Spring 2020 issue Backcountry Journal

PUBLIC LAND OWNER
E-BIKES and the Backcountry
BY TIM BRASS
I’m not one to pass up a shot on an elk. My hunting buddies all
give me a hard time about “ruining a great bow hunt” prematurely,
as I tend shoot the first legal elk within comfortable range. I
would argue my approach has been dictated by the fact that I’ve
largely been limited to hunting Colorado’s increasingly crowded
over-the-counter archery units for the past nine years, where if
you have an interest in putting meat in the freezer, it’s best to take
the shot when you get it.
But this year was different. Nine years of over-the-counter elk
hunting had yielded enough preference points to draw a tag in a
“trophy unit” with a near 50:50 bull to cow ratio and 80 percent
of the unit in public ownership. I figured, heck, when in Rome
it’d be worth testing my self-restraint to go after a big guy along
with my friends who had drawn the same tag.
We gave it our all and had opportunities to shoot bulls nearly
every day of the season, though the big guys had eluded us. The
last week of the season I met up with a friend who had found a
concentration of elk like he had never seen before – bulls bugling
all day long. They were hiding out five to eight miles from camp,
just off a dirt bike trail. We had found the elk motherlode, but
it was a haul, and the better way to access it would be with the
assistance of a dirt bike, e-bike or mountain bike.
So, we loaded up a mountain bike and a borrowed e-bike, and
the next morning biked to within a mile of the elk. With packs
loaded to the gills for an overnight trip, and plenty of pedaling still
required, it wasn’t exactly an easy uphill climb, but the thought
of riding a pack of meat back down on wheels eased a bit of my
hesitation to let an arrow fly.
We were down to the last few days of the season, and I was
needed back home, so it was time to fill the freezer. A perfect
calling setup brought a smaller 5 x 5 within 20 yards – too good
to pass up. I let the arrow fly, and he tipped over within sight. Six
miles deep, our fingers were crossed that our experimental e-bike
packout would work out as hoped. And, oh did it! The packout
was a downhill roll and, where pedaling was involved, the e-assist
kicking in made it perhaps wrongly easy. I lapped three of the four
bags of meat out with daylight to spare, using the turbo e-assist on
the uphill and riding the load downhill with relative ease.
A former mountain biker myself, the ride reminded me of
the joys of cruising downhill on a single track – a joy that I had
not experienced in years. Time for me to grab a new bike and
rediscover old ways? Not exactly. In recent years, I’ve found myself
more often pushing back on a seemingly relentless push by some
in the mountain bike community for more trail development
everywhere.
A growing breadth of scientific evidence is showing that
recreational disturbance from mountain bikes and other uses
is having a significant negative impact on elk populations in
30 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SPRING 2020