This season I had a reminder of why I hunt the backcountry almost
exclusively. A good friend, who married into a large land holding family in the Big Hole, invited me on an opening day hunt in a limited access area. Being friends with all the people invited, I figured I might as well give it a go. I dusted off my lonely old wall tent, went through the laborious chore of packing a whole camp onto my trailer and headed south.
Normally I am strongly against just showing up in an area and hunting. Since my buddy had done a good bit of the homework for me I felt somewhat okay arriving Friday and lightly scouting on Saturday. He had ideas on where he wanted to hunt opening day but after studying the area on Google Earth, I had my own ideas. In the wee hours of Saturday morning I headed out with my maps and spotting scope to be at a good vantage by dawn. I arrived at what seemed from my maps to be a good viewing spot about a half an hour before the light of day and got set up. As the brightness of morning grew I was rewarded with the view of two different groups of elk on finger ridges within 800 yards of my location. I watched them as they slowly fed back into the trees then I exited with stealth being mindful of the wind.
We all converged from our perspective scouting trips back at camp. Counting both the groups of elk that I had seen as one, we had found two locations that were holding elk. We split up into two groups of three for the next morning then began planning our hunt. One of my seasoned comrades would take the drainage in the direction where the bigger group of elk had fed into the trees. I would pair up with the rookie of the group and we made a pact. He got to shoot at any elk we encountered and since I was already tagged out for wapiti, I would get the shot if we saw a mule deer buck. We would head up the finger ridge below where those elk had been and be in position before first light.
The next morning came cold and early. We were heading out the door of the tent when we saw other rigs heading towards our spot. So much for exclusive land use. Frantic, we headed out hoping that these folks were not heading where we were. We passed them on the creek bottom trail and staggered our way to the finger ridge without our headlamps. As my partner and I started up the ridge, my buddy continued up his desired drainage. We were in position a full half hour before first light and the wind was perfect. As the dark gave way to gray, we could barely make out some elk milling along the tree line. About ten minutes before legal shooting the light from our rival’s headlamps could be seen about 300 yards up wind of the elk we were watching. At five minutes before
game time the lead cow turned to face the wind, smelled those guys and led the whole group away in a flash. My buddy in the drainage got to see a quick flash of a cow as they exited the ridge exactly where we thought they would.
I’ve related this story to point out a few important facts. First and I believe foremost, situations like this almost never happen in the backcountry. When you put the effort into getting to a remote place, you are almost sure to have the whole show to yourself. Further, the elk in the backcountry are typically less wary and will hang out in the open a bit longer. Second, no matter where you are hunting, you have to constantly pay attention to the wind. All of the odor eliminating products and clothing in the world will never make you 100% scent free. Of course you should always do all you can to reduce your scent but you must play the wind to win the game. And finally, do your homework. If I had known that this section of the ranch was a part of the general block management instead of limited entry, I would have looked elsewhere for animals. I tried to cram for the exam by doing some light scouting the day before the season opened and we ended up failing the test.
I went through all the work of packing and setting up a full camp and no one brought home any meat. I drove my truck (which broke down) and trailer two hours each way and put nothing in my freezer. If I had packed my backpack and drove a much shorter distance to hunt, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time and money and I would have had better odds of getting an animal. These are just a few of the reasons why hunting the backcountry is so rewarding.
As December sets in most of the hunting in Montana has come to an end. The last thing on the mind of most people is getting ready for the following hunting season, but now is a great time to make the personal commitment to hunting the backcountry next year. You will have a whole year for preparation and maybe Santa will bring you some of the gear you may not have.
I would like to end this month by congratulating a few fellow backcountry enthusiasts. Vince, Brad and my close friend Sparky all managed to harvest animals in the backwoods. Each of them has put a ton of effort into finding remote places and hunting them alone. Their reward, beside the experience, was three elk to grace their freezers. These three guys and everyone else who has busted their tail in the backcountry should be proud, whether an animal was harvested or not. I’d like to wish everyone a happy holiday season and I’d like to remind folks that time off from work can be spent watching wintering critters and testing new gear.