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This is part II of the story of the back country bow hunt for elk in the Lolo Zone.  Find Part I here.

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The prospects of Hope Meadow made it easy to get up early on Monday morning long before the sun.  Prior to leaving Hope the evening before, my partner and I had picked out three potential spots to sit in the morning dependent on wind direction.  We were still learning how the thermals behave at morning, mid-day and evening so we needed to strategize based on multiple possible wind situations due to our ignorance.  We also were going to be ready to move.  What we planned was to first set up for ambush hunting, where you pick a spot and sit still, hoping your prey moves past your spot within shooting range.  While this was our initial set up, we agreed we had to be flexible and be ready to move should we hear any bugling in the distance.  This would transition us to a spot-and-stalk hunting style should that occur.  Spot-and-stalk is where you find a vantage point and find animals at a great distance away and then work a plan on sneaking up to them and hopefully getting in range for a shot.

With that in mind we arrived at Hope slightly before 6 am.  We checked the wind direction with a wind puffer.  This is a vital piece of gear for hunting in situations where the wind is prone to change directions throughout the day.  It sends a small puff of chalk into the air and lets you see how even the smallest thermal breeze is moving along the mountain.  I believe scent trumps any other sense for hunting ungulates.  My bet is that if an elk sees or hears you, they will be concerned, but not enough to disappear completely.  They will work to find a safe location to investigate.  However; if the same animal catches your foreign scent, they will be gone before you even glimpse them.  I have seen this happen in the field many times.  This is one reason that I don’t obsess over what type of camo I wear, but I will take every precaution to stay downwind of an animal so that the wind carries my scent away from them.

With the understanding of our three options for ambush sites, we tested the wind and picked our spot on the southernmost part of the meadow, behind a few pines.  The morning was beautiful.  Dense clouds blanketed the creek valley hundreds of feet below us and the thermals were carrying some of the moisture up to our elevation.  It created this slow rolling fog that varied in density as the morning progressed.  Then, as if an apparition moving with the rising fog, a giant mass rose above the thicket on the north side of the meadow.  A bull.  I had never seen one in the wild like this and I realized how mystical they truly are when I saw him appear to the north.  His antlers swept wide and back from his head, his broad muscular shoulders resided prominently over the very thicket my partner and I battled to fight through.  He moved gracefully and without sound through areas of brush that tangled and pulled at us when we inefficiently fought through them.  

As soon as he broke the northern ridgeline I whispered to my partner to lay down, that there was a bull elk.  I put one of the trees in between the bull and myself and scooted forward five yards with my bow.  My heart was racing.  He was a little over 100 yards away.  One football field.  My effective shooting range, the range that I felt confident that I was deadly accurate at, was about 50 yards.  I needed to move him closer.  He took survey of Hope Meadow, making sure it was clear and then he turned and walked west.  Inexperience kicked in.  I had no idea what to do, so I turned around and whispered for my partner to toss me the cow call that was in my bag that I had left a few yards back.  He tossed it my way and I turned back to face the bull.  I let out a pure grade-D cow mew from the call.  His head snapped right to me.  It wasn’t in my general direction, he knew exactly where that shady sound had come from and he stared right at me, without actually seeing me.  I sat frozen, all I could do was take in the animal without moving a muscle as his eyes bore down at the tree and myself concealed behind it.

I have an odd practice of not allowing myself to look an animal directly in the eyes when I know the animal is scouring an area looking for any oddities such as myself.  It’s a weird act but I almost feel that the animals have that innate ability to sense when someone is looking them in the eyes, even from afar.  I took time to look this amazing creature over.  He stood tall enough above the undergrowth that I could see the mass of his whole body.  He was muscular.  It almost felt like you could note individual muscle fibers, or at the very least, the small muscle groups that came together to form his massive front and back quarters.  His antlers were beautiful and symmetrical.  His face was dark such that it was difficult distinguishing where his eyes and snout were.  His body was a lighter color.  I wondered if this indicated any hint at age.  

