Friday a friend and I packed into a nice little mountain range in the SW corner of Montana to see how the elk hunting might be. She had never been elk hunting before… and never been bowhunting before. We worked hard this summer to get her shooting about 45# and hitting consistently out to about 25 yards. She pulls off a longer shot pretty often, but not consistently enough to make her confident at anything past 30. This year I upgraded a 2009 Martin for a 2005 Mathews Switchback. This bow gave me some serious confidence. What a joy to shoot… Thanks MUCH Todd_ID… for helping me set it up and encouraging me to take a look at that model in the first place! I was putting broadheads where I wanted them at 70 yards… even though I had no intentions of shooting over about 45. Well… maybe 50.
Anyhow… we left the truck at about 4pm on Friday in the bright sun and near 60 degrees at 8000 feet. To my surprise… I glanced over across the canyon…and not 5 minutes from the truck, in the bright sunshine, a spike was feeding on the open hillside.
Lady Luck is seeing her first elk while on an elk hunt!
Zoomed View… spike is right in the center. Shortly after, 3 cows and 2 calves bolted out and they all ran down the hill to the left. Guess they didn’t like us looking at them. I expected to hear a bugle with them all scattering like that, but we didn’t.
A little further in, Lady Luck and I posed for some scenery shots. The country in the background is where our tent would be set up for the next three nights. Hopefully, the six elk we just saw weren’t all of them!!
And a selfie… just because. One thing I did know, was that elk or not… it was going to be a great weekend. Lady Luck loves the mountains as much as I do and any lack of elk or kills would not hamper our enjoyment of this trip!
About two miles in we made a creek crossing. Some might wonder whether she was up to the rigors of hunting elk in the mountains. Well, I wasn’t worry… earlier this summer she covered 32 miles in the BigHorn Mountains of Wyoming, single track trail mostly… 6500-8500 feet… in six hours. The only real question was if I’d be able to keep up with her!
Another mile past the creek crossing we found a nice spring with good water and a decent flat spot in a grove of Spruce. When we entered the grove, momma and kiddo moose got up and trotted off… the hunt couldn’t have got off to a cooler start. Already saw elk… TONS of fresh elk sign and a pair of moose in just the first hour away from the truck.
We pitched the little two man Marmot, collected a few rocks for a fire ring and dawned a couple sweatshirts to fend off the evening chill. Not a cloud in the sky, but at 8500 feet this day, the high temp never got out of the 50s. The evening would be cool. We grabbed our food bags, some cord and a beaner and headed a couple hundred yards away to find a good branch to keep the food out of camp!
After I got the food hung, I popped a diaphragm in my mouth and gave a couple mews to see if anything was close by. Before the echo settled we had three bulls bugle from three different directions… it was going to be dark soon. It was the first night…
This first day couldn’t have been going any better. Her first elk hunt… and she was experiencing what it took me several seasons to experience and countless days afield.
With one hour of light left we grabbed our bows, I through my pack on and told her to leave hers…we wouldn’t be going far. I tossed her headlamp in my pack. We headed over to the food bags and I gave another mew… no answer. Waited 3-4 mins and gave another cow call. Nothing… Didn’t have much to lose, so I pulled out the tube and gave a mellow locator bugle.
After 30 seconds of silence an elk answered about 200 yards up the hill from us. The answer was tough to describe… mix between a cow call and a bugle. I told her it was probably a spike, but that there were certainly other elk up there. The area we hunted is brow-tine bull or antlerless… We were both willing to shoot a cow or a bull!
