HELP NO BLOOD

[sndmn11]

So... I guess the OP isn't coming back?

The Internet told him to keep waiting it out.

 

[ScreamingPotato]

Interesting.
I'd never heard this and my experience (elk) has been the exact opposite.
Liver hit practically as good as a heart shot.

Interesting. I think I mentioned in a previous post that most of my experience is with deer, perhaps Elk are different. Liver hits in a deer they never stop bleeding, they're going to die for sure, but it takes time. Perhaps there's more liver/lung overlap on Elk and liver is also taking some lung?

 

[sndmn11]

The year I shot that elk I was struggling with target panic, however I did not even truly recognize what it is.

Bingo! Heading out to hunt shooting 4ft groups is the start. When you make that choice there's no reason to not research how to track an animal shot anywhere from the nose to the tail.

I've worked to provide tend of thousands of dollars to crwm.

Since you focus on learning, consider examining your situation that year and all the moments that led up to not recovering the legally required amount of meat. Is there anything to learn that would have gotten you to recovering the legal amount of meat?

 

[COelk89]

Bingo! Heading out to hunt shooting 4ft groups is the start. When you make that choice there's no reason to not research how to track an animal shot anywhere from the nose to the tail.

There you go, filling in the gaps with more BS conjecture. Maybe a 4 ft group was your experience with target panic, but it was not mine.

I expect I will never see you at the range Mr. Troll. I am not inclined to believe a word you say on your conservation contributions either. Why would you want to conserve a heritage for all hunters when clearly so few hunters are qualified to be in the woods in your eyes?

You need a big serving of humble pie and I am sending all the negative karma I can your way in hopes you get it soon. I have no patience for the type of negativity your personality type brings to the hunting community, and I have no qualms about wishing negative negative hunting experiences for you and yours. You clearly need a reality check.

 

[jmez]

The "when in doubt, back out" never made sense to me. You shot it, go get it. It will be fairly obvious how careful you need to be before "bumping" the animal.

This whole movement of backing out came from the TV trophy whitetail hunters. Newsflash, they are concerned with photo ops and recovering antlers.

No way to know but I'd venture to guess just as much,bid not more, meat is wasted by coming back the next day as opposed to going after the animal.

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[ScreamingPotato]

No way to know but I'd venture to guess just as much,bid not more, meat is wasted by coming back the next day as opposed to going after the animal.

Almost zero IMO. I think people spent too much time in the city and assume meat spontaneously goes bad from sitting, it doesn't. Obviously around the wound channel it's going to be nasty and if there's any scavengers around that dig into it that's a loss but if the skin is on that meat will last a lot longer than people think. JMO but I think people choose to leave meat behind far too often and it's not actually bad meat.

 

[wyosam]

I’d say stop “punching it” at moving game as a good next step.


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[mavinwa2]

Simple.....ONLY take shots you are fully confident in hitting that vital, aim small area.
You need to have the archer's discipline and patience ingrained in your brain to do so. Willing to pass so called shots of chance due to risk of loss or lost recovery. After all, its bowhunting not high-power rifle hunting.

I believe many archery elk hunters out there lack the commitment, dedication, experience, maturity and discipline required to be an ethical, successful archery hunter of elk....deer too.

 

[CalvinMax]

Thanks to everyone who responded. Spent 4 days looking for him to no avail.

It may take me the ten years of reaccruing bonus points to get over this one, or maybe I never will.

 

[CalvinMax]

Birds, birds birds at this point if he's dead.

Any water nearby to check?

Checked all the known water and surrounding areas like a hawk, birds took me to plenty of dead elk but not mine. By day three my utter despondency at having lost and wasted him started to turn into a weird type of distilled hope he may have lived, because I am virtually convinced I would have found him had he been there.

 

[TxxAgg]

OP, you're a good sport. Keep your chin up. Don't feed the trolls.

 

[mike.adams.467]

Interesting.
I'd never heard this and my experience (elk) has been the exact opposite.
Liver hit practically as good as a heart shot.

A liver hit is not as good as a heart shot, period.

 

[ScreamingPotato]

Checked all the known water and surrounding areas like a hawk, birds took me to plenty of dead elk but not mine. By day three my utter despondency at having lost and wasted him started to turn into a weird type of distilled hope he may have lived, because I am virtually convinced I would have found him had he been there.

He's alive IMO. At least for now. Good job not giving up, you did your part there.

 

[CalvinMax]

He's alive IMO. At least for now. Good job not giving up, you did your part there.

I always follow up shots (good or bad) until I find a reason to stop and back out.
But I follow as though I'm hunting, super slow, glassing, marking as I go, not disturbing any tracks or blood.

