Post September Debrief…lessons learned

[Steeliedrew]

was fortunate this year to pick up a rather good OTC tag out of state along with a good buddy. With a good bull to cow ratio the anticipation was through the roof as the season approached. We’d meet 800 miles from home for what would turn out to be the most action packed Elk hunt of my short, 10 year quest of chasing bugling bulls. The plan was to hunt for 8 days until one or two tags were filled or we had at least left it all on the mountain.

We were pleasantly surprised to arrive at a trailhead and have it to ourselves. Arriving mid day we decided to head out for a sound check. that evening, perched on top of a ridge, and bugling across a canyon, we couldn’t let out a bugle or cow mew without it being answered by one or more bulls. We had arrived. We spent the next 3 or 4 days locating bull after bull. We were running into the same issue time and time again though. We’d call, they’d answer, we’d get in close, call again, and the next bugle would be further away.

At one point we were on that same ridge from the first night. It was a couple hours before dark and were getting some bulls worked up across the canyon that we figured we could make a play on in the morning. After 10 minutes or so of back and forth with those bulls, one we weren’t yet aware of came up hill towards us and screamed at us. Long story short we got set up in the timber and watched as this bull closed the distance silently. He was a nice 6 point and carefully picked his way through the timber until he got to the Hang-up spot. This would have been great if we had the time to have one of us get into range of the hang-up spot prior to him getting there but it all happened too fast. I dropped back and began raking and calling in effort to pull him closer to my buddy but he stood his ground and eventually just casually walked back to where he came from and continued bugling. We were out of daylight and another action packed day of elk hunting was in the books.

About mid trip the action had slowed a bit. We figured probably because our stink and bugles had filled the area so much the bulls had grown tired of us. So we packed up and moved spots which was a couple hour drive. That night we were a little worried we had made a bad move because there was a number of camps in the area. The next morning, a few miles from camp we got one fired up and we pushed down through the brush until we had him raking a tree at 20 yards but there was no shot and while trying to make something happen, a cow we had not seen busted out between us and the bull and that was that.

A day later we hiked to a new ridge and were bummed to find an outfitter camp in a saddle that we were really interested in. Not wanting to step on their toes we devised a hunt we could do on the way back into the bottom. Less than a mile from that outfitter camp we walk into a benchy aspen patch and find multiple wallows. I rip a bugle and instantly get a response from two bulls just below us. Their bugles just kept getting further away but they kept responding so we literally ran at them calling back and forth all the while. They ended up taking us back up near where we had just come down the ridge earlier. Before we knew it we had what sounded like 4 or 5 different bulls just cranking back and forth all within 100 yards. We couldn’t put eyes on any of them due to the timber, brush, and topography. My buddy crept towards one of the bugles and tried to go right at him using an Ultimate predator decoy and although curious, that bull just kept pushing down the mountain. He would stop and look, run down the mountain some more and stop and look, until my buddy had lost about 400ft elevation and came back up. Try as we might, we could not get one of them to close the distance and they eventually smelled us we think as they went quiet. No arrows were sent that day.

To be continued…


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[Steeliedrew]

It was those two encounters where I started to realize that our best shot at shooting a bull was going to be to get him talking, go silent, and slip in. Aside from the one that came in silent days before we had not gotten any to commit. They would announce their presence, but keep their distance. The bulls were extremely vocal but just wouldn’t come in.

Fast forward to Day 8. We had put in back to back 10 mile days with a lot of elevation gain and loss and our bodies were sore. We had not set an alarm that day as I was more concerned with getting some good rest and then hitting some north slopes later in the day. We each had planned for a full day of driving on the front and back end of the hunt. So that meant that day 8 could be a full day of hunting while day 9 was to be a wake up and start driving day to make the 14 hour trip back home. My buddy decides to head home so that he could get home that night and have a full day of rest before work. I fully understood but said that I have to go out one more time or I’ll think for the entire year about what could have happened on day 8. I’ve come out of the mountains a day early many times and by the time I’m home I always regret it. We parted ways, I shot a few arrows at the rig and then started hiking up a ridge we had hunted a few days prior.

