Back in the fall of '96 winter came fast and hard to the North Idaho
Panhandle. We set up our elk camp at 6200 feet elevation in the Coeur
d'Alene National Forest, in our customary camping site at a balmy seventy two
degrees on the fourteenth of October that year. This was at about two
o'clock in the afternoon. By the time we had pitched camp, set up the
awning off the camp trailer, garnered some firewood and set up a tent for
miscellaneous storage, the temperature had dropped to thirty degrees, and at
around four in the afternoon it began snowing big, goose-feather
snowflakes.
Season was already open for bull elk, and either sex deer, and the following
morning either sex elk season opened for five days. John Zieske, my
hunting partner and I decided to go for a drive to see if we could cut some
fresh elk tracks in the falling snow, to get an idea where some cows would be
for opening morning. We had scarcely gone more than half a mile from camp,
and I spotted a very nice, heavy beamed whitetail buck feeding on some
brush. Within just a few minutes we were dragging my trophy to the
road to load into the Suburban. When we arrived back at camp we had nearly
two inches of fresh snow, and by the time I had skinned that big boy and had him
dressed on the meat pole, we had close to five inches of the white fluffy stuff
on the ground.
After a full afternoon of setting camp, and then dressing out a rather
oversize whitetail buck, we were ready to eat a good hot meal, and get a good
long night's sleep to recharge for the big day tomorrow. After eating a
quick supper, we turned in, rather early even for us! About four in the
morning we had a tremendous crash, and shaking of our camp trailer! I
awoke to John poking his head out the door of the trailer with a flashlight and
announcing that we had over two feet of snow!
Indeed it was the case, the heavy snow had broken down the awning attached to
the trailer, and collapsed our storage tent! And it was still snowing
hard! We managed to pick up most of our gear and get it stowed either
inside the Burb, or the camp trailer. Upon checking our resources, I found
I had only packed one set of chains for the four wheel drive Suburban, and none
for the camp trailer. Knowing that some friends of mine were camped
down at the 2200 foot level along the North Fork of the Coeur d'Alene
River, we headed down without the trailer, knowing that without chains to go all
the way around on everything we would lose both the trailer and the Burb over
the edge on the steep mountain roads leading down to the river
level. Even though it was opening day of cow season, Bill and Hank
were both still in camp at daylight when we arrived, and very graciously
volunteered to help us get packed up and off the mountain. They had an
extra set of chains that fit the Suburban, but none for the trailer... we would
have to chance it.
By the time we arrived back at our trailer on top of the mountain, another
six to eight inches of fresh snow had fallen since we had left
earlier. We chained up, and headed out. About three miles from
camp John, my partner got out of the vehicle, because he said he didn't want to
ride with me through that section of narrow road... the drop-off on the North
side was perhaps a hundred feet nearly straight down, and the road a very narrow
single lane. I nearly lost the whole shebang right there when the trailer
slid and started jackknifing on me!
After a grueling two hours we finally made it the twelve miles to our
friend's camp along the river bottom. At the bottom there was only about
six inches of new snow, but later, the next day I hiked back to our camp site,
and found well over three feet of snow, and two other camps that had been
abandoned and their trailers left until spring!
This was the beginning of our '96 elk hunt! From a nice Indian Summer
day of seventy degrees, to three and a half feet of snow in a twenty-four hour
span of time! The drainage we customarily hunted was full of animals that
had been pushed down by the sudden weather change, and every day we were in
animals, but none that offered an opportunity of harvest.
One evening on the way back to camp, Hank (one of our new campmates), spotted
a nice herd cow across a tributary of the Coeur d'Alene River, and shot her just
before dark. This turned into quite an adventure, and involved
crossing this "creek" in ice-cold chest high swift water to get to the
elk. The animal dropped about two hundred yards from the road, and
weighed close to six hundred pounds. We finally decided that the
best plan of action was to get the elk into the water, float her as close to the
road as possible, then pull her out of the drink with a rope affixed to the
pickup. I must tell you that it was a very, very cold black night, with a
fifteen or twenty mile per hour wind and mid-teen temperatures. I
didn't relish ferrying this elk through the creek for a couple of hundred yards
in the dark in an equally cold, dark creek! All went well, until Hank
stepped into a beaver hole, and he sunk totally out of sight, with only his hat
floating on the water! He has a bad back, and I was instantly worried for
him, and let go of the cow, and went to Hank's aid in the strong current.
