JF Ranch
Well-known member
Upon returning home from my elk hunt in September, 1997, I wanted to get the story down before I forgot too much of it. Once I got started, it took me 2-3 months to finish it. I am a slow, methodical writer and I tend to work it over & over with revisions. I thought it was complete many times but something else would come to mind. After countless re-writes, I finally came to the point that it was complete.
Over the past dozen years, I have given many copies to friends and acquaintances who have shown an interest in the elk. Those who visit here and fail to notice the mount prove their ineligibility for the story!
I apologize for it's length, but here's my story and I'm stickin' to it!
It all started after Alex Wolfer, a good college friend and I had resumed correspondence in recent years. He lives in Riverton, Wyoming and has gone elk hunting for nearly 20 years with a group of friends in the Teton Wilderness, south of the Two Ocean Pass area near the southeast corner of Yellowstone Park. Last fall he invited me to come with them and sent me an application. I had reservations about sending it in because there is important ranch work at that time of year. I waited until the last possible day and with some encouragement from my wife, sent in the money (confident that it would be returned, since permits are so hard to get). Several weeks later...Bingo! 'On my very first try. The planning stage had begun and by mid September my ranch work was caught up and I was ready. Incidently, I have been caught up with my work all fall since I got back too, which has made me wonder what I have done with the extra two weeks each fall all these years.
I took a good friend along with me. Dave Jones has hunted twice before but has never gotten a shot at a bull. He has sent for an elk permit each year and although he didn't draw a permit this time, he will continue to apply, hoping to get another chance. He is always a handy guy to have around, but also has lots of good hunting/camping equipment and in addition, a couple of good, young mules to try out. I even borrowed his new rifle for the job, a Browning bolt action S.S. 300 win mag. As we planned for this trip, I had told him that getting an elk didn't matter that much to me. A wilderness hunt such as this was a once in a lifetime experience and actually bagging an elk seemed secondary. However, I said to him several times, "I'm not making any predictions, but as lucky as I am, it wouldn't surprise me if I got a good one." As we traveled the 7 ½ hours to Riverton, Dave asked me if I was planning to take any elk, or wait for a big one. I hadn't thought about that much before and didn't really have an answer.
Seven of us and 14 pack mules left the trail head at Turpin Meadows and trailed up to the camp site two days early to set up camp and get ready. The others in our group, from Riverton were, Alex Wolfer, a mortgage banker who was my official guide; Brian Ballard, an optometrist (he is another college friend of mine); Jim Gores, a civil engineer; Dr. Mike Ford, an orthopedic surgeon and Dr. Jim Stockhouse, a dentist from Jackson. They and others unable to make it this year, form the group of close friends who have hunted together for those many years. Their camp life has been refined to a high degree. We took the finest of gourmet food and drink, but it was the laughter I enjoyed the most. An outfitter was hired to pack us in and out so we only had to care for our own horses and Dave's mules while at camp. It rained lightly on us most of the ride in but by night fall, we had set up a quick but wet camp. After we finished unpacking and setting up camp on Friday, we were ready to go on opening day, Saturday, September 20, 1997.
Before daylight, Alex, Dave and I rode high, up to the area Alex prefers to hunt, where we tied our horses and proceeded on foot. The elevation was around 9000 feet with heavy timber, but the many clearings (parks?) offered plentiful feed and cover. Even as a novice, I could see that this was good elk country. Probably not as rough as your favorite spots in the Bob, however. We quietly checked out each clearing as we moved through the timber. For months, I had been primed for lots of bugling, but this morning was quiet. We heard nothing.
After about 45 minutes of hunting, we crossed a long, narrow, open area which sloped gradually up to a rocky cliff on the south. A game trail wound it's way up through it, past the fallen rocks. We were moving westerly across it and just as we were about to re-enter the heavy timber, I glanced over my right shoulder and saw him below us, grazing as he came into view from behind a small knoll about 200 yards away. He was just like the pictures I'd seen with heavy antlers, so there was no question about taking him. My impulse was to drop down out of sight since he was coming slowly towards us, then take a careful shot as soon as he came into view. My two buddies froze standing straight up, urging me to shoot! Shoot him, John, he's a good one! They could see him but I couldn't because of the brush and downed timber. As I peeked up once, I saw him coming closer and told them to "Get Down!" They remained standing, impatiently telling me I'd better shoot.
