About 14 years ago my friend and I had drawn elk tags for a hunt in North West California. This hunt occurred on private timber land and bordered a State and National Park. We had previously located a patch of grassland in the private holding that could only be accessed by a long hike from the nearest access gate. There was a shorter way in though it was thru the National Park. There was a mandatory hunt orientation meeting the day prior to the hunt and I asked if it was legal to park in the National Park and carry cased rifles to the hunt area and the answer was no.
The first morning my friend and I arrived at the access gate at 0 dark thirty and started walking the old overgrown road to the area. We split up and I walked thru the dark woods to the meadow and arrived there just before first light. I sneaked along next to the NP boundary fence with no success. My friend and I met up and we sat down and I started bulging. An elk answered from across the fence in the park and try as I could I could not convince him to come over the fence.
About that time a rube hunter came walking down the hill toward us from the NP area and asked if he could join us and we told him sure thing. We asked him where he had come from and he told us his guide had dropped him off in the park and told him to walk down to the area we were located in and he would chase a large Bull Elk from the park to him. I opined that that sure did not sound very sporting and we also mentioned that he must have been asleep during the hunt orientation when I asked if we could walk across park land to access the hunt area. We also told him that rangers in the lookout he walked past must have seen him and reported him. We were joking of course. He seemed to be very curious about how we had gotten access to the area and asked if I could show him the trail we used. I agreed and then we decided to hunt back to the truck. I dropped down the hillside and my friend stayed on the overgrown road. Later that morning I came around the corner and there was my friend with a cow elk with a calf pressed up against her side and he had her dead to rights. Our tags were for either sex and he asked me if he should shoot. I told him it was his call and he passed. I told him he made the right decision as that calf must have been telling him “please mister, don’t shoot my Mom”. We heard a rifle shot ring out and discovered another hunter that came in the same gate we did had shot a big bull out of a herd that the guide had chased out of the park. After showing the rube hunter where we had parked we went back to camp to regroup. The lucky hunter was not part of the plot and just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
I later learned that the rube hunter was an undercover Fish and Game Warden and the guide was arrested and that he also had a large amount of drugs in his possession. I sure am glad we did not decide to take a short cut that morning.
The Sting
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