bucksmut
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Once in a lifetime bull down!!
I finally have a minute to sit down and relive my Wasatch Archery Elk hunt and recap some of the highs and lows of a great hunt. Over all it was an awesome ?Once-in ?a lifetime? experience that I wouldn't trade for anything.
To tell the story right I guess I have to start from the very beginning. I have debated mentioning this part as I feel that I have gotten mixed responses from fellow hunters out there when I do but to validate the stories? accuracy I will tell the ?whole? story. Back in February I decided to donate a few bucks to SFW at the hunting expo. That same day I was able to meet and talk huntin? with a few fellow MM members and one in particular Sniper1 had me very excited for the fall hunts to get here as he was telling me about his plans to draw a certain archery elk tag that he was hoping to draw this year on the Wasatch Mountains. At that time I had never actually stepped foot on that unit but it is always fun to talk huntin? with a fellow archer and I was reliving my archery elk hunts from the previous year in Colorado and what an absolute blast it was to chase bugling beasts around the forest with a stick and string even though I went home empty handed that year.
Well as luck would have it, and I mean about a 1in 560 chance amount of luck, I was at an ice skating rink in Huntsville a month or so later and my phone started going off like crazy with text's and e-mails congratulating me on a super tag. To be honest I was really excited that I was lucky enough to draw the coveted Henry Mountain buck tag I had put in for that I was convinced I would draw (hahah someday?) and didn't even think about anything other than that. Well I got home and discovered that I had drawn the Wasatch Archery Elk tag that Sniper1 was referencing that day at the expo. When the shock of actually winning something other than a Weber State University parking ticket set in I felt like a fish out of water with a tag basically in my pocket on a unit that I had never even seen. I remember thinking to myself ?self?this is where the homework begins?. This thought was somewhat of an understatement as at the time I had no idea of how huge this unit was.
Well to speed things along I did months amount of homework with many hours with my nose glued to the Monster Muleys archives trying to learn as much as I could. (briefly I will pause to throw out a blanked thank you to all those before me with this tag for taking the time to post pictures and stories to relive your hunts with others because this was the only thing that got me through this wet spring)
After many weekends and $$$ spent on trips back and forth trying to learn this beautiful unit and after many e-mails back and forth with some of you trying to glean all the info I could it seemed like I was in a dream with the August 17 opener getting ever closer I felt paralyzed. Even with all the effort and time put into learning a new unit I still felt grossly inadequate to attempt to take a mature bull on a unit I was a novice to.
Regardless of how I felt opening day was here and I was on the mountain side at dark with one of my favorite hunting partners my older brother Nathan and we were ready for the bulls to start screamin and all sorts of elk action ?.well we heard crickets?.and we saw camo from other hunters not brown fur. I thought maybe we had taken a wrong turn and were on a general season unit for surely guys were not investing years? worth of bonus points to be so sweaty in August to see and hear nothing on opening day!
Pause for retrospective reality check
A couple of things that I learned about LE Elk hunts and elk in general: even though it is a limited entry tag it does not owe you anything?.meaning that every animal you have the opportunity to take-you earn it. I guess I was a little naive to this concept as on opening morning I was honestly expecting the sun to crest and then push play on a Primo?s Elk hunting video with all kinds of action. To be fair I think these expectations come from nearly a decade?s worth of bow hunting the Uintah Mountains with a small amount of bloody arrows to my name and something always whispering in my ear? ?If only this was a LE unit?. Another thing that I learned over the years and was paramount to remember on this hunt is this. ELK ARE INTELLIGENT. I lose a large amount of respect for anyone if I ever hear them minimalize the intelligence/instinct/surviving will power or an elk. I have come to find an exponential amount of respect for this critter, even the more when I try to kill them. They never cease to amaze (or outsmart me)! While I am on this rant I will through another thing out there that I was somewhat mislead on prior to my hunt. I always thought that a LE hunt meant that you could hunt the whole unit but I soon realized what the elk on this unit have known for years and that is there was quite a bit of private property on this hunt. At least where we were hunting it was easy to find the private as that was where most of the bugles were coming from later in the hunt. My point in mentioning this is to mention my appreciation for public land that allows us to hunt when and where we want within legal bounds and to show how cool and what an accomplishment it is for anyone to harvest such an intelligent animal on PUBLIC property as it is my opinion that the bulls know where they are less likely to be hunted hard. P.S. that was kudos to all of you who hunt public successfully no myself specifically?..but ya know what after the miles I put on my boot leather I will boastfully include myself as well
We did however come across a dead cow elk that someone had arrowed the week before and never recovered. It was amazing to see how quickly they decompose...