In my crouched position, I finally saw only his shoulder and upper ribs as he came into my view between trees. I fired the first shot. He turned back, walking slowly while I sent two more shots before he stopped on the knoll and turned broadside. The fourth shot dropped him there, it was about 8:00 am. He was hit 3 of the four shots, none of which went clear through. He proved to be a heavy antlered six by six, with evidence of a seventh abnormal point which was broken off flush with the main beam. A lone bull that Alex estimated to be a 5 or 6 year old (my cousin, an avid hunter who spent two years working for an outfitter in this same area 25 years ago, has since estimated the age at 7 or 8, figuring that possibly he was either a year before or past his prime). After quartering and skinning out the cape, I stepped off roughly 150 steps from where I shot, to the point where the bull had dropped, possibly 125 yards to where he was first hit. I was able to locate two spent casings as a souvenir.
We returned to camp for a "celebratory" late breakfast before returning with the mules to pack him back to camp that afternoon. Davies' mules performed perfectly, not minding the smell of a fresh kill as we crashed through the timber back to camp. With the aid of modern technology Brian's G.P.S. reported 1.8 miles from camp to the kill site, but it was still a two hour ride.
Asked to describe the hunt, I simply say, "It was a piece of cake! We just shot the first thing we saw." He proved to be the only elk we saw as every one else in our camp drew a blank this trip. The weather was so nice and the grass so lush, we agreed that they were scattered, up in higher country. Other outfitters reported similar success rates.
Dr. Ford had packed a medical kit for years without having the opportunity to use it, until I came along. On Sunday morning, Dave and I were preparing breakfast for the others, most of whom had been out hunting. I was opening a package of bacon with Dave's recently sharpened pocket knife. I clumsily pushed the blade through the tough plastic wrapping and cut my left thumb fairly deeply. Mike returned from hunting shortly and proudly produced his kit of instruments. Having no deadener, it looked like I might have to bite a bullet to "tough" through the procedure, but Alex produced an old bottle of lidocaine from his bag of horse medications. With only a horse sized syringe and needle available, it deadened the area just fine and in no time Mike had me stitched up as good as if I had made an office call. We all got a laugh over this incident and although I'm sure I would have recovered without him, I am glad that we had a surgeon on board. Jim Stockhouse went through a fever which kept him out of commission for several days, as he only came out of his sack for an occasional meal. Dr. Ford attended to him as well, helping to get him back to normal.
Dave and I packed the meat and head out of the mountains on Monday. Leaving at 7:00 am, we packed up in the dark and rode in light rain most of the four hour ride on the trail. By the time we got to the pickup we were stiff from the damp cold and Dave could barely stand after dismounting. We made as quick a trip to Dubois as possible to leave the meat at a processor and the head at a taxidermist to be skinned out and salted. A few staples were picked up at the grocery store, a couple of quick phone calls home and we were headed back to the trail head. We arrived back to camp in the dark, shortly after 8:00 pm. Our buddies had held up supper, waiting for us and we dined on filet mignons soon after we put our tired horses and mules up for the night.
Although the other hunters continued to search for elk, the remaining days left in camp for Dave and me, were spent seeing the sights. Several of the others went with us to see Two Ocean Pass and fishing at Enos Lake on Tuesday, which was a beautiful warm day up near 80 degrees. Two Ocean Pass is a unique place where the Two Ocean Creek falls out of the mountains directly on the continental divide. It splits in two at that point, where the Atlantic Creek goes on for 3488 miles to the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Creek for 1353 miles to the Pacific. A wooden sign marks the spot calling it "The Parting of the Waters." We took pictures of the sign and of us straddling the divide before we made our way on to Enos Lake.
