We have had some beautiful weather the last couple weeks here in Montana. Sadly nice weather is usually not very conducive to good elk hunting.

We enjoyed our annual elk hunt down in the Gallatin valley last week. My two boys had drawn tags and traveled out, also one of the our original elk camp partners was able to join.

We covered a tremendous amount of country searching for the wapiti, but with the drastic reduction in elk numbers and the blue bird weather we didn’t have any luck locating a nice bull.

We started each day at 3:30, getting horses fed, having breakfast ourselves and traveling to different trailheads to ride into the backcountry by legal shooting hours. So it wasn’t for lack of effort that we were unsuccessful with harvesting a bull.

It’s cliché but a hunt like this is much more than a harvest. Getting to ride all over this beautiful country with my boys and a long time hunting buddy makes a trip like this well worth the effort.

One of our days was spent hunting an area near what is called sunken forest. Back in 1959 there was an earthquake that created a deep fisher on the mountain. The whole side of the mountain broke off and sank into the ground.

Sadly as we grow older, these hunting trips get a little tougher to go on. Our initial core group hasn’t been together in four years now. Schedule conflicts, failure to secure tags, or just the lack of elk numbers in the area have prevented our traditional group from attending. This year John stated, was also going to be his last time making the trip. John has been hunting with us since 2005. Always willing to carry his weight and more, he was a great guy to have in hunting camp. His mishap fiascoes made for great stories around the lunchtime campfire and I will miss these adventures with him.

The boys and I also decided this will be our last year to venture down in the gallatin for hunting. Although it’s always been a special trip, wolves and grizzly’s have decimated not only the Yellowstone herd that would migrate through this area, but most of the local elk are gone now also. It’s time to start scouting for a new area. There will probably be some additional chances at harvesting a cow elk during the shoulder season so hopefully we will still get the freezer full.