Elk Hunt 2000
 Well you have probably read of my
ongoing quest for the elusive wapiti, unsuccessful as it has been. I have
been considering a guided horseback hunt into a wilderness area for the last few
years but have had a problem getting one of my regular hunting partners to
go with me. As a result, I just kept putting it off. One day last
summer I was perusing one of the forums that I frequent and saw a post about an
opening for a muzzleloader elk hunt in New Mexico with landowner tags
available. The more I thought about it, the more excited I became. I
didn't have a trip out west planned because my buddies and I were planning a
trip to Newfoundland for caribou and moose in 2001 and they didn't feel
comfortable that they could manage both, leaving me stuck at home for the 2000
season. Well, the more I thought about it, the better it sounded, I
finally broke down and called the number listed in the post and the rest is
history. I checked this outfitter out very thoroughly, I talked to him on
the phone for a few minutes and told him I'd go, send me the contracts.
Definitely not the procedure I would recommend for booking a relatively
expensive hunting trip, but I was so excited by this time that I was willing to
take my chances. Since I booked the hunt so late, I only had 2 1/2 months
to get in shape, what a concept.
When you sit behind a desk all day, and sit in front of a tube all
night, you tend to get seriously out of shape. So I started walking and
attempted to at least tone up a little. After I missed a few days walking
because of rain, I went out and bought a treadmill. I think that's one of
the best investments I've made in along time. I feel a whole lot better as
I write this after making it a habit to do a couple miles a day on a regular
basis. I don't think it compares to hiking in the mountains but it's a
whole lot better than nothing. When I used to live on a mountain in
Colorado, getting ready to go hunting was an everyday occurence. I lived at 8000
and going up to 10000+ to hunt just didn't seem that much different. When
I used to take a little walk around the "neighborhood", it was elk
country. Now that I live in Iowa, it takes a concerted effort to go to the
mountains and survive, let alone prosper. If there is one piece of advice
I can give someone off to chase elk, it is, get in the best physical shape you
possibly can and start now, not tomorrow. Your hunt will be a much more
enjoyable experience if you're physically ready for the mountains. Well,
my 50th birthday came and went and I continued to try to prepare for the hunt,
fortunately as excited as I was, it was pretty easy to keep hitting the
treadmill.
I also did a lot of shooting (covered in much more detail on the
Muzzleloder pages) getting ready for this
trip. I did quite a bit of research on the changes in the muzzle loader
world in the last few years earlier in the year and purchased a new Austin &
Halleck 320 in 50 cal. This is an inline bolt action with a 26" barrel that
shoots like a dream with heavy loads and quality bullets. I ended up
selecting Precision Rifle's new QT45 in 400gr for the elk hunt. With
3 Pyrodex pellets, I can push those 400s a little over 1700 and keep the
groups under 1 1/2 in@100 yds. Just the ticket for elk. I practiced
with the muzzleloader a lot last year and I mean practiced under field
conditions, not just sitting at the bench. I guess I put over 500 rounds through
it. By the time I left for New Mexico, I was very confident that given an
oporrtunity for a shot that it would be a real bad day for the elk.
The big day finally arrived and off to New Mexico I went, via
Denver to see my kids for a few days and adjust to the alitude. You will
probably get this advice from your outfitter, "come in a couple days early to
help adjust to the altitude." So in case you don't know any better,
strongly consider going a couple days early and take it easy those first few
days. It might just make the difference between thoroughly enjoying
your hunt and being hauled down the mountain with a mild case of altitude
sickness or worse. Also drink lots of liquids, even if you don't feel
thirsty, it helps keep you from dehydrating in that thin dry air.
Eventually, I made it to New Mexico and checked in with Eric Roybal, my
outfitter.
As it turned out, I got lucky. The Eric was as he
purported to be and everything was as promised with the exception of the
weather. I guess I could expect him to be able to control the weather, but
I thought that might be expecting just a little too much. If I'd have
thoroughly checked his references I would have known in advance that he couldn't
control the weather and not been disappointed when I discovered it on my
own. All kidding aside, the weather was extremely warm and as a result the
elk didn't really have love on there mind, the elk were more interested in
finding an air conditioner. When they couldn't find the AC, they just
plopped down in the deepest, darkest, coolest patch of black timber they could
find. Oh, they were around, but they were not interested in spending the
day in a meadow working on their tan. As a result, they were a little hard
to find. The Eric and the other guides were beside themselves trying to
find elk. We rode a lot of miles looking, trying to figure out where they
were. I actually think I jinxed the poor guy, if he'd have known about my
track record, he wouldn't have been near as eager to accept me as a client.
