Laurel Ridge Farm: Montana Elk Hunt

Well, let's get the suspense over with up front. I had some success on this hunt. As usual, there are some stories. I doubt if I will capture it all here. I'm blogging after the fact from memory.

We hunted with Hubbard's Yellowstone Outfitters Mike Hubbard was the host and he runs a good operation, This is the lodge which is also the summertime host of an Orvis endorsed fishing lodge, a cattle ranch, and a dude ranch of sorts.

The lodge is gorgeous and is located in the Tom Miner basin just a little bit north of Yellowstone Park.

We had about a dozen hunters in camp and everyone had tags for elk and deer. We saw tons of animals but shooter bucks and bulls were a little scarce. Weather may have been a factor. The food was plentiful and fabulous.

There are two spike cabins too - farther up in the mountains. They each hold 4 max hunters and are a little more primitive than the main lodge. Several hunters rotated thru the spike camps for a couple nights.

This is my son Eric on the dock just in front of the lodge. We had ducks, snow geese and trumpeter swans coming into this lake during the hunt.

My buddy Jim was the motivating factor for this particular hunt, He had hunted here once before and wanted to return.

Also in our hunting party where Bob and Bill who work with Jim.

This is the Shoebox spike camp. It has a generator, outhouse, and a fabulous view. Eric and I ended up staying at the main lodge all week and just visited the spike camps to check them out.

The Shoebox deck looking out on the Yellowstone River valley.

Eric with what's known as Paradise Valley behind him.

This is the DC spike camp up a different mountain.

A new outhouse with a motion activated night light. They found some bear tracks in the vicinity of this outhouse one morning.

On the first night hunt, Eric and I hiked up to a spot called The Snatch. We got hot on the uphill hike.

Then we sat down behind this little windbreak/blind until sunset. Then we got cold. We didn't see anything the first night - other than eagles and magpies on a previous gut-pile.

Most of the week the ground stayed clear in the valley but we had light snow up on the mountain. The elk and the mule deer live up on the mountain. There are whitetails down in the creek bottoms - along with grizzlies. This is bear and wolf country.

We did a lot of glassing with our guide Tommy. We did some walking and some sitting.

On occasion, they parked the old man in a spot and the young studs went tromping up the mountainside.

While driving the mountain roads we often spotted mule deer bedded right beside the road.

Sometimes we got out to see if there was a shooter buck. We were never really tempted to take a shot at any of the mule deer that we saw - and we saw quite a few.

We got a pretty good snow one morning and spotted a group of elk working their way up the mountain. Tommy parked me on one side of a meadow on a bluff. He and Eric worked their way across the head of the bluff to the other side of the meadow. We watched a group of about 20 cows, calves and spikes work into the meadow. There was one shooter bull in the group. I had him at 400 yards initially. Then he walked directly at me into 280 yards before going behind a tree.

I waited for a long time while the cows moved around behind the tree and back into the meadow, Finally the bull stepped out and showed himself at 220 yards mostly broadside. I put the crosshairs on the shoulder and took the shot. He dropped almost in this tracks but slid out of my view.

Eventually I worked my way down the cliff and found him within a step of where I shot him. Eric and Tommy made their way over and the celebration ensued. He is a 5x5 with a very nice lower rack. A couple of his points are broken from fighting. His upper rack is not huge.

Tommy got to work to get him gutted. In the course of this process, we discovered that my shot spined him in the neck. I have no idea how I missed that badly but it worked out just fine.

The process was assisted by the hillside.

Long brow tines but one is broken off. We waited for a while for the recovery team. Another hunter in our party, Bill also had an elk down. The little bit of snow seemed to get the bulls moving.

Eventually an atv showed up. I couldn't imagine how we were going to handle an animal this size with a little 4 wheeler. But they have their methods.

We bungeed the horns to the back luggage rack.

And then Billy took off down the mountainside.

He actually had to accelerate in the steep parts or the elk body would slide faster than the atv.

Once he was down far enough, the meat wagon truck backed in and they used a winch to hoist him into the truck. Bill's bull was already in there.

Then drive under the meat pole to string them up.

Two bulls that morning which ended up being the only harvest for all 12 hunters all week.

I assisted Tommy on the caping job.

Off to the taxidermist for the cape and the processor for the rest of it.

The last task was removal of the elk ivories. These are remnants of ancient tusks that can be made into jewelry.

The ivories.

We also recovered the heart (intact even though I aimed at it). It was bigger than a softball but smaller than a basketball. I can see why they climb mountains better than me.

The heart was handed over to chef Brian and it was served as appetizers one night. In a balsamic reduction - quite good.

After the elk harvest, we tried for a mule deer buck. We wanted to get Eric a shot on either an elk or deer.

We hiked thru the woods to this point where we set up to watch. We saw a couple of does.

I hid behind the hill and watched one direction. Eric and Tommy went out in the wind on the point and watched the other direction.

Eventually they spotted movement but it was Bill and Bob.

Over the week we saw some bucks. There was a wide 2x2 and a small 4x4. No real shooters.

I was amazed how close we could walk in on these mule deer.

The next morning we set up on Bud's point. We had a group of elk walk in toward us.

It turns out there were about 20 cows, calves and spikes. It may have been the group that was with my bull when I shot it.

On another morning, we watched another group of elk that counted on the order of 100 animals. No shooter bulls.

I sat out on a windy point one evening - near the Shoebox. It was cold and I didn't see a thing on this sit. Here I am walking back in.

Eric and Tommy found wolf tracks all up in this area. It seems that the wolves blew everybody out of there.

A view from the mountainside down on the lake and the lodge.

Last light glassing for deer.

One morning we watched a big grizzly bear moving across an open meadow in the valley. We first spotted him at 1200 yards ambling toward us. He disappeared into willow cover at about 900 yards and shortly thereafter, 3 moose busted out of there. It was a small bull with a cow and calf. We heard that a grizzly took a beef cow in the area one morning.

Eric was running several phone apps tracking our activities. This is the hunt where I shot the bull. At first light, the three of us walked across to a point to glass. A herd was spotted and we walked back. Tommy set me up at one spot while he and Eric kept walking to get to the other side of the meadow. The bull chose to walk in toward me at the bottom of the bluff.

Here's an example of a daily step count. 20,115 steps and the equivalent of 205 flights of stairs. Even when Eric and I walked exactly the same route, his counter always had more steps than mine. Which was right?

We had 12 hunters each with an elk tag and a deer tag. Only two bull elk taken. Unlike some of my other hunts though, we saw lots of animals every day. Elk, deer, bear, moose, eagles, grouse, geese, ducks, swans, owls. And an occasional wolf track.

I'm sure when the heavy snow rolls in, more elk would pile into this valley. Our only successful day was on a snowy morning.

Anyway, great lodge, great food, great people, good animal activity - just a bit of a shortage of shooters. I still thoroughly enjoyed the hunt and would recommend it to anyone. I wonder if late season would be best.

Here's a different summary of a morning hunt. Most of our hunts had about 400 feet of elevation change on foot.

Eric and I had an afternoon to kill before our flights the next morning so we drove into Yellowstone Park. We went into the North Gate and drove over to the Northeast Gate. This included the Lamar Valley. I had read a lot about the activity of elk, bison and wolves in this area.