The wife and I was hunting the area my son had taken his deer a week earlier. We had just finished walking a go no where grown over road when she heard what she thought was an elk bugle. I cow called and waited a few when sure enough a bull bugled back. I walked down the main road to locate where the bull was located. I could tell he was on a ridge up the mountain a short distance. We jumped in the truck and drove up a piece, where I saw an old overgrown road heading up the ridge the bugle came from. I had a cow tag and by the sound of the bugle I could tell he had girls with him. I headed up the over grown road while my wife drove up, turned around and found a spot to park. Almost as soon as I entered the woods I could hear the elk moving. Not far up the skid road I saw elk up on the hill start filing by (big bull first). Then as the last cow started by she stopped right in my sights. I pulled the trigger on her. It was not long after my shot when I realized my shot was not as well placed as I would have liked. I had hit her quartering and it was basically a gut shot. She stood where shot and began to cough. I quickly reloaded and hurrying, I missed. After the second shot she took off but bedded down 50 yards from where I shot her right on the old road I was walking on. Not knowing this my wife and I walked right up to her and she took off. We gave her a short time to bed down and started to look for the blood trail. There was very little blood to find so we were pretty concerned. The cow did not run far again and as we found the second drops of blood she ran again. Now its getting to be around 4 in the after noon so we gave her around 2 hr. before looking again. This time we could not find much blood at all and it finally just gave out. Now we are worried, its getting dark and were not sure what to do. So after a few prayers we started over and again the blood ran out. While standing there talking about getting more eyes to help look I see right behind my wife the out line of a bedded cow elk and low and behold she was right there listing in on our plan. I then finished her with a calm well place shot.
