The Lair

Opening weekend was brutal. We really worked hard, and for four days we hiked the leather off our boots. On day three our good friend, Del, followed some cows to their secret hiding place. He couldn't believe the hidden bowl they brought him to. He also could not get over the amount of bear sign. With all the elk and bear sign, and with how brutal and concealed this place was, he instantly named it "The Lair". 

Dictionary.com defines "lair" this way:

Lair:

1. a den or resting place of a wild animal
2. a secluded or hidden place, especially a secret retreat or base of operations; a hideout or hideaway

What a perfect name!

The Lair is protected by huge cliffs on three sides. The bottom has a small creek running through the middle of it. Approaching The Lair from camp and hunting it effectively is nearly impossible. You have to navigate down the cliffs on the South side, several times you have to carefully lower your bow on to ledges below so you can use both hands to climb down.

The cliffs do not drop straight down to The Lair though. They are more like stair steps. Each level you drop down to is loaded with elk and bear sign. Down and down you go, dropping from one step to another. The whole time you think the next level has to be the last.

The first of about four levels of The Lair

Kelly and I pumping some water before leaving The Lair

Del is a selfless hunter, after discovering The Lair he decided to hunt a different spot. But he had no problem allowing my brother Dan, my brother-in-law Kelly, and I to try our hand at this savage bowl.

Sunrise found us sitting on top of the cliffs looking down into The Lair. I had no interest in going down there. With the early morning thermals pulling the wind down the drainage I did not think we could get low enough, fast enough, to hunt effectively. And by the time we got there, I argued, everything would be bedding down for the afternoon. 

Honestly though, envisioning the hike out of this place might have influenced my thinking a little bit. Those thoughts never enter Danny's mind...

No sooner did I get done explaining why we shouldn't go down there when a bugle shattered the air. I knew what that bugle meant. It was the kind of bugle you hear in late September, not late August. That kind of bugle meant we were going into The Lair. We looked in one of the meadows and saw the bull. And a bull he was. There was no talking Danny out of it now. He had already started walking before I could even say anything. 

Into The Lair we went.

If only we had a better camera, the unique main beam really dropped off at the end

Step after step we crawled down. I've never seen so much bear sign! It was around every tree. The whole woods reeked of elk, and game trails zigzagged everywhere, with fresh tracks on all of them. We even found Del's tracks from the day before with elk tracks over the top of them.

Velvet from a bull's antlers he shed while preparing for the upcoming rut

We finally found ourselves in the meadow where we saw the giant bull. I thought the whole plan was stupid at first. But Danny masterfully led us into the depths of The Lair, using a small hill on the SW side to keep our wind as far from the elk as possible. We tried to make the best of what we had and did a little blind calling. After 15 minutes the three of us re-convened to talk about our next step. I closed my eyes for a little bit. Danny gave a bugle and then whacked me on the arm. "Did you hear that?" He asked. I was sleeping, I didn't hear a thing. So I grabbed my cow call and gave a mew. Within a second I got a mew back. Back and forth I mewed with a cow, and she was coming!

We all took our positions, Kelly went off to the right and disappeared in the trees. Danny and I stayed together and set up on the edge of a boggy meadow. Soon I saw the cow, well, it turned out to be a calf, standing on the opposite side of a small bog. One more mew and here she came! I have an extra cow tag, and would love nothing more than to use it on a tender, good eating calf. 

Danny giggled in my ear like a little kid, he sees what is about to unfold. I am going to have a perfect five yard shot at this calf. The wind is perfect and she has to walk behind some brush before she steps in to my shooting lane. Danny knows just as well as I do that this is as sure of a thing as there is in hunting.

My hiding spot at the edge of the bog the calf was crossing 

I'm playing the scenario out in my head. I already know when I am going to draw my bow. I am consciously reminding myself to pick a good spot. My hands and feet are perfectly in place. I've got complete control of my nerves, and I'm already thinking about how cool it will be to do this with my brother one step behind me.

The calf was walking along the edge of the bog, just 10 yards away now. I am starting to put tension on my bow string when I hear a soft thump, followed by a loud whack. The calf bolted into the willow bushes! It startled the heck out of me and took me half a second to figure out what the heck happened. 

Kelly! That shot stealing son of a gun! I forgot all about him! I didn't have any idea he was even that close to me. He didn't know where I was, and in our group, if you get a good shot, you take it!

Kelly used a Basset recurve, Carbon Express Heritage arrows, and 175grain  VPA Terminator broadheads. He achieved a complete passthrough with roughly 600grain arrows.

Our first trip in The Lair produced meat. Crawling out of there with the calf on our backs was really not much of an option. We could access The Lair from another trailhead and not have to deal with the cliffs, so we left the calf overnight and planned on fetching the meat the following day.

