hwqile I’m down at Tejon ranch chasing hogs, I’m gonna let my buddy from Montana, DJ Rankosky tell you all a story complete with pictures, about a couple of bull elk he has gotten to know over the years on his trail cameras:
One of the things I like to do with my trail cams is hike them into some remote basins and set them up on wallows and springs. Obviously I get some pretty neat elk pictures and bear pictures, but I am more surprised at what I don’t get. Not one picture of a lion, lynx, wolverine, or other small carnivores like weasels or martens.
Like I said, I get lots of elk, and two bulls stirred my interest in the summer of 2007, one I dubbed “toad sticker” and the other “thirds”. The “toad sticker” bull had a freakishly long left second tine, it stuck out to the side like a sword. Overall he was a nice six, long main beams but very narrow, not being 36 inches wide. “Thirds” was a nice bull, the big dog in the basin; his third tines were much longer than any other bull I had ever seen in this country. They never showed up together, but “thirds” had a little tag-along rag horn that was always with him. Both bulls played into archery season 2007, but “toad sticker” is the most interesting story.
My buddies and I were on the second day of one of our usual weekend over-nighters. We were hunting two basins to the south of where I had the bulls on camera and were heading back toward our trucks pretty much beaten. Sitting down, filling our water bottles, bugles started ringing out above us, two bulls, bugling right on top of each other. I had obligations back home to get to, so I told me buddies, good luck, let me know if we need to pack them out tomorrow, and I headed up the packers trail. They were going to keep the wind and bushwhack straight to the bulls.
Well, as luck would have it, the packers trail looped up and back right under the two screamers. I can’t see them as I am stuck in an alder patch, but they couldn’t be 80 yards up the hillside. I hopped up on a root wad of a wind-thrown tree to see over the alder and asses the situation. There they are, 5 feet apart, screaming in each other’s face. What a sight. One turned his head, and WHOA, it’s “toad sticker”!
I fumble around in my pockets for my little camera to get a picture. Just then they start fighting! Major rumble, not just pushing and shoving. I get a couple pictures taken, jump down, and knocked an arrow. This is my chance to move in, right?
Let me tell you, next time you try to get close to two fighting elk, know that you are risking your life. I started up that packers trail trying to get to the end of this idiotic alder to where I could see them. They wouldn’t be more than 40 yards away from there. You could feel the ground shaking from those two behemoths throwing each other around the hillside. I was ten yards from the end of the alder, ten yards from glory. Then I heard them come apart and one is running. Coming like a train right at me. I had to enough time to kneel down and see this bull blast into the alders, head down, legs and feet flailing, dirt flying. Right past me, nearly over the top of me, that left second sword missed my shoulder by mere inches. I literally ate dirt coming off that elk. Down the trail and over hill he went. Crushing trees and brush all the way, I could hear him going clear down toward the creek. Now the other bull, a descent six, is trotting down the hill to, just to make sure “toad sticker” is gone, I guess. He pops his head into the alder, but won’t show me any vitals. I am shaking like a leaf now, he zeroes in on me and then bolts. It was all over in a flash.
I didn’t see him ever again that year, or on my cameras during the summer of 2008. “Thirds” had disappeared as well. That is the worst part of trail cameras. I always wonder what happens to them. I want to know if someone harvested them, did a lion or wolves kill them, did they succumb to winter on a snowy ridge somewhere, or did they just move off to new country.
As luck would have it, at the end of this past rifle season, I was talking with a guy who was uncharacteristically forthcoming about where he was hunting. He was hunting 3 basins to the north of where I keep my cameras. I knew it well as I had hunted there occasionally. He told me he saw a giant bull way up in a slide. He got a quick look at it through binocs and said it had a third main beam sticking out the left side. I just grinned, because I knew what he saw.