That’s a question of fur color and age I still can't answer, but I did know that this bull was alone, which was a better indicator that he was not the dominant bull in the area and therefore most likely a little younger.  The way elk behave during the mating season is very peculiar.  Bachelor groups of bulls that have stayed together for 10-11 months out of the year will get a sudden surge of testosterone that causes huge spikes in aggression and abnormal behavior.  The bulls will begin to break up in September and then their focus turns into one of an antlered, aggressive shepherd.  Bulls begin rounding up female elk (cows) en mass and begin protecting them from other invasive bulls.  The most dominant bulls get the largest group of cows.   The cows come into heat for about 24 hours, so the bulls keep them all close so that when that time comes they can be prepared to take advantage of all their hard work by spreading their genes on to subsequent generations.  This bull being alone so late in September indicated that he was a satellite bull.  This is a bull that may be less dominant as they are not able to form, keep and protect a harem from rivals.

Regardless of his status in elk circles, he was still magnificent and an absolute shooter should he come close.  But my blunder with the cow call made him disappear back into the thicket where he had appeared a moment ago.  Thinking that he may be moving around a peak to try to get downwind of the mysterious noise that was my cow call, I grabbed my bow and moved myself to a location where I thought he may come through trying to get a scent of whatever produced that noise.  I stood there for an hour as the thermals continued to lift the creek valley clouds up to the ridgeline.

Eventually we decided I should circle the peak slowly and quietly that the bull disappeared behind.  This is a tactic known as still hunting, where you move as slowly and quietly as possible through the landscape and try to spot an animal before they spot you.  Due to the thickness of the underbrush in the region, this landscape is not exactly conducive to the still hunting method, but I none the less tried.  Once I circled around the peak I emerged into the meadow where the bull had first been spotted.  I walked back to my partner who was still seated under the tree.  It was still early; the bull had appeared at 7 am.  We caught our collective breath and talked through the encounter.  Both of us were amazed by what we had experienced but agreed wholly that a cow call was not the right move in that circumstance, especially since I was unpracticed with the call.  Given the presumed status of that bull, I think staying quiet in that situation and allowing the bull to come down into the meadow would have been our best opportunity.  Live and learn.

We decided to continue walking along the ridgeline to see what we could find further into the valley.  After fifteen minutes of fighting thick brush along the “trail” we emerged in an even larger and more promising meadow than Hope.  We called this meadow Amphitheater Meadow as there was a small pool of water at a central flat location and then for almost 180 degrees around the wallow the meadow rose, perfectly resembling amphitheater seating.  The Amphitheater Meadow also had a great vantage point to adjoining ravines and hillsides.  We spent a good amount of time scouting the area, getting a sense of how the meadow traversed the hillside, finding sign and once again strategizing about where to potentially set up to see a good amount of the meadow and provide good cover as an ambush location.  We chose a spot under a large wide tree that I am unsure of the type of species that it was, but it provided good cover and  it started raining slightly so the wide branches proved a useful spot for the remainder of the morning.

At lunch, we decided to head back to Hope  to eat.  We did this because it offered a beautiful view over the creek valley.  At this point in the trip the creek had disappeared as we continued moving ourselves along the ridgeline and climbing in elevation.  The other reason for choosing this spot is that we had marked it as the most optimal point of departure to get back home and it was time for my partner to leave.  This was the moment that I had been preparing for all these months.  I had known that my partner could not stay out with me the entire time that I planned to hunt.  We had taken extreme cautionary measures in planning our trip and I was not going to stay alone if I did not feel that I could do so safely.  On Sunday, prior to finding Hope Meadow, I had talked about removing myself from this valley with him on Monday if the thickets continued to choke out every place we found.  With the discovery of Hope and Amphitheater Meadows I knew that I had quality land to hunt that I felt comfortable with, which meant I would be staying in the wilderness alone the rest of the hunt.