It is a pristine mountain lake with beautiful clear water, but ten years earlier, it suffered damage from a devastating high altitude tornado. Downing timber on both sides of the lake, it went for miles. Although the following year the Yellowstone fire burned through the area, we could still see the flattened trees all laying in the same direction. I have since seen aerial pictures of the area that show the dead trees lined up, but in a swirling pattern.
We caught a nice mess of cutthroat trout at Enos, releasing as many as we took back to camp for supper. We took a rough route back to camp over the top of the mountain. After a couple of hours trailing through thick timber, Brian suddenly shouted, "I lost my rifle!" It could have fallen from his scabbard any where along the way from Enos Lake. Retracing our steps in that country and finding it seemed impossible. We had just come up a very steep side hill and several of us had dismounted to lead our horses out of it. We agreed that it might have slid out on that slope, but if not, there would be no hope of ever finding it. Back tracking as best we could, we nearly gave up hope, when Jim Gores suddenly said, "Here it is!" I was confident that I knew the route that each of us took across that slope, but Jim had looked in a different spot and became the hero of the day!
Dave's 44th birthday was Wednesday the 24th. He and I celebrated it by riding to Hawk's Rest on the upper Yellowstone River Valley. After crossing the bridge, we ate our sack lunch near the ranger cabin. Approaching the cabin, we had hoped to have a visit with the ranger, but found him gone. A couple of rough looking horses tied outside however, was a sign that he wouldn't be gone long. Looking north from the valley, one can see peaks in Yellowstone Park, the snow capped Thunder Mountain to the south, and Yellowstone Point to the southwest. It is a beautiful spot. However, evidence of the terrible Yellowstone fire was present in all of the country where we camped, hunted and explored. When we returned to camp that afternoon, the others had built Dave a surprise birthday cake with only camp ingredients and lots of ingenuity. It was a great birthday party, one that he will remember for the rest of his life (the cake even tasted good!).
While the others made their final attempt to bag elk, Dave, Brian and I spent Thursday laying around camp. After we took down our camp on Friday morning, a young bull moose gave us quite a show as he passed by our campsite. He made a wallow and loitered around for more than 30 minutes just 200 feet from where we stood watching him and taking pictures. The outfitter was late in getting back up to us, so leaving them with their task, we headed back to the trail head at 2:00 pm. Alex, Brian, Dave and I spent the night with Jim S. at their beautiful new home in Jackson, since it would be late when our gear arrived at Turpin. We got there at about 9:30 pm, took care of our horses, got something to eat and did a little celebrating at the Cowboy Bar downtown. What a shock to our systems, plunging into the swirl of humanity again.
The next morning we loaded up, returned to Turpin Meadows to get our gear and headed back to Riverton. Along the way, we picked up the meat in Dubois and selected Dana Richardson, a taxidermist in Riverton to do the mount. That evening we met the spouses of Brian, Jim G. & Mike and visited the homes of Mike and Brian. Dave and I loaded up, left Riverton on Sunday at 5:00 am and were home by 12:30 pm. We were glad to be going home to our families and responsibilities, but in a way were sorry that a wonderful experience had come to an end. I resisted turning on the radio for several days not wanting to hurry the inevitable return, to the real world.
Two and a half months later I have a beautiful mount which reigns in our living room. My wife and I drove to Riverton to bring it home with our youngest son. We built our new home in 1992, with a vaulted ceiling in the living room. I thought that perhaps one day I would acquire a buffalo head or something to hang on the north open wall. Sure enough, only 5 years later, I have a magnificent trophy gracing that wall. It must have been fate all along. Dana Richardson did a beautiful job with the taxidermy and he informed us that this is to be his last year doing this work.
Alex unofficially scored him green at 321. Although this does not make the record book and there are lots of better bulls, I am still amazed at my luck. I know there are thousands of hopeful hunters who have hunted elk and have never had a chance at a bull like this. I feel a bit guilty to have had such luck before paying my dues as a hunter, but it couldn't have been done it if not for my good friends and being in the right place at the right time. I have been told that I might as well quit now because it is all down hill from here! Life is Good!
