LEADVILLE — From my perch on a slope beneath the western brow of the Mosquito Range, I can see seven peaks above 14,000 feet in elevation. But not one single elk.
It is a marvelous vista that includes Colorado’s three tallest — Elbert, Massive and Harvard — each with a rapidly shrinking drizzle of snow barely clinging from a week-old storm.
Mountains don’t move, but apparently most of the elk have, beating feet for higher ground to escape hunting pressure and, perhaps, unaccustomed heat. A chilly 18 degrees at daybreak is vaulting toward bikini weather, a balmy 63 degrees by midafternoon.
All the elk in the countryside soon will be shaded up in dense timber, provided they haven’t reached that destination already. A three-quarters moon that cast a night-light glow over the upper Arkansas River Valley allowed animals to graze by night, snooze by day, a practiced strategy when hunters are prowling about.
Absent nighttime cloud cover, deer and elk are free, by the light of the silvery moon, to set whatever schedule they choose. This second hunt period that began Saturday and ends next Sunday — most popular of four segments — thus far has not been blessed with what most might consider good hunting weather.
That earlier moisture has turned to dust, leaving marginal clues as to when tracks might have been made. Most appear to be pointing uphill.
“Animals are scattered all over, all the way above timberline,” observed Tom Martin, veteran warden for the Leadville district. “There may not be much food up there, but no hunters, either.”
An earlier predawn gunshot from the slopes below Mount Elbert had sprung Martin into action. Literally jumping the gun, a hunter shot a spike bull, not legal in Colorado, fled the scene but had been apprehended when he attempted to sneak back to join companions.
Now the woods have settled into that familiar midmorning quiet when successful hunters are tending to their kill and the survivors, both deer and elk, are hunkered in gnarly enclaves where most folks don’t go.
Eric Anderson, my hunting companion, has discovered just such a place, launching a long march through a tangle of aspen and spruce. At the far end, I have established a hide beside a weathered stump that forms an effective shooting station.
Minutes pass into a half hour; nothing moves. Then a lone cow elk bolts from the timber 250 yards away, trots stiff-legged up a side hill, pauses briefly, then disappears over a rise, headed up-slope.
During an early-afternoon lull when animals and too many hunters seek the shade, a man in a maroon truck continues what has been a determined, day-long road hunting drill. The truck moves up the main gulch, then back again, now squirting off onto various side roads, seldom pausing on what seems an endless circuit, or at least until the gas runs out.
Along his march, Anderson jumps a six-point bull, “the largest bull I ever had a chance to shoot.” The animal stops broadside at 100 yards, posing a perfect target. Anderson is toting a cow tag.
Next morning, fortune smiles on the Carbondale resident when a herd of a dozen elk, at least half of them young bulls, appears far downslope, then turns toward him. He selects a cow and ends his hunt with a single shot.
A dry-weather pattern that seems much like last year, when elk success declined substantially, has made it’s mark on the early part of the hunt. Still, there seems to be considerable evidence that hunters are faring reasonably well.
Steve Bobitsky, who processes game animals at his Rocky Mountain Meats shop in Wheat Ridge, reported a brisk business Sunday.
“We’ll really know by Wednesday,” Bobitsky said of a pattern by which most hunters leave the woods after three or four days.
Those that stay — or return for the coming weekend — may benefit from a storm that dumped snow across most of the state’s prime hunting zones.
Bikini season officially is over, and elk should be headed back downhill.