We ate lunch and reflected on the past three days.  We couldn’t believe how lucky we were to have the interaction with the bull that morning, and I know that this nagged at my partner that he couldn’t stay longer to experience the next few days.  Plans were communicated between the two of us – he was to call my fiancée upon getting cell service and let her know about the area and how the hunt was going.  I said that I would not stray past what could be seen from the vantage point of Amphitheater Meadow.  Then it was time to leave.  Upon departure, my partner turned back and requested that if I get out of the forest to my vehicle and notice his truck still in the parking lot to please go back for him.  A bit of dark humor is helpful in moments like this.

I watched him walk down the ravine for as long as possible.  Then we hollered back and forth until our voices wouldn’t carry any further.  I stood in silence.  I was immensely grateful that I could hunt the past three days with him as a partner.  He had pulled me up the ridgeline on day one, he was eager to learn about the animals and their behavior as I was and having him with me allowed time to adjust to the forest and get comfortable with the tasks that needed to happen to keep me safe while giving me the best chance at a successful harvest.

Despite seeing the satellite bull in Hope Meadow this morning, I felt my best shot at a bull would be by focusing on Amphitheater Meadow and the ridgelines just beyond.  I headed back to camp. Once again, I broke down camp and transported everything further along the ridgeline “trail” to a semi-flat and open space on the other side of the ridgeline from Hope Meadow.  I was far enough away that I thought even if animals bedded in Hope or were feeding there that my scent shouldn’t disturb them.

After getting camp set up again I went and found another spot to sit in Amphitheater Meadow (AM from here on out) on a saddle that was a hundred or so yards from where we had sat in the morning.  It was a relatively slow afternoon and allowed me some time to just take in the surroundings and think about all that had happened thus far.  There were some small falcons that were hunting in the meadow during the afternoon and they would skim low along the meadow floor and occasionally came whizzing near me.  They were elegant to watch and helped pass the time.

Around 5:15 pm (sun set was around 6:30 pm) I started hearing noise coming just beyond the wallow.  I was seated in what would have been considered one of the balcony seats of AM and the noise was seemingly coming from “back stage” beyond the wallow.  I sat there and just let my imagination try to paint a picture of what was making those noises.  They were fairly loud noises, and I kept coming back to it sounding like an animal ripping at some semi-rotted out trees.  If that was the case this was most likely a bear, as we had noted plenty of bear sign when scouting AM that morning.  I decided to creep a little closer as the sun began to move towards the mountain peaks in the distance to investigate and see if I could get a glance back stage.  I was in my new spot for maybe all of two minutes when I heard him for the first time.  That eerie noise that I have heard on so many videos and audio clips that I have yet to hear in the forest until this moment.  An elk bugle.  For those unfamiliar, here’s a clip of an elk bugling.  It’s otherworldly.

He sounded far off, so I just sat where I was and listened with a smile on my face.  This bull was vocal.  I decided to test my own bugle out to see if I could get a response from him.  Almost immediately on finishing up my own call towards the bull he responded.  And he sounded closer.  

Judging distance to an animal based on sound can be difficult in this sort of landscape.  Sound waves bounce off ravines, are sometimes amplified and sometimes muffled by the features of the terrain.  In my case with the bull that evening, it had sounded like he had come over a ridgeline and was now in the same set of drainages as AM.  The first calls of him sounded more like I was hearing the echoes of the bugle bouncing around the mountain features.  Shortly after bugling myself his calls made it sound like he was calling directly towards me, albeit at a considerable distance.  There was more volume and a sense of more direct contact with the eerie calls.  I began moving myself slowly towards the vantage point of AM to see if I could see anything.  I continued calling as I went, and a third bugle joined in the chorus.  The second bull who joined in was closer but there was something about his bugle that seemed more juvenile.  It lacked the depth and bravado of the first bull’s call.  As I stood at the vantage point listening to the wilderness come alive, I spotted elk on the far facing hillside emerge from the trees.

Immediately I got my binoculars out and began watching.  Given the time of day, distance to the elk and my lack of preparation in my pack I knew that I would not be pursuing this group tonight.  I thought that the elk that were emerging would include the bull that I heard first this evening. As cow after cow streamed out of the thickets, I lost count of the number around ten and was just watching, trying to get a glimpse into their world to try to understand their behavior and dynamics.  I kept hearing the first bull and knew that he would be emerging soon.  When he broke from the thick forest I was floored.  