Over the past dozen years, I have given many copies to friends and acquaintances who have shown an interest in the elk. Those who visit here and fail to notice the mount prove their ineligibility for the story!
I apologize for it's length, but here's my story and I'm stickin' to it!
It all started after Alex Wolfer, a good college friend and I had resumed correspondence in recent years. He lives in Riverton, Wyoming and has gone elk hunting for nearly 20 years with a group of friends in the Teton Wilderness, south of the Two Ocean Pass area near the southeast corner of Yellowstone Park. Last fall he invited me to come with them and sent me an application. I had reservations about sending it in because there is important ranch work at that time of year. I waited until the last possible day and with some encouragement from my wife, sent in the money (confident that it would be returned, since permits are so hard to get). Several weeks later...Bingo! 'On my very first try. The planning stage had begun and by mid September my ranch work was caught up and I was ready. Incidently, I have been caught up with my work all fall since I got back too, which has made me wonder what I have done with the extra two weeks each fall all these years.
I took a good friend along with me. Dave Jones has hunted twice before but has never gotten a shot at a bull. He has sent for an elk permit each year and although he didn't draw a permit this time, he will continue to apply, hoping to get another chance. He is always a handy guy to have around, but also has lots of good hunting/camping equipment and in addition, a couple of good, young mules to try out. I even borrowed his new rifle for the job, a Browning bolt action S.S. 300 win mag. As we planned for this trip, I had told him that getting an elk didn't matter that much to me. A wilderness hunt such as this was a once in a lifetime experience and actually bagging an elk seemed secondary. However, I said to him several times, "I'm not making any predictions, but as lucky as I am, it wouldn't surprise me if I got a good one." As we traveled the 7 ½ hours to Riverton, Dave asked me if I was planning to take any elk, or wait for a big one. I hadn't thought about that much before and didn't really have an answer.
Seven of us and 14 pack mules left the trail head at Turpin Meadows and trailed up to the camp site two days early to set up camp and get ready. The others in our group, from Riverton were, Alex Wolfer, a mortgage banker who was my official guide; Brian Ballard, an optometrist (he is another college friend of mine); Jim Gores, a civil engineer; Dr. Mike Ford, an orthopedic surgeon and Dr. Jim Stockhouse, a dentist from Jackson. They and others unable to make it this year, form the group of close friends who have hunted together for those many years. Their camp life has been refined to a high degree. We took the finest of gourmet food and drink, but it was the laughter I enjoyed the most. An outfitter was hired to pack us in and out so we only had to care for our own horses and Dave's mules while at camp. It rained lightly on us most of the ride in but by night fall, we had set up a quick but wet camp. After we finished unpacking and setting up camp on Friday, we were ready to go on opening day, Saturday, September 20, 1997.
Before daylight, Alex, Dave and I rode high, up to the area Alex prefers to hunt, where we tied our horses and proceeded on foot. The elevation was around 9000 feet with heavy timber, but the many clearings (parks?) offered plentiful feed and cover. Even as a novice, I could see that this was good elk country. Probably not as rough as your favorite spots in the Bob, however. We quietly checked out each clearing as we moved through the timber. For months, I had been primed for lots of bugling, but this morning was quiet. We heard nothing.
After about 45 minutes of hunting, we crossed a long, narrow, open area which sloped gradually up to a rocky cliff on the south. A game trail wound it's way up through it, past the fallen rocks. We were moving westerly across it and just as we were about to re-enter the heavy timber, I glanced over my right shoulder and saw him below us, grazing as he came into view from behind a small knoll about 200 yards away. He was just like the pictures I'd seen with heavy antlers, so there was no question about taking him. My impulse was to drop down out of sight since he was coming slowly towards us, then take a careful shot as soon as he came into view. My two buddies froze standing straight up, urging me to shoot! Shoot him, John, he's a good one! They could see him but I couldn't because of the brush and downed timber. As I peeked up once, I saw him coming closer and told them to "Get Down!" They remained standing, impatiently telling me I'd better shoot.
