Two more weeks...

Lark Bunting

New member
Sep 14, 2016
710
I was out again last weekend. Had some buddies come up on Friday night, one of them had a deer tag for this area. I have a deer tag and elk OTC. Seems I have been into decent deer habitat...which I cannot differentiate between elk habitat; pines mixed with aspens. :shrug:

My son was supposed to be coming out with me but he had a horrible cold on Thursday/Friday and decided he was not up for the death march. Probably a good idea. I put in 9 miles between Fri-Sun. That was at a hunting pace too, not just crashing through the woods. I had a doe run across a trail I was sitting near. Not sure what spooked it but it never knew I was there and I couldn\'t find it in the aspen grove it ran into. I drove a couple miles up the road that afternoon to where I had taken the shot at a deer a few weeks ago. I parked just off the road and walked around my truck to the passenger side. I put on my pack and grabbed my bow off the seat and when I looked up I had two more does staring at me through my driver side window. I knocked an arrow, and quickly realized I was technically standing on the road. I walked slowly to the back of the cab so I could range them over the bed of the truck...11 yards...9 yards...8 yards...error. They were inside the range of my rangefinder! Unfortunately, they were moving to me closer to the road. In Colorado we have to be 50\' from the center line of a maintained road. I was maybe 5\'. :( I moved back toward the front of my truck and waited for them to move away from the road. I followed them up a hill and tried flanking them from the down-wind side but I never saw them again. I have shared the story with several people and most of them said I should have taken the shot. There was no way I was taking the shot from the road. I don\'t regret not taking the shot. I am hoping karma rewards me with a perfect set up this weekend for making the right decision. I\'m a little scatter-brained right now because I always leave camp with the intent to hunt elk but get interrupted by deer. :crazy:

I am going to a different spot this weekend with my son. We saw elk in this other spot last year and have some decent intel on the area. Same GMU and I\'ll have the deer tag and elk tag. This is a strange place as it\'s a lot of dense, rolling hills. Not your typical, \"Find a bench 2/3 up a mountain, saddles, north facing slopes, etc.\". It\'s 8200\' to 9200\'. There are aspens, pines, meadows...deer and a few elk. Seems we could get back away from the ATV trails better in this spot.

With two E/S elk tags and an E/S deer tag between the two of us, I have to think something is bound to happen.

Crossing my fingers!

I\'ll finish with a question. How long will you sit on an area? I have (undiagnosed) ADD, badly, and tend to just wander around looking over the next ridge, around the next corner, up the next hill. I feel I should sit an area longer but it will take everything in my fidgety body to sit longer. I\'ll do a calling setup and sit for 15 minutes then move on after scanning the area for animals.
 
Lark, good report and good for you not taking that shot. Temptations to break the law can happen when hunting, but doing the right thing always trumps the other choice, even if it means not taking an animal.

As far as your question goes, I am not a bow hunter, so the calling changes things, but I don\'t think moving around is a bad thing necessarily. I know you should wait in place after calling for a bit, but I hear anything from 15 minutes to 1 hour of waiting from different people, so who knows. You could always try not calling and simply still hunting...?
 
Lark
I havent been diagnosed with ADD, but come 15 -20 min on a call set and Im thinking about moving on.
My take is I would like to have more setups and initiate contact than to sit back and wait for contact.

The season is getting into PRIME TIME right now.
Let things happens sometimes, and make things happen other times!!!
 
Kudo\'s for not shooting. I consider these little grey areas of law infringement akin to shoplifting. Nobody knows but you and you showed integrity. Anybody that says they pushed the limits of legality lose a few \"cool points\" in my eyes.

As far as your hunting pace is considered, make sure you\'re having fun first. Covering ground is not necessarily a bad thing. As a fairly new to the area and hunting in general, everything presents itself as a learning opportunity. Just be aware of your surroundings and as encounters and situations develop. If you are hunting to fast the elk will tell you by blown opportunities. In areas of low elk density covering ground might be your best tactic. As you learn more about habits and habitat, you will learn where to spend more time. Its a hard learning curve but it is something everyone must learn for themselves and their hunting style. But that\'s part of the fun and challenge. Good Luck.
 
stay after em lark, you can rest during the off season.
i have a little different take on not shooting. last year i had a bear at 32 yds, bear tag in my pocket, first an only wild bear i have ever seen, an on my bucket list. but season didnt open up til the next morning about 12 hours away. i didnt shoot. i would be lying if i told you i didnt have nightmares about not shooting an it may cost me several thousand cause i may have to go get a guide to get my bear. but, it was the right decision an although tough im glad i didnt. i would have had to look at that mount an know for the rest of my life.
now with that said, if i had a tag an it was season, an i was on a gravel road with nobody around to accidently shoot at, i prob woulda shot. the key being not in the truck, tag in pocket, an season in.
but you did well
 
I\'m pulling for you.

Wished I would have had a deer tag in my pocket!!! Congrtas on not shooting, when I was younger I didn\'t always have the will power I have now nor did I have to worry about setting an example for anybody (my son).

Wished I was back out there to keep hunting, make the most of your time and enjoy the mountains.
 
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