2011 New Mexico Elk Hunt - Urraca WMA

I actually already posted this all on one of the hunting forums that I frequent live as it was happening (for the most part anyway), but I probably should get it posted on my blog so I can keep up with everything all in one place.  For the most part I'm just going to copy and paste, so I might have some past vs. present tense gramatical errors, but please bear with me.  It's also going to be a novel.

My friend Ben went with me, he's about 15 years younger than me, so I'm counting on him to help pack some loads out hopefully if we get lucky. He was with me on my New Mexico elk hunt last year and was dumb enough to sign up to go back with me again this year. Went grocery shopping and ended up buying $185 of junk food pretty much, but based on last year's New Mexico hunt I know we will be too tired to do any cooking when we get back to camp so the only thing we are going to have to heat up to eat is we bought a few cans of soup for evening meals.

I have a packer lined out if I get one on the ground too far back, and I talked to him on the phone today and he said that the 3rd hunt week is going on right now and pretty much everyone is striking out and going home early. Most are saying they haven't even seen any animals. I'm going to be hunting the Urraca WMA and it's only 13,000 acres so it's not like you can really go somewhere else if the animals aren't there so sounds like most folks are just packing it in early. This sounds like both good news and bad news to me, I picked this unit and these hunt dates based on drawing odds and pretty good success rates the last several years, but last years success rates came out after I already drew my tag and the 3rd hunt ended up with a 70% success rate last year while the 4th hunt (the date of my hunt this year) ended up with a 10% success rate last year. With the 3rd hunt date being a bust this year, maybe that will mean that my hunt dates will be better. Some weather is supposed to be hitting tomorrow that will hopefully help to change things around there.

I setup a photobucket mobile account so I was able to take pictures and upload them while I'm there as well if the cell coverage cooperated which it didn't very often. 

I've been working out pretty hard over the summer and fall and hopefully I'll be ready to tackle the steep elevation gains waiting for me this weekend. I'll be camped right around 8,000' and I expect to be working up in the 9,500' - 10,000' elevation range to be into the elk and I might even end up over the 11,000' mark if we end up having to work all the way to the back of the WMA.

I've never stepped foot or even laid eyes on this property before, everything I know about it has come from talking to folks on the phone and looking at maps and google earth. I feel like I know it pretty well from the time spent looking at it on google earth though!

Here's a overhead look at the WMA.

Here's some elevation shots from google earth.  North side - looking East.  The designated campsite is that little brown patch to the right side of the road before you get to the base of the mountains.

There are 10 bull elk tags for this 5 day hunt as well as 10 mule deer tags for a hunt going at the same time. There is no motorized travel allowed other than driving into the designated parking spot and there is a road that runs north and south about 1/2 mile to the west of the mountain front. There are several old logging roads, but they are off limits to anything but horses and people on foot.

Here's the center - still looking East.  If you look right in the middle at the base of the mountain you can see a small pond that we ended up hunting over one morning.

Here's the South side - still looking East.  This is where I expected to spend most of my time hunting based on looking things over on google earth, but when it was all said and done we only hunted here one evening.

Here's the end result of our hunting excursions.  We scouted one day to try to help get us acclimatized to the altitude and then hunted for four full days and then killed my elk the last morning so we were there for 5 1/2 days.  We covered a total of 51.4 miles and had a total of 12,450' of elevation gain over the time we were there.  Here are the tracks downloaded from my GPS and placed on the map showing where we went.  The long straight lines on the left of the picture aren't real tracks but where I turned the GPS off at camp and then back on again when we were at a trailhead. Also a lot of the tracks were out and back and just show up as one line on the map, but we covered both directions. You can figure out the real tracks pretty easy though.  We felt like we pretty much got the area covered when it was all said and done!

The first real test of the trip was just getting from our house out to pavement with our trailer!  It rained pretty good overnight before the day we were leaving and then was still raining the day we were leaving.  With 2 miles to get to pavement pulling a 29' travel trailer I got a little bit worried whether I was going to make it or not.  Here's the truck hitched up to the trailer in front of the house.

Here's a shot looking back on the county road once I got the trailer to pavement!

We pulled into the campsite just after midnight and then did a little bit of scouting on foot trying not to wear ourselves out, but get a feel for the area at the same time.  Found a little raghorn elk shed while we were out looking around.

Came across this crazy looking bear sunning himself on a rock. Almost looked like he was stuck or something. We got about 150 yards away and he looked at us, but didn't ever get up.

Here's a couple other pictures from the day we spent scouting.