The Lair is a place of its own. Almost magical to the four of us who have hunted it. There is an old woman who used to outfit this area and we found the trail she cut into The Lair many, many years ago. I would be surprised if many people have visited this place since she quit guiding. Nobody in their right mind would!

We found this bear den in the middle of one of the cliffs

On the way in to recover the meat, which I did not help with, Danny, Del, and Kelly had a run-in with a stud of a bull, who is still alive. But that's another story for another day. 

Keep checking back. Hopefully I will have a lot more good pictures and stories of the 2012 season!

Coyote Gulch

My grandfather on my Mom's side is quite the outdoorsmen. Like Barbara Mandrell's song "I Was Country (When Country Wasn't Cool)", Pop was outdoors when outdoors wasn't cool. 

As a little kid he always talked about his favorite place on earth, Coyote Gulch. He told us wild stories of all the elk and deer he saw up there. "You guys gotta hunt Coyote Gulch." He would say. "Just be sure to put your boots inside your tent at night, or else you'll have deer carrying them away to lick salt off the leather."

"Yeah, okay Pop. We'll be sure to do that." We thought. I mean, come on...he has to be exaggerating, right?

He showed us on maps where this special place was, but we were always too busy checking in on old haunts or exploring other parts of the state. Pop is getting on in years now, and it has been a long time since he has visited Coyote Gulch. What are the chances that it is still as pristine and chalked with game like it was in his youth?

Since Pop has gotten older he has started to tell us much more about his youth and his adventures. I have learned more about his life in the past five years than in the 25 before that. He brought up Coyote Gulch, again, and finally we started making plans to visit the place Pop calls heaven. 

Unfortunately I could not make the initial scouting trip to the paradise I've heard about my whole life. My wife just gave birth to our second son, so my time needs to be devoted elsewhere for a while. However, Danny brought his girlfriend, Ashley, to see if Coyote Gulch was all that Pop cracked it up to be.

In a few words...it was. They did not have any deer licking their boots at night, but deer they saw!

It is a small area, not the kind of place that would tolerate much, if any, hunting pressure. Based on what Danny saw we highly doubt that this place gets any hunting pressure. The effort that it took to get here might be a big part of the reason.

Danny and Ashley hauled in a spotting scope to check this place out without having to dive down in. From their tent they glassed across the bowl and spotted some deer.

One of the most exciting things they saw was the wide range of age class of deer. Everything from tiny forkhorns to a couple of absolute brutes. This looks like the kind of place that will produce a monster for many years to come.

They spotted over a dozen bucks this size.

 

Danny saw a deer that made his jaw hit the dirt. He was feeding out in the open, so Danny was in no rush to get a picture. The monster fed in to some stunted pines and never came back out. So he got no pictures of The King of Coyote Gulch.

He did get some pictures of one of the other beauties though. This great buck has a big 3 on one side, and a big 4 on the other, with some weird stuff happening on the left side.

He's got some palmation and some stickers coming off of his left side. Though it is quite hard to make out, considering these pictures are taken with a cell phone and the deer is nearly a mile away.

 

 

 

 

 Pop wasn't lying! Coyote Gulch is a paradise. Nobody I know holds a deer tag in this unit, this year.

But I know exactly where my Dad, brother, and I will be perched opening morning, 2013. 

How to make a leather hip quiver

Danny recently built a leather hip quiver for a good friend of ours. We took pictures of the process to show how easy it can be done.

Check it out HERE!

Tavis Rogers' incredible elk hunting story

With elk season just a few short weeks away I thought this would be a good story to get your blood pumping!


I'm always looking for good, original, bowhunting stories, told from the mouths of regular guys (but good hunters who know what they're talking about) to share with our readers. One of our good customers, friend, and dynamite bowhunter, Tavis Rogers shared this story with us in our store. The events of this story were so unique, and so exciting, that we asked Tavis to write the story in his words so that we could share it on our blog. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. 

Here is Tavis' story, in his own words, about his incredible 2008 elk hunting season.

Colorado 2008 elk:

I was leaving for an Arizona elk hunt in one day, but decided to hunt a little near home in Leadville, Colorado to get warmed up. I didn't really figure that I would kill a bull, but I thought that going through my gear and doing a little climbing would help before my hunt for the "big 'uns" down south.

I spotted a group of elk going up a ridge with a good 6-point herd bull. A decent looking bull was hanging behind the rest of the herd as they worked up and over the ridge. He was a 5x5, and although smaller than the herd bull, he was by himself.

With the wind in my favor, I worked between the main herd and the 5-point bull. He held up in a patch of smaller pines and looked like he was going to bed there by himself. I worked to within 25 yards using a big fallen pine tree as cover. With my bino's I could see him through the limbs of the fallen tree, standing broadside. He was looking my direction, so I thought I better find a hole to shoot through or he was going to get out of there. I moved slightly to my left and found a nice opening for my arrow.

