We’d been applying for preference points for three or four years until we could be sure of being drawn for bull elk permits in a prime area of the Colorado Rocky Mountains.
  Colorado is flooded with elk, and while there is no shortage of permits, there is no shortage of hunters who want them, either.
  My hunting partners, brothers Bob and Ken Ball, and I had five days in which to find and shoot elk. My brother, Jon, and his 14-year-old son, Cassidy, drove up from Boulder to join us, not to kill an elk but to enjoy the experience of a high-country hunt.
  Jon took heat from some of his too-civilized friends for exposing his son to guns through Colorado’s hunter safety course and to the prospect of seeing how meat on the hoof becomes meat on the plate. The boy survived it all, of course, and is eager to go again.
  Colorado weather is changeable at this time of year, so we were all prepared. In addition to tire chains for all wheels on our trucks, we had T-shirts and shorts. I knew it wouldn’t snow, though. Spending money on chains and snowshoes for the trip guaranteed no snow.
  The unit we drew ranged from 10,000 to nearly 14,000 feet. We met in Colorado a few days early to get used to the thin air. We hoped we’d get our elk in the lower lands near roads, not way back in the wilderness where wheels of any kind are not allowed.
  There were only 40 permits issued for the early hunt, but most of those 40 hunters were camped within a few miles of us. If they knew what they were doing, we were in the right place.
  A few inches of snow had taken down the last of the aspen leaves weeks earlier, but all trace of moisture was gone, and many seeps and springs were dry. The only clouds we saw, other than clouds of road dust, were coming over the western horizon as we drove down the mountains the morning after our season ended.
  Animals that we’d known were in the patchwork of trees and meadows in the days before the season opened had disappeared by opening day.
  We almost never saw other hunters to ask what they thought of the situation. It was a pleasant contrast to the Colockum Pass area north of Ellensburg where hunting camps are jammed tent peg to tent peg like a gypsy tenement and where orange vests in the sunrise make the woods look like a pumpkin patch.
  Game wardens came by our camp to check our licenses. They said elk were there but were not moving.
  I met three men with pack horses at nearly 12,000 feet on the last day. They’d hunted the high country in the area for a dozen years and sought only trophy bulls. They’d killed two in the first days but were baffled at how few they’d seen.
  When I told them we weren’t interested in huge antlers so much as taking meat home, they showed me on my map an area that always held a few hundred elk. I told them we’d been through the entire area twice and had seen no fresh sign.
  He was surprised and skeptical. He confirmed that we were talking about the same area, shook his head, and recommended a small valley without road or trail, but Bob and Ken had been through that little valley a day earlier and had seen no recent sign.
  We heard no more than half a dozen distant shots in the five days, except for sustained fire by ill-mannered, frustrated hunters shooting up targets in camp.
  We saw bighorn sheep, antelope, deer, rabbits, and grouse. The only elk we saw was a head on the wall of the restaurant where we ate breakfast the day after our season ended.
  We explained to my nephew that, yes, hunting can be hard work with miles of walking, but that almost never did a group of hunters not even see its quarry.
  We’ll save our recreation money for another Colorado elk tag a few years down the road.
  Meanwhile, all is not lost. It’ll be elk season at home in Washington in just a few days.