cause 2 out of 3 aint bad... 2022 archery season recap

[Gerbdog]

The 2022 Season Recap



Between my brother, my step dad, and myself we had three elk tags: My brother and step dad were hunting down in the Gila, NM (their home state) and I had an OTC tag in my home state of CO.



Both of the Gila tags were for the first Archery season so I decided I would go help my brother on his hunt for the first two weeks of September and forego my tag til after his hunt was done. He hadn’t drawn an archery elk tag in NM for like… 9 years or something insane. The tags were in different units in the Gila, so my step dad, an experienced elk slayer, went solo.



We arrived in the unit the day before season and truck camped, the next morning we did an 8 mile loop through gorgeous looking elk country, for anyone whos been down to the Gila this season… you know how green it all is, they just got so much rain after the fire that the whole place looks like Ireland in NM. Creeks are flowing in the bottom of all the valleys, stock tanks are over flowing, just really beautiful this year. However, that opening morning we saw zero elk, and the sign we found was old… I knew we had to move so we headed back to pack up camp.



While setting up camp the game warden for the area pulled up and we talked with him for awhile while he checked tags. Great guy, super nice, and as it turned out : super helpful, he suggested a few spots where he thought some elk may be but with how much rain and feed there was in the area he said the elk were spread out all over this year.



Without much of a lead we took his advice and went to a spot he suggested, the next morning I spotted a bull and a few cows out on a finger ridge a ways out and we made a move to get over to them, when we arrived they had moved (of course) but we heard a faint / lazy bugle down in the valley, but the wind had shifted and was no longer helping us out at all so we settled in for the day hoping the bull would come back up top to feed in the evening or let us know when he got out of bed to move. Fast forward 8 hours and he did get up, bugle once, and leave us empty handed. Bummer. Probably the first observation / thought provoking moment from this season which ill summarize below.



The next morning we got back in there and came up on a group of about 20 cows without any bulls around them… it was early season so I didn’t think much of it but figured there must be some bulls hovering in the area somewhere…. But we never found them if they were. We made a move to get up wind of the cows as they were moving but they moved faster then we could and we lost them as they moved to their beds. We spent the rest of the day trying to glass the valleys from different angles to find where they were bedded to no avail, they ghosted us. The weather held out for a couple more days and then went down hill into rainville pretty quickly and we headed back to ABQ for the work week.



Come to find out when we got signal that my step dad tagged out on day 3. That guys an elk slayer, and packed it all out solo. Story goes he was only seeing bears in his favorite valley, decided to move over a couple valleys and got into bugling bulls. He decided on the herd bull, rubbed some burnt tree on his hands and face, and went straight in. Cows spooked off, bull decided to keep rubbing the tree, and he got a great quartering away shot with the elk piling up in 50 yards. Cant beat that.

 

[Gerbdog]

The next Friday we all headed back out to my brothers unit to see what we could get in on. There was more hunting pressure and we ran into a few hunters when we headed back in before day light. I got a location bugle response but it was still very dark and we were headed back to a further in stock tank so we kept on further in. Later in the day we worked our way back to where we thought that bull had bugled from and glassed him bedded down with some cows, nice mature bull for sure. After watching a while we determined they were pretty set on staying where they were below a valley ridge so we went wide and tried to come in from the top where the wind would be in our face. As we were making our way around a thunderstorm was brewing… I thought perhaps it would give us some cover to stalk in if calling didn’t pan out…..



About 200 yards out from the elk it started to hail and torrential downpour …. I mean…. Soaking wet in 5 minutes even sitting under a tree. It let up for a moment so we started calling and making our way into the elk… and the weather tricked us good cause we got dumped on again. Eventually we found the elk beds had been vacated during the storm…. Either we spooked them or they said “nah”, it appeared they had gone before ethe storm because there was no fresh tracks in the fresh mud … in either case this was the second moment I had a thought and maybe would have changed a couple of things.



We hunted this location another day and then my step dad went back to ABQ for the work week, my brother and I stayed but we re-located to some different landscape with thicker timber. We were able to get some bugles out of the bulls in this new location but none wanted to commit and eventually the first archery season in NM came to a close. Saw lots of elk, heard lots of elk, sadly unable to get my brother to connect with one…. I hope he gets a tag before another 9 years go by…. I really wish this had panned out for him.



