big game

Huge New Mexico Antelope Tagged During 2009 Bow Season

Joe_Cermele — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:47:43 -0400

Steven Tisdale tagged a giant buck during New Mexico’s antelope bow season. Here’s the story, in photos.

10 Best Public Lands for Elk (And How to Hunt Them)

Joe_Cermele — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:27:16 -0400

Mark Seacat likens hunting on public lands to a game of chess—not one you play with the wapiti so much as with other hunters.

“Elk pattern off pressure,” the Montana hunter and former elk guide explains. “You have to know where the elk will go Sunday after being pressured on Saturday. By Tuesday they’ll start to settle down. I want to make a move to be in position to hunt them then.”
Seacat shot his first elk when he was 12. Several years ago, he set a goal to take a mature bull off each of the half dozen mountain ranges visible from his hometown in western Montana. His game plan began by unfolding a map. “I would draw a circle around the public land in the mountain range. Then I’d start by checking out the middle of that circle in the middle of the week.”

This “mountaineering approach to elk hunting,” as Seacat terms it, often has the 30-year-old hunter crossing the spine of a range to work down to elk that have taken refuge on the more inaccessible side. In bow season, he’ll locate herds by running the ridgelines, glassing the basins, and listening for bulls bugling. Once he finds a herd, he’ll follow it, often for days while living out of his backpack. Because public-land bulls become call-shy compared with elk on lightly hunted private lands, he patterns the bull’s movements and ambushes or stalks it to get close enough for a shot.

When it’s time to trade broadheads for bullets, Seacat seeks out the toughest country he can find.

“Some pretty crazy bulls hang out in some pretty crazy places. They have to or they don’t get old,” he says.

For Seacat, the strategy of hunting areas where elk escape pressure has paid off with bulls from all but one of the ranges visible from town. Last season’s 6-point, which he arrowed after spotting 30 or more public-land bulls, is in the 370-class. He is already studying maps, hiking trails, and talking to taxidermists and hunting friends as he sets his sights on the public ranges just over the horizon.

My own approach is a variation of the same game, just one that is played on a smaller chessboard and with considerably older legs. I’ll map out the public trailheads on one front of a range, then link the access points with straight lines. The midpoints along these lines, between any two accesses, may not be too far back into the range, but the country will be tough to reach. What I am looking for are forested ridges that finger sharply down onto private ranches in the valleys. Hunting pressure from the ranches often creates a daily migration pattern, with the elk feeding on the ranchlands at night, then climbing back into thick timber on the public lands to bed during the day.

The downside of our hunting strategies? The first word out of our mouths after the elk goes down is uh-oh. Meat trips can require miles of up-and-down hiking under heavily loaded packs. The big 5-point my nephew shot last year took three of us two trips each to pack out, with round trips beginning at dawn and ending in moonlight.

“Fortunately and unfortunately, that’s the case,” Seacat agrees. “Most hunters limit themselves. They want an easy fix. But wild public lands give hunters who are willing to put their foot to the trail and work hard a great opportunity.”

Best public lands: National forests, wilderness areas.

Best opportunities: Limited-draw archery or rifle hunts that require years of applying to accumulate bonus points before a tag arrives in the mail. These hunts take place in areas that receive relatively light hunting pressure and have a deeper pool of mature bulls.

Look for: Security cover. Ranges that contain hard-to-reach, unroaded tracts of black timber will reward you with a better chance at larger bulls than heavily logged, easily accessible terrain, where opening-day harvest is high and elk don’t have much chance to grow up. Hunting is also likely to stay good longer into the season where there’s security cover.

Watch out for: Elk sanctuaries. On some ranges, elk have become so fine-tuned to hunting pressure that they migrate miles to (relatively) safe havens on private lands before the rifle season starts. Contact game managers to see if this is a concern and invest in a computer mapping program, so that you can preprogram your GPS with waypoints marking property boundaries.

10 Best Public Lands For Elk

[1 Oregon] Siuslaw National Forest: Roosevelt elk are overlooked by most hunters, but there are plenty of over-the-counter tags available for two seasons in western Oregon. The Siuslaw and Alsea units in the Siuslaw National Forest present good chances for hunters who are willing to do a little legwork and put up with a lot of rain. www.fs.fed.us

[2 Montana] Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest: Fifty percent of the elk harvest comes from Region 3 in the southwest part of the state. The forest outside Dillon, which encompasses several mountain ranges, affords elk security cover while also providing numerous hunter-access points. www.fs.fed.us

[3 Colorado] White River National Forest: It’s heavily hunted, but there’s good access and a healthy elk population. Some bigger bulls live in the Flat Tops Wilderness Area of this tract, but it’s all thin air and you can get snow up to your knickers very quickly here. www.fs.fed.us

[4 New Mexico] Cibola National Forest, Santa Fe National Forest: Low-percentage, limited-draw hunts are the rule in New Mexico, but big bulls are the prize. Tags for the Zuni Mountains and Mount Taylor areas in Cibola and in the Jemez area in Santa Fe are a bit easier to draw than the coveted tags in the Gila National Forest to the south. www.fs.fed.us

[5 Idaho] St. Joe National Forest: Historically, this forest in the southern Panhandle region is among the best places in any state to score with a bow, with the adjoining Clearwater National Forest just as good. You’ll need either a GPS or a lot of iron in your brain to keep from getting lost in these deep woods, but you won’t have to worry about trespassing. www.fs.fed.us

