asaxon
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Assault team KORO terminates a Tule elk with extreme prejudice but we are left with a profound mystery*.
My troubles began in June with a letter from the CA DFW. I figure, “another damn fishing survey” I throw it unopened on my desk but fortunately not in the trash. A week later, I open it. “Congratulations! You have been drawn for the 2018 elk hunt listed above.” Holy Tartar Sauce Sponge Bob, I had won the lottery to get a tag to hunt one of California indigenous Tule Elk. Below is a picture of the letter for all of you hunters who have applied for decades and no longer believe this is real. Yes, such a document actually exists. The area I was to hunt, “Goodale”, is about 150 square miles of the Eastern Sierras, NW of Independence, CA. I would be the only elk hunter permitted for 16 days. At the Admirals command, I had applied for a cow elk hunt; they are better tasting and much smarter than the boys – so what else is new. For this hunt, I was required to use a muzzleloader; yup one of those ram black powder and a bullet down the barrel firearms and use iron - open sights. What fun.
I immediately meet with my Commander-in-Chief, The Admiral. We set out an operational plan and assembled a crack assault team for Operation Koro; Koro is Maori for “old guy or grandfather”. The team consisted of: the CIC - The Admiral, the Shooter - me = Koro, the Spotter and Head of Black Ops - PJ a former CA game warden for 17 years, an Undercover Operative - Agent X (his identity is protected) who works on the property where the elk hang out, a Weapons Officer - GD, a black powder specialist, a Scout Sniper Team Leader - MJ who lives near Independence and has great local knowledge, a Point man, Grunt, and Morgue detail man – ZA who is young, has a strong back and is good with knives, and finally a Logistics Officer - RK who was going to bring his 29 foot trailer up to Bishop, CA. Air-conditioned? Yes! Temperatures during the day may reach 100F+ at “Goodale” so AC was important for the team to be in peak operational condition.
GD (remarkably he looks a lot like ltdann) provided an “in-line” TC Omega muzzleloader. With some practice, I was able to pretty much hit center target out to 100 yards using a rest. But with “iron sights”, more than 100 + yards was problematic in terms of the sight picture. I did NOT want to just hit the animal “somewhere”, I wanted to hit it a vital spot and knock the animal down. Chasing some damn wounded elk for hours or days – NOT a plan. I also practiced in my backyard at 10[SUP]th[/SUP] size elk targets using an air gun to get comfortable with the sight picture at distances. Then one day a BPOE (Benevolent Protective Order of Elks) sign shows up on my target board. No doubt the elk spying were spying me with the help of the Russians #russiansdidit. That will teach me to wear my Putin t-shirt in the People's Republic of Santa Monica.
With a week to go, PJ checked with the Agent X and began monitoring our target(s). About seventy elk were coming into some alfalfa fields at night and, at first light, going back up into the rocky mountainside to the west. Driving up to Bishop the day before the hunt, I got a text from PJ giving us directions where to go and glass. Sure enough, we get there and see a couple groups of elk sitting, standing, and feeding in the boulders a mile or so up the mountainside. We are excited…
That evening, RK, ZA and Koro went to the fanciest restaurant in Bishop in our hunting clothes. All was OK until RK misbehaved so I had to take him to the local slammer. After he paid his bail and got bandaged up from the beating I gave him for insubordination, we jumped in the air-conditioned trailer, (aah, cool air) and turned in.
Morning, 4:30 am and Team Koro is headed out with everything we thought we needed. While driving, I noticed that the road signs looked a bit hazy to my right – shooting eye. Thinking it was just a dirty contact; I cleaned it a few times but that didn’t seem to be help. I could see but objects were simply not crisp. Huh? Just before shooting light, we moved into the area where we thought the elk would come from to head into the mountains. We soon heard elk bugling and then saw groups of elk moving. But we were too farther north. We high-tailed it toward them and finally got close to one last small group. Seeing us, they stopped and looked about like; “Now what we were supposed to do?” I quickly cocked my muzzleloader, aimed at a cow elk about 100 yards away and squeezed the trigger. “POP.” WTF, a freakin’ misfire! The primer fired but failed to set off the main powder charge. Nothing came out of the end of the firearm. In contrast, all sorts of interesting things came outta my mouth. If words could kill, all living creatures in a half a mile radius would have dropped dead instantly. The elk trotted away up the hillside. I took the breech out, unloaded the firearm, reloaded it and made sure it fired.