We hunted pretty hard for 3 days with only one hunter managing to
see an elk. This guy managed to stumble into a herd of 50-60 animals
including several bulls. He even managed to get a shot off at a good 6x6
but didn't cut a hair. On that note, the outfitter asked us if we would
like to try some other areas or stay where we were? The consensus of the
hunters was to head for greener pastures. So the next morning, we left for
greener pastures, while the wrangler and the cook packed our gear back down to
the trailhead where we would meet them that evening.  As we
proceeded to move to another area, we spotted a herd of 25-30 elk grazing in one
of the meadows we had been hunting every day, right where they were supposed to
have been all along. The herd included a couple of legal bulls so we went
after them. We had split up from the other hunter we were with, he went
down along the low side of the meadow and Eric and I stayed up high. Low
and behold, about the time we had worked our way around and down to
the to the elk, they spooked from the other hunter. I got off the horse,
grabbed my rifle and tried to get a cap on it but they were gone before I could
get everything put together. (If you go on a muzzleloader hunt, practice
capping your rifle quickly so you can do it blind folded, it just might get you
an elk.) After the elk disappeared, we followed, to catch up or cut them
off or at least figure out where they went. We circled around and suddenly
Eric is off his horse, pointing and wispering that there's a bull. I don't
know how he spotted that bull, he was standing in narrow space well back in the
quakies where there was just a "tunnel" through which you could see the
south-end of the north-bound bull about 60 yards away. At this point I
bailed off my horse, grabbed my rifle, stuck a cap on the nipple, and found a
tree for a rest where I could see the bull. Eric chirped on a cow call
trying to get him to turn one way or the other several times, but he just looked
back over his shoulder at us. This did allow me to at least see
antlers. What there was of em, he was a little rag horn, but he would eat
pretty good. He wasn't what I came to New Mexico for and he certainly
wasn't presenting the ideal shot, and I had all kinds of mixed emotions. I
didn't know whether to shoot or not to shoot. He finally made up my mind
for me by moving out of the opening. He looked like he was going to cross
through another opening which would have given me a broadside shot at just over
a hundred yards. So I moved the scope to the opening and waited. He
moved through just as expected, but farther up than I had expected and by the
time I adjusted I didn't feel comfortable with the shot and let him go. I
tried to circle around him on foot but never saw him again, I did manage to
almost be run over by a cow and a calf. They exit pretty quickly when they
suddenly recognize a human just a few yards from them.
The balance of that day, we hunted very rough terrain trying to
find the animals. We hunted areas Eric said he hardly ever hunts because
they don't usually have to, the animals are normally where we started. We
hunted hard and saw plenty of sign but no critters. They were still
around but they certainly weren't cooperating.
Finally, on the last day of the hunt, we trailered the horses over
to another mountain. This was totally out of the area that we had planned
to hunt but a friend of Eric's had seen a lot of elk in the area while he was
deer hunting a few weeks before so off we went. The climb up was on an
old, pretty much overgrown trail through a lot of scrub oak and pretty
steep. I was very thankful that I was on a horse cause I'm not sure I
could have made it up in time to make it back down the same day on
foot. Eventually, we came into a string of meadows that were full of fresh
sign. I really perked up thinking maybe theres a chance yet. We
worked on up through the meadows and eventually stopped for lunch. It was
kind of a dreary day, it was raining and snowing and really couldn't decide what
it was gonna do. We talked over lunch about the plan for the afternoon and
agreed that we would work our way back down to the string of meadows that
had looked so promising on the way up. With the plan in place, we started
hunting our way back down. We made it down fairly close to the meadows a
little too early, so we took a little side trip mostky to kill time and you
never know where you might stumble on to a bull. Anyway, we got a little
turned around and suddenly instead of dropping off to intersect the trail we
were shooting for, we ended up in the deepest, roughest, most god forsaken hole
I've ever been in. It was rough enough that we were having trouble leading
the horses through it. About this time I'm thinking to myself, I can't
believe he's taking me through this, what's he doing? After this continued
for a while and we actually made it to stretch where we could ride again.