Continuing on with the hunt
Over the next couple of days we were able to finally see some elk. My brother and I spotted some cows from about 500 yards out and there was a big?ol bull with them already and he was raking a pine tree like it was his job. He finally popped his head out of the pine tree and we thought he was a shooter so we moved in to about 100 yards of the elk and cow called them. For a while they never responded at all but then after about twenty minutes of soft cow calls the cows that were with the bull started to cow call back to us. We called and called and called?. I think I gave myself a canker on my lips from calling so much and they did not want to leave the pine pocket they were in that was directly across from us so we started walking down the ridge that was adjacent to the pine pocket that they were held up in. As we were walking it was getting later in the evening and we kept calling occasionally hearing a mew or a light bugle. We got to the bottom and discovered that we had hit the end of public property as there was a private sign so we paused to rest before heading back to the road to go back to camp for the night and we called once more to the elk behind us now. As we sat and drank I heard a rock click and I told my brother to get ready and I knocked an arrow. Sure enough nearly silently I saw a pair of brown fuzzy ears emerge from the cliff ledge ten feet below us. It was a cow then a calf then a couple other cows and I was holding my breath waiting for big bull to come through and my brother was trying to position for a shot on a cow then right before he was ready to throw an arrow at the next cow that came through the shooting lane I saw antler tips and told him not to shoot. I was not disappointed as it was one of the coolest things ever to call a whole heard of about 15 elk into our calls but the bull was a regular rag horn five point and I decided to pass him up in hopes a better bull and some more time hunting the rut. Looking back on it if I would have killed that bull I would have regretted it as there was still a whole lot of hunting to do.
After three long weeks on and off the mountain the only arrow that was flung between myself and my hosts of helpers with spike and deer tags was at a two-point buck deer that was mostly concealed by the jungle of thick underbrush and sailed wide right into a nice soft aspen which only took ten minutes to pry out and was not nearly enough time to rest from walking up such a deceivingly steep mountainside. With every passing trip I kept telling myself that this was another successful scouting trip as the ?real hunt? will be the last two weeks-especially when all the spike hunters were out of there?.funny the things you tell yourself to talk your motivation up throughout an elk hunt?moon, hunters, weather, lucky underwear etc.
On Labor Day weekend a good friend of mine and me headed into the hills with high hopes of cold weather and more rutting activity and we were somewhat gratified. We arrived late on Friday evening and after we set camp up we took a four wheeler ride to do some locating with a bugle. Seconds after the first bugle left my lips on my pack bugle we were greeted for the weekend by a mature bull just a few yards away from us. I went to bed that night for a few hours of sleep with the unique raspy bugling bull in my mind. Labor Day weekend hunt trip was one of those invaluable trips that I felt that I learned allot about the area I was hunting and I finally committed to one specific area as I had been told by many in the past that the Wasatch unit is very easy to spread yourself thin on and go home empty handed. This weekend we had seen some pretty decent bulls and saw some rutting activity and talked to ALLOT of fellow archers who were getting pretty uptight at this point. I was intrigued to see how uptight and almost panicked some fellow hunters were on this unit with the rut so early and the weather so hot. I vowed to not let myself get down from this point forward and just enjoy the beauty of the earth and company of loved ones. With the decision made to stick right where I had been and not make any more moves I learned the basic habits of the elk in the canyon and headed home with more confidence and those images of bulls that we had seen in my mind.
Three days later on Thursday night I decided to head up by myself as the rest of my ?crew? couldn't make it till the weekend. After I got there after work and driving and setting up camp I was exhausted (who know a wall tent was so much work to set up by yourself)! Since I didn't get to sleep till 3 A.M. I woke up a little late and hit my draw at 9:30. Needless to say I was a little upset with myself for sleeping in and wasting a morning hunt but when I got there I was shocked as there was all kinds of action happening. I counted 5 different bulls bugling back and forth to one another and I was so stoked and I was convinced that today would be a BULL DAY! As luck would have it on my decent to the elk I busted a couple of the bull?s watchdog cows and my morning was over. I was so quiet and so slow getting down there that I was very disappointed to blow all the elk out of the whole canyon that I wasn?t even paying attention to my surroundings and kicked a silent bull out from his bed under a pine tree just seven yards from where I had been standing. I couldn't believe that he just laid there for a good 15 seconds while I was sulking. Lesson learned!