With that hopefully fixed and the sun up, we started glassing the hillsides. Spotting a group of elk a mile or so away, we watched them until they settled down. ZA and I then took off on a stalk up the gullies and through the rocks. From where we started, it looked pretty “smooth” but that was totally deceptive. When we got into it, there were lots of gullies, ridges and big boulder fields. ZA and I could not see the elk as we stayed down in the terrain for if we were seeing them, they would surely be seeing us and would never let us get close. PJ, MJ and RK were spotting and sending us signals as to where the elk were. However, perspective matters. Through the spotting scope at a mile or more, distances seem much shorter than they really are. When PJ thought we were 50 yards or so from elk on flat ground and was wondering why the hell I was not shooting, in reality we were 400 yards from the elk in areas of gullies and large boulders. It sure looks different when you have your boots on the ground. To make a long stalk short, we spent about 3 hours and walked about 3 miles before we finally got close enough to where we could peek across a large bounder ravine and see the animals. A group of maybe twelve were about 190 yards away - too far to take a shot. They had seen us and were moving up toward the mountains. So we went downwind and moved up along the ravine to try to cut them off. When we next peeked over the edge, the elk were walking parallel to us between 115 - 150 yards away. At this point, we had run out of cover so we decided that I should try to take a shot. I crawled to where I could just see the elk. They looked right at me, decided that I was a threat, and began to move away. I aimed at a cow and squeezed the trigger. BOOM. Hurray, it fired. But it was a clean miss - ZA said the shot was low. Fine, no wounded animal to chase. The animals quickly moved off and we were done hunting for the day. But the adventure was not over.
We had to recover the backpack ZA had left by “the big white rock” about an hour before when we had lain in ambush as the spotters thought the elk were about to come over a rise to us. That had been a bust as the animals were actually much further away. Everything looked very different from where we now were. And there could not have been less than 1,000 “big white rocks”. We wandered about as the temperature went up toward 100F. We had no water (it was in the backpack) or food, and there was no shade. After an hour more, I was done in. I needed to walk to the vehicles. About half a mile down, low and behold, there is “the big white rock” and the backpack. Talk about dumb luck. I contacted ZA and in we went. We all had had a wonderful day– a great hunt, no dead animal required. That night, as I head for bed, a surprise. I go to put my contact lenses into their case and hello, there are lenses already there. WTF? At O’dark thirty in the morning, I had put in my old backup pair of contacts that reside in a similar shaped but different color case. No wonder my right eye didn’t have clear vision. Doh!
My troubles began in June with a letter from the CA DFW. I figure, “another damn fishing survey” I throw it unopened on my desk but fortunately not in the trash. A week later, I open it. “Congratulations! You have been drawn for the 2018 elk hunt listed above.” Holy Tartar Sauce Sponge Bob, I had won the lottery to get a tag to hunt one of California indigenous Tule Elk. Below is a picture of the letter for all of you hunters who have applied for decades and no longer believe this is real. Yes, such a document actually exists. The area I was to hunt, “Goodale”, is about 150 square miles of the Eastern Sierras, NW of Independence, CA. I would be the only elk hunter permitted for 16 days. At the Admirals command, I had applied for a cow elk hunt; they are better tasting and much smarter than the boys – so what else is new. For this hunt, I was required to use a muzzleloader; yup one of those ram black powder and a bullet down the barrel firearms and use iron - open sights. What fun.
I immediately meet with my Commander-in-Chief, The Admiral. We set out an operational plan and assembled a crack assault team for Operation Koro; Koro is Maori for “old guy or grandfather”. The team consisted of: the CIC - The Admiral, the Shooter - me = Koro, the Spotter and Head of Black Ops - PJ a former CA game warden for 17 years, an Undercover Operative - Agent X (his identity is protected) who works on the property where the elk hang out, a Weapons Officer - GD, a black powder specialist, a Scout Sniper Team Leader - MJ who lives near Independence and has great local knowledge, a Point man, Grunt, and Morgue detail man – ZA who is young, has a strong back and is good with knives, and finally a Logistics Officer - RK who was going to bring his 29 foot trailer up to Bishop, CA. Air-conditioned? Yes! Temperatures during the day may reach 100F+ at “Goodale” so AC was important for the team to be in peak operational condition.
GD (remarkably he looks a lot like ltdann) provided an “in-line” TC Omega muzzleloader. With some practice, I was able to pretty much hit center target out to 100 yards using a rest. But with “iron sights”, more than 100 + yards was problematic in terms of the sight picture. I did NOT want to just hit the animal “somewhere”, I wanted to hit it a vital spot and knock the animal down. Chasing some damn wounded elk for hours or days – NOT a plan. I also practiced in my backyard at 10[SUP]th[/SUP] size elk targets using an air gun to get comfortable with the sight picture at distances. Then one day a BPOE (Benevolent Protective Order of Elks) sign shows up on my target board. No doubt the elk spying were spying me with the help of the Russians #russiansdidit. That will teach me to wear my Putin t-shirt in the People's Republic of Santa Monica.
