Nebraskan makes right call to bag impressive five-pointActing quickly after bugling led his group to the right place at the right time
By Charlie Meyers
The Denver Post
Posted: 10/14/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT
Pat Glunz of Nebraska picked a nice five-point
when he found himself surrounded by two groups of cows,
each with a bugling herd bull. (Charlie Meyers, The Denver Post)FAIRPLAY — If there was any solace for hunters to draw from the good fortune of Pat Glunz during big-game season, it is this: Good numbers of elk are scampering around the high country, and they are still willing to talk.
Glunz, a robust fellow who might have played tackle for the football team in his native Nebraska, had wandered into one of those spine-tingling situations that keep us coming back no matter how discouraging the weather.
"We had started off into this park before daylight," he said as he described the adventure he shared south of Fairplay with a Colorado friend whom he visits on his periodic elk trips. "That's when we heard bugling near the top of a ridge."
What happened next can only be described by someone caught up in the intense excitement of a hunt that might spin in several directions at once.
"When we got up on the ridge, we found a good opening and began to cow call," Glunz recalled. "We got an immediate reply, but then we heard bugling off in the opposite direction and we could hear tree branches breaking.
"Cows were busting through the trees and the bull came chasing around them to bring them back. Everything was happening real fast. We did another cow call, and when he heard that, he just froze."
At that point, Glunz faced another of those decisions that lend spice to the hunt. The bull that stood with head and shoulders exposed in a tight opening 120 yards away was a heavy five-point, one of those animals that had grown thick in the lush summer meadows beneath the brow of Buffalo Peaks but had neglected to add that extra point to his rack.
Glunz could roll the dice on the other bull and come up empty, or take the one in hand.
"I knew it was a reasonably good bull," he said of the assessment that pulled the trigger.
He was surprised how good — a broad- beamed beauty that would make a more handsome mount than some skinny six that only counts for the number.
Mark Lamb, a warden in the Fairplay
district for 15 years, reported coming upon only
a scattering of small hunting camps where larger
hunt groups once were common. (Charlie Meyers,
The Denver Post )A couple miles north, Denver resident Henry Teigen found his six-point late Saturday afternoon in fading light while walking back to his truck, bookend bulls to what generally had been a slow day in what ranks as good elk country.
"I can't really describe it," said Mark Lamb of the Colorado Division of Wildlife. "I usually find a half-dozen camps up Salt Creek, and now there's only two."
It had been an odd opener in the mountains east of the Continental Divide. The Mosquito Range peaks carried a bare cookie sprinkle of snow and the slopes below, none at all. Aspen leaves carpeted the ground, "potato chips," as Lamb described the boot-crunching effect.
"I can't believe all the weather you're having down in Denver," he said of the cold and snow that chased athletes underground. "All we've had up here is lots of wind."
Lamb had another report he soon could do without.
"We've had moose in this country since 1994, and this is the first illegal shooting," he said of an incident during muzzle-loading season just north of Fairplay. "There were two hunters from North Dakota with bull elk tags, and one shot a cow moose at 40 yards. It's hard to believe."
The Dakotan had a hard time digesting the fine, more than $1,000.
"They still had their elk tags and went straight to Denver, paid the fine and said they weren't coming back, which is pretty much OK with everyone."
As he told his tales, radio messages crackled in describing similarly slow activity in other parts of elk country. To the west, a rim of promising clouds drifted across the Mosquito Range to the west.
The first elk-only season would end today, clearing the forest for a much larger wave of deer and elk hunters on Saturday.
In a perfect world, there would be a fresh snow up the top of a boot and enough amorous bulls bugling the way to both cows and hunters.
That's the mystery of hunting, the thing that keeps us coming back, even on the heels of the disappointment of the previous year. Always there are choices to be made, and sometimes they are good ones.
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