Tommy's Elk Hunt

Good friend, highly experienced hunter and invaluable member of the Sportsman Spotlight team, Tommy Allen recently went on an elk hunt. "I'm not used to hunting that thick of country. And I was up in the Selkirk Mountain Range, which is up towards the Canadian border. And the first thing when I got there, it was late when I drove in there and the roads had snow on them. So I started driving the roads to see if I could find the elk sign. I know there’s a few elk in there, but they're few and far between. But it's a chance to hunt branch bulls and like most of Washington state, where you can only hunt spikes. But I kept seeing just tons of tracks, wolf tracks all up and down the roads. There’s wolves all throughout the northwest out here. That's not uncommon, but that many wolves, it's very uncommon and didn't matter what mountain range I was on or what areas I was in it was just thick with wolf tracks. When I actually got on foot the next day and started hiking, came out, you know, hiking in an area and wolves are just howling like crazy. And, you know, so I figured, you know, that kind of buggered up that area because usually when the wolves howl, the deer and elk animals just scatter. But not only when I started, you know, really getting into the backcountry, hiking in the remote areas, there's just huge grizzly bear tracks everywhere. And so fresh tracks, old tracks. And I'd match up my foot. I wear a size 12 boots and they're the same size as my boots are huge, making a perfect case for at the very least, bear spray.