Montana Elk Catching
September 2019 was my first big game hunting experience. My friend Jarret had invited me to go to Montana with him and his dad (Keith) to archery hunt some elk, I said yes very fast. My role on the trip was to be there, assist in any way possible, and potentially share the load of hundreds of pound of elk meat if we were to tag one. Long story short, we did not shoot an elk, however the experience was absolutly worth it.
First night at camp
This post is mainly to provide access to pictures and videos from this amazing trip. Please scroll through these pictures and check out the video below. In the video you will hear an elk bugling at us from a very close distance a few times around minute mark 4:40. The video also provides a far away look at a herd of elk running up the valley around 0:55.
I hope you enjoy the video and the pictures and hopefully next time we will have some meat to share when we return.
For all Photos from the trip Click here
The view from Lost Fork Ridge
The photo that is below is an example of how difficult it can be to see these animals in this vast landscape. I am a novice hunter and when I was standing on this ridge taking this photo, I did not know there were Elk down below. At the time of the photo we were taking a rest and looking down in to the valley for where we were going to head in the upcoming days. After about 20-30 minutes we decided to head out, which is when i snapped this picture. We started grabbing out things and Jarret noticed a bull running down in the valley and immediately screamed a bugle in the elks direction. This elk did the fastest halt and about face i have ever seen and stared right at us from about 500 yards away. The elk then lost interest because we spooked it quite a bit. As we were watching him run down in to the valley I hear walking on the other end of the valley (toward the left of this picture) and we turn and see a herd of 9 elk making their way into thick green below the burn.
It was not until 2 days after I’s done editing these pictures (as is already looked in detail at these photos once) and said to the group how funny it would be if i could see an elk by zooming in. Lo and behold, I zoomed a laughed because I could see the bull elk grazing in the photo. We shared a laugh about how it would have been nice to see him before he saw us. To make matters worse, two days after that incident I happened to doing another round of edits and thought to myself if the cows were in that photo as well. After about 5 minutes of zooming and scrolling I let out a defeated gasp/laugh because I spotted a cow in the lower left corner. This cow is staring directly at me and is clearly the one that spooked the rest of the herd. Lesson learned.