Ok, so I'm finally back to the rat race we all call daily life.
Our season ended up pretty awesome. I killed my first archery Elk second day of the season, pictured above, and my buddy that came out for his first archery big game hunt ever, killed a Spike on 4th day of the season. My dad took a nice 5x6 bull on third to last day. (he held out and passed up 8 shots under 20 yards on spikes throughout the week)
Spike:
My buddy and my dad went out after I had run my cow to town for processing. They were heading up the hill at dark and got set up to do some cow talking. They called in a couple spikes which came within 15 yards of dad (bull tag), no shot, too early in season. The spikes spooked and came back after a couple more mews. My buddy, Spoon, took a shot at a spike and hit a branch, got off a second shot and shot over him and stuck a tree. (first year jitters).
They reset and after about 5 minutes a second set of spikes came running in and Spoon didn't hesitate and stuck one for his first Elk kill ever. Way to go buddy!
So after the spike we got some crazy weater over east as you all know. Sunday the thunderstorms moved in with the lightning. What a show that was. We were watching lightning strikes all over the ridge across from us. While we were out on the ridge dinking around watching the storm we had a little 4x5 at our trail cam 75 yards behind camp.
Monday rolled around and the cold weather moved in and winds blowing 25-30. Tuesday morning we had snow on the ground. Super crazy weather. Must have messed with the elk, cause we had one guy all week get close to a spike but no shot. On Wed. me and two guys headed up to the same ridge we had been hunting and had a bull get pretty pissed about our cow calling. He ended up grunting at us three times before circling to get our wind. Thursday was the first sign of any rut we had. Bulls starting bugling and we had two of them going at it pretty good but couldn't get on them, two of the guys had never experienced this and that made their trip.
Bull:
Friday my dad and brother went up to a new area on the top of the mountain and after chasing a bull around all morning they were heading back to the jeep around 11 when off the trail and over a burm they heard a bull tearing up a tree. Dad snuck over the burm and had a 20 yard shot on the bull. He turned as dad released and hit him back a bit too far. We ended up tracking down a blood trail and finding him in some thick thick thick sh$t, and oh did I mention it was thick. Took a bit to find him but we got him.
All in all the season was amazing. This is our first good year we have had and our first Washington Elk since moving out from Montana years ago. I'm glad we switched back to archery a couple years ago. The opportunities on elk seem to be more and less hunters in the woods. I spent the whole season up hunting and helping buddies and I never once ran into another hunter in the woods. The elk were responding to our calls and that made our hunt so much more fun.
Can't wait for deer camp and looking forward to Elk 2013
