Day 6 continued:
We (Jeff and I) slogged our way back up the trail in the dark. The rain had stopped the previous evening, but everything was still wet and nasty. I’m not going to lie, I’m starting to hate that hike in. The area we are hunting is a 2 1/2 mile hike back and about 1000’ climb. There’s no singularly bad about it, it just generally sucks from start to finish. Kinda like a Nicholas Cage movie. I hereby dub this hike the Nick Cage hike.
We will now pause for an editorial break that will tie in with the end of the story. The previous 5 days, I had carried my bow but I chose to call and help bring in bulls for Jeff. Jeff can make a passable cow call, but most of his his bugles sounds like Rosie O’Donnell talking about Trump - Lots of spit and high pitch unintelligible shrieking... This morning however, I had decided to try and get on a bull if the opportunity came up. I decided before season to be patient and shoot a mature bull only, as I had leave blocked off to come back out for the general rifle season in November. Over the last few days, I had come to the realization of the following: 1. Being the only caller in the group left me at a distinct disadvantage, in so far as I had called in a number of bulls for everyone else and not even seen most of them based on my position, 2. Talking to the guys who live out here, General season is a mess of people, snow, and tough hunting with a low chance at a nice bull unless I was on private or in horseback, and 3. I’d rather shoot a smaller bull with my bow in the backcountry than a shooting a big one with my rifle, while the bull is feeding in a hayfield.
Now back to our regularly scheduled program: We got to the top at 7am and I let out a locator bugle and the hillside started going crazy. We were surrounded by bulls! It was crazy - we had probably 6-8 bulls within 300 yards and they were all screaming. The wind was swirling and unpredictable, but we picked the closest bull with the best wind and worked our way to him. We were unsuccessful calling him in as it sounded like he was bedding down. We switched our efforts and dropped down a couple hundred yards and started working a bull in the bottom of the drainage. We managed to call him up out of the bottom, and I heard his footsteps through the trees as he circled further downwind than I had anticipated. I had setup 40 yards downwind and he circled at 90-100 yards. I heard him, but never saw him through the trees. With that plan failed, we went back to working other bulls for the rest of the morning, but were unable to pull them from the herd. I was hesitant to move into their bedding area and push them out of our drainage for the rest of the hunt. They continued to bugle incessantly from their beds all morning and afternoon, as we casually ate our food, had coffee, and discussed potential attack strategies. Eventually I decided to go all in and stalk into their bedding area. The bulls were all bugling from their beds and I had good wind, so I started in and passed on a rag horn 4 point raking a tree. I bumped a 5x5 and saw several other bulls through the trees before I backed out. I let the area calm down a bit and tried a different avenue of approach since the thermals had shifted. I came in from above and went for what sounded like the badass of the bunch. Jeff and I snuck into the herd and got close to the herd bull before being pinned by his cows. He was a nice 6x6, probably around 320 or so, and surrounded by cows. I was in front and Jeff was 40 yards behind me. This is where an experienced elk caller would have helped. Jeff was too close to rake and when he called all the elk could see where the call was coming from. They started to meander away and I had no choice but to bugle and try and bring the bull back. At this point I was 70 yards or so, and I could only bugle when they were turned away. It just wasn’t a good enough setup to make it work. Jeff was too close and he couldn’t do the calls needed to get the herd bull to come defend his harem. They slowly wandered off and we regrouped. I gave Jeff some thoughts on reading the “mood” of the bull and being more aggressive with calling when a bull shows interest. The herd started moving away and there was one straggler bull left in the area within 200 yards. At that point, we had tried every calling strategy except for one - trying to piss off a satellite bull. We had tried that earlier in the week, but it instantly shut down every bull we tried it on. However, I was pissed and I turned to Jeff and told him we were going to get that bull riled up and ready to fight and if he came in with 5 points on his head, I was going to shoot him. He went back and cow called and started going full Ike Turner on a tree 60 yards behind me. As soon as the bull bugled, I cut him off with a moderate intensity bugle. We did this three more times, each time I cut him off and mimicked the call he made with more intensity. I could tell he was headed towards us when he grunted and I screamed over top of him, then he broke into a trot through the trees. He angled uphill (downwind) and when he passed through a thicker area, I moved position to get a better angle on his approach. He was coming in fast on a hard quarter-to shot when he was approaching the window. If he kept going the same path, he was going to give me a broadside shot right as he approached my scent. I drew as he passed a tree, and he paused just prior to my shot window. I thought he had seen me, but instead he held for just enough time for me to see 5 points and get a good anchor, when he turned full broadside and slowly stepped into the window. I shot as soon as he took that step and immediately started the party in my brain when I saw the arrow hit. It was a 20 yard shot right in the pocket and I knew that bull would be down in seconds. He crashed shortly thereafter and didn’t require a tracking job. It was around 2pm when I shot him. We got to work breaking down the bull and Jeff called Cain to come help. Jeff, the hyper-athletic destroyer of mountain trails and Snickers bars, shuttled a hindquarter 3 miles to the truck while I finished the hard part! Cain and his fiancée (both of whom I had met only a few days earlier) had come up the mountain to get the meat out. They were total rockstars. Without their help, we would still be getting the bull off the mountain. We got to the truck around 9pm and drove into town and went right to bed. Talk about a team effort! I wouldn’t have a shot at that bull without Jeff in the back calling and the packout would have lasted two days, if not for the new friends and Jeff shuttling and extra load. What great people to help out and work so hard. The bull was a 5x? As he has broken off the left antler just last the G3. He was a fighter for sure, as he was the only bull this week to not run from a challenge bugle.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