The good thing was that the elk were there, they were talking and my callers were on their way. That evening my brother and I were on a really loud and angry herd bull that was lighting up the whole area with his bugle; for a second we thought he was coming into our calls as he sounded so close but we then realized that he was just turning his head towards us when he bugled. Those animals are so majestic!! That bull was putting the hair on my neck on end. We hiked out and by the time we hit the road it was dark and my brother called him pregnant wife who was ready to have a baby within a couple weeks to make sure all was well and I called my girlfriend and we kept asking them while we were on the phones if they were hearing all the bugles that we were hearing? they probably thought we were crazy as I doubt cell phone speakers are that good but it was cool as the bulls in this area were going nuts that night. As we were sitting on the four wheelers listening a bull pushed his cows right up on top 50 yards away from us and then back down the canyon from where we came and we had our excitement levels back up to where they should have been. That night my other good friend came up and the three of us talked about the awesome show we had seen(heard).
The next and what proved to be the final morning of my 2011 Archery Elk hunt greeted us with frost on the ground and there was an almost reverent level of excitement to get on the hill and hunt these elk while they were hot. We got to our area and listened and could hear a few bugles but nothing like it was a few hours prior in the darkness. We listened for a while and then dove off into the canyon towards the meanest sounding bugle. When we got in we were once again deceived by the volume of this bull as he was still a canyon over and by the time we realized he was not going to come to our calls the morning bugling session was almost over. We sat and discussed for a few minutes on what to do. I hate these times when the spotlight is on you as the tag holder and you really have no idea what to do next to utilize your resources and time left on the hunt.
After knowing what we should do but now really wanting to walk further into the deep canyon we decided to take advantage of the morning potential and head into the thick. As we were walking we decided to be really quite and slow and not skyline ourselves right from the get go; this proved to be the difference maker this morning. As we were inching our selves into somewhere that we didn't know held elk or not we hear a really loud and mean bugle just a couple hundred yards in front of us; we had the wind and we knew this was a prime opportunity to get into a mature bull. This all happened so quickly that it still feels like a dream but I sneaked within 100 yards of the bulls bugle and my two partners went the opposite direction about 50 yards behind me. As we were setting up getting into position the bull bugled again and I could tell he was no rag horn as he sounded like he was upset and groaning. I knocked an arrow and took my position behind a large scrub oak bush on a bare hillside that was near the fringe of a quaky pocket with pines running through it. This was a pretty steep hill and I told myself to shoot low if I see an opportunity. Well I got into position and almost like clockwork my partners knew I was ready without even saying or looking at them (I guess that is what you get from a decade worth of bow hunting together? some things just become automatic) They let out a symphony of cow mews behind me and then stopped after a few seconds and silence? I remember during this silence I was thinking ?Please bugle! Please bugle! Please bugle!? Sure enough after a moment of silence for emphasis the bull let out a blood curdling bugle that really affected me since we were so close? I was getting really excited but knew from past experiences to not get to excited because those last 100 yards to within bow range are the hardest. I then heard a twig snap and I could tell the bull was mobile. Then it was silent for a minute or two and then I heard it bugle but it sounded a little different like it was two hundred yards away. I was preparing myself for an emotional letdown again as everyone I had talked to this year said ?you are going to have to sit water cause they are not coming to calls? they will bugle but they won't come in? so I was getting a little depressed as it sounded like the bull had just wandered off into the pines away from us. Just as I was about to turn and look for my callers our bull shrieked again and this time he was only 50 or so yards away? I about fell down to the ground to hide after this bugle as it was really loud? it felt like I should have been able to feel the heat off of his breath it felt so close!! I stood still and got my face in the bush to look through the openings and then I caught movement. I saw some black legs swaggering towards me. I kept my eyes focused on the movement and then I saw the bull in all of his glory as he walked through an opening about 40 yards straight down the hill from me. My initial reaction was I am going to kill this bull?my second reaction was what is up with his antlers? this was needless to say not a typical mature bull. He had something going on with his rack. I am very grateful I was able to get a look at this bull clearly at 40 yards because if I later only had a fleeting glance I might have passed him up and that would have been a tragedy in my opinion. So after the bull walked through the opening as I caught a look at him he kept heading to the cow calls which then started up again fifty yards behind me. I could hear the bull