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Wyoming Elk Hunt 2006
~ Bill Lauenstein (10/12/2006 @ 11:06 AM)
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My first elk kill



Packing it out it took 10 hours to get back to base camp.



We had a great elk hunt beginning September 29, 2006. We hired Wyoming Wilderness outfitters to guide us for our first elk. Our group consisted of myself, Deb, Dennis Nelson, Rhonda, Don and Don's friend George.
Landed in the Teton mountains at Jackson Hole WY. Drove to Dubois, WY. and met up with the rest of the party and outfitters. We left on the 3 hour mule ride back to our wilderness camp on Saturday morning. There was a total of 24 mules hauling all us and gear for the planned 6 day hunt. The camp was diffently in the mddle of nowhere. We got settled in on Saturday afternoon and prepared for the openning hunt on Sunday morning. Dennis, I and Deb got assigned Brian as our quide and we set out at 5:00am. It is pretty cool and a bit scary to be riding your mule on mountain passes 200 feet straight down when it is pitch black out. You tend to put a lot of trust in that mule and guide. We did have a run in the a small grizzly bear on the trail, the quide took out his 357 pistol just in case the bear made the right move and left the trail, we proceeded to our hunting spot. After a 2hour ride we tied up the mules and walked to the final area to hunt. The elk only move in the open valleys in the early morning and very late daylite. The idea is to get up high and look for the herd. The bigger the number of cows, most likely the bigger the bull. We had walked for no more then an hour when we decided to site down and view a large valley below. Deb and I were not sitting 30 seconds when she said, "there's a bull". I looked down and sure enough there was a bull elk, not the biggest, but not bad. I could see it was a 5x5. The quide came by us and we agreed that is was a shooter. Deb had the range finder and read out 355 yards. A long way for my 3006. We used the shooting sticks to help steady the gun. It was a long shot, but I did make a shot and he dropped. I think I was more surprized then anyone that I actually hit it. Here we are, waited a year, spent over $5,000.00 to get there and I was done after less then 2 hours. I wasn't complaining, it just seamed to happen so fast. Spent the rest of the day getting the pack mules to the kill site, quartering the meat, head, cap, and because of the warmer weather. My guide and I did not get back to camp until midnight, Sunday nite. It was an awesome hunt. We ended up with four bulls, three 5x5s, one very nice 6x6.
I would diffently recoommend this outfitter.

Bill

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Our mule train to camp.
camp
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