I just got back from a scouting trip to Idaho, I drew a good rifle tag, last minute before I left I read that you could buy a second elk tag if there was any left after August 28th. I am an avid bow hunter so the choice was easy I grabbed my bow and bought me a second tag to use while scouting. Its much funner to scout while hunting. I loaded my truck and had my 10 year old daughter with me and we headed out. Got our camp settled in at about 12:30 in the afternoon and my girl was pestering me to go hiking so we went out. We took it easy hiking around within a mile or so of our camp taking alot of breaks. Aroun d 4:30 we started hearing bugles and my blood got pumping. We didn't do any calling of our own we just watched the wind and crept into the elk. By 6:30 we were staring down a decent little six point at 35 yards I ranged him the range finder (Leica 1200) said 48 yards so I drew back and shot two inches over the elks back. My daughter let me know that I should have hit the elk, I couldn't believe it I missed I re-ranged the spot and must have hit the tree behind the bull. That elk ran 50 yards than just walked back toward the herd. So we slowly hiked up the hill and hit the motherload. There were three bulls bugling including the one I missed and one was a really good bull maybe, 350+/-, he was high and wide with good mass. That bull bugled about 10 times than walked down the hill to 54 yards from us! He stopped behind a small tree we watched him for 3 or 4 minutes. I couldn't believe this it was one of my greatest hunts and I hadn't been out of camp for three hours on my first day, and I was with my 10 year old daughter, it was great. The bull stood still until some cows came out up the hill than he turned and walked to them I was at full draw but he stopped twice both behind trees and than was out of my range. This bull chased the cows around for a couple of minutes than we herd another bugle off to our right and the big bull answered he chased his cows away to our left and wasn't gone 1 minute when another bull came out to our left, this was a different bull from the other two. He was standing at 74 yards and I watched as he slowly walked toward the bigger bull as soon as he was out of sight the smaller bull I had shot at came out high on the ridge maybe 100 yards out and walked off toward the other two. We started to sneak around to get in front of the elk and three steps in all hell broke loose and we were busted the elk ran off to our left out of sight it was crazy my daughter thought it was the coolest thing that she had ever seen by this time it was getting late and we needed to get back to camp so we started to head back as we crested one of the hills in our path I noticed a couple of cows standing on the other side of the saddle we sat right down and they fed out into a meadow behind some trees so we slowly moved down close to them using two pine trees as cover as soon as we were behind the lowest tree we heard another bugle up the hill to our left and saw a decent bull move down to the cows at 84 yards. We watched them for ten minutes and than the bull started chasing a cow up toward us he ended up stopping broadside at 55 yards. I pulled back and let fly the arrow hit the spot we wooped once and than tried to contain ourselves. We watched as the bull ran 300 yards across the meadow than he stopped and stood were we could see him there was only ten minutes of light left and we stared at him until we couldn't see anymore the cow stood in a group and barked until just after dark we snuck off and went to camp. That night I just kept thinking of how my shot maybe wasn't as good as I thought or maybe the elk would run down the huge canyon just ahead of him. in the morning we hiked to the last spot we had seen him and saw no blood and no elk. We looked around for a couple of minutes and I was really getting a sinking feeling in my gut. When we looped back to the last spot we had seen him at and re-projected his path. I started hiking and within 40 yards I saw him. I was crazy happy my girl couldn't believe how big his body was. He was the smallest bull we had seen the day before but any bull with a bow is great especially in an over the counter unit. The best part was to share the experience with my daughter. The only draw back is we really only scouted for two hours for my rifle tag in the same area thats OK found some elk got some meat and an experience to last a lifetime.