Anyhow, I whispered that we would close some ground on these elk, get setup, then start a calling sequence… so we started up the hill to put on about 75 yards… after about 10 steps I heard crashing and saw a tan body running through the timber ahead! #^%@$#^#$%#^... Frick. NOT the first time I’ve done that, and it wasn’t the last either! We went ahead and creeped up the hill to where we saw the elk running and stood around whispering about how we blew that opportunity… but that we were still having an awesome first night. After a couple mins of whispering and bantering the quiet was interrupted with a “bark” from about 100 yards in the timber. I jumped… she giggled at me for startling and asked what the heck that was. I explained how it was a bark/alarm call and probably was a cow… and that basically every elk within about a mile radius was now on high alert because of this call. About every 20-30 seconds this elk would bark… I would mew back to it to try and calm it… it continued to bark, maybe 10 times, when I decided to bark back. I had a barking contest with a 5 point bull one time and as I barked at him he slowly approached and barked back at me. I never did get a shot up, but it sure didn’t scare him off…
Anyhow… the next time the elk barked it was noticeably closer… so I started mewing/calf calling again. Becky and I were hunkered pretty close to a bushy fir tree and just smiling and enjoying the acoustical drama… when it barked again and was maybe 65 yards from us right on the timberline of the park we were standing on the edge of. Then he stepped out. I had to raise the binos to see if he was legal (brow-tine) and I quicly determined he was. However, I didn’t get very excited because he was on high alert and still barking… I figured it would be a cold day in hell that he ended up within 30-40 yards of us… which is about what I wanted to shoot.
The next five minutes was great. This Ding dong bull would walk about 10 yards toward us, bark, then turn around and walk to the edge of the timber… stop… bark… then turn and walk towards us… bark… turn around…etc. He probably did this about ten times. We were well hidden behind a tree, that unfortunately blocked any shot opportunity at him! I kept whispering to Lady Luck, that he was way to suspicious… it was highly unlikely he would come far enough to clear himself of the branches of the tree we were behind. Nonetheless… we both knocked arrows and stood stock still to see what would happen…
Then he turned and headed into the meadow like he’d done 10 times before… but this time… he didn’t stop. He kept walking slowly, looking our way. There was a small grove of three trees in the middle of the meadow and he walked behind them. When… IF… he came out, we would have a clear view of him. BUT… he could be anywhere from 35-80 yards away… I was not going to shoot past 50… and Becky would not shoot over 30. She whispered that he was going to be too far if he appeared from behind the trees. I agreed and she gave me the ok to take the shot if I wanted it. He slowly walked out and at full draw I whispered that he was too far… then I noticed the log laying in the meadow that he was nearly standing on… I had looked at that log for several minutes before he showed himself… and I kept thinking it was about 35 yards… he couldn’t have been 2-4 yards behind the log… I put my finger on the trigger and whispered “or not” to Becky… the bull stopped, I put my 40 pin in the sweet spot and squeezed.
Right in the middle of the above pic, I am standing, barely visible with my arms up in the air. It ended up being 34 yards from where I stood to where the elk was.
zoomed in to me
Right in the middle of the above pic, I am standing, barely visible with my arms up in the air. It ended up being 34 yards from where I stood to where the elk was.
The zipped toward him, he “jumped the string”… but not before the arrow got there… then he ran straight away into a patch of timber. Lady Luck smiled and told me I got him. I asked if she was sure and she said, YEAH… you hit him… the arrow hit him in the chest. I immediately started cow calling and threw out a quick bugle to try and calm him. About that time we heard some branches breaking… I called some more. Then we heard the wheezing and coughing… Then silence. We both looked at eachother knowing what that meant and Lady Luck said, “so we have to wait a ½ hour right?”. I explained (as she was FRESH out of bowhunter ed) that yes, that is a very good guideline… and we did NOT want to bump him, but I was pretty dang sure he was dead. However, we would not go running over… I did want to sneak over to where I hit him and look for the arrow. When we got over there I walked around with my eyes to the ground… couldn’t see any arrow or any blood… Then Becky whispered, “He’s right there, I think he’s right there”… She pointed through the trees…
The tan body is BARELY visible through the trees in the middle of this pic.
Sure enough… he had went through a stringer of trees, across the spring, into the next park… then went down.
Looking back to where I shot from. He was standing just on this side of the log… I was just at the edge of the timber.
We headed across the spring… and I got my first good look at my first archery killed elk… This had been a long time coming. I have had a couple screw ups… and hundreds of very close calls… This time it came together. I’ve killed a few nice six points… with a rifle, including an awesome 380 bull… but I am no prouder of any of them than I am this little guy…
Gotta take a break... and will get a few more comments and shots up...
Sorry so long... but this hunt is really the hunt of a lifetime for many reasons... him being my first archery bull just one of them!
