Elk advice, 2 lost in a row where am i going wrong?

[Q_Sertorius]

Good on you for being here to ask for advice. It shows you have the right approach. I’ve done something similar on a big whitetail buck where he went down and I wasn’t ready for an immediate follow-up shot. I also had an 800-yard blood trail from a friend’s buck turn into nothing.

The animals aren’t “tough”, but they can have a lot of will to live.

I’ve recovered deer that “should not have gone anywhere” 400 to 800 yards away from the place I shot them. Good shot placement and good bullet performance usually means DRT, but not always.

The best thing you can do is practice more with a rifle you can shoot a lot so you develop justifiable confidence and make the quick, accurate follow-up shot a muscle memory thing. Also turn, the magnification down to where you can stay roughly on target with the recoil.

 

[Bluumoon]

Losing an animal is why/how I ended up on this site. Lots of arterial blood, decent blood trail, no animal.

Correct, monos aren’t great.

More likely..

Your equipment failed- scope mounting process, loose action screws, Leupold/Vortex shift, bad rings, etc

You failed. Nearly impossible to spot your own shots w >.308 win recoil. You know where you wanted to aim, not where you hit.

There’s a reason a number of us are accused of being groupies. There’s also some of us who have tried all the Rokslide things for our selves and found that they work… consistently.

Get a repeatable setup that holds zero and that you can spot your own shots with (the standard RS special, tikka, .223, SWFA 6x, Sportsmatch or UM rings). Get a 1000 rounds of ammo for it and shoot it all in a spring/summer.

Then, continue to shoot any animal still on its feet.

 

[Soj51hopeful]

OP I’m curious about the cow you lost. Why did the tracking stop at 500 yards?

 

[dg101]

Thank you all, I spent over an hour last night looking and elk anatomy and will be changing my shot placement going forward. Raised as a white tail hunter I was always taught to aim behind the shoulder for a double lung through the ribs. I also on reflection think I have a tendency to aim a bit high in general mid point on the animal instead of 2/3 of the way down. I want to try adjusting my shot placement to the shoulder more inline with the back side of the front leg on a broadside shot especially with bonded bullet as well as shooting lower. I also think the shot I took on the bull was a poor shot angle to take. When I say it was a slight angle quartering towards me what I mean is it was nearly a frontal shot. He was angled off slightly but not much, and I can see now it would be very hard to take out both lungs with this angle. As it relates to shooting I completely agree there is nothing but good in more practice, I've shot 1000s of rounds in my life and I'm confident in my shooting, i test my rifle and shoot steel and paper regulary and always check my zero before a trip. however this doesn't mean me or anyone else is incapable of making a poor shot. Prior to these 2 elk I had never lost any animal in over a dozen years of hunting. That's part of why 2 in a row hurts so bad. That's not to say from the animals I've killed I have never made a bad shot however, I have, and you probably have too. I've taken shots that felt perfect only to find I didn't hit where I aimed and it wasn't a good feeling either. For those I have no explanation. I've also taken shots that felt great and were great. My next range trip I will have someone else load my rifle with a mix of dummy rounds and live rounds to see if I have a flinch.

 

[KenLee]

Second shot sounds like you may have hit high, shocked the spine temporarily. I've never seen recovery of an animal that went down and got up and ran away. If they do that it's not a good sign.

Edit: I used to poke fun at Newberg talking about shooting til they're down but after reading a lot of threads like this I can see why.

When I was a kid, my Daddy said if their ear twitches, shoot em again. Had to watch em for 30 minutes ready to shoot again before I could come down in the homemade one piece climber.

 

[180ls1]

It has to be shot placement and missing the vitals.

This forum "hates" copper but even a little 6.5 copper round has worked well on elk when I put it where it's supposed to be. Like dead within 50 yards on a bull at 430 yards. I've killed a lot of other stuff with small caliber copper as well.

 

[SloppyJ]

Sounds like you just need more practice. If you do this enough, animals will get away. The mistake is thinking that everything was perfect and it was an anomaly. The problem is always us. Whether it's taking a bad shot or not being as proficient with our weapon as we should.

I have two animals that will always stick with me. Same deal as yours, one fell down and got back up shortly after and one looked like a murder scene from the blood trail and just trickled to nothing.

Since focusing on practice and shooting much more often through the year, I havent had one that didn't drop in sight in a couple years.

Get some ammo and meaningful practice shooting.