ok here it is from Buddy (a cat hunter not an elk hunter
)s mouth.
I drew a Hunter ED second Elk tag this year. So me and Matt planned on being out this week to shoot a big Bull. the Tag allowed me to hunt the rut with a rifle in a Nice Bull unit. The only problem was I've never passed a Legal bull in my life before.
We got in Sat night and did some scouting in the new unit which we had never hunted before, heard a few bulls backed up to hunt them in the morning. and spotted some cows across the canyon. So by Monday we had a couple options to put something together.
Monday morning we parked up close to where we heard them the day before, and happened to spot 2 elk across the canyon, As we were glassing them to try and see if there was a bull with them we heard our elk below us instead of Above us, so we knew he had moved a bit. We left the truck there and tried to sneak into them from the top. It was a pretty awesome experience getting that close to them but we just could not get him to stop or come back. But we were close enough to hear all the finest details of his bugles and grunts. I thought for sure we were going to see him. 2 miles later he had gotten out and into some ground that wasn't really good for stalking. While we were down there we made a couple loops to check out the ground and tried to piece together where and what went wrong. Heard him up on the Hill side across and figured out that we would leave him for the next morning and go check the country we spotted the other elk first thing.
Drove around the canyon to get in the other area and as we come around the corner I seen a bull looking at us through some second growth. He was a 2x2, I'm pretty sure he didn't have 3, Me and Matt had been joking all the time, I told Matt that the first Cow I seen was dead, and He kept telling me he would scare off any small bull that didn't deserve a bullet. So I told him I was going to dump it to see his reaction, Matt likes to watch elk drop so I think he got just a small bit of excitement thinking this was the moment. Anyways, I waited to see if there was a bigger bull with them and there wasn't.
We did find a Gated road with some good sign, that was super quite that we decided would be our evening hunt. A couple hours before dark we started on the mud road just listening to try and locate another bull. I really wanted a couple spots so we had some options. About 2 miles in we finally heard a bugle below us.. It was quite a bit down the steep part and we just didn't think we could cut the distance chasing him. We listened and tried to figure out what to do. We figured where he was heading and beat feet back to the the Truck to try and get down in front of him. We parked about about a 3/4 of a mile from where we last heard him and started in towards him as it was getting dark. It was a long shot with allot of country we didn't know if he was above or below us or where exactly he would end up or how far he would travel in the hour it took us to move and drive around . We as we got about a 1/2 mile or so in we heard the bugle a ways off and it was kinda that bitter sweet sound. We knew he was there but it was still a long ways out. I kinda thought this would end up like our morning hunt, Good hunt but there wasn't much chance left of seeing him. I told Matt well let's try to bugle him and see if he will come in since we don't have much to loose at this point, we had been pretty limited on any bugling and keeping that to a minimum. We never heard him again.
We decided to keep going towards and covered another 300 -400 yards in the direction were we heard him and got to the end of the road on a landing. I told Matt let's try the bugle again, and just try to get aggressive. Still nothing and it was getting in the last 20-30 minutes of hunting hours. I knew he had to be there somewhere we just couldn't figure out where. We decided to Run down and up the unit to a ridge line in the middle and give it one last shot. I figured Elk are load so I wasn't really concerned with being to quite, and just made it happen. We got up there and matt started to cow call, and about that time is when I heard a nice size branch break below us and finally things stared looking up. I spotted elk running in along the timber line in and out of the Re prod, when lucky he stopped and look up for us.
I'm not sure How I counted, because I counted 1,2,3 and then I think 4,5,6 was what I wanted to count, I was assuming he had two Eye Guards and the Tine in the back was going down, which Most Roosevelt Bull's I've seen always went straight up so I figured he had to have 5, maybe six. I got Matt over to see the Bull and Check it out. He said, That's a Nice Bull.... and that was all I needed to hear, BOOM. He dropped, I looked at Matt through my hand up and said Job's Done! Apparently I never Let Matt finish, but he was going to tell me that's a nice bull but, it's not the biggest we could probably shoot. As I walked in I knew in my mind he wasn't a 6, Although I did expect to see a smaller 5x5.
It's the biggest bull I've killed, I have a nice 4x3 Roosevelt elk as my first Bull and several Cow Elk in the freezer. So I'm happy with him, But as the adrenaline runs out, I have to wonder what if. I figure It's kinda like shooting a Nice Cat, It's really hard to pass them up at first, until you really learn and get confident that you can shoot a nicer one. My first Cat was not a trophy, but On my wife's Cat and several bobcats now it gets much easier and easier to pass them up looking for the right animal. With Laura's Cougar we just planned on Eating her tag and not killing a Cougar. We were total fine if we didn't shoot a cougar. We were catching and seen 10-12 cougars that season in the weeks before we finally decided to take her Tom.
I'm not sure if I'll ever get to the point that I'll pass up legal bulls, or planning on going home empty handed if I don't find the bull of my dreams, I like elk meat too much. But If I Get lucky enough for a tag like this again, Hopefully my kids will be a little bit older and I can spend more time scouting and plan on spending the time that this Tag Deserves to start passing bulls looking for a Trophy. I figured if I want a trophy I should probably put in the time.
thanks to RT for answering all of our questions!