grunting and glunking at the cows as he walked and then just like they always do he paused before showing himself to me for a shot. He bugled again but I couldn't see him as he was 20 yards away and behind a bush and then the bush I was at was blocking my view. All I can remember at this point was thinking please those last few yards!! Just as I finished this thought I heard the rustling of sage brush and I saw his huge eye guards emerge with the rest of his gnarly junk following. This was my Primo?s video emerging right before my eyes. This is a textbook call in. He had his eyes on my callers looking for them and didn't know I was there. As he was walking towards the sounds of the calls I drew my arrow back and he caught movement at ten yards and bolted sideways five or so yards and I instinctively touched off my release. I don't really remember going through my mental checklist that I usually do before a shot. All I remember was saying shoot low as he was still a few feel below me on the hill. As I touched my release I watched my arrow tipped with a 100-grain G5 Triton blow through his vitals at a nearly perfect angle. He whirled around and with two large bounds was out of sight down the mountain. I took a huge breath as I feel now looking back I wasn?t breathing a whole lot over those few seconds. There were two negative thoughts I immediately had. One was oh gosh that shot looked a little high?even though I aimed low and secondly was oh man he was headed towards the private property canyon that was parallel to the canyon we were in. I cow called to my callers and they came down with smiles on their faces. Clint said to my brother on the hill, ?Hey did you see it?? Nathan said ?No.. did you? , then Clint responded ? No, but I sure did hear his arrow shwack!?. They came down and we all relived what had just happened. I can honestly say that after all the years of going home empty handed and all the blown calling attempts and being winded hundreds of times by these animals that was the coolest call in and it was TEXTBOOK. We had the wind, we had the angles, I made the shot.
After about an hour we trailed the bull strait down the mountain about three hundred yards with some difficulty as it was so thick but we rounded a corner and I say a mountain of tan fur laying in the morning sun up ahead. We were fortunate that he had expired only a few hundred yards away from private property so we didn't have to deal with that mess and I couldn't have been happier! As we walked up on hi he head was buried in a bush and the ground and my partners were worried I had shot a cow lol. But when I got his head out of the ground and bush we all admired what a unique and special bull this was.
Then the work started?.. I have never seen such a big bodied animal on the ground before. This was a fat boy! The pictures do not do this justice!. I tried to roll this bull over and I about had to change my britches so I had my two partners push him over and he rolled on top of me and about hyper extended my knee which would have been at the worst place worst time scenario (now I know what it feels like to have a horse fall on your legs and pin you) Well we decided to gut him and get him cooled out while we went to get our packs. I carried out the head and cape and it about killed me. I was seeing dots after a few steps. Not healthy I am sure. I am sure it was over 110 lbs and as the days go by I am estimating more? Nathan my brother also carried one quarter out this trip and Clint got all of our gear which was also no small feat. Carrying three packs and a bow is somewhat difficult but we all have our own opinions on which one was hardest. We got back to camp and it started raining a little and we had to turn right around and do it again? this time for real with all the meat. We got the pack frames and psyched ourselves up mentally for the task at hand. When we reached the bull it immediately started raining again and this time it did not stop?we were drenched. Then it started hailing. I was pretty cold? that is not fun trying to carve out a bull with a sharp knife when you are shaking. I cut myself a few times needless to say. We first had high hopes of quartering him out but we soon realized this was not going to happen. We deboned all the meat off this big boy and filled EVERY and I mean EVERY pocket on each pack with meat. The zippers all looked like they were going to pop. We got all loaded up and creep-ed up the kill slowly. That was a ton of weight. When I took the meat to get it processed we found out that all the meat deboned added up to upwards of 350 lbs that we walked out of there.
All in all this was a once-in-a-lifetime hunt that I will never forget!! I had so much fun and was at the heart and soul of bow hunting the majestic elk. I am so glad that everything worked out the way it did and that I didn't have to sit water or in a tree all day to find a mature bull that I was happy with as I am impatient and really do love chasing them on the ground with calls. I owe allot of thanks out there to my hunting partners Nathan and Clint who helped me out on the mountain with this bull and other previous trips. I also owe thanks to my friend Justin for coming up and helping me with scouting and locating elk to hunt. Lastly I wanted to thank all of you out there who responded to my e-mails and PM?s here in Monster Muley land! Specifically I appreciate the knowledge and enthusiasm I received from Jim aka AWHOLEALOTTABULL. It helped me keep my feet on the ground. Thanks for reading and I hope that all of you will be able to have as outstanding of a hunt as I just did.
Good luck and keep the wind in your face!
