Can you believe ANOTHER surprise elk?

Okay, so this last weekend, I decided to go up the ridge where I almost shot that buck a couple days ago...which was in line with the two other hunters. But THIS time, I decided to wait until the afternoon when the morning army came out of the woods. This worked out really well, the woods were practically empty. However, it was blowing fits of snow...in winds that were really a little too high for my hunting convenience. You could almost feel your scent swirling around the hill. But, up I went, back onto the ridge. I was just starting to sneak along when out of the trees to my right (thick Christmas trees) jumps this ELK. I hadn't expected anything, let alone an elk, to be right there! He passed through this opening and I could see he was about a five-point raghorn...just meaning the tines on his antlers were short...he still had a lot...they were just short. Well, after I pushed through the trees that made my shot impossible, he was long gone. I didn't really want to push him completely off my ridge...I'm hoping he's still poking around that one this weekend...so I continued looking for some deer. In walking up the ridge, however, I found that he'd been cruising around the whole thing since last week (when we got this new snow) judging by all his tracks wandering here and there. If a guy had enough patience to sit in one spot for a LONG time (days?) he'd probably get a shot at a nice deer AND an elk on that hill. I'm not sure I have enough patience. Well, I continued along the ridge...the snow kept getting crunchier and crunchier...plus the top inch was this new snow and was really sticky! After a couple steps I'd have about and inch and a half of snow under the arch of my boot which made walking treacherous. Every once in a while, my ankle would fall to a side off my "snow heel." Well, I set up a couple times and tried to rattle. That really didn't seem to be the thing to do, one because it felt like the wind was just blowing the sound to the next mountain over the highway and because sitting there IN that wind made me pretty cold, pretty fast. I also tried to put out some scents, but with the same kind of thought in mind, the wind was just too strong. On the way back down the ridge, I heard a doe doing that "huffing" thing they do when they're spooked. Impossible! The wind wasn't going her way, she couldn't see me...how'd she get spooked? I finally figured it must have been my footsteps in the snow "crunch crunch crunch." Deer have little feet and don't seem to make as much noise...and yes, I WAS moving slow, but obviously not slow enough. Short story short, I moved up to where I finally saw her and what looked to be a decent buck booking it up the hill at about 50 yards. That was enough for me. It was about 1630 and was going to be dark in an hour...I had about a 45 minute walk out...so I just eased along the ridge and back out.
When I got to where I could see across the highway, there were some fellas lighting brush piles in a logging unit. The flames were probably about 40 feet high and you could hear the fires popping and cracking from 1/2 mile away. Of course, about this time the wind died down and it was relatively comfortable to be still, so I sat on the edge of the road and watched these huge fires burn into the approaching dusk. A pretty interesting evening.