About 3 miles from the rig I drop into an creek drainage running to the east. It’s got some really nice benchy north slopes in there. I get onto a finger that will allow my bugle to carry and rip one. Immediately I get a response. He’s below me. I look at OnX and drop a pin where I think he is. I decide to rip one more bugle and he bugles back twice. So I figure he’s getting fired up and I start slipping in all the while making sure the wind is right and I’m looking well ahead of me. I come down to a small bench with some aspens and sure enough there’s a nice wallow. I rip another locator and get another immediate response. This time though he continues to bugle on his own seemingly 1-2 times every minute. I go silent and keep the wind right as I still stalk him through the timber and brush while following the bugles.

He takes me into the bottom of the drainage and now I can hear him up on the other side. So I check the wind and up I go. I come to another wallow but this one is different. It was freshly hit. The water was chocolate milk and I know he’s very close. I rip a bugle from the wallow and he came unglued. Now he’s lip bawling and just sounding mean. Being solo and not wanting to be where my last call was I move up, keeping on the back side of a finger ridge that’s between me and the drainage the bull is in. He’s still bugling but not moving so I let out some sexy cow talk. This gets him more fired up. I can hear the emotion building in his bugles as the minutes go by. I move up again to get away from my last calls. Wind is perfect. At this point I’ve pinpointed his location and I’m beginning to slip up to where I can try and get the glass on him.

As I’m trying to make a plan on this bull I catch movement downhill of me. I pull up the glass and it’s a younger satellite bull. looked like a 5 point but it was now game time and I had no time to be worried about how many points he had. Me having not yet filled an elk tag in my 10 years of trying have absolutely no business passing a legal animal so my attention is now on him. All the while what I imagine is the herd bull is just screaming at less than 100 yards. I watch the satellite feed as I hope for a shot. He steps out at 50 and although my kudupoints are dialed at 50 I opt to wait for a better shot. As luck would have it he ends up feeding up the exact trail I had just come up and for some reason did not smell me where I had walked. the wind was perfect and as he approached I knew when I needed to draw. His head went behind a tree, I drew back and settled in. There stands a bull, unaware of my presence at 20 yards broadside. The situation I’ve tried to put myself in for the last decade. I settle behind the shoulder and the shot breaks. I watch the arrow burry to the fletchings. It must have hit the offside shoulder. As he runs over the ridge I watch the arrow starting to back out of him.

At this point I’m on cloud 9 thinking I’ve got a dead bull walking and how pumped my wife and kids are going to be when Daddy comes home with a bull! I know from all the horror stories that no matter how good the shot is a person should wait a while before getting on the trail and I fully intended to do just that.

Within 10 minutes I start seeing rain drops…I’m thinking you gotta be kidding me! Please don’t rain!!! I make the decision to find first blood. Problem was I was so jacked up after the shot I didn’t see the exact direction he ran. It took me about a half hour of fanning out and back in front of me until I stumbled on first blood. At that point I should have analyzed how hard it was actually raining and backed out again. It was still only sprinkling at that point. I was so concerned with the rain though that I pressed on. The sky was black and it looked like at any moment it could open up. I still should have waited though. As much as I want to blame the weather I have to own this.

I follow the blood trail for 300 yards. it’s not a great blood trail but good enough to follow without being on hands and knees. I found a couple of spots where he stood there and bled. Likely while watching his back trail. I never saw or heard him bump but I’d imagine I did bump him. I found last blood in a saddle and on the other side of that was a very brushy north slope. At that point it was a full on downpour and I had to put on the rain gear. With the tracker going on OnX I start gridding the brushy slope. This wasn’t an easy task as it was full of blow down and impenetrable walls of brush. I’d side hill across the slop the best I could, drop down 20 yards and walk back the other direction. I did this until dark and never found him. I had shot the bull at 1:45pm. The entire time I was blood trailing, 3 bulls with just cranking back and forth within 100 yards. I must have heard a couple hundred bugles that day. It was one for the books. What we dream of being a part of year round. At one point I slipped in close to them thinking maybe my bull would be near them. I got eyes on some cows and a couple of the bulls but mine wasn’t one of them.