In my crouched position, I finally saw only his shoulder and upper ribs as he came into my view between trees. I fired the first shot. He turned back, walking slowly while I sent two more shots before he stopped on the knoll and turned broadside. The fourth shot dropped him there, it was about 8:00 am. He was hit 3 of the four shots, none of which went clear through. He proved to be a heavy antlered six by six, with evidence of a seventh abnormal point which was broken off flush with the main beam. A lone bull that Alex estimated to be a 5 or 6 year old (my cousin, an avid hunter who spent two years working for an outfitter in this same area 25 years ago, has since estimated the age at 7 or 8, figuring that possibly he was either a year before or past his prime). After quartering and skinning out the cape, I stepped off roughly 150 steps from where I shot, to the point where the bull had dropped, possibly 125 yards to where he was first hit. I was able to locate two spent casings as a souvenir.
We returned to camp for a "celebratory" late breakfast before returning with the mules to pack him back to camp that afternoon. Davies' mules performed perfectly, not minding the smell of a fresh kill as we crashed through the timber back to camp. With the aid of modern technology Brian's G.P.S. reported 1.8 miles from camp to the kill site, but it was still a two hour ride.
Asked to describe the hunt, I simply say, "It was a piece of cake! We just shot the first thing we saw." He proved to be the only elk we saw as every one else in our camp drew a blank this trip. The weather was so nice and the grass so lush, we agreed that they were scattered, up in higher country. Other outfitters reported similar success rates.
Dr. Ford had packed a medical kit for years without having the opportunity to use it, until I came along. On Sunday morning, Dave and I were preparing breakfast for the others, most of whom had been out hunting. I was opening a package of bacon with Dave's recently sharpened pocket knife. I clumsily pushed the blade through the tough plastic wrapping and cut my left thumb fairly deeply. Mike returned from hunting shortly and proudly produced his kit of instruments. Having no deadener, it looked like I might have to bite a bullet to "tough" through the procedure, but Alex produced an old bottle of lidocaine from his bag of horse medications. With only a horse sized syringe and needle available, it deadened the area just fine and in no time Mike had me stitched up as good as if I had made an office call. We all got a laugh over this incident and although I'm sure I would have recovered without him, I am glad that we had a surgeon on board. Jim Stockhouse went through a fever which kept him out of commission for several days, as he only came out of his sack for an occasional meal. Dr. Ford attended to him as well, helping to get him back to normal.
Dave and I packed the meat and head out of the mountains on Monday. Leaving at 7:00 am, we packed up in the dark and rode in light rain most of the four hour ride on the trail. By the time we got to the pickup we were stiff from the damp cold and Dave could barely stand after dismounting. We made as quick a trip to Dubois as possible to leave the meat at a processor and the head at a taxidermist to be skinned out and salted. A few staples were picked up at the grocery store, a couple of quick phone calls home and we were headed back to the trail head. We arrived back to camp in the dark, shortly after 8:00 pm. Our buddies had held up supper, waiting for us and we dined on filet mignons soon after we put our tired horses and mules up for the night.
Although the other hunters continued to search for elk, the remaining days left in camp for Dave and me, were spent seeing the sights. Several of the others went with us to see Two Ocean Pass and fishing at Enos Lake on Tuesday, which was a beautiful warm day up near 80 degrees. Two Ocean Pass is a unique place where the Two Ocean Creek falls out of the mountains directly on the continental divide. It splits in two at that point, where the Atlantic Creek goes on for 3488 miles to the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Creek for 1353 miles to the Pacific. A wooden sign marks the spot calling it "The Parting of the Waters." We took pictures of the sign and of us straddling the divide before we made our way on to Enos Lake.
