quite behind the trees so we froze. She looked right at us for about 2 minutes. Then, we saw the bull come out of the trees. It was so hard to not pull out the camera and document, but she was still looking right at us, and I didn't want to be the one responsible for ruining it. She finally moved sideways down the hill towards the game trail. Chris had a good lane to shoot if she kept coming. She got a little closer and looked at Chris. I am right behind him at this point. He said he could see her nostrils flaring then she bounds off up the hill a little. The bull got a little closer, but stayed near the tree line. BLAST. The problem was that once she got so close he couldn't call the bull anymore and so they didn't come down further. If I had been able to call, I would stayed down by the river, and called her right past him. The bull looked like a 5 point, but he would have taken the cow for sure. You can't eat antlers. Oh well, it was my closest encounter and one of Chris' as well. I guess I had better add elk calling to my repertoire.

I took these next two pictures just after we heard the loud bugle.

The view from the bog area.

The beehive I found that gave me a "My Girl" moment. I touched it and INSTANTLY heard buzzing and saw 5-6 bees come out. I didn't need to see anymore. I was outta there. And to think I almost kicked at it...yeiks.

A view to the sky the first time on the mountain.