"Donnie's Bull" coming in to our set-up in 2008
Tuesday morning was cool and cloudy and we were excited to be in a new area. This area was particularly special to Donnie…in 2008 he missed a big 6X6 bull in this canyon. Last year, we returned and called the same bull in to 60 yards, but Donnie wasn’t able to get a shot. We’ve nicknamed this bull “Donnie’s Bull” for obvious reasons and as we walked down the ridge towards his bedding area, a familiar bugle screamed out at our cow calls. We scrambled for a good set-up, and in typical fashion for “Donnie’s Bull”, he was on top of us in a matter of seconds. The wind was a little “iffy” due to the cloud cover, so we did our best to set up with the most consistent thermals. Unfortunately, 60 seconds after it all started, it was over. The bull stormed up the hill to 50 yards and stopped to rake a tree. He hooked the tree twice before his nose went up and he was gone.
We climbed the ridge and made a complete circle around the basin, making sure we were far below the bull with a better wind. We also knew the chances of calling this bull back in to a set-up was minimal, but he was a big bull and we weren’t ready to give up just yet. We dropped into the canyon about 3/4 of a mile below our original encounter and let out a bugle. The bull answered just upstream, obviously moving down canyon away from our previously botched set-up. I stayed up on the sidehill to call as Donnie moved into the bottom and shadowed the bull as he continued moving down the canyon. He was fired up and screaming every 30 seconds, but we weren’t able to pull him in that last 60 yards Donnie needed for a shot. The bull finally got ahead of us and moved out of earshot down the canyon, still bugling like crazy. We decided to back out and let him bed down with a plan to come back that evening. As we were climbing out of the hole, a different bull bugled right below us. With the wind now consistently pulling up the hill, we set up and began calling. The bull was heading to his bedding area and moved up the ridge parallel to us, about 200 yards away. Donnie got a good look at him with the binos as he moved across an opening and figures he was a 330″ type bull. A true Idaho monster. The first bull we called in was a 300+ bull as well, so we knew where we would be spending the next few days!
Home for the next few days
We hiked back up to the truck and retrieved a trail camera and dropped back down a logging road the bulls had been travelling daily. Finding a nice, 10″ pine tree along the cut-bank, we placed our cable around the tree and padlocked our steel housing to the cable before placing the camera in the housing and padlocking it shut. You can never be too careful! We backed out and drove 1/2 mile down the road to set up our tent.
The evening hunt was quiet. The bulls hadn’t moved back into the draw and we hoped it was due to the storm that was moving in, and not our activity in there that morning. We drove to a canyon on the other side of camp and hiked a couple ridges looking for bugles over there. We heard one bugle at the top of the drainage just before dark, but it was quiet other than that.
As we cooked our Mountain Houses at the tent that night, a bull bugled 3-4 times across the canyon behind camp, opposite the area where the big bulls had been that morning. We decided to hunt the basin above the big bull drainage the next morning, hoping to find where they were going to bed.
Wednesday morning brought rain and wind, which would be great for our morning hunt. The rain quieted the dry pine needles and leaves and allowed us to slip quietly into the basin above camp. However, after 3 hours, we hadn’t heard a bugle or seen a fresh elk track. We did find a nice little draw that had some recent rubs and wallows, but nothing from the last 2-3 days.
Confused at where the bulls could have disappeared to, we decided to go back and check the trail camera. Bingo! “Donnie’s Bull” had walked the logging road at 9:30 the night before. He had come up out of the draw and posed for several pictures before turning around and returning to the draw. He had to still be in there and was probably just quiet due to the inconsistent weather. We decided to leave them alone for a few days and come back to hunt them later. There was absolutely no human activity in the entire area so we were confident we could come back in 3-4 days and get back on them. Here are a few pictures of pictures of the trail camera bull taken from the viewfinder of the camera with our cell phone (quality is poor, but you get the idea). And this is the smaller of the 2 bulls!
Dave Perry was on his way up to camp to join us that night, so we headed back to our original camp to meet up with him there and give this new area a chance to settle down a little.