From page 10 of the NM proclamation...
Waste of Game
Anyone who takes a deer, elk, pronghorn, bighorn, Barbary
sheep, ibex or oryx, must transport the edible portions of the
meat from the fi eld for human consumption. ?Edible portions?
of game mammals include all four quarters with 90% of the
meat taken, backstraps, tenderloins and at least 75% of the
neck meat. Hunters are not required to remove the rib cage or
organs from the field. Anyone who takes a turkey, must remove
the breast, legs and thigh meat from the fi eld. Anyone who
wounds or may have wounded any big game species must
make a reasonable attempt to track the animal and reduce it to
possession. This requirement does not authorize trespass.
You have a personal choice to make. Legally you have done your due dillegence and may continue to hunt. The ethical part of this situation is gray. Some people feel that if you draw blood, you're done. Some make the decision to hunt or punch their tag on knowledge gained by tracking if the animal actually died or not.
I have had this happen to me twice. The first time was in 16A several years ago. I chased a certain bull up and down & around a certain mountain for a couple of days when I asked my buddy bulls1 if he would come help me, because I had a plan...
My plan to kill this bull was to keep him talking as long as possible and wait for him & his cows to bed down & then go in & bust a few of his cows out & start bugling to confuse him into thinking that another bull had snuck in and tried to steal a few of his cows. Well.. it worked out pretty darn good. As soon as we jumped the first cow I bugled & bulls1 started calling as I continued to stalk in closer to the last spot we heard him bugle from. I didn't make if very far before the bull showed up. Problem was we saw each other at the same time. The bull started to leave, but bulls1 turned him around with some sweet mews and at 45 yds I let my arrow fly at the perfectly broadside bull. I was really certain that I smoked him behind the shoulder, but bulls1 kept saying he wasn't so sure because the bull did spin and leave like his ass was on fire, I thought after my arrow hit him & bulls1 said he spun before it got there. We waited a little over 45 minutes and then walked over to where the bull was when I shot. We found LOTS of blood and started tracking him. For several hundred yards there was so much blood that we were walking at a really fast pace following him, thinking he was going to be laying under the next tree.
Well, I'm here to tell you that the blood trail went ON AND ON AND ON. At times it was very difficult to track. If not for bulls1 finding a drop the size of a pinhead on a tiny rock we may not have be able to go on. I shot this bull at aprox 8AM and sometime around noon we jumped him from his bed. He left huge pools of blood where he laid down. He was bleeding out of both sides of his body, but when we jumped him it all happend so fast that neither of us could tell where he was bleeding from. Soon after there was no more blood and it took forever to track his tracks in the rocks. (Did I tell you that bulls1 is a very good tracker?) Once again bulls1 found a tiny drop & we were back on him. Just before dark we sat down to refuel our tired bodies. We had gone so far now that we were only about a 1/4 mile from our camp and were discussing if we should give up for the night & go back to camp or to continue the search. When we stood up to track him a little farther we saw him again on his feet about 400 yds in front of us. By this time the bull could hardly walk & we knew his demise was very near. We watched him crest the hill and slowly started to follow.
We did not find the bull that night or the next morning. A cowboy friend of ours was at our camp helping himself to a few cold beverages when we arrived. He offered to show up in the morning with horses to help search for & retrieve the bull. 'ol Harley rode all over that mountain for hours and never did find him. That afternoon bulls1 went hunting while I kept looking. I finally found the bull thanks to the buzzards.
He had traveled well over 5 miles from where I shot him according to my GPS.
Bulls1 was right about the bull jumping my string.. my arrow had hit him in the neck, between the esophogas and spine. He simply bled to death.
The 2nd time this happened to me was last year in 17. I shot a little bull quartering away at 16 yds. Shot placement was perfect, but for some reason I only go 1/2 an arrow of penetration. We tracked the bull until he crossed the fence onto private land. Luckily we knew the guy that runs the ranch and made a phone call and asked for permission to cross. He gladly allowed us to trespass & hopefully recover the bull. After finding really good foamy lung blood before he crossed the fence we lost all sign with no idea which way he went. There is a big hill to glass from, so we took the truck up there and glassed hard all afternoon. Just before dark I saw him, on his feet with a big bloody spot on his right side. We watched him bed down and made plans to retreive him the next morning. We made good mental notes of which tree he was under & had bulls1 go back to the hilltop & glass & guide me to him via radios. The little bull had got up and moved sometime after dark and I jumped him about 100 yds from where he was the night before. bulls1 watched him thru the spotting scope run for well over a mile before he vanished into a canyon. The bull was no longer bleeding.
I had to come home for my grandmothers funeral, but bulls1 and the guy that runs the ranch spent most of the next several days looking for him & never found him. We spoke with the rancher months later & he said he never did find him, nor did he ever see any birds in the area and he had several clients who hunted there after we left.
Did this bull live with one damaged lung? I doubt it, but who knows, maybe he did live. At least thats what I hope!
The point of this long story is to let people know that elk are seriously tough animals and can go a very long ways after the shot.
I found a broadhead in the shoulder of an elk while butchering it many years ago. There was no evidence that it was there until my knife blade made contact with it when I was deboning it.
The bottom line is that the choice to continue hunting is yours to make. There are lots of ethics police on this forumn with various opinions of how things should be. If you choose to continue hunting you are not breaking any game laws, therefore I will not critisize nor condemn you for your decision.
Good luck, I hope you find him!!
