brotherjack
09-15-2007, 09:34 PM
Tuesday morning, The Wife™ and I head out hunting elk. After the lack of elk sightings during bow season, our spirits were pretty low, but we knew from the sign in the area that there was at least one big bull around. We took the back way in, and glassed all the clear cuts we could from that side of the mountain. After a while of not seeing anything, we drove around, and headed up the other side of the same mountain.
We almost got run over on the drive up by a known road hunter coming out of the bush going WAY too fast with a six point elk in the back. We found the gut pile about 150 yards from where we spent bow season not seeing any elk. Good for him, but I tell you, that’s discouraging to see when you’re not all that sure that there’s more than one in the area. So, we did some half hearted hunting, but it wasn't long until we decided to give up for the day and head for home.
What should we see half way down the mountain, in broad daylight, standing in a clear cut about 150 yards from the road? You guessed it, a bull elk. I put the binoculars on him, and verified brow tines and waited. He turned his head, I counted to six, and whispered “he’s six, darlin’ – kill that elk!”
Out of the truck we bailed, me with the binoculars and the shakes, and The Wife™ with the fancy new gun (the Kimber) and a set of shooting sticks. She got off the road and found a good spot to set up to shoot. By this time, the elk has moved up and away enough that the shot is looking like about 225 yards up a 25-ish degree slope. No big deal, The Wife™ is an awesome shooter, and has dropped game at ranges in that neighborhood on several other occasions.
Just then, the elk went behind a cluster of freestanding trees in the clear cut, so I couldn’t see him from my angle. I jumped when the rifle went off – apparently The Wife™ could see him from where she was sitting. I was scanning furiously with the binoculars, hoping to see if he was looking hurt or not, but I never did pick up the elk again. I asked The Wife™ how she felt about the shot, and she said it felt good when she pulled the trigger, but she wasn’t sure, because she had got the scope in the eye – not hard enough to black it or anything, but enough to distract her so she didn’t get it back on target in time to see the bull’s reaction to the shot.
As the tree line was a good 50 yards or so from where the elk was standing at the time of the shot, we decided to sneak up quietly and look for hair or blood splatter, while keeping a sharp eye out for the elk himself in case he wasn't hit at all. As we were approaching the point of impact, we heard a ‘crash crash crash’ in the bush. I looked up just in time to see his form deep in the timber, side hilling away from us towards an opening. “Get over to that opening!” I hissed to my wife, motioning furiously with my hand. She bolted for the opening, and I shouldered the rifle and looked franticly for a shot between the thick trees. I never got one, and (as we would find out later), the elk made it across the clearing and into the far tree line before The Wife™ got close enough to even see him make the crossing.
Knowing the elk was not down (I was kind of surprised at that, given The Wife™'s shooting skills), and was still moving very well, we regrouped to look for blood sign in the immediate area, and leave him to go lie down wherever he had gone. It took about 20 minutes, but we finally located the start of the blood trail. The blood was dark and goopy. It also wasn’t very heavy, and petered out after about 30 or 40 yards. Not great.
About an hour after finding first blood, and only having short progress, I called a friend of mine with a lot more experience and asked him about the dark goopy blood. He thought likely a liver hit, probably fatal fairly quick, but maybe not quite yet - so we took a break and re-traced the blood trail a few times, looking for where it might have diverged. At this point, as far as we knew, the elk had five or six possible directions of travel from his last known position – so we were looking for clues as to which way he went.
I’ll spare you a lot more of the tedious blow-by-blow, and jump right to the point. Over 4 hours later, still no more blood found, we are into the ‘wander around on elk trails in likely directions’ search mode. The Wife™ calls me on the Garmin Rino, and tells me she’s got blood. I look up her position, and she’s a solid half a kilometer away from last known blood. Wow – talk about a gift from God to find a blood spot in the middle of the forest half a kilometer from the last known trail! When I reached her position and she told me the story, my spirits sank. She found the spot because the elk had packed up and bolted when he heard her walking on the other side of the ridge line from him, and she had heard the crashing and gone to investigate. He had bolted with enough vigor, that she never even got a glimpse of him. Dang it! Elk who have been shot through the liver over 4 hours ago shouldn’t be doing that! I shot a whitetail through the liver with a bow once, and it was dead in about 15-20 minutes.
