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10 October 2007

Oklahoma Elk Hunters and Turkey

Posted by Darrell under: Elk; Colorado; Hunting Stories .

 

On the second day of my recent Colorado archery elk hunt I ran in to some old boys from Oklahoma. Its funny, because I consider myself to be a fairly hard core hunter. These ole boys make me look like a girl scout.

Jeff and I were working our way along a ridge towards a valley from which we’d heard some bugling. We would call and we’d receive an answer. We were pretty excited. After about 30 minutes of this nonsense, I spotted a blur of camo moving through some brush in the general direction from which the bugling was taking place. At first I was afraid a hunter was going to run off our elk. Then I realized that the hunter was our elk. And they were coming in.

I don’t know what the proper thing to do is in this situation. So, maybe, you guys can blast me in the comments. But, to be honest I was a little dissapointed. I glassed 3 hunters about a 1/4 mile away making their way towards our calls.  I didn’t feel like jumping up and down and announcing ourselves so I started blowing some crazy calls - and I mean crazy. It didn’t matter, they kept answering and coming in.

So, Jeff and I, worked our way around them. We actually ended up heading in the direction they were likely going before coming after us. They never saw us. But, I got a pretty decent look at them. I’d be able to recognize them if they were back at the lodge in the evening and if they were talking about the elk that got away.

Anyway, a couple hours later, after lunch, Jeff and I were resting on the edge of a mountain top field (possibly sleeping after an intense climb) when I heard something coming towards us. A few moments later our ‘elk’ (all three of them) broke into the field - walking straight towards us. I think I startled them, when I raised my head and waved at them.

They came right on over. These were the types of guys that a normal and sane person probably wouldn’t wave over. They were rough looking. Long shaggy hair. Scraggly beards.  And, heavily armed. In addition to their well used bows and giant bowie knives, they all carried really large (and equally well used looking) revolvers.

I’m from the Ozarks. These guys were from Oklahoma. I could understand them. Some of you hunters on the East coast probably wouldn’t have had a clue what they were saying. If you are capable of understandig what all the characters on King of the Hill are saying - you’d have been OK. If not, you’d have been simply doing a lot of smiling and nodding. Anyway, these guys were the real deal - good ole boys and hardcore hunters.

I noticed that one of the guys arrows looked like they’d been to hell and back. I swear that in addition to being banged up, some actually looked bent. Most guys would ignore this. Not me. I asked about it. Well apparently this was his first time elk hunting. He’d fired off arrows at numerous bulls and recovered, cleaned and straightened them to the best of his ability. He was a mean looking dude, but his buddies were laughing so I felt comfortable chuckling a little, too.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that he was an elk newbie that had crashed headlong into a training course given by a couple of hardcore insane hunters. These guys had been in the mountains for about 5 weeks. I wasn’t going to run into them at the lodge. They had a base camp set up somewhere in the mountains and they had walked hundreds of miles over the course of the past 5 weeks.

They had called in numerous bulls over the past weeks, but the two experienced hunters were still waiting on a ‘big un’. They’d let their newbie buddy shoot at the ‘little 5×5s’ and such. “He just aint got no luck and aint much of a shot” they both laughed while he turned red and checked out everyone else’s boots.

I told them that we’d seen them coming in to our call earlier that morning. They laughed at this and said that they’d begun to wonder but they hadn’t seen us. We talked for a while and parted ways.  The two experienced hunters had been coming to this part of Colorado for archery season for around 15 years. They try to get there right as season starts and stay the ENTIRE archery season - camped out in the mountains and living off the land. They take trophy bulls almost every year.

They told us alot about elk hunting and actually told us where we could find a well used elk wallow. The one thing they told me that will probably stick with me forever went like this:

“So, you um ole boys from Missouri, huh?”

“Yeap” I said

“U’uns have lotta turkeys around there?”

“Yeap” I said

“Them birds is smart uns. They see good and hear every ting”

“Yeap” I said

“Huntin elk is like hunting crazy turkeys that can smell”

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