It’s dark now and I’m completely soaked with sweat under my rain gear and feeling worse than I can put into words. I force myself to turn the boots toward the truck. With a 14 hour drive ahead of me and no more vacation time to cover my time gone from work I’ve got to start heading home. The hike back to the rig was mentally painful. With each step I felt like strings were attached to me, trying to pull me back to continue searching. Hindsight is always 20/20 but I wish I would have just dealt with the consequences at work and spent that Sunday looking for him and drove home on Monday. I certainly would have missed work to pack out a bull so why not miss work to look more for a hit bull?

As the title of the thread states there were lessons learned on this hunt.

1.) Be prepared to adapt to the emotions of the elk. Don’t get tunnel vision on calling one fully in. If they’re talking, slip in and get a shot.

2.) Be aware of the weather, and make a damn good shot if looks like it could rain, or don’t shoot.

3.) After the shot, unless you watch him tip over, wait for an hour or more if possible.

4.) Once on the blood trail, be looking well ahead of you. Glass through the timber. Treat it like a stalk or a still-hunt.

I feel like I already knew these things but in reflecting on the hunt these are what comes to mind as things to remind myself of.

Thanks everyone for letting me vent here. That trip was one I’ll never forget. I got completely spoiled. I look forward to next September where I can hopefully bring the experience gained this year back into the same Elk woods…Maybe it will be just as awesome with new adventures to share and if the stars align, a full freezer.

Drew


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[BuckSmasher]

Thats a tough read. Hard to believe that you got penetration to the off shoulder and he went very far. Weird.

On the plus side sounds like you found some great elk hunting spots!

 

[Steeliedrew]

The only thing I can think of is maybe I hit him a bit higher than I thought and hit high in one lung. I didn’t see lung blood though. The shot seemed like a slam dunk but as many times as I play it over in my head I’ll never be 100% certain. 20 yards broadside though. Shots don’t get much easier.


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[williaada]

Tough one.

 

[mike.adams.467]

I’m thinking about what you would have done with a bull down that far from your truck, alone, with no time allotted to pack it out.


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[Steeliedrew]

I’m thinking about what you would have done with a bull down that far from your truck, alone, with no time allotted to pack it out.


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For sure. As I stated at the end there I would have missed work to pack out a bull so why didn’t I stay an extra day to look for him? trust me when I say I think about it daily. Really wish I would have went back in to grid it out the next day with fresh eyes.


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[Ithaca37]

One of the best posts I’ve read, in terms of the personal experience and emotion. Sounds like you are WAY ahead of all those that went out and didn’t even see anything. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Steeliedrew]

Thank you. I feel very fortunate to have been on that hunt and have it be as productive as it was.


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[Disco14]

Man that’s tough to read- sounds like an unbelievable hunt except for the ending. Hang in there.

 

[Steeliedrew]

Man that’s tough to read- sounds like an unbelievable hunt except for the ending. Hang in there.

Thank you. I’ve had some amazing days in the Elk woods but that hunt was something special. I feel the outcome of that last day will have a lasting impact on how I operate during close encounters with bulls. Most importantly when a shot opportunity is going to happen or after a shot is taken I’ll be reflecting on that day.


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[Disco14]

Every elk encounter Good or bad is a learning experience!

 

[Steeliedrew]

Every elk encounter Good or bad is a learning experience!

100%! It’s crazy to think I’ve been trying to get a bull down for a decade now but I’ve got quite the playbook now.

