Napping. That’s what I would call it. It sure wasn’t sleep. I was thankful for a place to lay my head, but was not well rested. All part of the elk hunting experience sometimes. On our way up the mountain, we kept noticing these grasshoppers bounding all over. Even in the cold! It was crazy and we joked about some nuclear spill nearby and it had possibly affected these little jumping machines.
We hiked past the outfitters camp and immediately the howls of coyotes erupted in front of us. We hiked and hiked up to nearly 11,000 feet. The scenery was again beautiful, but desolate. No animals were moving and coyotes were the only thing we heard all morning.
Back in camp, my water filter stopped working. I was thankful that Brett and I had thought ahead and each brought one. Mine was an attachment to your water bladder and after two uses completely plugged up. The problem was that there is no way of taking it apart and cleaning it.
Disappointed we hadn’t seen anything and frustrated with the heat again, we hiked to a northeast section of timber behind camp. It was a pretty sweet looking set up. As we sat and glassed, Brett found a hidden pond about 500 yards from our location. We sat and glassed the meadow, the valley, and the pond for a long time. Again, there was nothing happening.
In the midst of the boredom I noticed ripples at the edge of the pond. We raised our binoculars and waited. For what seemed like five minutes, and in actuality was like thirty seconds, we watched and hoped an elk would materialize. Unfortunately, two foraging ducks appeared and dashed our hopes. It was the most excitement we had encountered in days.
The 75 degree temperature drove us back to camp early. Cursing and commiserating about our experience to date, we made dinner and discussed our plan of attack. We decided that in the morning we would break camp, head down to the beaver pond area, and set up to hunt the remaining two days. It all sounded great and we turned in with anticipation of a great day ahead of us.
At 8:25 PM we heard our first bugle of he trip and it came from deep within the canyon we would be hunting near. I was very happy to finally hear a bugle! It turns out that what happened overnight would overshadow any excitement we had and frighten us both more than ever.
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