Cielo Vista - Colorado
Vicki with her first elk.
A beautiful bull.
Hunter: Vicki Cianciarulo
Cameraman: Ralph Cianciarulo
September 3
We arrived at the ranch about 2 p.m. Cielo Vista is 80,000 acres of mountains, basins, streams, and a pile of elk. When we arrived, we met up with Hal and Stacy Gahm and their 8-month old daughter Haley. Brian Hawkins, Josh Lineaberg, and Christopher Welch were there too. We had a quick sandwich, unpacked, put on our hunting clothes, shot my Hoyt, and we were out looking for elk by 4:30 p.m. We heard some elk, two different bulls were bugling, but we didn’t see either one. The ranch was beautiful and breathtaking. We went back to camp (a doublewide trailer) where Stacy had made us some tacos for dinner. What a great day!
September 4
We woke up at 4:45 a.m. and got ready to go out. We went to what they call Purgatory Basin—it was awesome! I don’t know how many bulls we heard bugling and grunting. We did see some bulls, over on the west ridge, but we heard closer ones. Ralph, Hal, Brian, and I went after them. We would get set up, and Hal and Brian would stay about 30 yards behind us and continue to call.
We did get to one bull. He was within 20 yards of us, but we couldn’t see him. It was too thick! He was raking a pine tree and we couldn’t even see that!! But he was close… We never did see him, and our wind switched on us and he took off. Later that afternoon, we went back out on the Bad Boy to look for elk. We would drive a little and then stop, call, and listen. We heard a bull in the bottom and went to get set up on him. He only bugled once and that was it!! We didn’t think he was coming, as he wasn’t talking to us anymore. Then we heard some movement below us. A beautiful bull crossed at about 100 yards across an old log road. Then a little rag horn came up and stood at 30 yards from us!! Both were covered in mud from a wallow. They walked away and we didn’t see that nice bull again. We continued on and heard some more bulls and a few cows, but none of them wanted to play! Tomorrow is another day…
September 5
It was a slow day, probably because of the full moon. The elk were pretty quiet all day. It rained for a bit this afternoon too.
September 6
It was quiet this a.m. until about 9:00, and then we started hearing and seeing elk. We took off after one that had a really different bugle, it was high and then growled. We never saw him though, until later around noon. We went around the other side of the mountain and heard a few different bulls bugling including him. He is BIG, they were guessing about 360!! He and a bunch of other elk (cows and calves) were bedding down, so we left them for later and headed back to camp. Ralph got a branch to the head on the Bad Boy Buggy; it cut his head and gave him a lump! He should probably watch where he is going! LOL!!
We headed back out to where we were this morning. We found the same herd of elk and they were bugling again. We went straight at them and had them yelling at us! We had one small 5x5 raghorn come to 24 yards from me, but that’s not what they want shot here at Cielo Vista. We never did get caught up to the big guy this afternoon, he stayed hidden.
The wind makes it very hard to get close to the elk. You have to constantly check your wind. Oh, I forgot that this morning we did get to about 60 yards from a spike and raghorn in the aspens. We found one of the elk’s honey-holes. The Aspen were full of fresh elk sign! Tomorrow is another day.
September 7
We had a great day today. We drove the Bad Boy Buggy up along the big meadow, stopping every once in a while to do some calling. We had a bull bugle really close, so we set up fast on him. He was with a few cows and they went up the ridge. The bull really wanted to see what was calling (Hal), but decided to stay with his cows. The closest he came was about 60 yards and he was in the bush. He was a good one! He was over 300 inches!! We continued on, and then found the Buggy had a flat tire. Hal radioed camp to have someone come with the trailer. We hiked up the ridge calling after a few more bulls. I think we saw 4 bulls this a.m. all shooters!!
This afternoon, we went back towards where we were this a.m. NEAR Salazar Meadow. We went up a different road and called elk. We set up a couple of times, one with the elk maybe 60 yards out, but the wind swirled. We moved up further on the ridge and called some more. Hal noticed a cow elk bedded down wind of us about 40 yards. She really didn’t seem to care much about us being there. It was neat!!