Bucksmut
I finally have a minute to sit down and relive my Wasatch Archery Elk hunt and recap some of the highs and lows of a great hunt. Over all it was an awesome ?Once-in ?a lifetime? experience that I wouldn't trade for anything.
To tell the story right I guess I have to start from the very beginning. I have debated mentioning this part as I feel that I have gotten mixed responses from fellow hunters out there when I do but to validate the stories? accuracy I will tell the ?whole? story. Back in February I decided to donate a few bucks to SFW at the hunting expo. That same day I was able to meet and talk huntin? with a few fellow MM members and one in particular Sniper1 had me very excited for the fall hunts to get here as he was telling me about his plans to draw a certain archery elk tag that he was hoping to draw this year on the Wasatch Mountains. At that time I had never actually stepped foot on that unit but it is always fun to talk huntin? with a fellow archer and I was reliving my archery elk hunts from the previous year in Colorado and what an absolute blast it was to chase bugling beasts around the forest with a stick and string even though I went home empty handed that year.
Well as luck would have it, and I mean about a 1in 560 chance amount of luck, I was at an ice skating rink in Huntsville a month or so later and my phone started going off like crazy with text's and e-mails congratulating me on a super tag. To be honest I was really excited that I was lucky enough to draw the coveted Henry Mountain buck tag I had put in for that I was convinced I would draw (hahah someday?) and didn't even think about anything other than that. Well I got home and discovered that I had drawn the Wasatch Archery Elk tag that Sniper1 was referencing that day at the expo. When the shock of actually winning something other than a Weber State University parking ticket set in I felt like a fish out of water with a tag basically in my pocket on a unit that I had never even seen. I remember thinking to myself ?self?this is where the homework begins?. This thought was somewhat of an understatement as at the time I had no idea of how huge this unit was.
Well to speed things along I did months amount of homework with many hours with my nose glued to the Monster Muleys archives trying to learn as much as I could. (briefly I will pause to throw out a blanked thank you to all those before me with this tag for taking the time to post pictures and stories to relive your hunts with others because this was the only thing that got me through this wet spring)
After many weekends and $$$ spent on trips back and forth trying to learn this beautiful unit and after many e-mails back and forth with some of you trying to glean all the info I could it seemed like I was in a dream with the August 17 opener getting ever closer I felt paralyzed. Even with all the effort and time put into learning a new unit I still felt grossly inadequate to attempt to take a mature bull on a unit I was a novice to.
Regardless of how I felt opening day was here and I was on the mountain side at dark with one of my favorite hunting partners my older brother Nathan and we were ready for the bulls to start screamin and all sorts of elk action ?.well we heard crickets?.and we saw camo from other hunters not brown fur. I thought maybe we had taken a wrong turn and were on a general season unit for surely guys were not investing years? worth of bonus points to be so sweaty in August to see and hear nothing on opening day!
Pause for retrospective reality check
A couple of things that I learned about LE Elk hunts and elk in general: even though it is a limited entry tag it does not owe you anything?.meaning that every animal you have the opportunity to take-you earn it. I guess I was a little naive to this concept as on opening morning I was honestly expecting the sun to crest and then push play on a Primo?s Elk hunting video with all kinds of action. To be fair I think these expectations come from nearly a decade?s worth of bow hunting the Uintah Mountains with a small amount of bloody arrows to my name and something always whispering in my ear? ?If only this was a LE unit?. Another thing that I learned over the years and was paramount to remember on this hunt is this. ELK ARE INTELLIGENT. I lose a large amount of respect for anyone if I ever hear them minimalize the intelligence/instinct/surviving will power or an elk. I have come to find an exponential amount of respect for this critter, even the more when I try to kill them. They never cease to amaze (or outsmart me)! While I am on this rant I will through another thing out there that I was somewhat mislead on prior to my hunt. I always thought that a LE hunt meant that you could hunt the whole unit but I soon realized what the elk on this unit have known for years and that is there was quite a bit of private property on this hunt. At least where we were hunting it was easy to find the private as that was where most of the bugles were coming from later in the hunt. My point in mentioning this is to mention my appreciation for public land that allows us to hunt when and where we want within legal bounds and to show how cool and what an accomplishment it is for anyone to harvest such an intelligent animal on PUBLIC property as it is my opinion that the bulls know where they are less likely to be hunted hard. P.S. that was kudos to all of you who hunt public successfully no myself specifically?..but ya know what after the miles I put on my boot leather I will boastfully include myself as well
We did however come across a dead cow elk that someone had arrowed the week before and never recovered. It was amazing to see how quickly they decompose...
