Man…Friday night I choked…totally choked. I found myself in the perfect scenario you could ever imagine. It’s exactly the way I dream it will happen every time I think about elk hunting…and I pee’d down my leg!
I didn’t hunt Thursday. It turns out, there are people in this world who don’t observe the month of September the way they should, so I spent the day in the office. I really wanted to hunt Friday morning but Thursdays appointments turned into some work that needed to get done Friday morning…never should have gone in Thursday.
I had planned on getting back up to the big mountains this week and was really looking forward to that. It’s steep, nasty country, lots of elk, and everything that’s awesome! My wife knew I was hunting the afternoon and asked if she could come along. She’s a savage, but she wouldn’t enjoy the kind of experience we would have in the big mountains. I love to hunt with her so back to the ranch we went Friday afternoon. I can hunt the big mountains next week.
I lost a herd in the fog Wednesday morning in an area I hadn’t spent much time in so I decided we would head back there for the evening. Due to the fog, I never saw the herd Wednesday morning, but I could hear them, and there was a big bull track with all the cow tracks so I assumed there was a decent bull with them. OnX says it’s 1.9 miles from where I park but it’s a pretty friendly route. We had a rare N. wind Wednesday. Friday we were back to the prevailing SW wind so we had to come at this spot from the opposite direction Friday.
One of the positives of hunting with my wife is that I’m forced to go at a slower pace. I have a tendency to blow through country sometimes, especially when I have a specific place I want to be. I have busted elk more than once when hotfooting it to a spot. We had plenty of time to get where I wanted to be, by the time I wanted to be there, so our pace was a little more leisurely.
My wife hears everything
and also wants every noise to be the thing we’re after. Rustling squirrels, grouse, and cones falling from trees almost always invoke the tug of my arm from her…did you hear that? It doesn’t bother me and I always tell her what I think we’re hearing. She’s like the best early warning detection system you could have. We were only a quarter mile from our spot when she grabs my arm and asks the question. I had heard what she heard too, but it didn’t sound suspicious to me. I was about to tell her I thought it wasn’t elk when I hear a cow mew. I think we said, “that’s elk” simultaneously.
In my mind this herd was over 100 yards away. The brush breaking was faint, as was the mew of the cow, and we had the wind blowing to us. I would have expected everything to sound louder than what I was hearing. My diaphragm call goes in mouth when I put on my pack so I’m always ready to talk elk if I need to. My wife’s standing right behind me when I make my little “calf in distress call sequence”. The next sounds we heard were not faint! I turn to tell her he’s coming and she’s already taken a knee behind some brush.
I moved up about ten yards to give myself a lane, based on where I thought he would appear. He is coming from my left moving to my right. I could hear his antlers banging on brush as he made his way to me. I was reaching for my range finder when I saw his rack, no time for a range now, he’s going to be right in front of me in a split second.
I naturally shake a bit, been that way since I was kid. My career as surgeon was never going to happen. When I get an adrenaline dump, I shake REALLY bad...picture a Parkinson's patient in an earthquake. I'm always the butt of jokes from anyone who has seen me in these scenarios. I’m struggling to get my release aid attached to my D-loop as I can see him through the brush. He paused for a brief second before he poked his head and front half into my lane. During that couple of seconds, before he popped out, I decided he was 30 yards or closer. I hunt with an adjustable single pin site. It’s not ideal for elk hunting, but it’s what I have. I leave it at 30 yards assuming that anything beyond that I’ll have a chance to dial to, but inside 30, I don’t want any extra movement. As he steps out he pauses and looks my direction. He doesn’t see me, he’s just trying to find the imaginary calf. Then he looks away. That’s my cue to draw, and I pullback. I’m exactly where I want to be, at full draw on a nice bull who is completely unaware of my presence.
I was standing and my feet were exactly where I wanted them to be, just like I shoot in the driveway. His vitals weren’t completely unobscured but I had a good window to them and he wasn’t nervous at all. It seemed like finding that calf was all that was on his mind. In retrospect, I think he would have taken another step and been in the wide open had I waited a few more seconds, but I didn’t wait and the arrow was loose. At 30 yards, arrows get there quick, but you can still see the flight of the arrow. My bow shoots well, but isn’t perfectly tuned at the moment so I can see the fletching just a bit as it flies down range.
I see and hear the impact of the arrow. I had judged the distance perfect but I punched the trigger as my pin was floating around the vitals. Target panic was in full effect and I fell back on an old, bad habit of trying to time the release with the passing of my pin in and around the intended spot. Adrenaline will make a man do stupid shit, I have been its victim many times. That arrow hit way too far forward. The bull lunged and I immediately hit the reed with a few cow calls.
