2012 MT Public Land DIY elk/muley

[sticknstring]

Sweet - elk chops in the freezer - congrats Scoot! Now the work begins!

[Sifty]

Just got into the ofice and the first thing I do is to see what direction the hunt will go today.

Congrats on the bull the shot and the find.

BTW if you work somthing out with the bacon sponsors I want in.

Sifty

[Scoot]

Thanks to DTro, you folks get to see the rest of the pics today! Thanks again, Darren!

I’d noticed when I saw him first coming into my shooting lane that not only did he just have one normal side to his rack, but that he had a goofy club on the other side. Here are a couple shots of this goofy club to show you how non-typical he is.

After some congratulations and “atta boys” we took some pics and then went to work. Here are a couple of hero shots of us and the bull.

Most importantly- a shot of me and a great friend with a bull we’d worked hard to lay our hands on. Jon and I have had many, many busted hunting and fishing trips together- individually we often do well, together we’ve traditionally struggled. Not this day though- we’d done it and finally broken the jinx in a big way! Although maybe not a great picture, this is a great picture to me.

I’ve talked about the gutless method a few times on this site, so I remembered to take some pics of this (a few anyway). Here are the pics that should give you a decent idea of what to do when taking care of an elk (or deer) with the gutless method. First, cut the fur off down the line of the spine and skin the front and back shoulders. You can pull the skin off in between them or leave it on and cut around it (we took it off here).

Next lift the front shoulder by lifting it up and cutting the connective tissue underneath (this one’s easy)- remove the entire front quarter this way. Next, cut down to the pelvis between the two back quarters. From there cut outward until you find the ball joint (hip joint)- cut the connective tissue and remove all the other connective tissue that holds the rear quarter in place- remove rear quarter. Both quarters are removed in this way in the pic below.

Next, cut out the backstrap. Finally, and unfortunately I forgot to get a pic of this, make a small cut (5” or so) just behind and along the edge of the last rib and reach along the inside of the spine and remove the inside tenderloin.

Flip the bull over and repeat. After this is done remove the neck meat and horns (I bring a Wyoming Saw for this) and you’re good to go.

Jon and I put the front quarters in his pack and the backstraps, loins, and rack on my pack. We bagged all of rear quarter meat and brought it down to the stream below us to hang in a tree. Here we are as we were about to take off with our first load, headed for the coolers and ice at the truck. Look how happy we look! Little did we know what we had in store for us over the next many hours…

[Scoot]

Just as we’d planned, we took the 60-65 lb. packs of meat down the basin and towards the truck. Unbeknownst to us, the knife ridge and rim of the bowl that formed the basin came together sharply as we approached the bottom, the side walls not only got steeper, they closed in on us, giving us an almost claustrophobic feeling. Additionally, the stream started to get stronger and bigger and we worried if we’d be able to cross it if we had to. Worst of all, however, were the blowdowns. I wanted to take some pics of them, but the further we went, the worse things got and soon we started to wonder what we’d gotten ourselves into. Wondering turned to worrying and several hours into our pack out we began to realize how dire our situation was becoming. The sun was headed to the horizon quickly now, the temps were already dropping fast, we didn’t have a lot of clothes with us, we were drenched in sweat, and we’d used my space blanket to remove the meat from the bone of the elk. It was becoming increasingly clear that the ridge we were following wasn’t going to the lake we thought it did and that we’d have no established trail to walk up on when we got to wherever we were going to.

We both had multiple ways to start a fire and we’re not scared of the dark, but the mountain side was so bone dry that we were afraid to start a fire for fear that we’d burn down half of Montana! On the way down to the bottom we found a somewhat open area and were fortunate enough to see the opening the truck was parked in. It was well over a mile away and we lost sight of this area as night fell and darkness swallowed us and our surroundings completely. We finally reached the bottom of the basin and were greeted with a crossable stream (good news) and a nearly vertical wall on the other side of it (not so good news). We took a break, had something to eat, and filtered some water for the remainder of the climb.