Continuing on with the hunt
Over the next couple of days we were able to finally see some elk. My brother and I spotted some cows from about 500 yards out and there was a big?ol bull with them already and he was raking a pine tree like it was his job. He finally popped his head out of the pine tree and we thought he was a shooter so we moved in to about 100 yards of the elk and cow called them. For a while they never responded at all but then after about twenty minutes of soft cow calls the cows that were with the bull started to cow call back to us. We called and called and called?. I think I gave myself a canker on my lips from calling so much and they did not want to leave the pine pocket they were in that was directly across from us so we started walking down the ridge that was adjacent to the pine pocket that they were held up in. As we were walking it was getting later in the evening and we kept calling occasionally hearing a mew or a light bugle. We got to the bottom and discovered that we had hit the end of public property as there was a private sign so we paused to rest before heading back to the road to go back to camp for the night and we called once more to the elk behind us now. As we sat and drank I heard a rock click and I told my brother to get ready and I knocked an arrow. Sure enough nearly silently I saw a pair of brown fuzzy ears emerge from the cliff ledge ten feet below us. It was a cow then a calf then a couple other cows and I was holding my breath waiting for big bull to come through and my brother was trying to position for a shot on a cow then right before he was ready to throw an arrow at the next cow that came through the shooting lane I saw antler tips and told him not to shoot. I was not disappointed as it was one of the coolest things ever to call a whole heard of about 15 elk into our calls but the bull was a regular rag horn five point and I decided to pass him up in hopes a better bull and some more time hunting the rut. Looking back on it if I would have killed that bull I would have regretted it as there was still a whole lot of hunting to do.
After three long weeks on and off the mountain the only arrow that was flung between myself and my hosts of helpers with spike and deer tags was at a two-point buck deer that was mostly concealed by the jungle of thick underbrush and sailed wide right into a nice soft aspen which only took ten minutes to pry out and was not nearly enough time to rest from walking up such a deceivingly steep mountainside. With every passing trip I kept telling myself that this was another successful scouting trip as the ?real hunt? will be the last two weeks-especially when all the spike hunters were out of there?.funny the things you tell yourself to talk your motivation up throughout an elk hunt?moon, hunters, weather, lucky underwear etc.
On Labor Day weekend a good friend of mine and me headed into the hills with high hopes of cold weather and more rutting activity and we were somewhat gratified. We arrived late on Friday evening and after we set camp up we took a four wheeler ride to do some locating with a bugle. Seconds after the first bugle left my lips on my pack bugle we were greeted for the weekend by a mature bull just a few yards away from us. I went to bed that night for a few hours of sleep with the unique raspy bugling bull in my mind. Labor Day weekend hunt trip was one of those invaluable trips that I felt that I learned allot about the area I was hunting and I finally committed to one specific area as I had been told by many in the past that the Wasatch unit is very easy to spread yourself thin on and go home empty handed. This weekend we had seen some pretty decent bulls and saw some rutting activity and talked to ALLOT of fellow archers who were getting pretty uptight at this point. I was intrigued to see how uptight and almost panicked some fellow hunters were on this unit with the rut so early and the weather so hot. I vowed to not let myself get down from this point forward and just enjoy the beauty of the earth and company of loved ones. With the decision made to stick right where I had been and not make any more moves I learned the basic habits of the elk in the canyon and headed home with more confidence and those images of bulls that we had seen in my mind.
Three days later on Thursday night I decided to head up by myself as the rest of my ?crew? couldn't make it till the weekend. After I got there after work and driving and setting up camp I was exhausted (who know a wall tent was so much work to set up by yourself)! Since I didn't get to sleep till 3 A.M. I woke up a little late and hit my draw at 9:30. Needless to say I was a little upset with myself for sleeping in and wasting a morning hunt but when I got there I was shocked as there was all kinds of action happening. I counted 5 different bulls bugling back and forth to one another and I was so stoked and I was convinced that today would be a BULL DAY! As luck would have it on my decent to the elk I busted a couple of the bull?s watchdog cows and my morning was over. I was so quiet and so slow getting down there that I was very disappointed to blow all the elk out of the whole canyon that I wasn?t even paying attention to my surroundings and kicked a silent bull out from his bed under a pine tree just seven yards from where I had been standing. I couldn't believe that he just laid there for a good 15 seconds while I was sulking. Lesson learned!
