Opening Day: Ben and I Find Elk!
We drove up to the School Section before dawn, heard a bull bugling around 9am, and decided to hike up the mountain while calling to see if we could attract him. We found fresh beds, scat, but couldn't entice him to com closer. Back to the cabin for lunch, then in the afternoon we headed back to the school section and positioned ourselves with a view of the tree line. Bulls were bugling and elk were crashing in the woods creating a major adrenaline rush. In the last 5 minutes of shooting light, we heard elk bugle 3 from three different locations, but did not come out in front of me. Ben was perfectly positioned at the edge of the timber. First a nervous cow entered the meadow, then a spike bull, finally an excellent 6x6 bull trotted onto the meadow, filling Ben's scope. Ben pulled the trigger, the bull ran 30 yd's and died 30 yes away, - one shot through the lungs. After taking a few pictures, it was now 7:30 pm and full dark. Ben and I proceeded to use the "gutless" skinning method. Both being novices with this technique, we finished 4 hrs later at 11:30 (vs 10 minutes in the YouTube Video). Now the work begins - 1/4 mile carry of quarters, head, loins and neck (roughly 275lbs of elk) to the truck. Thankfully the path was fairly level, so we finished by 12:30. We returned to the cabin at 1am, skinned the quarters to quickly cool them, ate dinner and by 2am were fast asleep.
Sunday morning we were up at 10am and after breakfast drove the meat through lightly falling snow to Reliable Big Game Processing in LaPorte for hanging, cutting and packaging.