I drew back and let an arrow fly. Man, I love watching a good shot fly through the air right where you wanted it to go! Happens every now and then when you get lucky. I didn't see the actual impact, but it looked low and tight to the shoulder. “It should be a short tracking job”, I thought. 

I stood up and eased around the small pines he had been standing in and looked down the hill where he had run. He was standing in some willows about 100 yards below. He stumbled a little and then bedded. “I must have hit him really good!” I thought. 

I eased into where he had been standing at the shot and found some blood. I started down the blood trail and found my arrow a few yards past where he had been standing. It was covered from stem to stern with good blood. Not sure if it passed all the way through or fell out after a few hops, but it sure was pretty. I figured, "heck this is a slam dunk", and walked straight to where he laid down in the willows.

He was bedded in the willows facing away from me. As I got to within 10 yards I noticed that he was still breathing. I still had the bloody arrow in my hand so I went ahead and nocked it as I eased around to the left. He must have heard or smelled me, and he stood up. I saw where the first arrow hit him, and it looked right on the money for a heart shot. But there was not a ton of blood pumping out like like you would expect from a heart shot. He started turning to his left as I hit full draw and shot again. The arrow disappeared into the same hole! Complete pass-through and out the other side! "Dang, I'm good sometimes!" I thought. "Just hope I can find the arrow in the willows."

I step out from cover and into the open, congratulating myself on the great shooting and wondering if I will be able to find that arrow. As I step out, the bull turns to face me head-on...then he drops his head. He was not moving real fast and I figured he was fixing to fall over dead. Boy, was I wrong! Here he came!

All I could see was antlers coming up toward my face! I didn't even have time to say "Oh, S!" He smacked me hard. All I could do was try to keep those antlers from poking me in the stomach and face. I was on the ground pretty fast just fending off antlers. I pulled my legs up to try and keep his kicks from hitting me in the groin and stomach. He pushed me up the hill by scooping at me with his antlers for about 20 yards right into a fallen tree and stump. 

I managed to get away from him and crawl under the stump. He smacked the stump a couple of times and then started staggering side to side and stumbled down the hill back into the willows.

The bull locked up about 25 yards from me and was trying to stay upright on his feet facing away from me. I was a bit shook up, but noticed that my bow was not too far away. I crawled over there on my side, keeping low and hopefully out of sight. I got to my bow and found another arrow laying not to far away. I nocked it up and got to my knees. I had a hard quartering away angle on the bull and figured he needed some more killing, so I drew back and shot again. The shot hit in the ribs angling forward toward the offside shoulder. This was all he could take and he stumbled sideways, tipped over, and died in short order.

What an adrenaline rush! I was shaking really bad and had to sit down for a while to get my wits about me. It is not everyday a guy gets in a fight with a critter that out weighs him by 5 times! By the time I could stand again, and not taking any chances, I gathered up the rest of my arrows and nocked another one before I eased up to him. This time he was fer-sure-dead. Took a few pictures and then started breaking him down for the pack out.

I didn't really notice how beat up I was until several hours later. My legs, ribs, and back really started to hurt, a lot. The next day colors started to show up all over my body. I had a real pretty stripe on my back where that bull had raked me and a couple of antler point marks over my kidneys. There were a number of big, hoof shaped bruises and scrapes on my thighs and shins that spread out till my legs were basically bruised from my groin to my feet. I was sore in about every muscle and bone in my body for about 4 days and the bruises stuck around for about two weeks.

Bruises

The moral of this story is: Don't ever walk up on an elk unless you know for darn sure that he is dead!!

Arizona 2008 elk:

I didn’t have time to heal up with a great Arizona tag in my pocket. The drive down to Arizona was long and seemed even longer by my crippled up condition. I literally had to call my friend Lee when I got there to have him help me out of the truck. To make that long story short, I had a great time with good friends. I hunted every day of the hunt, chased some enormous bulls, helped two of my buddies get great bulls, had one of the best hunts of my life, and managed to kill a little bull on the last day of the hunt.

My buddy Lee's Arizona bull

Derek's Arizona bull

My little Arizona "last day" bull

Life’s short, hunt hard!

--Tavis Rogers

Buying Wood Arrows

I love shooting wood arrows. I still remember making them with my Dad before I was old enough to be in school. 

Two years ago my shooting went through, shall I say, a rough phase. I was breaking so many arrows I decided to shoot carbons, BUT JUST FOR THE SUMMER until my shooting got better.