At the bottom near the stream we realized we only had a little over half-a-mile to go to the truck. However, we had well over 1000 feet of climb in that half-mile and some of it looked like it was going to be a problem. Just getting up the first 30 yards of the river bed proved dangerous, exhausting, and demoralizing. Once we got past this point though, the slope went from nearly impossible, to really difficult, which was a wonderful improvement! Our mantra became “just keep pecking away” and we did just that. However, at a scant distance of .39 miles and with many hundreds of feet left to climb (maybe 600 or 800) Jon started to get sick, likely from exhaustion and dehydration, and my legs began to turn to mush. We’d traveled a long ways while dangerously tired and we’d already risked injury- banged legs, knees, shins would be bad, but with that much weight and being as exhausted as we were I was afraid of falling and smashing a head on a rock or being impaled by one of the millions of the spear-like broken limbs that stuck out from the deadfalls. We finally decided to drop all of our meat and gear and make the final push to the truck without any of it. It was very tough going and we were shot. However, but we got to the truck in the dead of night- exhausted, beaten, battered, and bruised- but alright.

I wish I’d taken some pics of the mess we were in, but as things began to look more bleak pictures became the last thing on my mind. In fact, I’m pretty sure Jon may have beaten me if I’d tried to take pics of what was going on. You’ll have to trust me- it wasn’t pretty. When Jon and I have to constantly remind ourselves to “not panic” and that “we’ll be ok if we spend the night on the mountain”, things aren’t looking too peachy. We also worried about Gabe- not so much that he was OK, but more that he’d have a pretty miserable night wondering what ever happened to us. Worrying about him worrying wasn’t much fun, but there was nothing we could do about it. We agreed that he is a level-headed, bright guy and he’d stay calm, operate as if all was alright, and maintain an even keel. At least that’s what we hoped…

[mrklean]

Great job

[Scoot]

Over the weekend I got flack from a couple people about having my pictures photoshopped. My bro-in-law told me he thought I'd shot a cow and I only had the goofy rack photoshopped on the bull (he was just giving me a hard time). Another friend made similar comments. Just to show you what was done, I'll post an original and the photoshopped version.

Here's what the original of Jon and me with the bull looked like.

...and here's what it looked like after it was photoshopped. The only thing that was done was to clean up the blood. Much of the blood is cropped out of both pictures. I have no problem with blood and I appreciate it's part of the deal when one bowhunts. However, I prefer to remove as much of it as I can when I take pictures. I wiped off the elk's mouth and entry wound as much as I could with wet wipes. However, I ran out of wipes and there was still blood in both places. Without a stream really close, we called it "good enough" and took out pictures. Also, being colorblind, I didn't even see the blood on the ground when we took the pics- turns out there was quite a bit of it. However, thanks to DTro, that got cleaned up!

So, just to set the record straight, the pics above show the bull I really shot- no artificial enhancements to the rack or the bull, just a little cleaning up of blood is all.

Another thing I got asked about is how the rack of this bull compares to the first whitetail I ever shot? Well, there certainly are some interesting similarities- check out the rack of the whitetail I shot in 1984 at the tender young age of 12.

The whitetail's club hung a lot lower than the bull's, but there certainly are some similarities!

[Scoot]

Day 5

Jon and I got up after sleeping poorly for about three or four hours. Even though we had slept miserably in the cramped truck, we felt quite a bit better. We drove the truck as far as we could and walked down and got the meat, rack, and gear we’d left late the night before. From there we hoofed it back to camp, out to the hanging rear quarters, back past camp, and all the way to the truck. After not seeing Gabe in camp either time we assumed we’d see him at the truck- we talked about how he’d have our basecamp tent set up for all of us and that he’d have the stove all ready to cook us up a burger or two. We were very ready for a burger and thought we might even have a celebratory beverage too. However, just in case we were wrong we left a note in Gabe’s tent so he’d be clear on the happenings of the last day-and-a-half and what our plans were tomorrow.

Just before sundown we once again made it back to the truck. All was quiet. We could tell Gabe had been there by the shifting around of some of our gear and we knew he knew what had transpired over the last 24 hours, at least in a rough sense. He had to have seen the rack, that our frame packs were gone, that our hunting packs were there, and that two coolers were loaded up with elk meat, didn’t he? Again, we assumed so…

It was getting dark, we were shot, and we had over four miles back to our little spike camp from the truck. We’d just put on almost 20 miles hauling out the bull I shot and we were hungry and tired. We decided to eat, crash in the truck (again), and head for camp in the AM. This would cost Jon yet another morning of hunting, which I felt badly about, but he was as tired as me and our bodies were pretty well crushed at that point. Our feet, in particular, took a major beating over the 36 hours of packing out the bull. From the time we knocked the bull down to the time we got back to camp ready to hunt again, we’d covered 23 miles, almost half of which we were hauling meat and horns. Here’s a pic of Jon’s big toe, which was starting to get infected (caution: not a pretty sight! Look away if you don’t care to see yuckiness).

