After five days of scouting for an antlerless cow elk, we finally came upon some promising elk signs in the Quehanna Wild Area in the Moshannon State Forest area near Piper.

The area is unpopulated and has quite the history of experimental aircraft and nuclear reactor experiments from the 1950s. Now the only significant state-run facility is the Quehanna Boot Camp, which is a minimum-security facility for first-time offenders. We saw the military style bootcamp drilling in the early hours as we headed for our hunting destinations several times.

We were driving back to camp at mid-week when we saw a small group of elk in Zone 10, which was the next-door neighbor of our Zone 12 hunting area. A hiking trail and powerline separated the two where we planned to hunt. We had hiked 25 to 30 miles looking for the best area to concentrate our efforts and we found one on a drive back to camp.

We decided to focus on this area the next day and try to pattern the elk herd’s movements. As my guide, Brian Rumsky, stated: “We don’t leave elk to find elk!” I agreed with him and the new leads picked up my spirits as I realized that we had an opportunity to get into some elk.

Wednesday morning found us up at 4 a.m. and at the lodge dining hall for breakfast and a packed lunch of sandwiches, fruit, cheese crunches and water bottles. We were hiking into the wilds and we would not be coming back out until dusk. We started down a powerline that buzzed like a nest of angry bees and found that the middle powerline was the divider of two zones. Any elk on the right side were off limits until they crossed over the middle line markers.

As we hiked the line, we found plenty signs of elk droppings and I got an education on bull and cow dung. The cow droppings were about as round and the size of a fireball, while the bull dung was much larger and not as uniform. The guide checked it for freshness…I took his word on the findings. If it stuck to you, it was fresh! If it was hard, it was older than we wanted to find.