JAK Traks: Unsuccessful Elk Hunting and South Platte Gold Rush 10/28-11/1

After a brief interlude of school responsibilities in the middle of the second rifle season for elk in Colorado I headed back to unit 14 on Thursday night. On the drive to Clark I listened to a JRE podcast with Wim Hof, dude is a BEAST and maybe slightly insane.

Cool lenticulars over Cameron pass again

The next day was spent hunting some thick timber and blow down around a certain butte with a lake on top. No elk were spotted, but I did see some sign and found what was likely the site of an archery kill earlier in the season. That evening I did some glassing from the top of the butte and I found 9 moose in the valley below, 4 of which were decent bulls. Definitely the highest concentration of Shiras moose I have ever seen.

Location of a previous kill. Either they boned out the meat or found the animal dead and just took the antlers. Sort of odd.

On the second day I chose to change things up and head to the south end of the unit and hunt off of Rabbit Ears pass. I ran into a few guys at the trail head who had seen some elk in the area so my spirits were high since they both had bull tags and I had a cow tag. The day was mostly light fog with some drizzle until 3 or so. I found plenty of sign, spooked a mule deer doe and even found some grouse (left my 22 pistol in the car though), but no elk. I covered a fair amount of ground from 7 to 230 or so, then decided to have lunch and check out the Hahn's Peak area. The village of Hahn's peak seemed like a perfect Utopian paradise with log cabins, backyard fires, and dogs everywhere.

Hahns Peak

After driving some rather rugged roads past private property I decided to call it a day and head back to base camp up Seedhouse creek. I had only one more day to hunt, so I just hunted around the swamp park trail head for the morning on Sunday. After not seeing any sign or animals for a couple of hours I decided to call it and start the 5 hour drive back to Boulder. It turns out that I don't know shit about elk hunting, and after spending 5 days hunting and 4 more scouting I never saw an elk. I think I have held 4 or 5 elk tags in my life and have yet to fill one. In the moment it was hard to stay motivated by myself. My father was supposed to be with me the last weekend of the hunt but he ended up getting sick and wasn't able to make it. I definitely missed his company and his knowledge of elk and their habits.

Sometimes being alone is one of the most empowering experiences because you can make intuitive decisions with out having to worry about other people. If you see a track that leads to an area you want to check out you go there. If you want to cover ground all day you can. If you want to stop and glass for a while you do it. The inner dialogue is simple. But when the going gets tough it can be hard to stay motivated as well. I never suffered during the hunt, but after not seeing an animal for 3 or 4 days in a row I started to question everything I thought I knew about public land elk hunting. I've never killed an elk so I don't know what I am going to miss by not succeeding, but I think I will be more motivated to prepare more wholesomely in the future.

After the hunt I came back to Boulder. I had class on Monday as well as teaching obligations, but the schedule of Tuesday was wide open. I decided I would go back to the South Platte and give it another crack before the temps really start to fall. Before coming to Boulder I had made it a goal of mine to catch one of the fabled lake run browns out of Elevenmile Reservoir, but in my 10 or so days fishing the dream stream I had yet to crack the 21" (or so) mark on a brown. I had caught a couple nice cuttbows, but the large browns had eluded me. I had either spooked all of the true giants or I was too late in the spawn and they were all on redds, beat up and not wanting anything to do with a fly in their face.

Well on Tuesday I cracked the code, or got lucky or both. The weather was clear, so not ideal but there was a slight cold front sweeping in from the NW, so I figured the fish might be more active after the mild October that was had. By this time last year the spawn was pretty much over for the lake run fish and spotting a fish over 20 was very difficult. This year it happened a little later (I think) and I was able to connect with some really nice fish using a variety of tactics. The best setups were red midges and beads behind redds (both kokanee and brown spawning grounds) and a white sex dungeon trailed with a red and white clouser minnow in the slower and deeper pools. Behold the fish porn.