“Hunting elk with stick and string”, man that sounds like an swell idea.  An idea hatched somewhere between Baghdad and Tikrit, sometime in 2006. Elk with a bow seems pretty manly, not like hunting lions with a hickory stick, but manly nonetheless.

Here’s the catch, I’m an active duty Soldier, no time and less money.

Eureka! I find a place I could afford. Now I need time off.  Got it time off, thanks Brigade Commander! Now I need a battle buddy, because I don’t want to drive to Colorado and/or hunt without someone to share it with. Normal hunting battle buddy, my lovely wife Aline cannot make it, damn!   First Sergeant Marshall “Mark” Ware, said he’d go with me!

Now I’m excited, terribly excited, been a long time since I was “kid at Christmas” excited and by God I am.

We hunt with Jim and Linda Hockenberry near Somerset, CO. staying on their ranch, the “Lazy H”. We hunt during the first archery season, the last week of August. The ranch is very small by western standards and average by Kentucky farm standards, but it’s surrounded on three sides by the Gunnison National Forest. We drove out in a Chevy Avalanche with plans to put the meat and capes of two bull elk in the bed, cover with ice, and drive home. That’s all the background, here’s how it goes down…

      Two day drive out is easy and in true warrior fashion we decided to sleep for three hours at a Kansas rest stop, totally legal, instead of driving straight through (Army Accident Avoidance and Defensive Drivers Classes must have worked). Mark is a firearms instructor packing a .45 and I’m a martial arts instructor packing a 3 D-Cell Mag-Light. We could probably get away with driving through Mogadishu, but that’s another story. We get our over-the-counter licenses at Wal-Mart the next morning, best $551, I’ve ever spent. We arrive a little early and Jim greets us on an ATV at the ranch gate and we roll up to his place.

      Gorgeous house, tack /elk processing shed, and three little cabins for hunters/ranch hands. We don’t get out of the truck before Jim says, “Leave your stuff and come with me”. We go on a short drive to the edge of the ranch get out on foot and scout the Gunnison National Forest about a mile from his ranch in almost all directions. He shows us multiple small ponds, wallows, trails, and potential ambush sites. It’s during this reconnaissance that we first realize Jim’s not actually guiding or really even outfitting us. He’s going to let us hunt his stands on our own, give us advice, provide room and board, help recover/butcher/cape the elk, treat us like family, and that’s about it. The hunting part is truly up to us, in fact totally up to us after this recon.

Mark and I are leaders in the Army, we don’t take well to being bossed around unless you’re wearing a bunch of rank, so this works awesome for us. Jim is a wise man, with years of experience and accomplishments to back it up. He has a way of speaking that instantly lets you know, on a subconscious level that he’s the authority and you should shut up, listen, and follow orders. Mark and I do just that.

I love the anticipation before a hunt, but always struggle with exactly where and which set-up to use. So, I let Mark decide and of course he takes the spot I would have taken, a very small pond about half way down a huge draw with high ground on three sides, well done Mark. I get the second best spot, but it’s “all good” as my young Soldiers say. We spend the rest of the day meeting the other hunters, Jim’s wife Linda (who’s also a great cook), Jim’s son BJ (who’s also a former taxidermist), and the one remaining ranch hand (whose name escapes me).

Mark and I buy into the advice Jim gives us, “Now elk are not whitetails. I was born in Pennsylvania and used to be like y’all. A few years back I was a guide, guided elk out here a long time, mostly on horseback and it was different then. I’m older now and don’t guide anymore, but you need to understand a few things about elk. If they’re in a good area, good habitat, food and water and cover, see, they’re not leaving unless they got a reason. We’ve got a huge basin around the ranch and the elk are all over it, they got everything they need, they’ll stay if you don’t chase them off. So, don’t run them off (very serious). Pick your spot, sit down, shut up, don’t call too much or at all. Elk are going to lay up most of the day in the dark cool timber. When it gets quiet around 10:00am, you’ll know it, even the birds slow down and get quieter, but when that happens, come back to the ranch, Linda will have sandwiches laid out, shoot your bow, take a nap, and talk to the other hunters. Go back out about 3:30pm stay until you cannot see your sight pins anymore and I’ll guarantee you see elk up close and over half of you get a shot.”

Mark and I listen like our lives depend on it, go back to the little bunk house/cabin we’re staying in and agree that Jim’s the smartest man we’ve ever met, we will follow his advice to the fullest.

I get up and eat breakfast and don’t take one of the old trucks to the ranch wire (as recommended), then walk to the water hole I’ve picked out, it’s only about a mile I’ll walk it. Walking a mile for me is not much effort, even at 8,000ft, but it takes longer than expected and I get to the stand about grey morning light to see a bull elk, branched antlers which I cannot see well enough to judge, and a single cow in the meadow 164 yard away. They don’t know what I am, but know I’m not a calf or something good, so they keep on moving into the wood line.

I’m pumped. I sit all morning and have my first visitor, mule deer doe, about three years old, and second visitor a cinnamon phased black bear, young one. I get down and walk through the beautiful aspen forest downhill to the ranch the whole way, it seems to take two minutes, a whole lot different than the walk earlier (it’s downhill this way), which took about twenty minutes but seemed to take an hour.