At this point, we backed completely out of the area, and went and called some friends, and let the time tick on by. With about 4 hours of daylight left, we arrived back on scene with half a dozen pairs of eyes, most of them much more experienced hunters than we are. We all pounded bush till dark, and just nothing. The last known bed had only maybe a few ounces of blood in it, and there was no other blood to be found. The area was so thick with elk tracks going every which way, it was impossible to tell which way he might have gone from the tracks. The only thing we knew, was that he had run away from The Wife™ as she came around the ridgeline, which led off into a draw running downhill. So, all we could do was fan out, pound bush, and hope for the best. The best didn’t happen.
Daylight broke Wednesday morning, with us again pounding bush. We took a break for work (dang jobs!), and later on, daylight set Wednesday night with us still pounding bush. No elk. If you’ve never walked a mile in those shoes – let me tell you, it is a tough bit of walking. It’s a sick, sad feeling, that gets right down in your bones. What if, what if, what if. In hindsight, you can always see all sorts of things that had you done them different, could possibly have resulted in a different outcome. We definitely rushed up to the point of impact too fast - but then we never would have ever thought to wait 8 hours either, so we would have pushed him out of there whenever we went up, and on, and on, and on your mind rolls.
……. Epilogue ……
Being the hard-headed people that we are, even though we had given up the ground-search, we continued hunting elk in the same area in hopes that crows or coyotes might tip us off to where he was, and also maybe the big guy was still alive and maybe him or one of his bigger brothers would show himself in the meantime.
This morning, after a 30 second encounter with a bull who’s itty bitty sixth tine I decided was a good inch longer than legal at about second 29 of the encounter (which means, no I didn’t get a shot off), and a whole morning of hard hunting and not seeing anything, we were pulling out and heading for lunch. On the way, we ran into one of our buddies we’d had out to help search. We did the roll down the window thing, and what do you think the first words out of his mouth were? You guessed it – “I found your elk!” The crows and the smell had led him to the carcass.
The elk had come to rest having traveled about a kilometer and a half in the one direction we were just sure he hadn’t gone, because The Wife™ had spooked him in approximately the opposite direction last we had seen him. Sadly, he had expired probably within a few hours of that sighting. An elk dead since Tuesday, is no good for eating purposes by Saturday afternoon – I can promise you that.
The Right Thing™ seemed to be to cut the tag, and salvage what was salvageable – which was only the antlers at this point, so that’s what we did. Just getting them cut off got us close enough to the smell that we were practically retching. We were really seriously bummed out by the loss of the meat – we don’t hunt them for the antlers (I actually despise the six point/trophy hunting only regulations), but at this point, things were what they were, and nothing else we could do about it. It was good to have some closure, and the antlers are very nice, but it wasn’t exactly a happy moment either.
As a side note – the shot was obviously not placed in an ideal spot, but I’m wondering if I had a bullet failure that compounded that problem. We looked over the carcass as best we could without cutting it open, and couldn’t find either entrance wound, nor exit wound. We know there was an exit wound, because he was bleeding out of both sides in his last known bed. I was pretty surprised that there was an exit wound at all, given that this was a 165 grain bullet with an impact velocity at that range about 100 FPS slower than a 180 grain bullet out of my 303 British at close range – and I’ve never got an exit wound on an elk with one of those. As bloated as the carcass was with a lot of the hair already fallen out, you'd think at least the exit wound would be obvious. Who knows – and I’m not man enough to go do the forensics on that stinking carcass, for sure… Maybe I'll get ambitious and go back in a few days after the rest of the hair falls off and look for it through binoculars.