Some very pretty country.  Put in a total of 7 miles and 1,550' elevation gain when it was all said and done on the day spent scouting.  We didn't carry our packs though so it seemed pretty easy going.  We saw 2 cow elk and a small raghorn right at sunset, but other than that it was pretty slim pickings on elk sign.

Of course the guys who just hung around at camp saw 3 nice bulls and a dozen cows from the camper while we were out scouting. They all have deer tags, so we decided to go after them opening morning.

Got where we wanted to be about 15 minutes before shooting light, and had about a dozen cows in on us right before daylight. Several were less than 50 yards away. Saw what I'm assuming were the 3 bulls from the night before getting shot at by folks in 3 or 4 different vehicles as they crossed the road heading our way.  They were well over a mile away when we saw them.  I don't think I'm exaggerating when I saw they got off 20 shots at those bulls as they crossed the road. There were actually 4 bulls and they ended up shooting 1 of them, and maybe wounded another.  We moved along the ridge line to try to intercept the 3 bulls that made it through the gauntlet, but lost them.

We kept going along the ridge that runs north to south and covered just under 8 miles on the day and climbed 2,700' of elevation when it was all said and done.  Here's where we stopped and ate lunch at the south end of the ridgeline overlooking the south canyon.

We stayed up high until 25 minutes after sunset and with nothing moving at all we headed back down to try to use at least a tiny bit of light with 1,000' of elevation to drop through the brush. Of course we get back to camp and several folks saw our headlamps coming down the mountain in the dark and thought we were crazy. Even worse the said that right at the end of shooting light 3 bulls came over the saddle to the left of that picture in the oak brush. Coming down in the dark i was thinking we should have left out earlier, I guess we left 5 minutes too early. Seems like they must read our play book and know where we are going to be in advance or something.

Here's where we sat that first evening looking over the oak brush in the saddle.  The oak brush was about 225 yards and across on the opposite ridge ranged from 400 - 500 yards. This is the spot where we were sitting the evening on opening day and the bulls came out in the oak brush after we left.

Here's a picture of camp after everyone cleared out after the weekend. If you look at the snowy ridge to the left of the front of the trailer that's where the bulls were supposed to have been on night before the opener and opening night when we left out too early.

This picture is taken from that ridge looking back at camp. You can see the road coming down and where it makes a bend and gets to the trees just over the top of the ridge is where our camp was.

Here's the view from up on the ridge above the pond in the center of the property.  That's where we were on the second morning.  If you look close you can see the pond right in the center of the picture. 

We thought we had the skinny on a 6 X 0 that one of the deer hunters at camp saw yesterday, but we got skunked this morning. Pretty view though!

Here's a closeup of the pond.  It was pretty, but not much activity around it.  We didn't see anything all morning.  We thought we might have an offhand chance if some bulls decided to run the gauntlet and cross the road heading for the hills this morning, but there were 7 vehicles staggered out along the road and either the bulls crossed earlier in the dark or after getting shot at yesterday figured out a safer place to cross.

Tried a different spot that afternoon.  Sat watching the oak brush in an area where we thought the elk would come out right at sunset.  They never came through on their part though.  This ended up being our easiest day of the hunt when it was all said and done.  Just 5.5 miles on the GPS and 1,550' of elevation gain.  Here's a picture of where we sat that evening.

The next day was the biggest day of the hunt.  We had the line from some other hunters on some elk up on a small pond that had been in there pretty thick. We woke at 3:00 am and actually started up the trail a little later than I wanted at 3:50. At 1.25 miles in we came to a fork in the trail and started to go left like the other hunters had said, but after going up the trail another 1/4 mile or so we second guessed ourselves and went back and took the right fork. I really should have sprung the $10 for a nice hard copy Topo map of the area instead of trying to talk to them with patchwork Topo maps on my phone. I navigated right to the map se had talked about on the map on my phone, but it was the wrong pond. 6 miles one way in and 2,700' of elevation gain walking through up to 8" deep snow to get to a frozen pond. Oh well, live and learn. It was really pretty though.  Here's the walk in.

Here's the pond we worked so hard to get to.  Frozen solid.  Ben had a thermometer with him and it was 19 degrees at the pond that morning.

We had it figured out where the right pond must be, and headed back around the back of the property to find it. We got the right around noon with 11 miles on the boots, again with much of it spent trudging through snow. We were tired. We hung out and dried out and ate lunch and scouted around for good spots to sit. Someone had made a litte rock blind about 150 yards above the pond. Here's the view from there.

One bright spot in the day was that we met up with another hunter on horseback while we were on the backside of the property and he said that he had been at the right pond that morning and he hadnt seen anything, so all the side trip cost us was a lot of wasted effort. He was VERY suprised to see us all the way at the back of the property, none of the other hunters had been back there before that day even on horses.