Believe it or not, the picture doesn’t really do the ugliness of his foot justice- LOL. Fortunately for all of you reading this story, you can’t see the oozing of green puss in a picture like this… My feet didn’t look much better. After doing surprisingly well for the first few days, they turned to hamburger over the course of getting that bull to the cooler. I had blisters in all the usual places and some in places I’d never seen the before. Isn’t elk hunting fun!?!

After the long haul out with the meat, Jon and I discussed the possibility of finding a packer if we were lucky enough to take another elk. I brought up the idea because 1) Jon and I were shot and we knew hunting would be pretty difficult for a day or two, and 2) because I felt guilty that I’d eaten into so much of Jon’s hunting time hauling out the bull. Jon agreed this would be a good idea and before we left the truck, we sent my brother a text message asking him to try dig up the name of a packer. Rod can sleuth out just about anything online and I figured he’d round up the name of a person or two for us.

I previously mentioned that on the walk in we stumbled into a wallow that some elk were headed towards. We thought we’d discovered a gold mine at the time. However, that didn’t turn out to be the case- there were wallows everywhere we turned in this country! With so many wallows to choose from, it was a needle in a haystack to pick the one that’d get hit on any one particular day. Here are a few pics of the many, many wallows we saw on the trip.

[paceman]

What do the elk do in the wallows? Waht is there purpose?

[Scoot]

Bull elk are said to "wallow" when they come in to a wallow (a wet spot on a mountain that elk have been using)and pee into the water, roll around in mud, paw the ground with their hooves, and rake their antlers in the mud/water. Peak wallow time is from about mid Aug to mid Sep. If it's hot, wallow action tends to be better. Also, once the cows come into heat, wallows get ignored more because of the bull's priorities.

Exactly why an elk does it is impossible to know, but the act of wallowing seems to get them fired up and preps them for the breeding that is soon to come. During early Sep it's not uncommon to see a bull elk all covered in mud as he does his thing around the mountain.

[Scoot]

Day 6

After eating and cleaning up a little, Jon and I made our way back to camp and waited for Gabe to show up. Remember Gabe? We wondered if he’d remember us at this point! It was Wed at noon and we hadn’t seen him since Mon at 5:30 AM. After ditching him for so long we wondered how his “solo backpack hunting trip” was going! We felt terrible for disappearing for so long and hoped he understood there was little we could do about it.

Just as anyone who knows him would predict, Gabe strolled into camp with a smile on his face and a congratulations for us taking an elk. We told him the story about the bull we shot and the pack out, then inquired about his last couple days. Here’s what he told us…

Gabe hunted NW of camp on Monday morning- he had a very interesting day. He heard a bull grunt 300 yards ahead, so he moved in to a reasonable distance and started cow calling. Soon, a decent 6x5 was slowly and silently moving in on him. The bull stopped at 50 yards and wouldn’t commit to coming any closer. Meanwhile, several cows were coming towards Gabe. Suddenly, a beautiful 6x6 herd bull came tearing in, screamed a wicked bugle, and chased a hot cow down the mountain at break-neck speeds. Gabe only saw him for a little over a second, but he could tell he was the stud of the mountain.

The 6x5 was still nearby, but wouldn’t come any closer and Gabe was pegged- he couldn’t move in on him any further. This stalemate lasted for almost ten minutes until the herd bull and the hot cow came back up the mountain, and they swept the whole harem of cows with them. The 6x5 shot out a few nervous grunts as if to say “show yourself” to the calling cow (Gabe). When didn’t show, the bull lost interest and faded away.

Random filler pic.