Fast forward through another couple of days with work events for me in NM and I headed north back to CO for my own OTC hunt. I dropped into a spot I had scouted previously this summer to do some hunting for the weekend and ….. I have never seen so many trucks / truck dcampers / horse trailers / RVs…. Just …. Mind blown. Guys were walking around with their bows in their hand 2 pm around camp and … yea. OTC pressure. I talked to a hunter in the area who was leaving to get an idea on the temperature in the area and he said there had been elk… but they were blown out now. He said where he thought they may be but I decided to head back home, it had been a couple of weeks away from the family and I am but a human.



I hunted near home here the next week after work a few times, especially when a cold front came through to see if I may get lucky and pull up a stray elk in the area, to no avail, just old sign. Then Sept 23 I headed out to a location I swore I’d never try and pull an elk out of because its just gnarly, and is instead a great mule deer hunting location for me. My step dad was going to meet me there at the trailhead and we would pack in and camp/hunt for the weekend.



When we arrived at the trailhead there were 20+ trucks, about 5 horse trailers, and 3 RVs. Again, mind blown. I have hunted this location several times in the past and have never seen the treailhead so over blown. We got in late so we packed in as the day ended and we passed about 8 hunters coming out with head lamps, with news that there were some elk in the area and many more camps ahead of us full of hunters. There was a moment here where my step dad suggested maybe we should turn around but I talked him into just setting up camp there for the night and we could make a decision in the morning.



Morning came around and we walked straight up the mountain from there. We got up high into some nasty timber full of thorns/ brambles under neath and found lots of elk sign and could smell they had been there. Across the valley my step dad caught a single glimpse of a bull that disappeared into the trees and never resurfaced. I spotted a group of about 8 cows across the valley but they had no bulls in their group at all, just a spike, which… I figured would have been run off if a bigger bull had been serious about the cows? It seemed unusual for this late into Sept not to have a bull on those cows but as we watched that group of cows they headed down the valley towards all the hunting pressure and we figured that: A. They would blow out in a random direction or B. They were coming up our side of the valley to bed somewhere. In either case they were out of sight, and we kept hunting along the ridge we were on.



Moving slowly, listening, and calling a bit we made our way along the ridge through lots of elk sign for another 4ish hours. We had just found an old dried up wallow with the grass around it completely flattened for about 20 ft in all directions and were discussing taking a morning siesta. My step dad wanted to move a little further to find a place to rest he could glass, so we walked like 15 more steps when he said “don’t move” and I looked to my left , down hill and through a small forest I could see the back half of an elk body. My step dad told me 30 yards, but I didn’t have a shot at the vitals yet from my angle and needed to take a knee to clear some branches with the shot and thread it through the trees. Eventually the elk took a step forward, I came to a draw, checked my pins for twigs, and let the arrow fly. It went right under the elk. My heart sank, and the elk spooked out of there. By dumb luck another cow elk spooked into that same shooting lane with her butt facing me when the other elk spooked out. I’m not gonna take the Texas heart shot so I wait and my step dad tells me 47 yards this time… which made more sense… it seemed like an awful far 30 yards down hill to me on the previous yardage. My step dad couldn’t see what was going on from his angle but the cow took a step to her right and gave me a quartering away shot. Placed the pin, let the arrow fly, and I swore it looked like I hit her high and had a pass through….. Told the step dad I think I hit her high and had a pass through, we heard a crash not soon after the shot so we waited a half hour. I went and recovered the low arrow. At this point the spike and other cows we had been watching bolted out, finally figuring out there were hunters in the area. We spent another 20 minutes searching for the arrow we hoped had hit the cow, and discovered a blood trail so we gave a silent thumbs up and waited another 10 minutes before following the blood trail. Turned out she’d died about 30 yards from where I shot her, maybe went 50 yards total because she had turned back.



12 hours later we had the elk butchered and back at the truck. Grateful for the opportunity to hunt elk and fill the freezer.

