2009 Montana Elk Archery Opener Sept. 5,6,&7

Last weekends opener for elk in Montana proved to be a very nice Labor Day Weekend. We rode our bikes in to a camp about a mile and half behind a gate. After setting up camp we scouted a bit. We were pleased to find some tracks that looks somewhat recent.

With the full moon out and this meadow pictured above not to far from our camp, we were able to do some night time glassing. Around 11:30pm we heard a spike making some noise in this meadow. And was joined later in the night by a bugling bull and some cows. At one point we could see the bull trashing a tree in the meadow.

Saturday proved to be a warm day. We managed to jump the spike on a ridge top( spikes are not legal in this district). He winded us before we reached the ridge. By afternoon a thunderstorm rolled in a cool things down. This got the elk moving and we managed bump into four cows in three separate groups after the storm moved through. We never managed to get set up in time for a shot on these cows but it was encouraging nonetheless to be into elk.

Sunday proved slow with the exception of Sunday evening we bumped into the same spike with 20 minutes of shooting light left. After hearing us cow call he was eager to find us long after we stopped calling. It was all we could do to get to camp with out him busting us.

Finally on Monday with a nice cool morning, we managed to get a bull bugling. We did our best to figure out where he was. Several draws and ridges later we were on top of his location, but by then he was no longer responding to our bugles. It was a bit of a wild goose chase, but we ended up in some country we had not hunted in this area before.

The B.O.B trailers make for a pleasant pack out of camp. Even if our trailers weren't loaded down with meat.

Montana's Opening Weekend for Archery, Sept 5th 6th &7th

Opening weekend featured cooler temps and rainy weather. This kept some elk up on their feet through out the day, unfortunately the day was on Friday when we couldn't hunt them. We loaded up our bikes and bike trailers for what we thought would be a five mile bike ride. 15 Minutes up the road we encountered a herd of elk with a bugling bull who we could hear, but could not see in the timber. So we backed down the road a bit and set up camp. Not far enough though. About 1:30am that night we had elk plowing through our camp. I thought Saturday would be great. We didn't see or hear an elk all day, and we hunted pretty hard. Our luck was a little better on Sunday. That morning we decided to head up the road to where we had origanlly intended to camp and hunt. About 3 miles up the road we spotted an elk crossing the road. We couldn't make out the sex at the time. We geared up, headed into the timber and started calling. We called in two spike bulls who were still in velvet and their spikes looked like baseball bats. Unfotunately we couldn't shoot spikes in the district that we were hunting.

After this happened I thought we would get into more elk so we headed further up the road. We hunted hard until late morning rains sent us packing. Aside from the spikes we didn't hear or see any other elk on Sunday.


















About to load up the bob trailers.




































Some great country to glass.

Sept 23rd

When is elk hunting not that fun? Not that we didn't have fun, but at times it didn't feel like it. Especially on the bike ride out when our hands got very cold. Sometimes a hunter is better off staying bed in the morning and not going hunting, considering what time in the morning that we got up to get to here, we should have stayed in bed on this day.

Here is that picture again.

Ted is smiling because we have only be riding about 3 minutes. Our smiles soon faded. If they only made camo spandex.