Time is always my biggest enemy. I’m usually only able to set aside the time for a week long hunt once per year. the rest are weekend warrior hunts. The occasional 3 day hunt if I’m lucky. I think about what Cody Rich says often. “A man only has so many Septembers”. I’m 36 years old. Let’s say I’m healthy enough to hammer the hills until in 70 (might be a stretch) but humor me. haha. That’s 34 more years of hunting elk. now let’s say each year I get 10 days to hunt them. That’s only 340 more days of chasing bulls in September! When I look at it like that it adds significant value to my time. Time is our most valuable asset and it’s my goal to free up as much as possible going forward.


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[JeremyBlackHawkNSDQ!]

phenomenal story; expertly written! how how can I help? PM me... I'm a CO native and live near CO SPNGS. Guessing you want closure.

 

[Steeliedrew]

phenomenal story; expertly written! how how can I help? PM me... I'm a CO native and live near CO SPNGS. Guessing you want closure.

Thank you for the kind words. I tried to write from a perspective like I was telling the story to a buddy. I really appreciate the offer to help but I’m not able discuss the area where the hunt took place.

Thank you,

Drew


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[JeremyBlackHawkNSDQ!]

Totally understand. Thanks for sharing your story! Hope to hear more of your hunting experiences. You have a gift of writing like we are around the camp fire. Riveting to say the least.

 

[Steeliedrew]

Totally understand. Thanks for sharing your story! Hope to hear more of your hunting experiences. You have a gift of writing like we are around the camp fire. Riveting to say the least.

Much appreciated Jeremy. Hopefully I can have some more experiences worthy of writing about in the not too distant future.


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[Marble]

It was those two encounters where I started to realize that our best shot at shooting a bull was going to be to get him talking, go silent, and slip in. Aside from the one that came in silent days before we had not gotten any to commit. They would announce their presence, but keep their distance. The bulls were extremely vocal but just wouldn’t come in.

Fast forward to Day 8. We had put in back to back 10 mile days with a lot of elevation gain and loss and our bodies were sore. We had not set an alarm that day as I was more concerned with getting some good rest and then hitting some north slopes later in the day. We each had planned for a full day of driving on the front and back end of the hunt. So that meant that day 8 could be a full day of hunting while day 9 was to be a wake up and start driving day to make the 14 hour trip back home. My buddy decides to head home so that he could get home that night and have a full day of rest before work. I fully understood but said that I have to go out one more time or I’ll think for the entire year about what could have happened on day 8. I’ve come out of the mountains a day early many times and by the time I’m home I always regret it. We parted ways, I shot a few arrows at the rig and then started hiking up a ridge we had hunted a few days prior.

About 3 miles from the rig I drop into an creek drainage running to the east. It’s got some really nice benchy north slopes in there. I get onto a finger that will allow my bugle to carry and rip one. Immediately I get a response. He’s below me. I look at OnX and drop a pin where I think he is. I decide to rip one more bugle and he bugles back twice. So I figure he’s getting fired up and I start slipping in all the while making sure the wind is right and I’m looking well ahead of me. I come down to a small bench with some aspens and sure enough there’s a nice wallow. I rip another locator and get another immediate response. This time though he continues to bugle on his own seemingly 1-2 times every minute. I go silent and keep the wind right as I still stalk him through the timber and brush while following the bugles.

He takes me into the bottom of the drainage and now I can hear him up on the other side. So I check the wind and up I go. I come to another wallow but this one is different. It was freshly hit. The water was chocolate milk and I know he’s very close. I rip a bugle from the wallow and he came unglued. Now he’s lip bawling and just sounding mean. Being solo and not wanting to be where my last call was I move up, keeping on the back side of a finger ridge that’s between me and the drainage the bull is in. He’s still bugling but not moving so I let out some sexy cow talk. This gets him more fired up. I can hear the emotion building in his bugles as the minutes go by. I move up again to get away from my last calls. Wind is perfect. At this point I’ve pinpointed his location and I’m beginning to slip up to where I can try and get the glass on him.

