The short version is I didn't kill a deer and my buddy didn't kill an elk. The rest of the story is it was an interesting hunt and I saw tons of game. EHD is hitting the area pretty hard and the stands I hunt are along a great trout stream. The walk to each of the stands reeked of dead animals. We found a total of 6 dead does but no bucks. The grass along the creek is about 5 ft tall and many of the deer died in the grass. I saw probably 6 big bucks but by the end of the second week I didn't see any. Lots of orphaned fawns running around and not a single yearling buck. The first week I averaged seeing about 30 to 35 deer a night. These deer come into a huge alfalfa field from different directions and are pretty much always visible in the evenings. As the two week period went on the bucks disappeared as did some of the does. I'm guessing they died during the week. At the end of the last week the rancher cut the hay and the deer came in the first night but did not return to the field after that. There was uncut alfalfa to the east and my guess is they went there. I had a huge 8 pt at 34 yards and could never get a clear shot. I stopped him twice and both times it was behind a tree branch. I passed numerous does as they all had fawns. A couple of times I passed single does because it was in the 90's and given the number of dying deer, thought it might be just as well to let them walk. I saw some big mule deer in the mountains when hunting elk with my buddy but they were never in a good spot for a stalk. Guess that's why that got so big! :D One of my buddies took a doe mule deer and the other shot a nice 4x2 muley in his bed. We had trouble finding elk the first three days of our hunt as they were not in the usual spots and were not talking much at all. When we finally found them we figured out their pattern and my buddy sat in an old clear cut while I went deer hunting for the evening. He had a huge 5x5 bull walk in and at 35 yards he drew his bow and the bull turned to leave. He stopped, turned broadside and looked back to see what the movement was. The shot was just low but a complete miss. As it turned out, when the bull turned around to leave he had moved 7 yards further away. The next morning we were set up where the elk were crossing a main road and going up on a ridge to bed in dark timber. Three bulls passed by at 85 yards so my buddy moved down the draw to a funnel where the other elk crossing the road were coming and going to cross at 40 yards or less. About the time the next bull started to jump the fence and cross the road a pickup came around the corner and stopped to look at the elk (with 40 to 50 more behind him) and was directly between my buddy and the fourth bull. The bull turned and ran back to the herd and they all moved into the timber 600 yards to the west and never came back across the road. I had to leave and my buddy hunted to more days. He heard a couple of bugles but could never get back on the elk. It was a great trip and we saw lots of game. Here are a few pics of the hunt.
Sounds like a great time Jerry! To bad you couldn't put a tag on that big 8. In the last year or so the West has been calling my name. A few weeks a year just isn't cutting it anymore. May be headed to CO or Wy in the next year or so for good. There's nothing like chasing those elk in the hills.
Sounds like you had a good trip. Too bad on the EHD and the pickup messing up the elk for your buddy.
