What a Start to the New Year

Wednesday afternoon of this past week I received a random phone call. It was someone from the division of wildlife resources. She told me that there was a depredation elk hunt going on for the starvation reservoir region. A depredation hunt is where there are animals such as deer or elk getting into the farmers fields and either destroying crops or eating the hay that is meant for cows. In Duchesne area where the hunt was being initiated they had received more than 2 feet of snow last week. This pushed the elk out of the high country and down into the valley floors. The best way for them to find food was by eating farmers hay. So the Division of Wildlife asked me if I was interested in going out to hunt the area the following day. It was very quick notice but I was excited and said I would go.

So the next morning my friend and I left at about 5:00am to get there by sunrise. We didn't know the area very well so it was somewhat frustrating but we figured out where we were supposed to be thanks to suggestions from the local biologist.

At about sunrise we drove around a corner and saw these bad boys...



What a sight they were. And so close to the road! Unfortunately, I had a tag for a cow (female) elk so I couldn't shoot those boys. I could have shot that cow elk in between the big bulls except for the fact that this was in a private pasture.

So we moved on looking around for a few more hours. Our strategy was to drive around to a good high point to get out of the truck to look. Because the snow was so deep we couldn't move around very fast or quiet but we did our best. Each time we got out to look around we would see elk. It was amazing. There were elk everywhere. Once we came over a little hill and caught glimpse of at least one big bull and a cow running away from us about 75 yards away. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a shot by the time they were out of view. We couldn't catch up to them in the deep snow. We also saw three bulls a cow and a calf way out about 800 yards away. They were so fun to watch but they were across a canyon we didn't believe we could get across in the snow so we moved on.

By this time we were out of the valley floor and cruising the benches above the valley. We saw a ton of tracks coming off the benches into the valley floors. It seemed the Elk where migrating down into the farm fields at night and staying up in the bench areas during the day because once we got up to the benches we began seeing the most elk.

At about 11:00am after seeing a nice spike elk about 50 yards away from us we looked across the canyon to see this...

If you look closely you can see the elk bedded down in that little opening in the trees. We saw them first at about 500 yards away and decided to get closer. As we got closer we saw more and more of the elk. There were also a ton of deer down below in the creek bed too. We got as close as we could...about 350 yards away where I zoomed in my camera and took this picture. There were about 30 cow elk with 3 bulls out to the left of the picture. Luckily they were about 200 yards from a road. The road was up and to the left of this picture which meant we would have our work cut out for us should we decide to take the shot. We sat for about 30 minutes waiting for the right cow to move as far left as possible (closer to the road = less work hauling out). But they didn't move that way.

So I decided to take the shot. With my buddy behind me with the binoculars I told him where I was shooting. He would let me know if I missed and where it went. I took my first shot...missed... the elk were starting to stand up but weren't spooked. Took another shot...missed again. This time James said he thought I was too far to the right. So I adjusted and had to change the elk I was aiming at because the other was behind a tree. My third shot I aimed a little farther to the left and bingo! it dropped to the ground. It must have busted its front leg because it dropped and was trying to get up but couldn't. It didn't act wounded in the vitals so I needed to take another shot. After 4 more shots I felt like it was down for good and had been hit in a good spot. I wasn't sure where though...so we got in the truck and headed over there.

We approached the area where the elk went down where I snapped this shot...

This was James first time out hunting and he was eager to make sure the thing was dead. He is sneaking up on the elk just in case it wasn't dead yet.

And it was down for good so we admired, took some more pics, and began the hard part of field dressing and dragging it all out of there.




Three hours later we had the elk in the truck. We tied ropes to its legs and then tied the ropes around our shoulders and pulled for about an hour and a half. We headed back home at about 3:30pm. It was another successful and exciting hunt. What a great start to the new year!