Reports? Yeah, I blew it not once, but twice! I somehow missed a gimme shot at a 5+ bull on Saturday morning at the long distance of 27 yards!! He whirled just as I shot and I all I got was a big patch of body hair. I was about 6 miles in past the gate on the upper Wynoochee road at the top of the ridge. The bull took the rest of the herd and ran down the backside into the Skokomish drainage and two days later I sneaked in to range of them while they lounged in a rockslide. When they got up to start moving several cows and bulls moved into range an I got another shot at about 75 yards. With a gun not cleaned as well as normal due to the pack in, I got the first snapped cap of my life at big game on a little better bull in the group. By the time I managed to get a few grins of powder into the nipple and a new cap, the bunch was just out of sight behind a tree in front of me. If I'd just settled down and let them start moving around again, I'd have been fine, but a little 3 point ran up to see what was going on and I took a quick shot at him. Unfortunately I hit him kind of low through the front leg, but no bone. He moved off with the rest of the bunch and I followed a little blood for about 100 yards when it ran out. I ended up dropping down there for the next two days and was not able to find any sign of him or the rest of the herd. I'm pretty sure he wasn't too badly hurt and will probably heal up for next year. I quit going further down into the Skok drainage because I wasn't sure I had it in me to bring one back out to the top of the ridge and then another 6 miles down to my truck on the Wynoochee side. I never saw any others up high and it ended up raining pretty hard Thursday and yesterday. I think these bulls are giving me a bad case of buck fever or something.
