Made it with 10 minutes to spare. Glancing up from my watch, I soon located the craggy rock pile I had discovered on an earlier exploratory hunt into the basin. It would be my base to watch the nearly vertical, open slope above for signs of elk at first shooting light.
Adding another layer and gulping down an energy bar finalized my setup as I settled prone with my rifle nestled in my backpack and pointing upward. After a few zaps with my SIG Sauer KILO6K HD rangefinding binocular, I felt confident that no shot would extend more than 450 yards. Relaxing my eyes for a moment, I lifted the binocular back to my eyes to begin scanning through the gray haze of daybreak.
That’s when I saw the first bull step from the far side of the timber to graze across the face. Was the last day of my hunt going to be my lucky day?
NARROW WINDOW
As I’ve added years to my well-used body, I’ve been blessed to be able to also increase my time in the field. That is a good thing, especially when it comes to hunting elk on public land with a DIY mindset. Over the course of my hunting career and particularly as I fine-tuned my public-land approach, I discovered a given amount of time is required to tag out when competing with the crowd. Public-land elk receive a tremendous amount