A little after noon, Gabe heard antlers crashing. He made his way towards the noise and he found two bulls, the 6x5 from before and a smaller 5x5, passively clanking their horns. They’d drop their heads and shake their racks back and forth gently. Before Gabe could get into bow range, the bulls both bedded down. He sneaked into about 40 yards from the 5x5, but he got pegged and the bull boogied out of there. However, the 6x5 was only another 15 yards away. He stood up when the 5x5 left and wondered what was happening. Gabe softly cow called twice and the bull came in on a string. Gabe came to full draw as the bull cleared a small pine tree- the bull caught Gabe’s movement and stopped in his tracks 15 yards away and facing him- the standoff began. Three minutes later, the bull won. Gabe, not feeling good about the shot, let down his draw and the bull whirled and was gone in a flash. It was an intense, heart thumping interaction that Gabe was thrilled with. In total, it was quite a day!

Random filler pic.

Tues was basically a bust for Gabe. Because we didn’t show up at camp the night before, he climbed the tallest mountain around to see what was going on. As luck would have it (maybe bad luck as it turned out), Gabe saw Jon and me driving the truck to as close as we could to where we’d dropped the meat the night before. He headed down to try to help us pack out. He had no way of knowing that we only had a short haul to make (retrieving the meat we’d dropped) and we were long gone by the time he made it there. Long story short was that he never found us and that we ended up missing each other between the camp and the truck all day. He got back to camp late on Tues and didn’t hunt that day.

Random filler pic.

Wed morning Gabe again hunted N and W of camp. Gabe ripped off a locator bugle in the cold, crisp morning air. After no response, he took a step to leave and an unseen elk blew out of the wooded area below him. Later, he was cold calling, he got up to leave and was immediately busted by the 6x5 he’d had the standoff with the day before. The bull tore out of there and wasn’t seen again that day either. Gabe and this bull were getting well acquainted and the bull was consistently coming out one step up on Gabe. He considered the bull his nemesis and really wanted to drop the string on the 6x5.

Random filler pic.

Wed afternoon Gabe and I teamed up and went down to the area Jon and I were at when we shot the bull. This evening represented a turning point in the trip to me- the bulls went quiet that night. They largely quit bugling on their own and they stopped responding to calls as readily as they had prior to this. We wondered if this would just be the case for the evening or if it would last for the duration of the trip. Unfortunately, the latter was mostly the case.

Random filler pic.

BTW, even though I had a muley tag unpunched, I had left my bow in the case at the truck. I figured if there was a crack at a muley, one of the other guys should get it. With my elk tagged filled, I was a “hauler and caller”. Most of the time prior to shooting the bull, I looked like the pic below, but afterwards, this is pretty much how I looked all the time that I wasn’t sleeping or eating. I'd carry my call in mouth, chewing on the back edge of it as I walked around the mountain looking for elk.

Jon had a tough night that evening too. The elk had seemed to turn into ghosts. It’s amazing how this can happen- you can be in an area where you’ve seen and heard a bunch of them, but when they go quiet it’s like the whole mountain is completely devoid of the dang things. It’s like they become invisible and completely silent, even though you know they’re still around. Although Jon didn’t find a single elk that night, he did manage to fling an arrow!

Random filler pic.

While slinking through some sparse evergreens up high on the mountain, Jon noticed the grayish side of a mule deer up ahead. He went into “sneak mode” and got to within 40 yards of the deer. He could see it was a doe, but he’d never shot a muley and she was broadside and in range- game on! The winds swirled and the doe had him pegged just as he drew his bow. Although she didn’t run, she was on pins and needles. Jon took careful aim, centered his pin on the back edge of her crease, and squeezed the trigger. The arrow flew perfectly and went exactly where Jon aimed it- it rang out in the cool evening air, “Whack!!!”, as loud as could be when it came to a stop. However, with the doe on high alert, she was about five yards down the trail by the time Jon’s arrow made it to where she was standing when he shot. I’m not sure what the limit is on pine trees in MT, but Jon center punched a fine one with his shot. He unscrewed his arrow from the tree and headed back to camp, with his tail tucked between his legs.

In all honesty, his tail wasn’t tucked at all- he’d made a good shot, but the deer jumped the string pretty badly. Not much he could have done…

[Bear55]

Great work as usual Scoot, can't wait to hear how the rest of the trip went.

[marine_man]

Great job Scoot!

marine_man

[brandonpaman]

Good story bro! Looking forward to the rest.

[slimngrizzly]

Looks good! Congrats on the unique bull!

[Scoot]

Thanks fellas! Since my brother in law even came out of the woodwork to post, I figured I'd reward him with a surprise afternoon update to the story.

