Originally posted by Mini D
I'm not as amazed by the presence of elk. It's that hill in the background that surpised me.
Well, there's a few places where you can gain and lose a tiny bit of altitude here.
Ft. Riley is the home of Kansas' largest elk herd, about 200 animals. We have another smaller herd down in the SE corner with Oklahoma on the Cimmaron National Grassland but something happened out there and I don't think you can draw tags for that herd. Rumor is the ungrateful elk mostly up and moved back into Colorado and some into Oklahoma.
Anyway, he drew one of the 7 "any elk" tags this year and he hunted very hard every weekend from October 1 until yesterday.
You hunt on Riley's "maneuver area" where the troops drive tanks and Bradley's and practice firing every gun in the army. The place is roughly an 8 mile square, and all the old signs of human habitation have been removed. No old tumble down farmhouses or barbed wire fences. It's divided up into areas named alphabetically, and the Army posts a weekly list of what areas are open to hunters. Some days most of it is open, some days almost none of it is open.
So, it's a very tough hunt. You may scout an area and figure "this is the place" but come the weekend that area is "closed" and you have to try somewhere else. On top of that, the elk know it like the back of their hooves and you don't. And they've got 64 square miles to hide in.
The kid's a working stiff and could only get out on the weekends. I, of course, planned to be with him every weekend back when he drew the tag in July. Unfortunately, I only made opening weekend (we didn't see an elk!) and I also went out with him Saturday. I've had a few appointments that kept me out of the picture.
Anyway, he stuck it out, walking and learning the areas by himself, talking to "locals" for tips and finally found "the place". He hunted a little point between two draws that lead down into the artillery impact area the last 3 weekends. The elk like to spend the day in there because it's strictly "off limits" to hunters. His plan was to catch them at daybreak, just as they tried to slip back into the impact area.
His scouting, his plan and it worked perfectly on his third weekend of trying to ambush them their.
This bull was not the biggest elk on Riley or in Colorado by any means. There is a rumor of a big 9x9 out at Riley, a few "known" 8x8's and numerous 7x7's. I believe we caught a little group of "satellite bulls" on their way into the impact area; there were no cows with them at all. There was a smallish 4x4 raghorn, a big-bodied 6x6 whose rack was smaller and way lighter and this huge bodied 5x5. The bases on the rack are about 11-12" with 17" brow tines; we havent' had it scored yet.
It's a fine trophy for him though because he absolutely EARNED this one with his own sweat all by himself. Well, he did borrow my rifle
Nash, you can drive on any established trail in the maneuver area, so we drove to within about 60 yards of him on a humvee/bradley/abrams track. There's tons of these tracks from all the wargaming. Pretty rough driving though. With me still pretty laid up and this elk weighing in right around 700+ after gutting him, we needed some help.
John called some local deer hunters that he'd talked to and one guy brought 3 folks with him to help load. We figured, what the heck, if abrams drive all over this place, the erosion of an F-250 isn't even going to be noticed. So we drove down the rise to the right of the elk in the picture and put the tailgate down about 3 feet from the rear of the elk. They drug him up and in and then we drove to my old elk hunting buddy's place about 2 hours West.
There, my friends pulled him out onto a concrete slab and we hoisted him as needed with the front end loader on a John Deere. After washing him, he's now aging in a cold shed, hanging from an engine lift they use to pull engines out of combines. He's BIG bodied; he just clears the floor with his hocks chained off to the top I-beam of the lift. We're going to age him all week and butcher next Saturday.
Anyway, it was just really a gift to be with him when he finally got his "once in a lifetime" Kansas elk. I'm a lucky man.