We then started up through some of the worst blowdowns that you can
imagine. It started to get dark and we had to backtrack over and over
again, and it got darker and I thought we were going in circles, but thought it
must just be me. This guy grew up in this area, has been guiding here for
almost 20 years. Finally, he looked over at me with the most embarassed
look I've ever seen on a man and admitted he was lost. By this time, it
was dark. I told him I liked the idea of spending the night a lot better
than trying to find our way out in the dark. He agreed, while telling me
that it would be the first time he ever had to stay out unexpectedly like
this. I think he agreed mostly because I was the client and that's what I
said I was comfortable doing. He wasn't really sold on the idea, but we
got a fire going and he commented that it was going to be long cold night on the
hill. He then got on the radio and got hold of the other guide to advise
him of the situation. When the other guide asked him where we were it donned on
me that I had my GPS in the saddle bags but hadn't considered getting it out
because we didn't have a map. I had brought topo maps but they didn't
cover the area we had trailered to that morning.
It really doesn't help much to know your exact location if
you don't know where that is relative to anything else. The other guide
relayed our position to another outfitter who plotted where we were and
determined the best way out on the basis of my GPS coordinates. Now we had
a direction and it really wasn't that far to a major trail. Only about a
half mile, up about 500 feet, through blowdowns in the dark that we had trouble
finding our way through in the light. Well, it was an ordeal, but he
managed to find his way up through that mess and we did get to that trail and we
did get off that mountain. To put this in perspective we got down off that
mountain around 2:00 AM. That's a seriously long day on the hill, for man
or horse. Eric, my guide during this little "adventure" has graciously provided
his perspective and few comments on
surviving a wilderness elk hunt.
Well as we close another season, the quest for an elk goes
unfulfilled. I came closer than ever, I actually had a loaded rifle
pointed at a legal bull elk with the safety off in easy shooting range.
That's a first, and I didn't push the situation and take a less than certain
shot. I'm rather proud of that, knowing how bad I want an elk and how many years
I've been trying.
And I finally went on my guided horseback wilderness elk hunt into
some of the most beautiful country you'll ever see. One thing you need to
understand about riding on a horse in the mountains, You are always going up or
down and contiuously bracing yourself one way or the other. This uses
muscles in ways that I don't know how to prepare for other than riding a
horse. While you can definitely cover a lot more ground on a horse, it
does take its toll. You will feel stiff and sore. My knees bothered
me when we rode for extended periods of time more than anything else.
I did learn a few things about horses this year as well.
They are some amazing animals, they go through areas I never dreamed you could
take a horse through and they can see in the dark and find there way home with
uncanny ability. It helped me understand how elk get through some of the
areas that they do after seeing what the horses could do. If you ever get
the opportunity to go on hunt like this by all means do so, you won't regret
it.
I'd also like to point out a few things about survival gear in the
mountains. When I hunt on foot, I always carry survival gear in my
backpack. While hunting on horseback, I didn't transfer everything from my
pack to the saddlebags, I should have, but I didn't. I know better but was
lulled into a false sense of security because I had a guide. As you can
see from the account above, this could happen to anybody, and I mean
anybody. Hopefully this may provide a wakeup call to someone that's just a
little too confident. Always be prepared for the worst, if it never
happens to you, so much the better. The mountain wilderness is an
unforgiving environment to be caught in unprepared.
 What about my guide, (pictured at right
with one that didn't get away) who was ill prepared? I'll bet no one
reading this, that has hunted in the mountains very much, hasn't taken a little
stroll without taking all their gear with them. I know I've been known to
drop off my pack when I was trying to move a little faster to cut off a herd of
elk. What if you couldn't find it again, cause you got turned around
while chasing critters. It can and does happen. Eric knows his area
like the back of his hand, yet just this once, it happened to him. In fact
it's probably easier for it to happen to him because he is so experienced and
comfortable there. Do I begrudge him getting lost? No, I think he
had a bit of a wake up call and it will probably never happen again. Would
I trust him enough to go again? Without a doubt or seconds hesitation, in
fact, I'm already booked this year and I'm taking my brother along to keep me
company.
A Pro's Perspective - Eric's comments on our
experience.
Where To Go
For further information on hunting in New Mexico, contact Eric at
Bear Creek Adventures, visit the
State Wildlife Agency or the
list of Registered Outfitters.
All pictures on this page are courtesy of Eric
Roybal
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