Flint Hunter said:
Could you share the story in more detail?
Hi Flint Hunter.
The long version. After I got out of the Corps I started hunting hard but was really disappointed with the large number of people I would run into in the woods. I decided to try muzzle loading one year to avoid all the rifle hunters. I was born and raised in Fort Collins so I just headed west into North Park. I ran into a TON of people over there too. I got mad, swore off hunting and started to drive home. I was still fuming when it hit me that I’d been driving for a very long time with the Poudre River on my right and a very large, *long*, steep mountain with few or no breaks in it. I figured nobody, least of all the folks I’d been running into, would ford that river and climb that mountain to hunt elk. So I took a risk that there would not be another road or easy access on the other side of the mountain, parked my car, crossed the river and climbed the mountain. I dropped down into a basin on the other side and start walking up it. I walked for several miles, bugling along the way. Lot’s of down timber, black timber, steep country. I’d gone quite a ways when I figured I should turn around and go back to try a little side draw that I’d passed a ways back.
I hadn’t gone far when, out of the corner of my eye, I caught some movement up slope to my right. I had buggered a rag horn bull. He saw me before I saw him and he started up and away. As I was looking up at him, I caught more movement out of the corner of my eye to the left. There was a little opening in the timber (20 yards or so in diameter) with a little group of aspens in the center of it and a small seep on the other side of the aspens. There was a bull in the seep, wallowing but he had stood up when the rag horn bull buggered. His standing up was the movement that caught my eye. I lay down and crawled toward him until I got to a good spot just outside the edge of the opening. His head was behind some aspen and all I could see was the terminal fork of his rack, far back and high, and his front leg and a little bit of his chest. I aimed for that and shot him. He ran a few yards up the side of the hill toward the rag horn.
I had walked right passed this spot not too long before so they must have come down right after I went by. I gut, skinned and quartered him and then, rather than hump straight over the mountain the way I’d come in, I started down the drainage with a hind quarter because it was easier walking. But it was much longer as the crow flies. His hind quarters were 125 pounds each. I did one, then the other, then a front, then the other, then a side, then the other, then the neck/heart/liver, then the rack and finally the hide, one trip per day. It was about nine miles in and nine miles out (as the human walks). The next year I found a 4 X 4 road that would have saved me a few miles and the walking, while up hill, would have been easier. Turned out I was in Comanche Peaks Wilderness Area.
About mid way I had bear on the gut pile but he seemed happy with that and did not bother anything. I’d marked my territory (******) around the meat and while I could not hoist it high, I did tie it up around the trunks of trees just off the ground. Luckily it was pretty cool that year and the meat did not spoil and the flies weren’t bad. I peppered the meat.
I’ve been back to hunt that country many times since then and, while I’ve always had great experiences, the last time I was in there (2011) I did see two other hunters and one hiker so things are closing in. Good thing I’m getting old, I guess.
If you would have told me that you had to draw for a deer license some day, even as a non-resident, I would have laughed at you. Now you have to draw even as a resident! I remember when everything was over the counter for everyone, pretty much everywhere. Oh well.
