Sorry about not getting things posted right away.
I didn’t connect with a bull. My Uncle was able to get a bull on the last day, in the last hour and a half of the Muzzy season.
The first 5 days of the season we had contacted several bulls and could get them close, but never gave us the real opportunity to shoot. About day six, the bulls stopped talking. We had a hard time locating them, and it seemed like the cows had started to fall off from the bulls. We’d spot a couple of cows and call, but we could never get any response. It was getting harder and harder to find some elk. We looked high and low for a couple days and only could find cows.
On the last day we were headed to a spot where we had consistently been seeing some cows, hoping that there had to be a bull close by that we could hunt down. About half way to our spot as we were driving I see a cow on the road. I roll out hoping she had some trailers behind her just in time to see 3 elk crashing back down the hillside. I couldn’t see any horns but my uncle had seen a spike with the bunch as they went into the timber.
At this point, I’m just trying to fill my tag so any spike will do. I decide to cut in a little lower and my uncle goes up the road a bit and we try to put the squeeze play on this spike. I’m in the woods about 45 minutes and I hear a bugle. It’s probably about 400 yards away down in the bottom. I throw out some cow calls and run about 75 yards towards the bull and get set up in some reprod. I call again and this bull is now 75-100 yards out, but the trees block my view to him. He sounded young, but he also sounded hot. But before I could get him to come any closer, the wind shifts, I hear him grunt and bolt down and away.
I worked till noon trying to locate him, but it looks like we blew him out.
We do a little lunch in the truck, trying to decide our last afternoon of hunting. I think I knew were that spike was headed so I get dropped off down the road about 2 miles and I head up a trail trying to find him. My uncle decides to head down the trail. I spend the next few hours looking for this spike and I can’t seem to find the elk.
Its about 5:40 and I’ve made my way back close to the road. In the other direction, I hear a shot. I know full well there is only one other person down there. I take off on a dead run. I get there just in time to help finish skinning.
We were just about right on where we thought the spike would be. We pushed him about 2.5 miles and we think we pushed him right into a bigger bull. My uncle said that as soon as he started headed down the trail he heard two bulls bugling at each other. One sounded younger and the other sounds more mature.
After some time everything went silent, and he couldn’t find where they went. As time was running short, he decided to walk a spur road back to the trail. Not long after that, all hell broke loose on the hillside coming at him. A Cow and Calf passed by and right behind them was this bull. He stopped at 12 yards, and got dropped right in his tracks.