We did some more calling and had another bull coming in really close, about 20 yards, but he smelled where we walked and he ran away. He was a big bull. I was full draw, just waiting for a broadside shot. We found a honey-hole again today. There was so much elk sign it was crazy. Ralph told Hal in all of the years and places that he has hunted for elk; he has never seen sign like this anywhere! We are planning on going back again there tomorrow. We saw and heard so many bulls and good bulls too! Oh, we had a spike come running in at us also…this place is awesome and so is everyone here in camp. Elk hunting Heaven!!!
September 8
I DID IT!!! I shot a bull elk finally, after 6 tries at elk hunting…and he’s beautiful!! This a.m. Ralph, Hal, and I went out on the Bad Boy. We went back to Salazar Meadow. It was very quiet. We drove around a bit and decided we should get the Buggy back to charge up. The battery actually drained out on the way back and Ralph and I pushed it back—it was funny!
It was raining when we were going out this afternoon and the buggy wasn’t fully charged, so we took Hal’s truck. We checked a couple of places and they were still pretty quiet. We went up drainage and when Hal turned off the truck, we heard a bull bugle. We called a few times and he continued to call back. We tried to set up on him a couple of times, but he wasn’t going to come to us. So we decided we needed to stalk up and continue to try to get closer to him. Ralph and I set up in a pile of slashed logs, Hal set up about 60 yards away from us to call the bull past us for a shot. The bull kept calling, but still wasn’t really moving. Then for whatever reason, the bull did move, he moved higher on the ridge. At first, I thought my shot was going to be about 9 yards, but he came through on the higher trail. I drew back my Hoyt set at 56#, 26.5”—Beman ICS Hunter tipped with a NAP Hellrazor! He was behind some brush as I drew. He didn’t give me a shot until he was about 35 yards out. He was quartering away and my arrow hit behind the ribs and straight up into him. I couldn’t believe it! I started shaking bad, and started to cry with joy! We heard the bull cough a couple of times, so we knew he was down!
Hal came over to where we were and told us he could hear my bull. We were all so excited, we gave the bull about 15 minutes before going to look for him. This bull had been playing with us for over an hour and finally showed himself about 7 p.m. We walked quietly over to where we saw him run to and were able to see him laying there. He went about 80 yards from where I shot him. I started crying all over again. The elk monkey is off my back!! Yea!!! We walked up to him and the closer we got to him, the bigger he got. Hal hadn’t seen him yet, so he was very excited too. We had to go back to camp and get help and chainsaws to be able to get this bull home. When we got back to camp, everyone wanted to go with us to get my bull. We had 9 people go—me, Ralph, Hal, Josh, Christopher, Brian, Andrew, Paul, and Carlos. We were able to get back to the area pretty quick.
We took lots of photos and then we loaded him up on a 4x4 to get him back to the truck. I was soaked from the rain earlier and cold and tired. We got back to camp about 12:30 a.m. and then we had to hang him and cool him off. We got to bed about 2:15 am. I cannot believe it!! He is beautiful!! Thank you Lord!!
September 9
We slept until about 7:30 a.m. and went and took some more photos of my bull elk. When we were done, we (Ralph and I) caped out the bull while Andrew and Christopher cut up the meat. Ralph and I headed into town (San Luis) to get Ralph an elk tag. When we got back, Carlos and Milton were joking around about my bull with Ralph, saying that maybe Ralph shouldn’t have bought the tag because it’s going to be hard to beat 358-6/8. They measured it while we went to town. Ralph wanted to cry (just kidding) my bull is bigger than anyone expected. We did go out this afternoon, but didn’t hear anything or really see anything. We have tomorrow a.m. for Ralph, then we have to go home.
September 10
I made a mistake and thought we were flying out to the Yukon for our moose hunt on the 13th, but it was really on the 12th, so we threw all of our gear into my truck and drove 16 hours home so that we would have time for RJ and laundry before we had to leave for the airport!!
It was all well worth it!!