The good thing was that the elk were there, they were talking and my callers were on their way. That evening my brother and I were on a really loud and angry herd bull that was lighting up the whole area with his bugle; for a second we thought he was coming into our calls as he sounded so close but we then realized that he was just turning his head towards us when he bugled. Those animals are so majestic!! That bull was putting the hair on my neck on end. We hiked out and by the time we hit the road it was dark and my brother called him pregnant wife who was ready to have a baby within a couple weeks to make sure all was well and I called my girlfriend and we kept asking them while we were on the phones if they were hearing all the bugles that we were hearing? they probably thought we were crazy as I doubt cell phone speakers are that good but it was cool as the bulls in this area were going nuts that night. As we were sitting on the four wheelers listening a bull pushed his cows right up on top 50 yards away from us and then back down the canyon from where we came and we had our excitement levels back up to where they should have been. That night my other good friend came up and the three of us talked about the awesome show we had seen(heard).
The next and what proved to be the final morning of my 2011 Archery Elk hunt greeted us with frost on the ground and there was an almost reverent level of excitement to get on the hill and hunt these elk while they were hot. We got to our area and listened and could hear a few bugles but nothing like it was a few hours prior in the darkness. We listened for a while and then dove off into the canyon towards the meanest sounding bugle. When we got in we were once again deceived by the volume of this bull as he was still a canyon over and by the time we realized he was not going to come to our calls the morning bugling session was almost over. We sat and discussed for a few minutes on what to do. I hate these times when the spotlight is on you as the tag holder and you really have no idea what to do next to utilize your resources and time left on the hunt.
After knowing what we should do but now really wanting to walk further into the deep canyon we decided to take advantage of the morning potential and head into the thick. As we were walking we decided to be really quite and slow and not skyline ourselves right from the get go; this proved to be the difference maker this morning. As we were inching our selves into somewhere that we didn't know held elk or not we hear a really loud and mean bugle just a couple hundred yards in front of us; we had the wind and we knew this was a prime opportunity to get into a mature bull. This all happened so quickly that it still feels like a dream but I sneaked within 100 yards of the bulls bugle and my two partners went the opposite direction about 50 yards behind me. As we were setting up getting into position the bull bugled again and I could tell he was no rag horn as he sounded like he was upset and groaning. I knocked an arrow and took my position behind a large scrub oak bush on a bare hillside that was near the fringe of a quaky pocket with pines running through it. This was a pretty steep hill and I told myself to shoot low if I see an opportunity. Well I got into position and almost like clockwork my partners knew I was ready without even saying or looking at them (I guess that is what you get from a decade worth of bow hunting together? some things just become automatic) They let out a symphony of cow mews behind me and then stopped after a few seconds and silence? I remember during this silence I was thinking ?Please bugle! Please bugle! Please bugle!? Sure enough after a moment of silence for emphasis the bull let out a blood curdling bugle that really affected me since we were so close? I was getting really excited but knew from past experiences to not get to excited because those last 100 yards to within bow range are the hardest. I then heard a twig snap and I could tell the bull was mobile. Then it was silent for a minute or two and then I heard it bugle but it sounded a little different like it was two hundred yards away. I was preparing myself for an emotional letdown again as everyone I had talked to this year said ?you are going to have to sit water cause they are not coming to calls? they will bugle but they won't come in? so I was getting a little depressed as it sounded like the bull had just wandered off into the pines away from us. Just as I was about to turn and look for my callers our bull shrieked again and this time he was only 50 or so yards away? I about fell down to the ground to hide after this bugle as it was really loud? it felt like I should have been able to feel the heat off of his breath it felt so close!! I stood still and got my face in the bush to look through the openings and then I caught movement. I saw some black legs swaggering towards me. I kept my eyes focused on the movement and then I saw the bull in all of his glory as he walked through an opening about 40 yards straight down the hill from me. My initial reaction was I am going to kill this bull?my second reaction was what is up with his antlers? this was needless to say not a typical mature bull. He had something going on with his rack. I am very grateful I was able to get a look at this bull clearly at 40 yards because if I later only had a fleeting glance I might have passed him up and that would have been a tragedy in my opinion. So after the bull walked through the opening as I caught a look at him he kept heading to the cow calls which then started up again fifty yards behind me. I could hear the bull grunting