Anyway, that’s the story of The Wife™’s first six point elk (and the second of three six point elk we’ve ever seen during hunting season). Highs and lows, indeed.
http://xjack.org/hunting/welk2007.jpg
We almost got run over on the drive up by a known road hunter coming out of the bush going WAY too fast with a six point elk in the back. We found the gut pile about 150 yards from where we spent bow season not seeing any elk. Good for him, but I tell you, that’s discouraging to see when you’re not all that sure that there’s more than one in the area. So, we did some half hearted hunting, but it wasn't long until we decided to give up for the day and head for home.
What should we see half way down the mountain, in broad daylight, standing in a clear cut about 150 yards from the road? You guessed it, a bull elk. I put the binoculars on him, and verified brow tines and waited. He turned his head, I counted to six, and whispered “he’s six, darlin’ – kill that elk!”
Out of the truck we bailed, me with the binoculars and the shakes, and The Wife™ with the fancy new gun (the Kimber) and a set of shooting sticks. She got off the road and found a good spot to set up to shoot. By this time, the elk has moved up and away enough that the shot is looking like about 225 yards up a 25-ish degree slope. No big deal, The Wife™ is an awesome shooter, and has dropped game at ranges in that neighborhood on several other occasions.
Just then, the elk went behind a cluster of freestanding trees in the clear cut, so I couldn’t see him from my angle. I jumped when the rifle went off – apparently The Wife™ could see him from where she was sitting. I was scanning furiously with the binoculars, hoping to see if he was looking hurt or not, but I never did pick up the elk again. I asked The Wife™ how she felt about the shot, and she said it felt good when she pulled the trigger, but she wasn’t sure, because she had got the scope in the eye – not hard enough to black it or anything, but enough to distract her so she didn’t get it back on target in time to see the bull’s reaction to the shot.
As the tree line was a good 50 yards or so from where the elk was standing at the time of the shot, we decided to sneak up quietly and look for hair or blood splatter, while keeping a sharp eye out for the elk himself in case he wasn't hit at all. As we were approaching the point of impact, we heard a ‘crash crash crash’ in the bush. I looked up just in time to see his form deep in the timber, side hilling away from us towards an opening. “Get over to that opening!” I hissed to my wife, motioning furiously with my hand. She bolted for the opening, and I shouldered the rifle and looked franticly for a shot between the thick trees. I never got one, and (as we would find out later), the elk made it across the clearing and into the far tree line before The Wife™ got close enough to even see him make the crossing.
Knowing the elk was not down (I was kind of surprised at that, given The Wife™'s shooting skills), and was still moving very well, we regrouped to look for blood sign in the immediate area, and leave him to go lie down wherever he had gone. It took about 20 minutes, but we finally located the start of the blood trail. The blood was dark and goopy. It also wasn’t very heavy, and petered out after about 30 or 40 yards. Not great.
About an hour after finding first blood, and only having short progress, I called a friend of mine with a lot more experience and asked him about the dark goopy blood. He thought likely a liver hit, probably fatal fairly quick, but maybe not quite yet - so we took a break and re-traced the blood trail a few times, looking for where it might have diverged. At this point, as far as we knew, the elk had five or six possible directions of travel from his last known position – so we were looking for clues as to which way he went.
I’ll spare you a lot more of the tedious blow-by-blow, and jump right to the point. Over 4 hours later, still no more blood found, we are into the ‘wander around on elk trails in likely directions’ search mode. The Wife™ calls me on the Garmin Rino, and tells me she’s got blood. I look up her position, and she’s a solid half a kilometer away from last known blood. Wow – talk about a gift from God to find a blood spot in the middle of the forest half a kilometer from the last known trail! When I reached her position and she told me the story, my spirits sank. She found the spot because the elk had packed up and bolted when he heard her walking on the other side of the ridge line from him, and she had heard the crashing and gone to investigate. He had bolted with enough vigor, that she never even got a glimpse of him. Dang it! Elk who have been shot through the liver over 4 hours ago shouldn’t be doing that! I shot a whitetail through the liver with a bow once, and it was dead in about 15-20 minutes.