It is a pristine mountain lake with beautiful clear water, but ten years earlier, it suffered damage from a devastating high altitude tornado. Downing timber on both sides of the lake, it went for miles. Although the following year the Yellowstone fire burned through the area, we could still see the flattened trees all laying in the same direction. I have since seen aerial pictures of the area that show the dead trees lined up, but in a swirling pattern.
We caught a nice mess of cutthroat trout at Enos, releasing as many as we took back to camp for supper. We took a rough route back to camp over the top of the mountain. After a couple of hours trailing through thick timber, Brian suddenly shouted, "I lost my rifle!" It could have fallen from his scabbard any where along the way from Enos Lake. Retracing our steps in that country and finding it seemed impossible. We had just come up a very steep side hill and several of us had dismounted to lead our horses out of it. We agreed that it might have slid out on that slope, but if not, there would be no hope of ever finding it. Back tracking as best we could, we nearly gave up hope, when Jim Gores suddenly said, "Here it is!" I was confident that I knew the route that each of us took across that slope, but Jim had looked in a different spot and became the hero of the day!
Dave's 44th birthday was Wednesday the 24th. He and I celebrated it by riding to Hawk's Rest on the upper Yellowstone River Valley. After crossing the bridge, we ate our sack lunch near the ranger cabin. Approaching the cabin, we had hoped to have a visit with the ranger, but found him gone. A couple of rough looking horses tied outside however, was a sign that he wouldn't be gone long. Looking north from the valley, one can see peaks in Yellowstone Park, the snow capped Thunder Mountain to the south, and Yellowstone Point to the southwest. It is a beautiful spot. However, evidence of the terrible Yellowstone fire was present in all of the country where we camped, hunted and explored. When we returned to camp that afternoon, the others had built Dave a surprise birthday cake with only camp ingredients and lots of ingenuity. It was a great birthday party, one that he will remember for the rest of his life (the cake even tasted good!).
While the others made their final attempt to bag elk, Dave, Brian and I spent Thursday laying around camp. After we took down our camp on Friday morning, a young bull moose gave us quite a show as he passed by our campsite. He made a wallow and loitered around for more than 30 minutes just 200 feet from where we stood watching him and taking pictures. The outfitter was late in getting back up to us, so leaving them with their task, we headed back to the trail head at 2:00 pm. Alex, Brian, Dave and I spent the night with Jim S. at their beautiful new home in Jackson, since it would be late when our gear arrived at Turpin. We got there at about 9:30 pm, took care of our horses, got something to eat and did a little celebrating at the Cowboy Bar downtown. What a shock to our systems, plunging into the swirl of humanity again.
The next morning we loaded up, returned to Turpin Meadows to get our gear and headed back to Riverton. Along the way, we picked up the meat in Dubois and selected Dana Richardson, a taxidermist in Riverton to do the mount. That evening we met the spouses of Brian, Jim G. & Mike and visited the homes of Mike and Brian. Dave and I loaded up, left Riverton on Sunday at 5:00 am and were home by 12:30 pm. We were glad to be going home to our families and responsibilities, but in a way were sorry that a wonderful experience had come to an end. I resisted turning on the radio for several days not wanting to hurry the inevitable return, to the real world.
Two and a half months later I have a beautiful mount which reigns in our living room. My wife and I drove to Riverton to bring it home with our youngest son. We built our new home in 1992, with a vaulted ceiling in the living room. I thought that perhaps one day I would acquire a buffalo head or something to hang on the north open wall. Sure enough, only 5 years later, I have a magnificent trophy gracing that wall. It must have been fate all along. Dana Richardson did a beautiful job with the taxidermy and he informed us that this is to be his last year doing this work.
Alex unofficially scored him green at 321. Although this does not make the record book and there are lots of better bulls, I am still amazed at my luck. I know there are thousands of hopeful hunters who have hunted elk and have never had a chance at a bull like this. I feel a bit guilty to have had such luck before paying my dues as a hunter, but it couldn't have been done it if not for my good friends and being in the right place at the right time. I have been told that I might as well quit now because it is all down hill from here! Life is Good!
