Olympic Elk on the Olympic Penninsula

[Okanagan]

Cow elk wading the Queets River yesterday afternoon.  Olympic Mountains in the background.  We saw nine herds yesterday and this was the only solo elk. My son thinks that she is near to having a calf and looking for a quiet hiding place to birth it.

Sunday drive with a son and grandson.  We drove out Saturday evening after a track meet the grandson was in, and camped on a river.  Cooked for hours over a good campfire, elk steak and bacon, corn on the cob in coals, long slow breakfast on Sunday morning on a rare sunny morning.  All campfire cooking rather than use the stove we had along.

The next two picture below are looking down from a 100 foot high logging road bridge into the Matheny River.  I think it is the Matheny.  We crossed at least 12 rivers in an area I don't know well, some of it in Olympic National Park, and I got rivers mixed up.





Salmon River below.  Eagles in the trees but they don't show in the pic.



A couple of waterfalls beside the road as we drove the loop around Quinault Lake in the Park.  Every where we went is accessible to 2 wheel drive car, though a bit of clearance helps.





Below is a herd of elk near Quinault Lake.  The elk just above center is a young bull that has shed his right side antler but still has his left (right side from our perspective as we look at him.)  He likely has three or four points and would be legal to shoot in a 3 point on one side or better season. 

[pitw]

Pretty country but I wouldn't want to hunt with an idiot there.

[Okanagan]

Pretty country but I wouldn't want to hunt with an idiot there.

Guilty as charged.    I haven't hunted elk in years myself, but the boys have me almost talked into buying a tag and hunting elk this fall.

[pitw]

Have fun and remember not shooting is an option.   Every time I look at your pics it reminds me of back breaking work cause some idiot didn't understand physics.  I've come to enjoy the hunt and retrieval on flat land just fine. 

[nastygunz]

Beautiful pictures!

[riverboss]

God creations are so beautiful.

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[JohnP]

"My son thinks that she is near to having a calf and looking for a quiet hiding place to birth it."  Probably so.

Nice pictures.  Although I would never leave the desert I do wish we had a river nearby that I could fish.

[Okanagan]

Will fess up that a major reason for the exploring was to show me some flat land where I could have a good chance at an elk.  Most of those are hunted heavily, but we found a couple of spots with elk that for various reasons we don't think will be hunted much, if at all.  One will require knee high rubber boots if not hip waders.    They also showed me road connections and places where I might pick them up.  At one dead end road way up a river canyon my son said, "The only reason you'd ever pick us up here is if it went really bad, or really good."

IF I do decide to hunt elk, a walkie talkie is a critical item, to call my descendants to come and get my elk and me.

I can't remember all of the rivers but here are the ones I recall crossing Sat. and Sunday.  Hamma Hamma, Hoh, Dungeness, Quilcene, Skykomish, Wynoochie, Lilliwap, Dosewallips, Duckabush, Sam, Elwah, Matheny, Salmon, Bogachiel, Calawah, Clearwater, Queets, Quinault, Sol Duc, Humptulips...  Lotta water running off of the rain and snow of the Olmpic Mountains makes for a lot of rivers.

We could spare one to you, John, if we knew how to get it to you.  Someday they will figure out an atmospheric siphon and do just that, air pipe water from Forks to Phoenix.  I've read that the Dungeness has the greatest elevation drop in the shortest total length of any river in the world.  It passes a mile and a half from where I sit. 

[pitw]

I think you drove across more rivers in a short period of time than I have crossed in Alberta and Sask.  Slaves are handy and never shoulda been outlawed.   

[FinsnFur]

Man that is some beautiful country