At this point, we backed completely out of the area, and went and called some friends, and let the time tick on by. With about 4 hours of daylight left, we arrived back on scene with half a dozen pairs of eyes, most of them much more experienced hunters than we are. We all pounded bush till dark, and just nothing. The last known bed had only maybe a few ounces of blood in it, and there was no other blood to be found. The area was so thick with elk tracks going every which way, it was impossible to tell which way he might have gone from the tracks. The only thing we knew, was that he had run away from The Wife™ as she came around the ridgeline, which led off into a draw running downhill. So, all we could do was fan out, pound bush, and hope for the best. The best didn’t happen.
Daylight broke Wednesday morning, with us again pounding bush. We took a break for work (dang jobs!), and later on, daylight set Wednesday night with us still pounding bush. No elk. If you’ve never walked a mile in those shoes – let me tell you, it is a tough bit of walking. It’s a sick, sad feeling, that gets right down in your bones. What if, what if, what if. In hindsight, you can always see all sorts of things that had you done them different, could possibly have resulted in a different outcome. We definitely rushed up to the point of impact too fast - but then we never would have ever thought to wait 8 hours either, so we would have pushed him out of there whenever we went up, and on, and on, and on your mind rolls.
……. Epilogue ……
Being the hard-headed people that we are, even though we had given up the ground-search, we continued hunting elk in the same area in hopes that crows or coyotes might tip us off to where he was, and also maybe the big guy was still alive and maybe him or one of his bigger brothers would show himself in the meantime.
This morning, after a 30 second encounter with a bull who’s itty bitty sixth tine I decided was a good inch longer than legal at about second 29 of the encounter (which means, no I didn’t get a shot off), and a whole morning of hard hunting and not seeing anything, we were pulling out and heading for lunch. On the way, we ran into one of our buddies we’d had out to help search. We did the roll down the window thing, and what do you think the first words out of his mouth were? You guessed it – “I found your elk!” The crows and the smell had led him to the carcass.
The elk had come to rest having traveled about a kilometer and a half in the one direction we were just sure he hadn’t gone, because The Wife™ had spooked him in approximately the opposite direction last we had seen him. Sadly, he had expired probably within a few hours of that sighting. An elk dead since Tuesday, is no good for eating purposes by Saturday afternoon – I can promise you that.
The Right Thing™ seemed to be to cut the tag, and salvage what was salvageable – which was only the antlers at this point, so that’s what we did. Just getting them cut off got us close enough to the smell that we were practically retching. We were really seriously bummed out by the loss of the meat – we don’t hunt them for the antlers (I actually despise the six point/trophy hunting only regulations), but at this point, things were what they were, and nothing else we could do about it. It was good to have some closure, and the antlers are very nice, but it wasn’t exactly a happy moment either.
As a side note – the shot was obviously not placed in an ideal spot, but I’m wondering if I had a bullet failure that compounded that problem. We looked over the carcass as best we could without cutting it open, and couldn’t find either entrance wound, nor exit wound. We know there was an exit wound, because he was bleeding out of both sides in his last known bed. I was pretty surprised that there was an exit wound at all, given that this was a 165 grain bullet with an impact velocity at that range about 100 FPS slower than a 180 grain bullet out of my 303 British at close range – and I’ve never got an exit wound on an elk with one of those. As bloated as the carcass was with a lot of the hair already fallen out, you'd think at least the exit wound would be obvious. Who knows – and I’m not man enough to go do the forensics on that stinking carcass, for sure… Maybe I'll get ambitious and go back in a few days after the rest of the hair falls off and look for it through binoculars.
Anyway, that’s the story of The Wife™’s first six point elk (and the second of three six point elk we’ve ever seen during hunting season). Highs and lows, indeed.
http://xjack.org/hunting/welk2007.jpg