I ended up shooting carbons for over two years. This Spring I decided to go back to my first true love - woods. Part of the reason I chose to go back to wood is because I am still shooting the same two dozen carbon arrows that I made two years ago. I never broke any of my carbons! (I was shooting the CX Heritage arrows primarily) I really enjoy making arrows, and those danged carbons were robbing me from one of my favorite pastimes. 

Don't get me wrong, there are still times where I'll be toting carbons. I'm not a "purist", I don't get a tingle up my leg when I shoot woods, and I certainly don't think it has anything to do with...well...anything in regards to "traditional" archery. I just flat love wood arrows. I love making them, the smell of cedar, the straightening process, the limitless options of stain color, the bigger nocks, gluing on my points, and most importantly (because if you don't love this you have no business shooting wood arrows) - the smell of a broken arrow! When a woody gets broken in our group we pass it around so everybody can take a hit before discarding the fallen shaft.

One of my better shots with a wood arrow

And one of my "not so better" shots with a wood arrow

HOWEVER, there is one thing I hate about wood arrows. Matching them...

Buying wood arrows can be a huge pain. Wood is a natural material, obviously, and not consistent from tree to tree. Which in turn means that it is not consistent from arrow shaft to arrow shaft. The last set of wood arrows I bought without matching myself had a difference of 138 grains in physical weight.  ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY EIGHT! 

Before Tom started RMSGear he brought home, literally, 1,000 arrows at a time (up until 2010 Tom never killed an animal with anything but a wood arrow). I thought all those arrows were the coolest thing in the world when I was a little kid. Tom's supplier gave him a deal because Tom spent several days spine testing and weighing all 1,000 shafts. At the end of the process he picked out the ones he wanted and brought the rest back to his generous supplier.

So when Tom started RMSGear he thought that one way he could serve his customers was to do all that laborious work for them. Which really meant that his teenage kids would do (and still do) all of that work. I kid of course, Tom spine tested more arrows in his first two years of business than I will in my lifetime.

(For those of you who do not know, measuring the "spine" of an arrow is done by suspending an arrow over two points, 26 inches apart, and measuring the deflection caused by hanging a two pound weight in the center)

We buy arrows from several sources. Some batches are better than others, even from the same supplier. But we have definitely learned something over the years that I will pass on to you - don't ever trust a group of wood arrows. Unless of course you spine them yourself, or buy them from us ;) 

Danny spent the majority of Wednesday spine testing our latest batch of 1,000 arrows. His work is only half done though, because before these arrows will be ready to sell to our customers we will weigh them all. From there we will match them as close as we can in to batches of 12-14 arrows. 

Of those 1,000 arrow shafts only 46% were within the spine range we thought we were buying. That's right, over half of them were wrongly matched.

Here is a graph of the last box of arrows. I have highlighted the area that the arrows should have been within.

You can see how unreliable the advertised spine was. I don't know what other wood shaft retailers do, but when you buy arrows from RMSGear we guarantee that you will be getting exactly what you ordered. Your arrows' spine will be within 2-3lbs and their weight will be within 10 grains. This is a time intense and mindless job, it will test your patience and your back, but the rewards are well worth it.

If you enjoy the small reward only earned by the work of your hands, then I think you'll take pleasure in making and shooting wood arrows. Like I said above, I don't believe they are magical and I don't believe they make you more of a "traditional" bowhunter/archer. I do believe they are fun and enjoyable, and I do believe there is something about using items that your own creativeness and labor brought to fruition.

Like always, this sport is our passion, and we love nothing more than to help others get in to this wonderful tradition. Please pick up the phone and give us a call or shoot us an Email if you have questions or interest about making your own arrows.

A few pics of the spine testing process:

 

CTAS High Country Shoot

We'll be going up to the CTAS High Country Shoot this weekend. If you can make it don't miss out! It is one of the most enjoyable shoots of the year. It is a great event put on by great people, a better family outing cannot be had (at least in June).

The Denver Post did an article about it today. I thought you all might be interested in seeing it.

http://www.denverpost.com/outdoors/ci_20894153/high-country-shoot-its-20th-year-featuring-traditional?IADID=Search-www.denverpost.com-www.denverpost.com

This is how we roll!

The guys don't jack around on Monday's at American Bowman. Five or six get together every week for a night of arrow breaking madness. Long shots, trick shots, shots through brush, anything but easy shots! This is what it's all about!

Early Summer Fishing

The boys did a little early summer fly fishing this past weekend. 

Every year we get a big group together (our cousins and some friends) and go hit some of the water our dads taught us how to fish 25+ years ago. This year was a little tough with the wind, but we still managed to catch some real nice fish.

Not a much better way to spend a weekend this time of the year.

Sun, wind, rain or shine, Dan Clum is an animal. On the river with his fly rod or in the mountains with his bow. His skin is waterproof.