I’ll explain why the cow calling immediately after the shot, just in case someone is unaware of the reasoning. In these scenarios bulls are pretty fired up, and arrows are so sharp they don’t know they are hurt when they get hit. They hear a sound, maybe feel something, but they are still laser focused on finding the elk they are looking for when they come to the call. Often times they will take a few, really quick steps at the sound of the arrow, but then wheel around to look for the sound, all the wile bleeding out right where they stand…if they are hit well. It’s a very different reaction than the boom of a gun. Unfortunately, my bull wasn't hit well and I knew it, but I followed through with what's supposed to happen just in case.
I listen for a minute and then turn around to my wife who’s fist pumping me. She could see me and the bull. She heard the impact of the arrow but I was blocking her view of where it hit. I gave her the thumbs down and motioned for her to move up to me. She asks what happened and I tell her I hit him way forward. Sometimes your eyes can trick you and I’m hopeful the arrow says otherwise when I find it but I felt awful. She’s very optimistic in the moment, but she always is, and she didn’t see what I saw. I would be thrilled to be wrong on this one!
After a few minutes, I slowly approach where he was standing, listening intently as I move up to the impact site. I see my arrow laying on the ground 5-6 yards beyond the bull. It hit enough that it slowed the arrow and didn’t bury into the dirt. It has blood and hair on it but not the kind of blood soaked fletching you’re hoping for. We stand there for a few more minutes as I whisper my instant thoughts of what I’d done wrong. There is no reason to get on a blood trail immediately. I have my doubts about the shot being fatal to begin with, and if it's going to be fatal, us pushing him by following the blood trail is the worst possible thing to do. I have that t-shirt. That said, I do want to see where the first blood is and what it looks like. This is where it gets wild!
When the bull left he went into a patch of timber that had been heavily thinned 15+years ago and the ocean spray is head high. This place is covered in that stuff. All animals love the cover of ocean spray as it grows fairly tall, but it doesn't completely choked out everything else around it like alder does. Once you get in it, you realize how nice the paths in and around it are, but you can't see those until you're in it in it. I can see his tracks where he peeled out so I follow them into the cover for about 5 yards when I look up and see him staring at me no more than 20 yards away. He didn't hang around and I expected to hear him breaking brush to the next county. Now I'm really perplexed and not sure what to make of it, but if there is going to be blood, it will be where he was standing. It had been 10-15 minutes since I had poked him and he's been standing 30 yards away the whole time.
I grab my wife, we move to where he was, and there is blood. It's not a lot but it's not a few drops either. It's coming out both sides but the space between those is only 6-7 inches. If the arrow had passed through where I needed it to, the blood would be spaced 12-18" between patches. The image in my mind of where that arrow hit was confirmed. It went through the brisket in front of the shoulder and there is nothing of significance in that area. This bull is going to bleed a little but he's as injured as you or I would be by getting a cut on a quad through nylon fishing pants. My wife thinks she's seen the blood of triple homicide, she's a mom, and I explain to her how insignificant that is for a 5-600 pound animal. As we're standing there I can hear him below us and he sounds pretty close. I nock another arrow and hit the calf call. Within seconds he's right on top of us, no more than 10-12 yards, but all I can see is the top half of his rack through some ocean spray. I have lanes to his left and right if he'll step that way. His horns are turning right and left, they tip back as he tries to get a whiff of what he's hoping is another elk. We're stuck there for another 3-4 minutes and he moves off straight away keeping the brush between us and him but he's in no rush.
This is where I make another of a seemingly unending list of adrenaline filled bad decisions. I knew I could call him back again. I should have taken a few minutes to think through where we were, where my best opportunity for a shot would be, and move to that spot before I called him back...but I didn't. I quickly moved to the next subpar lane in that sea of brush and called again. He was probably less than 50 yards from his previous location and came right back. This time he came back really fast and with more intent! My wife got scared as she thought he was going to run her over. She had been super slow and quiet through all of this but she was looking for something solid to hide behind when he had us pinned. There he stood again, inside of 20 yards, head turning side to side, nose working, looking for the calf he was hearing but couldn't find, and I had no shot. Eventually he walked off for the last time.
We set up one more time hoping he'd come back but I knew we were cooked. You are only going to get so many chances. Even a rut drunk bull is eventually going to move on. By now the sun is long gone, the clouds are totally pink, and the crickets are almost deafening. It's time to make the long walk of shame back to the pickup.
