I picked up from where I had riboned the last bit of blood from yesterday. We tracked him slowly, sign and blood were getting tougher to find. We were probably averaging a hundred yards an hour. As hope was getting thin I found a bed, a bed with some blood in it, very little however.Over the next several hours I had found where he rebedded three times. Each bed had less and less blood. I could see where he had bailed over the ridge and onto a main elk trail. This is where the blood stopped. We were a good couple kilometers away from the initial shot and a solid 800ft in elevation higher. I had to reluctantly accept this bull has been lost. I was sick to my stomach over the fact.
My friend knew I was pissed so there was little conversation on our way off the ridge. On the hike out I went back to the location where the bull was standing when he got hit. I stood there and looked across the draw to the tree I braced on for the shot. I then threw the binos up to see the exact shooting lane. I was so confident in my shot I couldn’t understand how this bull survived. As I glassed the shooting tree that was aprox 150 yards away my heart sank. I could see tips of some dead trees that were in the shooting lane hallway between from where I shot to the elk. Looks like I probably clipped some wood.
As annoyed as I was I was starting to feel better knowing that the bull had a very good chance of survival. Despite being very discouraged I would come back with Elk-Aholic for the last and final day of elk season. All night I kept playing the shooting scenario over and over again. I had my fingers crossed we could get into elk tomorrow but realized we had stirred the area up pretty good so odds were way down.