After months and months of preparation, conditioning and scouting my hunt has concluded with a happy ending. There are so many people from this site to thank for all the tips you have provided me for this hunt. Here is a HUGE THANK YOU!!! to everyone that contacted me.
We setup camp 4 days before the season opener to get as much scouting in as possible. The bulls were fairly vocal in the evenings. The weather started off warm and windy. A couple days before the season, it started cooling off a little which really seemed to help. One evening my dad and I worked our way out a ridge and did some calling. We got about 7 bulls going with 3 coming in and we were not even trying. Things were looking encouraging.
Finally opening morning was here. My brother and another hunting partner showed up the night before to help out. We worked our way out the same ridge we had all the action on 2 days before season. We had 3 bulls answering our calls. They were still too far away for us to pinpoint their location. After working our way out the ridge a couple miles we were close enough to locate the bulls. They were in the bottom. My younger brother and I decided we would drop in after them and see what we could make happen. It took us over an hour to get down the really steep brushy ridge to where we felt we could start working the bulls. During this decent we found tons of bear sign and berries everywhere. From the top we heard 3 different bulls in a close proximity. One of the bulls sounded more like a moo cow. He would just growl with a little moo to go with it. Once in position we both started cow calling. A calf immediately responded and within minutes ran to within about 50 yards of me. We also heard a cow respond and then 2 different bulls started bugling. I moved down 10 yards to get into a better shooting lane . My brother asked me if he should move back around the ridge and I said yes. My brother has never hunted elk with me during the rut but he sure made some great decisions. As he moved away from the elk and continued to call I stopped calling. The calf ran straight towards him and about 20 yards below me. The bulls were getting closer and more worked up. Their cows were leaving them. A cow ran over to the calf in the same general location. Then I hear another elk come crashing down the ridge. The elk comes within 50 yards and the first thing I see is horns but he stops right behind a tree. I hear another bull bugle 20 yards behind him but cannot see a thing. I am telling myself, please just one more step. He started moving and takes that one step and stops to rake a little sapling. My first impression was this bull was the one and I took the shot. After the smoke cleared I see him walking away and the other elk were scattering everywhere. I seen some brush move about 20 yards from where he was standing and thought I heard him crash. I also heard labored breathing and was fairly confident it was a double lung shot. I tried to reload but was shaking so much I dropped some powder from my speed loader. I grabbed another load and finally was able to get everything down the barrel. My brother worked his way back to me as we were looking through the binoculars to see if we could see him. After walking down the ridge about 20 yards we could see he was down. As we worked our way over to the bull we could see a lot of horn on one side. We thought his other side may have been broken off, but it was just buried in the leaves and brush. I picked up his head and couldn’t believe I had just shot my first 7X7.
This hunt was everything that I had hoped for. It took 2 days to get this bull back to camp. We had snow, rain and ice pellets during the pack out. One of the hardest but most memorable packs I have had. I want to thank BLUEBULLS for offering to help pack. It was nice to meet you at camp after all of our conversations.
Younger brother is an animal. He competes in ironman competitions.
Dad and hunting partner
TC Shockwave 300 grain bonded broke shoulder blade, rib and went through both lungs. Found just before exiting other side of animal.
Bull with about 20 cows.
Ice on the trees. It was sunny most of the day but the wind would not let it thaw out.