Day 7

Jon went down in the area I had taken the bull, now called the “Hell Hole”. After getting skunked there, he headed cross country all over the place. Long story short is, he got blanked.

Gabe and I went to the area we had called in the 5 point bull again. After striking out on that North facing ridge, we pushed further this time. We tipped over a ridge and found a beautiful bowl ahead. Gabe bugled and although I didn’t hear anything, Gabe thought he’d heard a bugle. We pressed on, closer to the small bowl. Two hundred yards close, Gabe tried another locator bugle. This bugle was greeted with a loud, low, growly bugle that spiked up high at the end. It was a very distinct bugle and there was little doubt that in elk language it meant, “get the heck out of my bowl! This is MY house!” We checked the wind and made a plan- we’d go past the bull on the South side and try to hook around him from the West- this would hopefully make use of the prevailing winds and the thermals, so he wouldn’t smell us on the way in. The plan was easy, but getting in there to pull it off was a whole ‘nother thing! The bowl became known as the “blowdown bowl” and here are a couple pics of one of the hillsides that formed the bowl and of us heading down into it. It only gives you a little taste of how messy it was to get in there.

As we walked in, the bull would lightly chuckle. We were trying to be quiet, but I’m pretty sure he believed the noise we were making was coming from a cow moving through the area. We got set up and I dropped one small cow call. Here’s where Gabe was when I did that.

Within seconds, the bull bugled back and he wasn’t far away- maybe 80 yards. Yeehaa, my favorite scenario playing out again! I grabbed my bugle and screamed a bugle back at him, cutting him off before he could finish. However, there was just one little hiccup this time- when I unloaded the bugle with as much force as I could push through my lungs and past my diaphragm call, the back of the call got caught by the air, came detached from my palate, and popped up against the back of my teeth, instantly stopping my ¼ completed bugle and sounding ridiculous. This had never happened to me before and I stood there dumbfounded and acted like a punch-drunk fighter- I was confused and couldn’t recover. Gabe looked back at me with a wry “you dumb arse” kinda smile and mouthed “that’s ok, no big deal”. The bull bugled again and sadly, the exact same thing happened again. This time, I was able to follow up the ridiculous .4 second long scream with some grunts, to at least continue along the lines of a bugle that said, “c’mon big boy, let’s rumble”. We continued playing with this bull for 10 more minutes, but in spite of getting within 40 yards of him a couple times, we never saw him. Eventually, he lost interest and left his little hidey hole.

Random filler pic.

I was completely embarrassed and really mad at what had just happened. In more hours practicing with an elk call than I could ever count, this has never happened before. I finally concluded that because I’d had the call in my mouth for about 12 hours per day and because I chewed on it much of that time, the call simply fell apart at the back and sagged down off of my palate. This made the back edge of it catch the air I was pushing past it and when I really screamed a powerful bugle out, the violent moving of air simply peeled it from the roof of my mouth. Regardless of why, I’d just made a fool of myself and it may have cost Gabe a bull. I felt like a moron and was completely embarrassed. Per usual, Gabe blew it off and said “It might have made no difference in the outcome anyway.” I’m not sure I bought his response, but I appreciated his understanding.

BTW, I haven’t mentioned water- water is a big deal on trips like this. Obviously, we needed a lot of water each day to stay hydrated- over a gallon per person. Given the weight of water, there’s no way to haul that volume of water in with us on a trip like this. We all came armed with water filters or chemical treatments for the water. Here are a couple shots of Gabe and Jon filtering water out of a stream that ran down the mountain not too far from camp.

After being a bit apprehensive about drinking filtered water, the three of us converted fully in short order. Before long we dumped any “city water” we had along and only drank the filtered water from the mountain streams. It was clean, cold, and almost had a sweetness to it- it was infinitely better than we were getting from our taps at home.

That afternoon Gabe and I headed North and West of camp. We got there plenty early- well before when we expected the elk to be very active. We decided to take a break, maybe take a little snooze, have a snack, and listen for bugles for a while. Literally one minute after we sat down I had my head slumped over and was half asleep. My eyes popped open as I heard a stick snap not very far away. Gabe and I looked at each other with a “did you just hear that?” kind of expression. Gabe slowly stood up and almost immediately crouched down to grab his bow. He hand signaled to me that there was a bull and he was not far away. He slinked up 15 yards and off the trail a bit and signaled for me to call. I did and the bull turned on a dime and headed our direction. I saw a glimpse of the bull and right away knew it was the 6x5 bull Gabe had come to know well. I had visions of Gabe not only taking this bull, but me helping him to take down his nemesis! I softly called and watched as the bull came in to a distance of about 45 yards.