and glunking at the cows as he walked and then just like they always do he paused before showing himself to me for a shot. He bugled again but I couldn't see him as he was 20 yards away and behind a bush and then the bush I was at was blocking my view. All I can remember at this point was thinking please those last few yards!! Just as I finished this thought I heard the rustling of sage brush and I saw his huge eye guards emerge with the rest of his gnarly junk following. This was my Primo?s video emerging right before my eyes. This is a textbook call in. He had his eyes on my callers looking for them and didn't know I was there. As he was walking towards the sounds of the calls I drew my arrow back and he caught movement at ten yards and bolted sideways five or so yards and I instinctively touched off my release. I don't really remember going through my mental checklist that I usually do before a shot. All I remember was saying shoot low as he was still a few feel below me on the hill. As I touched my release I watched my arrow tipped with a 100-grain G5 Triton blow through his vitals at a nearly perfect angle. He whirled around and with two large bounds was out of sight down the mountain. I took a huge breath as I feel now looking back I wasn?t breathing a whole lot over those few seconds. There were two negative thoughts I immediately had. One was oh gosh that shot looked a little high?even though I aimed low and secondly was oh man he was headed towards the private property canyon that was parallel to the canyon we were in. I cow called to my callers and they came down with smiles on their faces. Clint said to my brother on the hill, ?Hey did you see it?? Nathan said ?No.. did you? , then Clint responded ? No, but I sure did hear his arrow shwack!?. They came down and we all relived what had just happened. I can honestly say that after all the years of going home empty handed and all the blown calling attempts and being winded hundreds of times by these animals that was the coolest call in and it was TEXTBOOK. We had the wind, we had the angles, I made the shot.
After about an hour we trailed the bull strait down the mountain about three hundred yards with some difficulty as it was so thick but we rounded a corner and I say a mountain of tan fur laying in the morning sun up ahead. We were fortunate that he had expired only a few hundred yards away from private property so we didn't have to deal with that mess and I couldn't have been happier! As we walked up on hi he head was buried in a bush and the ground and my partners were worried I had shot a cow lol. But when I got his head out of the ground and bush we all admired what a unique and special bull this was.
Then the work started?.. I have never seen such a big bodied animal on the ground before. This was a fat boy! The pictures do not do this justice!. I tried to roll this bull over and I about had to change my britches so I had my two partners push him over and he rolled on top of me and about hyper extended my knee which would have been at the worst place worst time scenario (now I know what it feels like to have a horse fall on your legs and pin you) Well we decided to gut him and get him cooled out while we went to get our packs. I carried out the head and cape and it about killed me. I was seeing dots after a few steps. Not healthy I am sure. I am sure it was over 110 lbs and as the days go by I am estimating more
? Nathan my brother also carried one quarter out this trip and Clint got all of our gear which was also no small feat. Carrying three packs and a bow is somewhat difficult but we all have our own opinions on which one was hardest. We got back to camp and it started raining a little and we had to turn right around and do it again? this time for real with all the meat. We got the pack frames and psyched ourselves up mentally for the task at hand. When we reached the bull it immediately started raining again and this time it did not stop?we were drenched. Then it started hailing. I was pretty cold? that is not fun trying to carve out a bull with a sharp knife when you are shaking. I cut myself a few times needless to say. We first had high hopes of quartering him out but we soon realized this was not going to happen. We deboned all the meat off this big boy and filled EVERY and I mean EVERY pocket on each pack with meat. The zippers all looked like they were going to pop. We got all loaded up and creep-ed up the kill slowly. That was a ton of weight. When I took the meat to get it processed we found out that all the meat deboned added up to upwards of 350 lbs that we walked out of there.
All in all this was a once-in-a-lifetime hunt that I will never forget!! I had so much fun and was at the heart and soul of bow hunting the majestic elk. I am so glad that everything worked out the way it did and that I didn't have to sit water or in a tree all day to find a mature bull that I was happy with as I am impatient and really do love chasing them on the ground with calls. I owe allot of thanks out there to my hunting partners Nathan and Clint who helped me out on the mountain with this bull and other previous trips. I also owe thanks to my friend Justin for coming up and helping me with scouting and locating elk to hunt. Lastly I wanted to thank all of you out there who responded to my e-mails and PM?s here in Monster Muley land! Specifically I appreciate the knowledge and enthusiasm I received from Jim aka AWHOLEALOTTABULL. It helped me keep my feet on the ground. Thanks for reading and I hope that all of you will be able to have as outstanding of a hunt as I just did.
Good luck and keep the wind in your face!
Bucksmut
