Sheesh, I can’t believe I’m already writing a start of the Fall hunting season update. Feels like spring was just here a few weeks ago, but here we are. At this point in the season, I’ve had two hunts. A black bear hunt in Arizona and an elk hunt in Colorado. Both landed on the rough side, but both held their own lessons.
Arizona started off pretty good honestly. Through scouting I was able to locate several bears and the food sources were prime. At that point, if I had to put money down on if my hunting partner Brian and I would get opportunity or not, I sure would have. And with that said, I would have lost my money…
For 9 days I scoured the Arizona high desert for bears and turned up zilch. I was perplexed, frustrated, and eager to know why. We saw a ton of bucks. A few of them Brian made a run at, but came up empty handed. I probably drove in the realm of 1200 miles throughout that time trying to dig up a bear in 3 separate units. And some places where I have an immense amount of confidence. Nothing. Only one thing stuck out to me as the problem.
Everything was in place. The food, the water, and the right topography features. One thing was out of place and that was the moon. Opening day served up a moon that made our headlamps not nearly as important as normal. Talking with some very experienced bear hunters, and friends, told me we were not the only ones struggling to find bears. You can’t fight Mother Nature. She’ll win every time and this time she decided it was our turn to ride the struggle bus. No bears were harmed during this hunt.
It had been quite a few years since I’d hunted elk in September over in Colorado. Aside from that, this place was special to me. It was the first place I ever did an out-of-state hunt, or an archery elk hunt for that matter, which is more of the reason I wanted to return. The hunting wasn’t it. It was the memories. So, my expectations weren’t super high and I knew it was gonna be a grind of a hunt. I was right. Kind of.
Throughout a week of elk hunting through essentially new eyes, we were into elk every day. Whether we were seeing them, calling them in, or hearing them each day held some semblance of positive reinforcement. This was way more than I was expecting. I even got to full draw on the last morning, but no arrows were loosed. That’s how she goes sometimes. I still consider myself a newer September archery elk hunter, and on that front, I feel like I learned a ton.
Each hunt, no matter the season, holds a lesson or two and these are no different. On the bear hunt, if I could do one thing differently it would be to not move around as much. I feel like if I had just stayed in one unit, rather than trying three, maybe I would have turned something up, even though the moon was not on our side. Patience can be hard to come by when you can’t see the carrot in front of you to chase.
On the elk hunt, well, I don’t think I would change anything, except where we were. The spot we were in is densely timbered, doesn’t have a ton of elk, and the bugling isn’t exactly something that flows like the plentiful river we were camped by. I’m the first one to say getting out of your comfort zone is good for you, and here I was definitely out of my comfort zone. I’m also the first one to say to make the most out of your time though. These out-of-state trips are long and taxing on multiple fronts. Putting myself in areas that play more to my strengths as a bowhunter, that being spot and stalk, should be somewhat on my radar. And if not that, then areas that have denser populations of elk. Sometimes I do hard things just to do them, and sometimes that bites me in the ass. This was one of those times.
The next few hunts I have are ones that I am SUPER excited about. First up is rifle October bear in Arizona. That’s a hunt where I essentially became a bear hunter and it means a whole lot to me. My wife, daughter, dog, brother, and friends will be with me one an off throughout the week. A good fall hunting camp with bear meat in the cooler sounds like it would hit the spot just right at this point in my season.
After that I’m heading back to Colorado. Not for elk though. I’ll be joining my buddy Jace Bauserman for a treestand archery whitetail hunt in November. This is something I’ve never done before, but a hunt that my eagerness is soaring through the roof about. Jace has been sending me trail cam pics and everything. To say the least, the stoke is HIGH.
After the whitetail hunt, it’ll be time to enjoy time with family for the holidays before January archery coues deer and javelina in Arizona. A glorious time of year. Hope you all have been out there getting after. Fall has just started. Make the most out of it!
Books
Copyright 2019 Dialed In Hunter
Design by NXNW.