 

[Gerbdog]

Was it a 400+ bull? No. But for me this was a redemption archery shot, after hitting a twig and injuring a good bull last year. That bull last year was the first animal I had lost, I believe he lived because I found the arrow, but it shook me pretty good and had me second guessing archery hunting, which I love. The shot on this cow this year was a downhill shot through deep timber and after last years shot… I was ultra careful to check for twigs on all my pins on the way down to the 50 yard pin. I believe last years screw up made me a better archery and this year I threaded the shot between the trees and got it done. After butchering this cow this year we found that the helix broadhead had entered on the backside of the ribs, clipped the liver, two lungs, and broke through the far side shoulder blade. At this point the cow must have clipped the arrow off because we found half the arrow inside of her and the other half was never found.



What worked for me:

• I remain completely impressed with the obsidian foundry pants by first lite. This is my second season with them and they survived on the briars, thorns, and under brushed without tearing anywhere. They remained comfortable and warm when they were sopping wet, dried fast, and then remained comfortable to wear even in the baking sun.
• Helix broadheads continue to do work for me. Simple design, fly well, and hammer hard.
• I just happened to run into a guy locally who is starting his own line of socks, and I got to test drive his alpaca wool socks this season. Pretty f’n amazing actually. Soaking wet, beat to crap, and many miles later I can say they were fantastic. Didn’t double layer them at all, no blisters, only hot spots I got were packing out meat and they didn’t amount to anything anyway, and very comfortable. Unsure if they're for sale yet but looks like his website is going (hollowfleece.com)
• Crispi boots – third season with this pair – they DID let some water through during the down pours in NM but… I don’t think any boot would have held that water out for long.
• Editing to add something here that worked great for me personally - a cheap pair of leather work gloves - I am constantly knicking myself with the ultra sharp knives when im butchering the elk up and the gloves prevented that and were AWESOME for gripping the hide while pulling back, getting a hold of quarters, etc.

Less impressed with:

• Sitka long sleeved shirt… I believe it’s a synthetic material…. The briars and thorns ate that shirt up.. It would snag and they it would pull the material out in a long strand that would contract into a kind of balled up *poof* on the shirt.
• Sitka rain jacket…. It just took wayyyy to long to dry out. Felt wet inside during the rain storm. For how much that thing costed me… I guess I expected it to make it stop raining altogether. Maybe expectations were too high here.

Things I would have changed and lessons learned:

• I wish I had been more aggressive in NM with my brother. I feel like the time we spent staring at elk through glass was precious time considering a thunderstorm bore down on us when we made our move. Could I have predicted a thunderstorm was gonna build that fast at that moment? No. But hindsight I wished we had glassed it up and just made the move instead of waiting and plotting. I also wish we had moved on the first elk we had in a bed below us in the valley also. Elk are gonna elk, just cause you hope they come back up top to feed in the evening doesn’t mean theyre gonna do anything of the sort, wasted opportunity, for all the good it did may as well have blown him out stalking in.
• 
  
• I also had it driven home that just cause the valley your in has 20+ hunters in it doesn’t mean there aren’t elk, and as everyone knows…. If you leave the trail your gonna find success….. it stayed true that most hunters didn’t leave the trail and the elk were just above them all, un-bothered with the hunters oblivious to their existence. Even after telling hunters as we were packing out meat that there were elk above them they just kept on keeping on with the trail…. Gotta want it bad enough to get into the bad stuff guys. A few are gonna get lucky and call one down to the trail… but I still would rather put myself where the elk are and let luck handle it from there.
• 
  
• Elk still like to be in the worst places you can imagine them being. Still the truth.

 

[AllDayAT]

Great recap and congrats on your successes!

 

[Maz7869]

Congratulations, great story

 

[trophyhill]

Love it! Great story, great outcome, great hunts! Sure is better than Mr Meatloaf

 

[Indian Summer]

Great report!

Probably one of the biggest decisions we have is when to take a deep breath and assess the situation and when to just make a move immediately. Every scenario is different.

I’ve watched bulls for 3 days before deciding they were in a spot where I could on them. Other times it’s now or never. Last year I hesitated on a nice bull and never saw him again. I have a picture of him I took through the spotter. So this year the plan is too blow it by getting too aggressive. Haha!

 

[Indian Summer]

Better look out this year! He’s in an area that gets little to no pressure. But close to areas with lots of pressure. They stand around feeding until 9:00 and come back out at 3. If he’s not there someone will be.

But I’ve come to realize that some of the elk I see there are still on the move heading to further nastier places. Places I can’t get them out of.