[6 Wyoming] Bridger-Teton National Forest: Near Jackson, the forest allows access to some of the prettiest alpine basin country in the world. And there are elk here, too, lots of them. Good lungs and bear spray are prerequisites. www.fs.fed.us

[7 Wyoming] Shoshone National Forest: Also in the Cowboy State, the Beartooth Mountains offer classic wilderness elk hunting. There are good populations of bulls in big country all along the North Fork of the Shoshone River and Sunlight Basin. www.fs.fed.us

[8 Arizona] Coconino National Forest: All motor traffic is prohibited in the forest’s Pine Grove and Rattlesnake Quiet Areas in 6A, dissuading some hunters from going after what are among the biggest bulls on the planet. www.fs.fed.us

[9 Washington] Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness: After lean years due to unlimited tags, forest fires, and mountain lion predation, bull elk ratios are finally on the upswing in the famous Blue Mountains hunting grounds of southeast Washington. Over-the-counter tags restrict hunters to spikes, but if you draw a coveted any-bull tag, you’ll have a chance for a trophy in the roadless areas in this section of the Umatilla National Forest. www.fs.fed.us

[10 Utah] Ashley National Forest: The new world-record elk was taken last season on public land in Utah. The state vies with Arizona for the best public-land elk hunting, and residents sometimes find a plentiful supply of undrawn tags, including spike-bull permits. The two Uinta Mountains units in this forest are good choices among any bull areas, but no Utah tag is less than superb. www.fs.fed.us

Wet and Wild Montana Moose

Joe_Cermele — Wed, 13 May 2009 10:41:12 -0400

Wet And Wild Montana Moose

Joe_Cermele — Wed, 13 May 2009 10:41:12 -0400

F&S Adventure: City Girl On African Safari

Joe_Cermele — Fri, 08 May 2009 16:01:10 -0400

Trip Report: Late Season Elk Camp

Joe_Cermele — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:46:37 -0500

Sometimes it's more about the lessons learned and friends made at camp than it is the hunt. Ben Romans joined a rag-tag group of late-season elk hunters in Montana and got schooled in stalking, poker, and keeping your shorts from freezing.

Darting Rocky Mountain Bighorns In Arizona

fieldandstream-editor — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 04:00:00 -0500

Classic Deer Hunting Photos from the Field & Stream Archives

fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 04:00:00 -0500

Hunting Tips from Master Outdoorsman Jerome B. Robinson

fieldandstream-editor — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 11:00:00 -0400

Group Therapy

fieldandstream-editor — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 05:30:00 -0400

Were this the best of all possible worlds, we would fire three rifle shots at a target, peer downrange, and see three holes clustered within the area of a dime at precisely the right place. But this is not the best of all possible worlds, in that it has a place for chiggers, bad cholesterol, rabies, abdominal fat, leprosy, and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY). And in this vale of sorrow, we often look at our targets and see horror, chaos, and disorder. (It occurs to me that I am being unfair to leprosy. If so, I apologize to Mycobacteria leprae everywhere.)

In any event, we know that something is wrong, but what? Rather than burst into tears, you should regard this as a heart-to-heart talk with your rifle, which, if you can speak its language, will tell you what ails it.

Complete Breakdown. Problem: Your shots are all over the place and you can't get a group to save your life. There are several causes. First is a ruptured scope. The way to test this is to put a different scope on your gun and see if it groups better. Second is loose bedding screws on the rifle. Check to see if they're tight. Third is loose ring or base screws. Sometimes, one particular bullet weight will give results this bad. If this is the case, it's usually because the barrel's rifling twist is wrong for that bullet weight.

Consistent Flyer. Problem: Your ammo is almost, but not quite, right for your gun. Usually this shows up as two holes close together and the third one off to the side by an inch or two. At 100 yards, this is not a problem, but at farther distances you'll have trouble. It's caused by bullets traveling just above or below the optimum speed for that barrel, causing it to vibrate inconsistently. Handloaders can cure it by raising or lowering the powder charge. Non-handloaders will have to try different ammunition.

Inconsistent Flyer. Problem: Most of the time you get good groups, but sometimes you have one shot go astray, and sometimes all three go where they're not supposed to. Most likely you're flinching, and if you don't think you can flinch from a benchrest, think again. You can buy a Lead Sled Shooting Rest ($125; 800-243-3220; midwayusa.com), which virtually eliminates felt recoil, or put a soft gun case or sandbag between your shoulder and the butt. If it were me, I'd get a less punishing rifle.

Rising Group. Problem: your groups are okay, but they keep moving up on the target, sometimes straight up, sometimes up and left or right. This is caused by an overheated barrel. When a tube gets too hot, it warps slightly, sending bullets errantly, and the heat waves rising from it give you a distorted view of the target, sort of like shooting through a swimming pool. The cure is easy: Let your barrel cool down. I start each group with a cold barrel and never let it get beyond lukewarm.

Stringing. Problem: groups string vertically or horizontally. First, check the barrel bedding. Most barrels today are free-floating-there should be no contact from 11/2 inches forward of the receiver right out to the end. If there is, take the gun in for a rebedding job. Horizontal grouping can be caused by wind at the target that you don't feel at the bench. Vertical groups can be caused by the fore-end jumping on too hard a surface.