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Cowboy Heaven Consulting, LLC |
Past Month's Moccasin Telegraph
November '01
| 11/28/01 | Well, another hunting season has come and gone in Montana (unless
you’ve got a tag for a late hunt), and a lot of people aren’t too pleased with
how things went. This was the fifth (count ‘em; five…back to ’96)
consecutive hunting season with distinctly adverse conditions. That’s not adverse in
the sense of snow and cold, but adverse in the sense of an abject lack those
meteorological qualities. With November temperatures running into the 70’s, even in
high-elevation mountain areas, many animals basically stayed on their summer range. The
dog days of November, indeed…. The Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks is saying that harvest levels were near normal, or at least on a par with the last few years. Of course, that ain’t really saying much…. Actually, deer harvests were fairly good; it’s elk that were particularly hard to come by. Of course, non-hunters are likely not moved to any degree of sympathy by this
situation. That’s fine, as I’ll certainly play the hand I’m dealt, with no,
or at least minimal, complaining. Actually, we’re not complaining at all, as my son
drew a flush, or maybe even straight flush, in his first year of big-game hunting.
Non-hunters might also question any lack of success due to the animals still being on
high-elevation ranges. What’s the matter; too many elk hunters afraid to get out of
sight of their The upside of all this, of course, is that after so many years of low hunter success,
and nearly non-existent winterkill; there are perhaps more mature, trophy-class bull elk
in the woods than at any time in modern history. One of these years, we’ll have (what
used to be) normal weather during hunting season, and the elk hunting is going to be truly
spectacular. At the moment, though, my confidence in predicting when See you on the trail, while I’m out scouting on skis and snowshoes this winter….. |
trucks or the nearest beer cooler? Well, there may
be a bit of truth to that, but as with most generalizations, it isn’t quite that
simple. In fact, I just had a Freudian slip that sums it up nicely; "quite" in
the previous sentence came out "quiet" on the first try. That, in a nutshell, is
what makes elk hunting under mild conditions so difficult. The elk, particularly those
big, mature bulls, aren’t really hanging out in those high-elevation meadows and
heads of basins they favor during the summer months. They’re in the thickest,
nastiest, blowdown jungle of north-facing timber they can find. Aside from security
issues, that’s where the last vestiges of green grass linger longest into the fall,
and if there’s water nearby, they don’t ever need to leave their snug little
nests. Plus, we did have some snow early in the season, and after if freezes and thaws
repeatedly, it takes on the consistency of
Styrofoam, and is just as quiet to walk through. Each step results in a loud crunch, which
serves as a most effective alarm system for big elk secure in their boudoir. So, they
never have to leave their lair, you can’t sneak into it, and their security is pretty
much absolute. 
that will occur is quite low. I’ve been proven wrong, if I
recall correctly, three years in a row now. Wrong about the weather, anyway. I harvested
bull elk in two of those years, including a decent 6-point last year. This year, my son
killed a bull opening day, so I was holding out for a really big one. Passed on nine
different bulls, but unfortunately only a couple of them required any significant degree
of deliberation. Oh, yes, I sense any degree of sympathy you might have had evaporating
like a skiff of snow in sixty-degree temperatures, but that’s fine. Montana
isn’t known as "next year country" for nothing.