I could see by the way the bull was moving through the trees that he was very intentionally trying to be quiet and sneaky. He was soft-stepping everywhere, poking his head in openings and looking, then backing out and moving to a new area, just a few yards away, to repeat the same careful process. Eventually he disappeared into the thick woods and we couldn’t see him. Gabe came back to where I was to talk to me. As he stood whispering to me, I saw him look up over my shoulder and his eyes nearly popped out of his head! The 6x5 was quietly walking down the trail right at us! At a distance of 35 yards he veered off the trail and stood silently. He backed out again and Gabe moved in to try find an opening for a shot. I backed off 40 yards to try draw the bull in a little further with some soft cow calls.

After ten minutes of this, the bull came in and stopped broadside from Gabe at 42 yards. Unfortunately, the bull was behind a tree with only his head and neck showing. Gabe waited… After ten more long minutes of this, the bull finally lost interest and wandered off. I was too far away to know what was happening, but Gabe conveyed the happens of the last 25 minutes to me when I came back to him.

Later we found the 6x5 bull and two others, but failed to cut the distance we needed to before they boogied out of the area. Dang! So close once again, but no arrows flung.

[student]

Fun stuff!!

[totally_addicted]

I hate the suspense waiting for the next update!!!!!

[Scoot]

I hate the suspense waiting for the next update!!!!!

LOL- I put an extra update in today to help you with that!!! I think I've got two more days to go, so I'll wrap up on Thurs AM if all goes according to Hoyle.

[nbadger23]

Great story so far Scoot... I'm hoping it ends with one more elk on the ground!

[sticknstring]

Good stuff - can't wait to hear the rest of the story!

[pumper317]

Agreed, very suspensful and fun. Hopefully another bully hits the dirt... or two, but I would be happy with one. Thanks for taking the time Scoot.

[Scoot]

Day 8

Desperate times call for desperate measures! In spite of the fact that we begged Gabe not to wear this hat, he did! Jon and I gave him a hard time about it every day. However, since we were in need of a change in luck, I agreed to swap hats with Gabe in hopes that it’d turn our luck around. My wife will be so disappointed in me if she sees this picture…

Gabe and I decided to go back to the same area again NW of camp. Jon asked about the “blowdown bowl” and thought about going that direction. We agreed that we’d all try to make it back to camp for lunch. As we were leaving camp in the dark, Gabe told me he had a feeling that Jon was going to shoot a bull this day. I asked why he thought that and he simply said, “…just a feelin’…”

The morning for Gabe and me was a total bust- nothing of interest to report at all. We headed back to camp to meet lunch. We hung around for nearly two hours and Jon never showed. Gabe again said, “Jon shot a bull.” I wondered if his gut feeling from the morning might be right.

Again Gabe and I went back NW of camp. We sat a wallow that was very near where we’d heard a bull a couple days earlier. Here’s a view of Gabe on the wallow.

All was quiet until about 5:00. A bull started bugling about 100 yards from us. Instead of chasing him, we waited. Soon, it sounded like he was coming to wallow. Unfortunately, he came right to the side of the wallow and headed past it, going uphill and possibly chasing a cow. Before long he came back downhill and was 100 yards from us again. After remaining patient as long as we could, we went after him. We sneaked to 80 yards and I waited for him to bugle so I could cut him off (I had a new call in, so I was confident I wouldn’t make the same ridiculous mistake as I did in the “blowdown bowl”). Soon he bugled and I screamed a loud, shrill bugle that cut him off. All went quiet. When it was clear that he wasn’t coming in I ran up to Gabe and he told me the bull was closer to 120 yards than the 80 I thought he was at. We moved in closer and repeated. The bull bugled and I cut him off again. The bull backed off and again we cut the distance to him. We played this game for a bit, but then it got a lot more high paced- the bull would back off 80 yards after we cut him off and we’d sprint as fast as we could after him. While going downhill, this was all well and good. However, he turned uphill and then things got a lot tougher for Gabe and me. We pressed on, dogging this bull and getting as close as we dared, then trying to entice a bugle out of him so I could cut him off- we wanted him to want to fight us. Our approach was the equivalent of calling his mama bad names and when he walked away refusing to fight, we’d chase after him and repeat it to him, in hopes of him turning around and trying to take a swing at us.