My buddy made what we thought was a perfect shot one evening. Followed it slowly until about 150 yards into the timber we found the arrow which had a deformed broadhead.

Backed out and came back in the morning. another 100 yards or so we. Stunk like bull and we found where he'd laid down and got up and rebedded about 6 or 8 times. Frothy blood at each bed. Finally found where he'd headed. On hands and knees we tracked him about a half mile. Pine duff, some needles moved here, a pinhead drop of blood only occasionally.
He got in with some other elk and we lost him. Continued to hunt that same area for a few days hoping for magpies or crows or eagles or something. Nothing.

One lung. Probably 25 years ago. It still hurts a bit.

Reading this was revelatory to me, thanks for writing. I pulled out on my bull simply because I thought it was best practice to let him go. Thinking back on it now I realize this was probably my single biggest error. I made a lot of assumptions that led me to believe he just needed a few mins to lie down but none of the were correct, clearly, and had I trailed him I would have figured that out very quickly I think.

 

[CalvinMax]

So... I guess the OP isn't coming back?

Sorry, I’m here! Was still in the field until yesterday. I was prowling around here when back in service looking for any and all advice but was having some degree of trouble figuring out how to post coherently as I am new to the posting thing, usually I just read forums and articles. I didn’t want to devote too much time to figuring it out while I had actual work to do toward the recovery effort.

 

[CalvinMax]

Here’s the important part to me. Some things aren’t for everyone. For me whether or not a frontal shot is OK depends on the Hunter. Not so much his shooting skills as his experience with elk.

This nails my experience 200%… when I let that arrow go my blood was ice cold and I was positive to my core I had done every single thing correctly, and I was so incredibly wrong. I have more than enough technical ability to pull of a frontal shot, but unfortunately it’s only now in retrospect that I see the vast behavioral understanding of the animal a shooter requires to know when and if to take that shot.

 

[CalvinMax]

Anyway, good luck, even if you call off the search check back every couple days and listen for blue jays and crows, they will find anything dead after a few days and possibly give you some closer or at minimum show you what happened.

Thanks for the full response, I learned a lot. Truly.

Shot him Sunday and by Wednesday with no sign of him I thought about going out for the last day, having felt like I truly gave it my all to find him. Just didn’t feel right, not because of a one animal one tag type of principle, but because that was totally just IT. From the first day in the field until the shot it was a true once in a lifetime dream state type of hunt. Felt like trying to top it for the sake of bringing an animal home was… greedy? Maybe that’s the right word? Hard thing to describe I have never encountered before.

I am fortunate to visit this area fairly often with family and I suspect I’ll be going on a lot of walkabouts in the areas around for years to come, because like you said I would love to know anything about why what happened occurred. Even if it’s just where he went off to.

 

[CalvinMax]

Exactly what I was thinking. Shit happens when you got a bull staring at you and your adrenaline is through the roof. You can convince yourself of a certain shot when the opposite happened. One year I was 100 percent positive I made a perfect shot on a buck at 35 yards only to find my arrow in a tree clean as a whistle. The fever is real lol

I was wondering about this. Look, it’s entirely possible he moved in the moment just before I fingered the release, and that my perception got warped. But that said, I would swear to you both I can see it clearly in my minds eye how he spun, almost like a rodeo bull.

Now what I will say is I have not one ounce of a clue how an arrow on center line manages to strike the shoulder area of a bull that is moving off of that line. The two possibilities I can conjure are that one, the bull was a total acrobat and managed to spin on a dime in a millisecond. The other and I fear far more likely is that I tracked that spot as he moved and let the arrow go a fraction later than I thought I did.

I almost think after writing this that I was over committed to that shot.

 

[COHunter33]

While on this subject, I got trail camera pictures of a bull with an arrow in him on 09/20. Pictures were taken on private land and the nearest public is a few miles away. I think he will probably live if he does not get an infection. Not sure how the hunter got an arrow in him at that angle. Just an awful shot, which is upsetting but I realize stuff happens. Think he will live?

 

[CalvinMax]

While on this subject, I got trail camera pictures of a bull with an arrow in him on 09/20. Pictures were taken on private land and the nearest public is a few miles away. I think he will probably live if he does not get an infection. Not sure how the hunter got an arrow in him at that angle. Just an awful shot, which is upsetting but I realize stuff happens. Think he will live?
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Wow I am with you on the how of that shot. Tree stand maybe? But even then it seems like an intensely strange angle… it’s hard to imagine how that arrow would work its way back out too, I would have to assume that gets infected but I also kind of wonder if it’s a crossbow bolt? If it’s a bolt I think he totally survives that, arrow I just don’t see how it doesn’t eventually develop a serious infection.