Fairplay – Binoculars pressed tight against his brow, Mark Lamb watched tall trees grow from the darkness, great blobs that sprouted limbs when a thin line of light began etching the mountains far to the east.
“Look down there, along the edge of those willows. See those shapes moving. That’s part of the herd,” he said.
Lamb, district wildlife manager for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, was a man on a mission. His vehicle tucked up a side road, he was on guard for a potential game law violation. The three dozen or so elk grazing 500 yard below had inadvertently baited the trap.
The veteran warden figuratively had put the herd to bed the previous evening, opening day of the Colorado big game hunting season. Thing was, Lamb had a hunch someone else was watching, too.
“There’s a guy here with a history of violations, and I expect we’ll see him any minute now,” he said.
That minute grew to 10, then 15, then 30 as the light grew to accommodate visibility with the naked eye. The elk drifted like ghosts into the forest.
“Guess he’s not going to show,” Lamb declared, turning the ignition.
On an adjacent county road, the animals suddenly reappeared, spooking ahead of Lamb’s vehicle before leaping a fence. Most were cows, but the herd included at least three legal bulls that posed like statues in a bachelor group just 100 yards away.
Lamb drove past, then turned around to see the pickup of his suspect approaching from the opposite direction. After a brief discussion, the hunter plodded off in pursuit of the elk, leaving the warden to wonder what might have occurred if the man had been first to sight the elk from the road, where shooting is illegal.
“On one hand, we may have prevented something bad from happening. On the other …” he said, his voice trailing off at the prospect of nailing a known miscreant in this eternal game of cat-and-mouse.
A couple of hours and 1,000 vertical feet farther uphill, Lamb’s patrol took a more appealing turn beneath the towering humps of the Buffalo Peaks, a wilderness area noted for a high ratio of bull elk.
A flash of bright orange from an aspen-clad ridge materialized into three figures, two laboring to control a heavy game cart, the third clearing a path through fallen trees.
Andy Johnson of Arvada had bagged a 5-pointer higher up the ridge late the previous day, only scant minutes and a few yards from where his brother, Tim, shot a similar bull. Now the hardest part of the hunt was at hand.
With their father, Ray, and cousins David Boonstra and Michael Dowell, the brothers had realized every elk enthusiast’s dream: quick, clean kills early in the hunt not terribly far from a road, a heady preamble to lots of juicy steaks on cold winter nights.
It was a textbook scenario that delighted hunter and monitor alike.
“Thanks for helping us with our herd management objectives,” Lamb quipped, only partially in jest.
The Johnsons had been twice blessed, first by drawing licenses for the quality first season in one of the state’s most desirable hunt areas. Unit 49, encompassing the towering Mosquito Range, is favored both for its elk population and proximity to the Front Range and increasingly populous Summit County.
This unit, indeed all the hunt zones surrounding the broad expanse of South Park, has reached a leveling of its elk population in keeping with DOW’s aim to bring herds into better balance with the range.
Despite a blustery Saturday night storm, these lucky hunters opened the season to generally mild weather and no perceptible movement of animals. Although high peaks glistened with a cake’s frosting of white, the snow line barely reached to 11,000 feet. In Fairplay before dawn, the thermometer registered a balmy 31 degrees.
A more serious snowstorm that swept across the state Tuesday generally came too late to aid this first hunt. But this midweek storm, along with another front expected Friday, should set the stage for the more intense nine-day second segment for both deer and elk that starts Saturday – along with two later hunts that extend through Nov. 19.
It will be a month marked by exciting times and momentous decisions. But before any hunter decides to take the wrong shot, he might consider who might be watching.
Charlie Meyers can be reached at 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