Since the elk hadn't been the that morning, we decided not to sit the pond that evening, but hunt the oak brush over the ridge from it instead.  Here's the view we we sat that evening.  Recurring theme, sitting watching oak brush hoping to see elk start feeding before dark and hiking home in the dark disappointed.

By the time we got back to the truck we had 14.6 hard miles in with over 3,500' of elevation gain and much of it spent slogging through 6" to 8" deep snow and even worse some 4" to 6" crusty snow where you break through on every step.

At some point we talked ourselves out of going back to the right pond this morning and tried another spot on the north corner of the property where the elk were supposed to travel from the crop fields back into cover in the mornings. There was a good chance that they would be on private property, but at this point we were excited to just have the chance to actually see some elk.

We slept in and left out at 5:30 this morning and got setup in a good spot about 30 minutes before shooting light and just before shooting light we actually saw an elk! It was too dark to see antlers, but based on the fact that it was by itself I was going to assume it was a bull. It was 600 yards away and moving south so I decided to go after it. About that time we saw 20+ elk with several bulls moving off onto private property. We were distracted for a second and the lone elk we had seen disappeared into the pinons. I told Ben to watch the elk on private to see what they would do and I went after the lone elk.

I sidehilled for about 1/2 mile and thought I had lost it, but I caught a glimpse of tan hide moving through the pinons. I waited for a bit thinking at a little draw, thinking it might come my way, but after a bit I decided it wasn't going to and started sidehilling again.

I got to a spot with an opening and caught sight of it again, it was a bull! At first I thought it was a raghorn, but I'm pretty sure it was a 5 or 6 point on the left side with a pretty nice main beam and nothing on the right side. It was 450 yards away and moving pretty quickly and I didn't take the shot. He obviously knew I was there and was moving out. The worst thing was that he was closer to where our travel trailer was parked than he was to me. On our way out I ranged it from where he had been the last time I saw him before he disappeared into the pinons again and he was 355 yards from camp! According to my GPS I walked 5.8 miles that morning and a bull went within 400 yards from camp about 30 minutes after sunrise. Crazy. It seems like we were putting in too much effort, maybe we should start road hunting!

Even worse, some guys on horses went back to the pond where we were last night and shot a little 5x5 this morning. Wrong place at the wrong time.

That night we ended up going up pretty much the last spot that we hadn't hit on the WMA, the canyon on the very south side of the area. We headed up several hours before sunset with no intentions but to hike up until we could find a good lookout spot and then wait for dark to see if anything would come out. We got going pretty good and about 1/2 mile up the trail we got on a track of a wounded elk. I'm assuming a bull, but it wasn't an exceptionally massive track and there were no dew claw marks in the snow so I won't guarantee it. The season was for bulls only though so someone really messed up if they wounded a cow. The track was at least a day old, but the snow made it pretty easy to track and it was staying right on the trail so that made it even easier.

We followed the blood trail for over a mile and found one spot where it had stood there for a while and then instead of following the switchbacks, it had just gone right up the side of the hill so I didn't think it could have been hurt too terribly bad. Then I came to a spot right in the middle of the trail were it had laid down and there was a pretty good amount of blood there and I wasn't so sure.

Here's a picture where it laid down. Looks like it was bleeding from the right hindquarter. I know the snow makes it seem like more blood, but it looked like a lot of blood to me. It was walking on all 4 feet and when walking there was usually 2 or 3 drops of blood on every 4th step. Hopefully it's still alive somewhere.

We ended up following the blood trail for at least a mile and a half and that elk was still moving steadily up the hill. We never did see a good lookout spot and it was pretty close to sunset so we decided to quit the trail and started heading back down hoping that we might have a chance to see something moving. I was cow calling and bugled a few times but didn't get any responses.

It was right at the end of shooting light and we were going down the switchback that we had skipped following the blood trail on the way up and I let out a cow call while we were walking and a bull lit up about 200 yards off the trail. I tried some more calls and never could get him to talk again and it was too dark to see him even if he did so we headed on back down for another unsuccessful day spent on the mountain. We logged 12.5 miles for the day and 2,700' of elevation gain. Again, it seemed like we were putting in too much effort. We had followed that blood trail up to 9,800' and then on the way back down we hear the bull at 9,300'. If we hadn't been following the blood trail up the side of the hill instead of taking the switchbacks would the bull have piped up when we walked by earlier? Lots of second guessing.

