We were up at 3:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, November 11th jin order to give us enough time to put chains on the four-wheel drive trucks in order to get up the narrow road to our hunting location. With the continued snow and the steep drop offs the chains gave us some comfort about going up the mountain.

Eight of us left the trucks and headed toward our stands. The day before the road had only some traces of snow, this morning I found myself with snow up to the ankles of my boots as I worked my way down the ridge.

Once I got to my stand I pulled out my Kestrel 3000 and saw that the temperature was 36 degrees. A little while later a heavy snow storm caused the reading to drop to 20 degrees. It was cold!

While I saw no elk on opening day, one our hunting party, Pastor Jim Dunn of Stockton, California was sitting in the right place. Around 8 a.m. a herd of elk came over the saddle he was watching. There were at least 70 elk. Thirty seconds after the herd past, with no legal bulls, a 4x4 bull came running to catch the herd. Jim dropped him with at heart shot from his .300 Win mag at 243 yards.

This was a great way to start the elk hunting season.

On Sunday morning the skys had cleared which made the temperature drop to 10 degrees. We hunted the same spot in the morning but we saw no elk but lots for deer and some nice. Bucks.

Standby for additional reports later this week.

Jerry Springer