Finally came together after three years! First WA bulls for both of us.
Opening morning, first light, 10 miles behind a locked gate and truck rolls up behind us.... A logger, whom tells us he hasn't seen an elk in the area for over 2 weeks. Not a great confidence booster to the start of our hunt, but we press on. Working our way into a drainage we've had elk encounters in the past, a bull rips a bugle about a 100 yards above us. We each get into position on each side of a draw and start our calling sequence of cow calls. Each time we call, the bull bugles but doesn't move. After about three or four sessions of this, my buddy rips a bugle and immediately hear the bull moving our way. A minute later, I see antler tips working towards me about 40 yards out. He's on a string headed my way so a pull back and settle my bow on the only opening I had. He enter's, stops, lock's onto me and I let it rip. 17 yards later, my arrow made a solid "thwack" sound, the bull jump kicks, and heads back up the hill. 5 seconds later, we here a bunch of crashing and then silence. He was quartered pretty hard towards me and I held right in front of his shoulder, but we let him lay for an hour before looking for blood. 8:00am.
During the long, seemingly endless wait, bulls kept ripping bugles all around us. Not wanting to charge and potentially spook my bull, we sit tight and periodically cow called keeping the other bulls within earshot. After the long wait, we walk 40 yards into the unit, spot a big blood pool, and my bull piled up! Bull Down! After a couple ATL shots, we head up the hill in search of the other bulls. Making all sorts of noise working our way through the unit, we cow call and the bulls keep answering. We climb to a small knob, rip a bugle and see a bull about 400 yards out b-lining in our direction. We check the wind, make a minor adjustment and get into position just in time to see an alder tree getting demolished about 50 yards away. We cow call, sneak another 10 yards closer and get into a good position with a couple good shooting lanes. A few minutes later, bull walks out and arrow is on it's way. "Thwack"! Bull jump kick's, arrow is buried up to it's fletching in the perfect spot. Bull runs 10 yards and takes a nose dive kicking hard. We make a little more commotion that we probably should have, high fiving, as the bull stands up, looks at us and runs off...."oh $h#t". We flag the area, and then head back down to process my bull. 9:30am.
An hour and a half later, meat hanging, we head back to the location where we shot the second bull. No blood, starting to get nervous as it was thick. 20 minutes later of grid searching, bull piled up not 30 yards from the impact site. Back to work again. Meet hanging by 1:30, we went back about a mile, retrieved our bikes, headed back, loaded the carts and started the journey out.
Holy cow, god bless bike trailers and disc brakes! One trip, bent wheel, no brakes left, we got back to the truck just before dark. Headed home. Not a bad opening day! A little bitter sweet as our season is over, but one heck of a way to do it. Until next year....