We debated back and forth on where to go on the last morning. Since another bull was shot at the pond that morning we figured the elk wouldn't be back in there the next day and it would be pretty discouraging to hike 3 miles back there and not see anything. Our packer that we had lined up was also going to be unavailable that afternoon and I really didn't want to have to stick around an extra day if I got a bull down back there either. We had seen elk in the front corner the morning before and really had the best opportunity of the week there and no shots had been fired to keep them from coming back so that's where we decided to head in the morning.

We had scouted out a few good spots to setup the morning before during the daylight and had marked it on the GPS so we decided to get there at least 30 minutes before shooting light. We got to sleep in late and headed out at 5:30 since the spot we had marked was only a mile from camp. The spot we picked out was right at the edge of the pinions at the base of the mountain because once they got to the pinions it was almost impossible to really be able to move in on them so we wanted to intercept them before they got there.

We ended up getting to our spot 45 minutes before shooting light and hunkered down and tried to be as quiet as possible. For a second the wind got behind us and I worried everything was going to be for naught, but then it turned and started blowing right in our face. The sagebrush was so tall in front of our spot that we had to stand up to get a good view. We had a pinion pine for a backstop and started glassing about 10 minutes before shooting light. We adjusted our spot a little as it got shooting light and heard some elk moving in the pinons already. I heard an antler click on a branch not very far away. I decided to try to go after them and headed in their direction. I let out a soft cow call and got an answer less than 50 yards away, but the pinons were so thick I couldn't see anything. I tried to follow for about 100 yards and cow called a few more times, but didn't see or hear anything and decided to go back to the original spot.

One reason for optimisim that morning was that a front was coming in and we were hoping the elk would be feeding later that morning so it was pretty disappointing to have a group of elk move in before shooting light. The big herd that has sticking to the private land was still out on the alfalfa field though and we thought there still might be a chance. They started milling around and a car parked out on the highway and that seemed to bother them a little. They worked right then left then started moving out and were staying on the wrong side of the fence.

About that time I saw a cow elk headed our way and it was already on the right side of the fence! Then I saw a decent bull following behind her!! Our plan might actually work! He wasn't a monster but after all the hard work and lack of any real opportunity all week any legal bull was going to be in trouble.

They were about 400 yards away and moving south and where we were setup I was thinking they might cross about 200 yards out in front of us. Looking some more there was also a raghorn following back about 100 yards behind the cow and the larger bull.

We got setup and started watching the opening where they were going to have to cross. I had my shooting sticks up and was on my knees to stay above the sagebrush. It seemed like an eternity and they still weren't showing up! I was a little worried about the cow being out front that she might spot us and turn back before we got a chance on the bull. I was so tempted to try to stand up and see if I could spot them, but stayed put.

Out pops the cow in the lead VERY close. She is looking straight at us! We stay perfectly still, but we have absolutely nothing for cover in front of us, just the pinion behind us to block our outline. She looks for a good 30 or 40 seconds and then starts walking a few yards then stops and looks, then walks a few yards then stops and looks for what seems like forever. The wind is perfect and she knows something is odd, but can't figure us out. The bull is still no where to be seen. She ends up traveling about 30 yards and I'm barely able to see her in my peripheral vison but I don't dare even move my head.

Finally the bull shows up and is just walking by completely oblivious. He's a 5X5, nothing impressive, but a decent bull and plenty of meat on him. He's so close I don't even try to stop him, just take the shot as he is walking steadily. It's a solid hit, but he's still on his feet and moving, so I chamber another round and hit him again. He goes down. Right before he goes down he takes a breath and you can see the exhalation going out 2 seperate holes in his opposite side. It's over. All the effort put in over the previous 5 days and we now have a bull on the ground less than 1 mile from camp as the crow flies. The GPS reads 1.15 miles and less than 200' of elevation gain for the day! When I went over to where the bull was down I used my rangefinder and it was a whopping 65 yard shot.

It's about 20 minutes after sunrise but the sky is overcast and there are a few snow flurries starting to show up. We got the pictures taken and started working on getting him quartered up and packed out. There is one spot where the road ends up only .76 miles from where he went down so we'll go ahead and pack him out on our backs. It's pretty open and slightly downhill too.

Here's the glory shots.

Here's Ben with me.

And the start of the packout.

We found couple small elk sheds and a couple mule deer shed antlers as well over the course of the week.  Here's a picture of all of them together.

When it was all said and done we ended up with over 51 miles on the boots and almost 12,500' of elevation gain.  Most of that with 30+ lbs packs on and some of it trudging through deep snow.  Lots of work, but the end result was worth it.

I think that's about it.  If anyone needs any information about Urraca WMA let me know.

Nathan