We approached a clearing and we could hear the bull ahead, raking some trees. His last bugle ended with aggressive, ticked off grunts and I told Gabe to get ready- this was the spot. I felt like the bull was finally ready for the fight we were trying to get out of him. We stopped and I raked a tree. The smell of elk filled the air; the downhill thermals brought his scent to us and there was no missing or mistaking the smell. For those who’ve never smelled elk, it’s kind of like a musky cattle smell and it’s very distinct. He was close, very close, but we hadn’t yet laid eyes on him. He finally bugled and I once again screamed and grunted when I cut him off. He started to bugle back, but his bugle started, “GrrEEee”, but very oddly, it quit about ½ of a second into the bugle… and that was the last we ever heard from the bull. It seemed that mid-bugle, he decided this wasn’t a fight he could handle, so he abruptly stopped his bugle, turned tail, and ran. He never called again and we had lost him.

We were drenched in sweat- we’d just sprinted most of ¾ of a mile. We were huffing, puffing, full of adrenaline, and all fired up from yet another “almost experience” while chasing elk. Sadly, it was getting dark and we had to head back to camp with no arrows flung. It was exciting with a great memory, but no elk down for us.

Jon decided to go back to the area of the “blowdown bowl” to see if the herd bull we’d played with the day before had returned. He was on the rim of the bowl and he ripped off a locator bugle. Jon was greeted with the exact same kind of bugle Gabe and I had described to him from the day before- it had a low, growly start and screamed up high at the end- in elk language it clearly meant “this place is mine, get the heck outta here!” Because the early morning thermals were headed downhill still, Jon stayed put waiting for the thermals to switch and move uphill. Two long hours later, Jon slid down the hillside hopping over, through, and around the blowdowns that formed a protective barrier for this bull’s lair. He moved in on the bull and got within 80 yards of him. He dropped one quiet cow call, the bull bugled back, and Jon rudely cut off his bugle with a wicked screaming bugle of his own. The bull clearly didn’t like this and came crashing towards Jon. The bull’s lair was so thick, however, that Jon couldn’t see the bull, despite the fact that he was about 30 yards away. Soon, the bull backed out and Jon started stomping and raking a tree. Again Jon cow called, the bull responded, and Jon cut him off. Jon heard an elk rush in to his left, he started to draw, and out stepped a cow from behind the brush. The herd bull and Jon continued to scream at each other, but the bull slowly moved away.

Suddenly, Jon realized that he was surrounded by elk. Accompanying the cow elk he’d already seen were a half-dozen other elk that were to Jon’s left, right, ahead, and behind him- how or why they didn’t smell him is crazy (trust me, we all stunk at this point in the trip). Jon continued to call to the herd bull and the elk surrounding him couldn’t have cared less. As he moved along with the herd, Jon looked over to his right and saw a spike bull. Upon closer inspection, he noticed it wasn’t a spike, it was a 4x3 with browtines, which meant it was a legal bull. He slunk in to 36 yards, drew back, steadied his pin, and dropped the string. The hit was a little further back than Jon wanted, but it made no difference whatsoever- the bull only made it seven yards before dropping.

With nobody there to take pics for him, it was tougher for Jon to get many great shots of him with the bull. He did manage to get this nice picture of him and his prize.

Unlike the bull I shot, Jon had no help doing all of the work breaking down the elk. Jon got all the meat hung and one load up to the trail before climbing the tallest peak and send my brother a text to line up the packer. He sent gps coordinates and told him where to meet us. My brother got it all lined up, which was wonderful given how far this pack out would be. Jon got back to camp nearly at dark. It was an exciting and exhausting day.

[CrewJones]

wow another nice animal and tons of action what an exiting hunt

or at least your story telling is very good

[hoppe56307]

This is an amazing adventure, the way you are able to convey the way things played out on every stock of every bull makes you feel like you are there.

[DonBo]

So much for those "poor odds" huh? Great hunt!!!! Thanks for taking the time to share.