I too went past my neck into the swift ice water! All the while, John, my
partner is trying to hold this cow elk from being swept downstream by
himself! Finally we all got onto solid footing, and the elk to the north
shore of the creek within a stone's throw of the nearest road.
Somehow, in the cold, the wind and the dark, we managed to get a rope on the
elk, and snake her up onto the road with the aid of Hank's pickup. Then,
with a mighty effort, we loaded the front quarters and head of that elk into the
back of the truck, and while Bill held a front leg and the rope around it's
head, the three of us remaining managed to heave the rest of that big, wet,
slippery, cold cow into the back of his truck whole!
That evening turned out to be VERY long! We skinned and butchered elk
until nearly midnight. Exhausted we crawled into bed, and were asleep
before our heads hit the pillow! The following morning we slept in, and
took stock of what we knew, and made plans for not only the evening hunt, but
the next morning's hunt as well, since it was the last day of cow season, and
our last day before returning home. That evening we had a rather
easy hunt, more or less scouting for the following morning. We came
back rather early, ate and turned in early in anticipation of the "last
hurrah"!
It had once again snowed overnight, and there was a good four to six inches
of new snow, and still lightly snowing at daybreak. John and I had slipped up a
closed, gated logging road for about four miles in the dark, and sat waiting for
daylight at the edge of a steep clear-cut timber unit near the top of a long
high ridge. Daylight came with nothing stirring but a few Canada Jays and
Ravens. Even the red squirrels were burrowed down where it was warm that
morning. We decided to work our way up the ridge, and then bail off
to the south into the roadless drainage which lay below us over the ridge
crest. This ridge had held elk all season, and the fresh snow invigorated
us, and lifted our hopes and spirits. As we crept up to the ridge-trail
that ran along the crest of this ridge, we came across some elk tracks that had
been made during the night. They were enormous, a single, solitary
animal by itself wandering up the trail the same direction we were headed.
I asked John if he wanted to take the lead, as we entered the heavy black
timber that characterizes the virgin, uncut trees of this basin. He
declined, and told me to go ahead. I was careful, picking my footing
through the slickness of the wet snow on the steep trail ahead. Slowly, I
would take a step or two, and then stop, looking into the blackness of the
timber that contrasted so starkly with the freshness of the new snow.
After several hundred slow yards, I spotted a strange looking branch sticking
out from behind a big spruce tree. Everything had a fresh four inch
layer of snow on it, and this branch didn't have any snow at all on it! My
reaction time wasn't quick enough! The branch became two branches, then
they moved in unison, attached to a chocolate brown head with a massive mane,
followed by a huge buckskin yellow tan body! The massive bull had been
bedded down all night, and arose when he heard us slipping up his back-trail.
My rifle was up, the safety off, and the peep sights following a running,
seemingly flowing bull elk of such magnificence that I didn't think to pull the
trigger! I simply followed him with my front sight trained on his shoulder
as he ran broadside to me for perhaps forty yards before quartering away through
the timber. I was dumbfounded! The last thing I had expected was to
ever catch up to the bull that had made those tracks during the night!
John didn't even raise his rifle, because he said he had seen me flip off the
safety of the old Springfield, and had him dead to rights... no doubt in his
mind that the bull was as good as dead. Going through the scene in my
mind, as I stepped to one side of the huge spruce tree, I recalled seeing the
bull looking straight at me, fully facing me, and as I looked at him over the
sights, my front sight traveled from his brisket to his throat, then he bolted,
and I just trained the front sight on him until he was out of sight!