With a week to go, PJ checked with the Agent X and began monitoring our target(s). About seventy elk were coming into some alfalfa fields at night and, at first light, going back up into the rocky mountainside to the west. Driving up to Bishop the day before the hunt, I got a text from PJ giving us directions where to go and glass. Sure enough, we get there and see a couple groups of elk sitting, standing, and feeding in the boulders a mile or so up the mountainside. We are excited…
That evening, RK, ZA and Koro went to the fanciest restaurant in Bishop in our hunting clothes. All was OK until RK misbehaved so I had to take him to the local slammer. After he paid his bail and got bandaged up from the beating I gave him for insubordination, we jumped in the air-conditioned trailer, (aah, cool air) and turned in.
Morning, 4:30 am and Team Koro is headed out with everything we thought we needed. While driving, I noticed that the road signs looked a bit hazy to my right – shooting eye. Thinking it was just a dirty contact; I cleaned it a few times but that didn’t seem to be help. I could see but objects were simply not crisp. Huh? Just before shooting light, we moved into the area where we thought the elk would come from to head into the mountains. We soon heard elk bugling and then saw groups of elk moving. But we were too farther north. We high-tailed it toward them and finally got close to one last small group. Seeing us, they stopped and looked about like; “Now what we were supposed to do?” I quickly cocked my muzzleloader, aimed at a cow elk about 100 yards away and squeezed the trigger. “POP.” WTF, a freakin’ misfire! The primer fired but failed to set off the main powder charge. Nothing came out of the end of the firearm. In contrast, all sorts of interesting things came outta my mouth. If words could kill, all living creatures in a half a mile radius would have dropped dead instantly. The elk trotted away up the hillside. I took the breech out, unloaded the firearm, reloaded it and made sure it fired.
With that hopefully fixed and the sun up, we started glassing the hillsides. Spotting a group of elk a mile or so away, we watched them until they settled down. ZA and I then took off on a stalk up the gullies and through the rocks. From where we started, it looked pretty “smooth” but that was totally deceptive. When we got into it, there were lots of gullies, ridges and big boulder fields. ZA and I could not see the elk as we stayed down in the terrain for if we were seeing them, they would surely be seeing us and would never let us get close. PJ, MJ and RK were spotting and sending us signals as to where the elk were. However, perspective matters. Through the spotting scope at a mile or more, distances seem much shorter than they really are. When PJ thought we were 50 yards or so from elk on flat ground and was wondering why the hell I was not shooting, in reality we were 400 yards from the elk in areas of gullies and large boulders. It sure looks different when you have your boots on the ground. To make a long stalk short, we spent about 3 hours and walked about 3 miles before we finally got close enough to where we could peek across a large bounder ravine and see the animals. A group of maybe twelve were about 190 yards away - too far to take a shot. They had seen us and were moving up toward the mountains. So we went downwind and moved up along the ravine to try to cut them off. When we next peeked over the edge, the elk were walking parallel to us between 115 - 150 yards away. At this point, we had run out of cover so we decided that I should try to take a shot. I crawled to where I could just see the elk. They looked right at me, decided that I was a threat, and began to move away. I aimed at a cow and squeezed the trigger. BOOM. Hurray, it fired. But it was a clean miss - ZA said the shot was low. Fine, no wounded animal to chase. The animals quickly moved off and we were done hunting for the day. But the adventure was not over.
We had to recover the backpack ZA had left by “the big white rock” about an hour before when we had lain in ambush as the spotters thought the elk were about to come over a rise to us. That had been a bust as the animals were actually much further away. Everything looked very different from where we now were. And there could not have been less than 1,000 “big white rocks”. We wandered about as the temperature went up toward 100F. We had no water (it was in the backpack) or food, and there was no shade. After an hour more, I was done in. I needed to walk to the vehicles. About half a mile down, low and behold, there is “the big white rock” and the backpack. Talk about dumb luck. I contacted ZA and in we went. We all had had a wonderful day– a great hunt, no dead animal required. That night, as I head for bed, a surprise. I go to put my contact lenses into their case and hello, there are lenses already there. WTF? At O’dark thirty in the morning, I had put in my old backup pair of contacts that reside in a similar shaped but different color case. No wonder my right eye didn’t have clear vision. Doh!