He had the look of maturity and dominance, even from a half a mile away through the binos.  His fur was a beautiful dark brown and his antlers swept back low, wide and massive.  I never expected to see a bull like this in the wilderness in my life.  He seemed world class, especially to my virgin eyes.  The remaining minutes of light, I just watched.  He wrestled to keep his harem contained to a tight area.  It seemed that there were even clowns in the group trying to make his life difficult for the fun of it.  There were a few calves in the group that would go running away from the bull in a very playful manner and they required the bull to veer off, screaming at the calves, and herd them back in to the group.  They bounded through the browse, and some of the cows began to bed down.  I stayed watching as long as possible just viewing the action, trying to learn as much as possible about how these creatures behave.  One thing I could easily tell is this was a dominant bull who would aggressively protect his harem.  

Apologies for the shaky camera work and for shooting in the vertical but the below video was taken right as the herd was coming out of the thicket.  No animals can be picked out but his bugle is pretty clear following some stupid narration by yours truly.  

Bull bugling in Lolo Zone of Northern Idaho.  Author caught talking to himself/camera

Watching this group interact was the highlight of my hunting experiences up to this point.  I was grateful for the opportunity and incredibly happy that I had invested in a quality set of binoculars for this hunt (see detailed gear post, to come).  Even as the sun set and light was fading, the binos could capture all the action with incredible clarity.

Finally, it got dark enough that I knew I had to get back to camp.  I still had a twenty-minute walk back through a thickly covered trail and light was fading fast.  I marked on my GPS where the group was on the facing hillside and where the juvenile bugle’s came from.  I knew that I would be going after the lead bull tomorrow.  The hillside the mature bull was on was a half a mile away, as the crow flies, with a couple ravines and two peaks to traverse.  

Within twenty feet of hiking back to camp along the trail I lost the main path.  I was on the far side of the mountain in thick alder and underbrush so it was even darker than in the open.  I knew where I was the entire time, but I was fighting thicket the whole way and without realizing it had gotten pushed down the mountain a hundred feet or so after about ten minutes of bushwhacking.  Wanting to find the trail, I pushed towards the mountain peak to try to intercept it.  This was the most intense moment of the thick brush pulling at me and pushing me back down the mountainside.  Somehow, I caught sign of the trail and continued along it to Hope Meadow.  I damned the thicket under my breath and vowed that I would figure out how to move well in these mountains eventually.  Little did I know that I would soon be tested on this capability.

Once back at camp I settled into my evening routine of bringing down the food bag from the tree, making dinner, brushing teeth, packing everything up and re-hanging it.  I then sat down to write out my journal for the day, which recounted the most exhilarating hunting experience I have had to that point in my life.

I put together a plan of attack for the following morning.  The large bull continued to bugle as I captured my day’s adventure in my journal and planned for the next morning.  I would be in AM early, ready to call out to the bull and hope to find him on the same hillside.  If he was still there, I was going after him.  I also decided to pack to be mobile for Tuesday evening.  I was prepared to chase the bull into the last rays of shooting hours if need be.  I was bringing along my sleeping bag, sleeping pad and tarp to make a mobile camp site.  I planned on skipping dinner and breakfast the following day in order to pursue this bull.  I decided that the younger sounding bull from that evening was probably the same one that my partner and I had spotted that morning.  From this point forward I referred to him as Junior, and the large dominant bull as Senior.  It seemed that if I were to be getting a bull in the next two days, it would have to be one of them and I would be honored to get a chance at either of them.

The bugling continued as I drifted to sleep that night.  I had found them.  All the work over the last few months obsessing over this landscape, trying to figure out where these animals could possibly reside and here I was falling asleep in an area where I knew two impressive bulls were spending the night as well.  I was buzzing with excitement from the day.  Struggling to calm my restless mind, I convinced myself that the bull and his harem would move on during the night, that I probably wouldn’t hear from them again.  I tried being a bit pessimistic with my expectations of what the morning would bring.  Was I ever wrong.

Kyle Zibrowski