A First Elk Encounter

                   My alarm goes off, its 330 in the morning. I jump out of bed like a kid on Christmas. Today is my first solo elk hunt. The temperature outside is thirty-five degrees, clear skies expected. The entire town of Bozeman is sleeping and the streets are quiet. An hour later I'm behind the wheel, winding my way up a dark gravel road into the mountains, cell phone service is gone. I arrive at the turn-out of a dead end road, at the end, a gate. I unload my mountain bike, rifle and gear. One last chug of coffee. The truck is locked and the doors close. I begin the six mile trek into the early morning wilderness. The air is cool and crisp, stars emitting an illuminating light. I lift my bike over the gate, then my pack, lastly the rifle. I continue on gravel for another mile before the road turns to trail. Under the thick canopy of pine trees the starlight is cut off, blackness all around me. The towering forest continues in front of me for miles now. The mountain butting up against me, a thousand yards to my right, projects a ghostly shadow. I turn my headlamp on, my eyes take a minute to adjust. A few miles from the truck now; a feeling of detachment from everyday life. Now and then I glance back to make sure I'm not being followed by the creatures that live here. I cruise quickly and quietly down into the bottoms, hardly making a sound. My light, briefly meeting a pair of glowing eyes as I sail effortlessly down, telling myself they are just deer, not elk; I move on, deeper into their country.

                I arrived at my destination an hour early, still too dark to begin hunting. Its here that I stash my bike, consolidate packs, ready my rifle, and from this point on, Ill remain stealthy. Since I arrived early, I thought I'd lay down and take in some rest before the long day ahead of me. It was about 4:30 when I heard something around me. A stick broke. I laid there, impatient, I couldn't really rest anyway. I lit up a smoke and opened a package of cranberries. I wasn't trying to be particularly quiet or anything, sniffling and sneezing here and there, a muffled cough now and again. Complete darkness all around me, besides a thin, faded line of light creeping up over the adjacent mountains. A thermal, still falling from the cool evening, brushed against me from behind. I waited quietly and attentively, so quiet in fact, I couldn't hear over the sound of my heart beating. A unique and exciting sound had pierced the silence. Chirps. Breaking sticks. The sounds were coming from different sources, fairly close and moving closer.  It took me a moment to realize. I was being infiltrated, by what I did not know, I was on edge, my heart beating faster and louder. Thirty minutes went by. By now I was aware of several animals all around me. The chirps were getting nearer, louder, directly behind me. Its as if the chirps were communicating with each other. I was laying down at this point. I slowly got up to my feet to soundlessly chamber a round. Multiple sounds were wrapping around me on three sides, I was being enveloped by a herd of animals. It's still far too dark to see ten but feet in front of me. With my rifle casually pointed in the direction of the noise, I begin to walk down the trail. A few more steps, I turn my light on. There before me were five pairs of eyes. Elk! I cut the lamp and silently, but promptly, creep back to where I was.  My main concern now was to control my nerves and my breathing, my heart sounding like thunder. Still, it was too dark to legally shoot, I'm forced to sit tight and wait it out.

                A few minutes pass and something else catches my eye. I see the lights from two hunters walking my way. I meet them on the trail to let them know there were elk ahead. They quickly make it clear they weren't there for elk, but have a special B permit for trophy mule deer. Then they told me there was a small herd of elk about two-hundred yards back up the trail. It would later occur to me that I laid down right in the path of a herd of slowly moving elk. I've never heard the sounds of cow elk mewing and chirping, a truly fascinating thing to hear in the wild. With the sun on the horizon and shooting light nearer, I was all of the sudden projected into a fast paced hunt, requiring a few quick decisions. I had to come up with a plan real quick or would end up missing out on this lucky opportunity. The deer hunters moved on, and probably pushed those elk I saw, down the mountain. I decided to go after the elk they saw a couple hundred yards back, both groups part of the same herd, divided by my presence. My heart still racing, my brain trying to keep up with the adrenaline pumping throughout my body. Make sensible decisions, I thought to myself. Those chirps I heard earlier were now silent. The elk knew I was there.

                 I swiftly jump into action and sneak to a vantage point with a wide view, mere paces away. I try to steady my rifle on a tree limb and wait. I'm perched up on the side of the trail using it as my shooting lane. I know they are coming, I know they have to cross that path. My rifle barrel swaying more than I liked, my feet shuffling around as I try to better my center of gravity. I quickly decide to take a knee. Then, about fifty yards down the trail, a cow elk steps out, standing broadside to me in the early morning twilight. My senses become elevated with a heightened sense of awareness. My gun shaking, even with my desperate effort to keep it still. I continued to watch. As if standing guard, a single cow elk stood in the middle of the trail while others crossed, one by one. Now kneeling and looking for antlers through my scope, my eyes fighting the darkness to see, I focus in on this one elk.  I try to verify that this broadsided elk wasn't a spike elk, not easy with poor lighting. This is, after all, one two times I have had an elk in my cross-hairs. More and more elk begin to cross the trail. As my senses become tuned to what's going on, I realized there were a lot of elk around me, and I mean a lot. The sounds of these huge animals, now alerted of a predator, were erupting from all directions. Grunts, warning calls, chirps and mews, broken sticks, trees being knocked over, hooves on rocks, it was hard to make sense of what was going on. I had no idea where I needed to be. I kept on track with my current target and soon confirmed it was a cow. Just as I was ready to take a shot, she took the tail end of that group and ran down the mountain. She ran through heavy timber and into private property, letting our a chirp here and there to let me know she was gaining distance. Out of breath and shocked to disbelief of what just happened, I started to walk back to where it all began. There was one more small group that I displaced, and they had yet to cross the road; one more chance I thought. This just resulted in me becoming physically exhausted trying to keep up. I run this way, then that way, listening over my heavy breathing, trying to pin point these animals in a thicket of young pine trees and dead-fall. It wasn't long when an eerie quietness swept over the area. I knew then and there that my chance that morning was over. I was thrilled!

               I took advantage of the fact that there were a good number of elk in the area and did a little tracking to see what I could find. I ended up coming to the conclusion that the elk were in their beds, about one-hundred yards above the trail, and began making their trek for food a good time before sunrise. I caught them in the transition. There were fresh hoof marks crossing the trail on both sides of my original location. It was obvious they split into two groups, as they slowly migrated down the mountain, around my thicket of pines. They could smell me and kept a certain distance away, as if I had a bubble around my perimeter. The rest of the day I spent walking the area, looking for sign, learning the terrain, hoping to stumble upon some lone bulls.  I hiked up and down hills, listened to the thick creek draws for movement, kept my nose in the air and spent a good amount of time glassing the countryside. That adrenaline from the mornings encounter had carried me another two miles before I decided to head back, my energy spent.

              I had learned some priceless information that morning, which I will continue to build upon to this day. Since writing this, I have harvested two more elk in the years since, thanks to the hook that caught me from this experience. The encounter I had with the animals that early morning was only the very beginning of an unforgettable experience I would have in pursuing elk in the mountains of Montana. There are many more failures and lessons ahead of me and there is never a guarantee of anything. Often time it's a memorable experience, and you never know what you might have seen if you don't get out there. When it comes to hunting in Montana, a day without a harvest is not a bad thing but adds to the big picture; why we go into the woods. Go Forth! Explore Montana!