Nice pictures Gabe. Good luck on your hunting.
Thursday morning was full of excitement. Started out with hiking a small ridge by camp towards a far upper meadow. The quiet and cool morning, suddenly broken with the distant scream of a bull announcing his dominance. Direction sounded right, he must be up by the meadow, I thought. I responded with a bugle to double check his position. Unfortunately that was a mistake. My call only excited the hunters in the drainage below and the their excitement caught the attention of another hunter even further away. Soon all three were closing in trying get me to answere again. The two guys below were parked near at the end of the road near our camp. I had met them up in there a few years ago so I decided to wait and watch. Soon they were closing in and one guy was quite startled when I cow called as he came right by me at about ten yards. I chatted with them for a few minutes and they asked about tagging along with me towards the upper meadow.
We did several set up when we got near the meadow and all seemed quiet so we worked our way around to the other side. Sitting for a rest and having a snack when the stillness was once again, pierced by the high pitched scream deep grunts of a mature bull. Just up on the ridge as above us we quickly assessed our situation. the thrumals were already starting to cause the breeze to swirl and getting a sure direction on the wind was difficult. We thew out some cow calls a he responded instantly. However the younger of the two guys made a critcal mistake and screamed back at him before we could detirmine if he had cows with him. Not wanting another bull to get his cows he turned and started moving away from us.
The calls getting further away I told them we needed to press hard and try to turn him to fight. However that decision was to late as he was putting some distance between us. We tracked for a while and I let them know that I needed to head back to get packed up as my wife needed some help on the home front. On the way back to camp I cut some fresh tracks again and heard another distant bugle. I made the hard choice of staying focused on getting backhome to help.
As I was headed towards home I decided to stop and check one of my salt licks on the way. Some good sign around it so I set up and threw out a few cow calls. All of the sudden a bull chuckled back, up on the ridge. Just before dark, all I had was my bow. No pack, no GPS, no light or any of the gear I needed to persue this bull. I tried to coax him on down the ridge but there just wasn't enough light so I had to back out. Lulyn sent me a text to stay and hunt the next morning and try to get back on him. So back to camp I headed.
The next morning I was where I needed to be well before light. Unfortunately I was closer to him then I thought and just before it was light enough to see well. I heard the depressing sound of an alarm bark,,,,,,,,way to close
To add to the frustration He was now down wind. Two mistakes and it wasn't even shooting light yet. The morning seemed to continue this way. Headed home to help out.
With bulls starting to scream and hormones raging it was hard to leave. But the fight is not over. Stay tuned for the next round.
