Opening Day Moments 2015
- Boss Crewmember Eli Rooney
- Sep 13, 2015
- 5 min read
Being a college kid, I have one of the most difficult times trying to prioritize my time…especially during hunting season! Sure homework gets put on hold, classes might be missed, and let’s be honest, we all want to take sick days at work. Keeping my priorities straight however, is very important. I have found that over the last 6 years of opening day experiences that I have been in college for, never have I had more excitement than that of this year. My fiance’ was able to be in the woods with me, and we were more in tune with the elk and deeper into their territory than ever before.
I’m not the guy that gets a nice week long hunt, let alone a few days in a row to head up to the woods. For me, school starts a week before hunting season does. With school comes an adjusted work schedule so that I can still manage to pay the bills. A lot of people come into the shop and assume that I am out there slaying away and putting meat in the freezer every year. Truth is, during the fall rut, I usually only get about a maximum of 3 days to hunt. These hunts are typically short lived, consisted of heading up Saturday after closing up shop, and hunting Sunday morning only to return home Sunday evening because of class/work on Monday. Therefore, I have become accustomed to making every minute count that I am up there in the woods.
Not being from the area, I definitely put boot to dirt in search of the elusive wapiti. I’ve had some good encounters, and have had the opportunity to pass on calves or cows over the years. Is it absolutely necessary that I fill my tag? No. May I get a load of crap for getting a bucket full of tag soup that year? You betcha! But I still keep going back. This last Sunday, we woke up about 4:45am after finally getting camp set up at midnight the night before. As we were getting ready, I tried to start the pickup only to find the battery was dead. Great. Just what we need. Being flustered, we started to get antsy to get up on the mountain, so we started on our way at 6am. It was a perfect day. The wind just somehow managed to always be in our favor. We crested the top of our first ridge, about a mile and a half from camp, without hearing or seeing a soul. Just as we had gone another couple miles, crossing a few meadows and to another ridge, we felt a little bit discouraged at the lack of game from 6am to 10:30am. Just as we conversed this to each other, a small mule buck had walked up 70 yards in front of us and had no idea what we were. It stayed there in a motionless stare off for the longest time, then continued to feed. I have a mule deer tag in my pocket, do I use it? Melody tells me, “We’re hunting elk Eli, let’s wait to see if we can’t get into them…they’ve gotta be here somewhere.” After stalking to the deer to see how close we could get, it spooks out when we were about 30 yards away. We decided to turn back to 30 yards prior where we were going to sit for lunch. I told Melody, “Maybe that’s God’s sign to us to not give up just yet...” No sooner had I finished my sentence that right then we both saw a spike walk right down a small meadow lower down the ridge we had crossed. I mewed a few times to try to get its attention to divert his path our way. We had an elk in sight! We started to point in the direction we needed to move in order to cut him off, and that’s when we saw more cows directly below us feeding about 120 yards away in the timber. I let out a small bugle…and then that’s when we saw him. He was standing in a 10-12ft window when he bugled back, a beautiful 5x5. He raked this small pine right next to him as I challenged his call. He was fired up. There were so many eyes though, how are we going to make a move? We knew my calling wasn’t too bad because we were able to keep him and the cows vocal and responding. As I bugled more aggressively, the cows never batted an eyelash as to something was askew. We waited for opportunity to present itself. Then out of no where, we hear a gunshot from the direction of all the elk camps further across a few ridgelines. We had no idea why or for what animal this gunshot was taken, but it put this herd we had found into a little bit of a frenzy. The herd bull started running a lap around the cows and spikes to gather them up. We had a 59 yard shot at a calf, but surely had thought we would have a chance at even a cow closer up. Then our worst nightmare came true. We heard 3 consecutive gunshots from the same location about 40 minutes after the first. All the elk started moving away at a pretty decent pace.
It was over.
We were involved with the herd from 10:45am until 1pm. Moving ever so slowly deeper towards the center of the commotion only to have it warded off by gunshots.
As Melody and I stood on the fresh tracks the elk had made, it was time to make a decision. Do we go after them? We know where they are headed, but it’s going to be a slow walk to get back into them. Or do we hunt our way back to camp so we can pack up because we have to be back in town tonight? We opted for the latter. Much to our dismay, this was not the decision we wanted to make, but it was the wise decision for our priorities.
As we headed home, we couldn’t help but talk about the success of the day. Melody had never experienced elk in the wild. For her, seeing and hearing that herd bull bugle was the magic of fantasy meeting reality. We head back in a couple weeks for another Sunday hunt…hopefully this time we can make it happen!
Were there things we would have done differently if we could? Of course. But that is what hunting is all about. It’s not about everything being all lined up in a row. If the hunt was easy, would it keep you coming back for more? Probably not. Leave it to the college kid who broadhead tuned his bow the day before, packed everything the day before, only to get in on the most action for one day he has ever had in 6 years. I’ve got to hand it to the elk though, as majestic a creature as they are, they never cease to amaze me. The hunt was successful not for a freezer being filled, or the trophy bull taking a dirt nap; this hunt was successful because of the memories made and shared while being in the element understanding a species of animal that few get the opportunity to relish in.
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