The bull wasn't overly spooked, and we could hear him settle to a fast walk
after just a few yards of his crashing departure. The snow was falling
lightly, and his tracks were distinctly fresh in the newness of the
snow. Tracking him was easy, except for the near waist deep depth of
the snow, and we kept dogging him up the ridge, then around, circling back on
his track, then over the ridge, paralleling it for a distance and then climbing
back over the north face once again and into a deep roadless north facing bowl
of heavy black timber. We could tell by his tracks where he had paused for
periods of time, watching his back trail, pawing and stomping, as he waited for
us, to see if we were still following him. Soon we began to lose the
fervor of enthusiasm, as it became apparent that he knew full well we were
there, and was toying with us. Our hope was that he would become
over confident, and we would catch him watching his back trail. One thing
in our favor, was that he didn't appear to want to leave the heavily timbered
bowl he had sought refuge in, and given the size of the area, he didn't feel
pressured. Also, we hadn't cut another human track made in the snow since
the day before.
KAWHAM!! Then a rumbling series of echoes broke the absolute stillness
of the morning! One single shot from above us and slightly to the
north. We both felt it, as John and I looked at each other, we said,
"Someone just shot our bull!" We continued tracking our bull,
but rather half-heartedly now, slipping as we climbed a steep face of the
timbered bowl. The timber canopy was thick, so it was dark there,
but the canopy also shaded out all sunlight as well, so there was no underbrush
to impede our travel, just the ever increasing snow, as it continued to fall,
and as we continued to climb, ever higher and into deeper snow pack. We
both saw it at once, a huge tawny body, and an enormous set of
antlers!
Our bull lay motionless on a side-hill trail, his neck doubled back with his
nose pointing towards his rump, antlers arrayed forward, and his body jammed
into the base of a large hemlock tree. As we cautiously approached the
massive critter, the tracks in the snow told the whole story. A single set
of human tracks came up out of the bottom where a small creek ran, and alders
choked the the little stream. Those tracks led directly to the elk,
and circled him once, to get to the uphill side. On his antler was a
clearly punched Idaho elk tag, wired securely to the main beam of his
rack. This bull's ivory teeth were worn down to mere coffee colored nubs,
and his 7x8 massive rack loomed huge over the 1100 pound body. A red
Idaho Department of Fish & Game radio collar adorned the neck of this
monarch, and his dark chocolate face was scarred from a couple of decades of
fights, and his saucer sized hooves left tracks that rivaled those of a moose.
John and I stood silently surveying the scene, knowing full well that we had
pushed this bull right to whoever killed it. The hunter tagging the bull
had left it in the snow where it had dropped, not even field dressing
it. We commented on that fact, then slowly, and quietly resigned
ourselves to the twelve mile hike back to our vehicles. We struggled
uphill through the ever increasing snow, traveling north for about three miles
until we cut the road that wound its way up to our original camp on the top of
the mountain below the lookout. Once on the road, we began the descent
towards the trailhead, with the sting of knowing that I had that bull dead to
rights if I had just pulled the trigger. As we walked down the road, we
met a four wheel drive import pickup with three guys in the front seat, and two
in the back end. They asked us if we had seen anything, and we merely
replied that we had seen a big bull in the morning, and tracked it for three and
a half grueling hours, to where someone had killed and tagged it! The
young man riding in the passenger side seat of the truck grinned from ear to
ear. "Yep, I killed that bull! I kept falling on my keester
down there next to the creek, and got tired of landing on my rump, so I just sat
down and waited. Hadn't sat there fifteen minutes when I hear this
crashing, and look up and see this huge bull! One shot from my .308
Winchester to his neck and he was down for the count! Did you guys see
that rack? Go ahead tell them, wasn't it really a 7x8!"
This young man was from Post Falls, Idaho, at least he was a local, and it
was his first year, first day elk hunting! Unwittingly, and unknowingly,
my hesitation, and lack of action several miles down the mountain had given this
young man the experience of a lifetime! Imagine topping that first hunt...
ever in your life!
I've killed my share of game over the years, and the Lord allowed me the
thrill of tracking that bull to his bed, actually drawing a bead on him,
and having the thrill of the hunt. But at the same time the Lord
also allowed a young man who had never had the experience of downing an elk to
get the biggest thrill of his hunting life that day as well! I'm always
thankful for this hunt, and the memory it made that day, regardless of whether I
pulled the trigger, it is a memory of a lifetime! It is these memories
that keep us going back into the woods year after year, and you know what, I
don't even mind that I gave away a bull that day! It was quite a way to
end my elk hunt for that year, and a thrilling end to a very unusual season.