At lunch I learn I’m the only one who saw elk or bears, cool. Mid-day prescription, bologna and cheese sandwich, stories at the ranch house, hammock down by the cabin, book to read, nap, oh yeah. 3:30pm and I’m rolling back to the stand with a spring in my step, say a prayer, climb the stand. Nothing major comes to see me and I’m still fired up, dinner was awesome, camp is fun, day one is over.

Day two starts with Mark making coffee for both of us and a breakfast bar, told Miss Linda (Jim’s wife), “Sorry I won’t be at breakfast”. I’m on stand in the total dark now, watching the world wake up I write a poem in my head called, “My Meadow”, it’s all about the gorgeous meadow in front of me, but I forget it when another black bear walks in, stays a while. He is 43 yards downwind and he doesn’t even know I’m there.

My stand is facing due east to account for the terrain, no other way to do it, but the sun is brutal starting about 8:00am. I climb down go around the water hole to the other side and hide behind some brush and try not to take a nap. An hour later a cow elk crosses the meadow above me at a range of 122 yards turns left and walks right behind my stand! Arggghhhh! Why did I move! Oh yeah, the sun. Well at least I’ve got a good story for the lunch table. That is until I see the “meat wagon” with Mark riding an elk cowboy style driving back to the tack shed.

Mark Ware With His Elk

I start running from across the ranch, a far piece later, I’m standing shaking Mark’s hand and a beautiful dark horned 5x5 is laying in the “meat wagon” (old wooden wagon pulled behind a big ATV that doesn’t look like it’d work, but it really does). “Only elk I saw”, Mark says. Standing over his bull that is almost perfectly symmetrical and very dark horned, gorgeous.

Night two, with Mark’s elk fresh in my mind I’m ready, but it’s the same story, great wildlife, beautiful view, but no elk in range. I did get to see a cow moose and her calf walk across the meadow this time, awesome. Third morning, a cow elk and her calf snap a branch coming down the hill behind me at about 80 yards; I take my time standing up, raising my bow, and getting ready. We say, “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast in the Army.” As I turn to the right she’s standing right there at 19 yards! Are you kidding me! She moved all that way and I didn’t hear any more noise! Did I really take that long standing and getting in position? Aw, hell she’s trotting away. She’s stopped in range, range her – 47 yard, easy shot, been practicing out to 65 all year, totally makeable for me, daggummit! There’s a sapling dead smack in the way! Ok, sit back down, calm down, thank the Lord for even seeing an animal in range, don’t cry you’re a grown man, you’ve seen elk every day, good work. Time to go have a sandwich, maybe Linda will give me a moon pie or something for dessert to cheer me up. That hammock sounds good right now.

Third evening starts like the others, beautiful. Black bear came in at 19 yards down wind, didn’t notice me, okay ScentLok may be worth the money. Man he’s a good looking bear, what’s that movement to my left? Two coyotes! Legal to kill while you haven’t filled your elk tag, I’m going to stick one! Daggumit, busted, all I did was move my hand two inches. Coyotes are evil witch like creatures at 20 yards, they see all, smell all, and hear all.

Compose yourself you still got an hour of shooting light, thank God for the fun you're having and sit still. Movement over my right shoulder! It’s that cow again, the one that snuck up on me, ninja style yesterday, she’s dead meat. Where’s the calf, don’t want it to bust me? She picked her head up…horns…it’s not her, oh hell, legal bull. I’m up turned around in shooting position faster than superman blinks and slicker than a New York Lawyer. Problem, the end of my arrow is wagging like my dogs tail at dinner time, just a bit of adrenaline running through my veins. He walks behind a tree at 37 yards, I draw my bow. Oh no! He stopped behind the tree with his shoulder and vitals covered by a huge aspen trunk. I pull good weight on my BowTech, but I’m not getting through that tree and then through an elk. Okay dude either walk another three steps or I’m shooting you in the neck, it’s bigger than a whitetails vitals, I’ll do it, I’m warning you. Okay great, he’s moving again, stopped three steps closer, that’d be about five yards I guess, 32 yards, squeeze. I swear he didn’t move. I didn’t miss, did I? No, there’s a disturbed patch of hide right where I aimed. I missed, crap, nock another arrow, be cool, you’ve been under pressure before; oh no he’s jumped that log and is moving away. YES! (convulsions of joy begin) He’s crumpled like a coke can under a heifer! He didn’t even feel it when my arrow passed through him! Range it, see how far it was, 32 yards! Right on!

I wait until he stopped moving, climbed down, ran the whole way back to the ranch house to find Mark and Jim out for a “mountain walk” and Linda minding the ranch. I tell her, “No nobody is hurt, sorry to alarm you for running in (she could see me for a long way off), but I’ve got elk down, legal bull!”. Linda, “How big?” I declare; “He won’t hang in Cabelas, but he’ll hang on the wall at my house.”

Mike Abell and His 4x4 Colorado Elk

My bull was only a 4x4, but he was very wide and heavy, gorgeous. Jim said about three or four years old.  Day Six, Mark and I are driving home with two bulls in the bed of the Chevy. Six hunters were staying on the ranch, listening to Jim’s advice, and hunting the Gunnison on their own. Four killed bulls, one killed a cow, and the last one had a shot, tried and failed. I’d say Jim knows elk.