PREPARING FOR AN ELK HUNT

Choosing Hunting Locations

EDITOR'S NOTE: Steve Puppe of Hamilton, Montana, promotions director for Knight Rifles and longtime avid hunter, lives on the edge of the Bitterroot National Forest with its abundant elk, mule deer and white-tailed deer.

Question: We're in the Bitterroot National Forest and hunting elk. What roads are we going on and why?
Answer: We're just taking a forest-service road here called Laird Creek. It's one of the areas I hunt. Everybody has his own secret honey hole. You hate to tell everybody exactly where you like to hunt, but this is one of my spots I know really well. I know how I can access different hills or mountains from this road. Basically, we'll take this road all the way to the end. There are a couple of T's where we could turn off and go into some different drainages. But we're going to take this road all the way up to where it dead ends and see what we can see.

Question: What are those other roads you're talking about?
Answer: There's Gilbert Creek and Bear Creek Saddle, which goes down into Warm Spring's drainage. There are several options from this one road, which is one of the reasons I do like it. I can cover lots of ground in this one area. There's another drainage on the east fork of the Bitterroot where we can go up in some of the creeks. To guide an elk hunt, you must know the land. You need to know how to get from one place to the other by the easiest access. Your clients may sometimes think they can't make it. If you know the easiest routes to get to a certain mountain or a specific saddle, that's the way a guide encourages his hunters. For instance, he can say, "Hey, it's not a big deal. We can go right here. It's pretty simple. We can just walk up this nice, easy ridge instead of going straight up one of those mountains." Part of that is spending time out here and knowing all of these different access points. Up above us we have Medicine Point and Rocky Knob. A little bit to the north of that is Shook Mountain where we are going to go. We'll hunt between Rocky Knob and Shook Mountain. I have some spots in there I really like to look for elk. There are some meadows on the backside.

To learn more about Knight Rifles, call (641) 856-2626, write them at Knight Rifles, Customer Service Dept., 21852 Hwy J46, Centerville, IA 52544, or visit their Web site www.knightrifles.com. You can contact Scott Boulanger, a dependable, expert elk guide in this section of Montana by writing him at P.O. Box 733, Darby, Montana, 59289. You can call him at (406) 821-0017, e-mail him at elkhunter@circlekbl.com, or visit his Web site www.circlekbl.com.