As I’m trying to make a plan on this bull I catch movement downhill of me. I pull up the glass and it’s a younger satellite bull. looked like a 5 point but it was now game time and I had no time to be worried about how many points he had. Me having not yet filled an elk tag in my 10 years of trying have absolutely no business passing a legal animal so my attention is now on him. All the while what I imagine is the herd bull is just screaming at less than 100 yards. I watch the satellite feed as I hope for a shot. He steps out at 50 and although my kudupoints are dialed at 50 I opt to wait for a better shot. As luck would have it he ends up feeding up the exact trail I had just come up and for some reason did not smell me where I had walked. the wind was perfect and as he approached I knew when I needed to draw. His head went behind a tree, I drew back and settled in. There stands a bull, unaware of my presence at 20 yards broadside. The situation I’ve tried to put myself in for the last decade. I settle behind the shoulder and the shot breaks. I watch the arrow burry to the fletchings. It must have hit the offside shoulder. As he runs over the ridge I watch the arrow starting to back out of him.

At this point I’m on cloud 9 thinking I’ve got a dead bull walking and how pumped my wife and kids are going to be when Daddy comes home with a bull! I know from all the horror stories that no matter how good the shot is a person should wait a while before getting on the trail and I fully intended to do just that.

Within 10 minutes I start seeing rain drops…I’m thinking you gotta be kidding me! Please don’t rain!!! I make the decision to find first blood. Problem was I was so jacked up after the shot I didn’t see the exact direction he ran. It took me about a half hour of fanning out and back in front of me until I stumbled on first blood. At that point I should have analyzed how hard it was actually raining and backed out again. It was still only sprinkling at that point. I was so concerned with the rain though that I pressed on. The sky was black and it looked like at any moment it could open up. I still should have waited though. As much as I want to blame the weather I have to own this.

I follow the blood trail for 300 yards. it’s not a great blood trail but good enough to follow without being on hands and knees. I found a couple of spots where he stood there and bled. Likely while watching his back trail. I never saw or heard him bump but I’d imagine I did bump him. I found last blood in a saddle and on the other side of that was a very brushy north slope. At that point it was a full on downpour and I had to put on the rain gear. With the tracker going on OnX I start gridding the brushy slope. This wasn’t an easy task as it was full of blow down and impenetrable walls of brush. I’d side hill across the slop the best I could, drop down 20 yards and walk back the other direction. I did this until dark and never found him. I had shot the bull at 1:45pm. The entire time I was blood trailing, 3 bulls with just cranking back and forth within 100 yards. I must have heard a couple hundred bugles that day. It was one for the books. What we dream of being a part of year round. At one point I slipped in close to them thinking maybe my bull would be near them. I got eyes on some cows and a couple of the bulls but mine wasn’t one of them.

It’s dark now and I’m completely soaked with sweat under my rain gear and feeling worse than I can put into words. I force myself to turn the boots toward the truck. With a 14 hour drive ahead of me and no more vacation time to cover my time gone from work I’ve got to start heading home. The hike back to the rig was mentally painful. With each step I felt like strings were attached to me, trying to pull me back to continue searching. Hindsight is always 20/20 but I wish I would have just dealt with the consequences at work and spent that Sunday looking for him and drove home on Monday. I certainly would have missed work to pack out a bull so why not miss work to look more for a hit bull?

As the title of the thread states there were lessons learned on this hunt.

1.) Be prepared to adapt to the emotions of the elk. Don’t get tunnel vision on calling one fully in. If they’re talking, slip in and get a shot.

2.) Be aware of the weather, and make a damn good shot if looks like it could rain, or don’t shoot.

3.) After the shot, unless you watch him tip over, wait for an hour or more if possible.

4.) Once on the blood trail, be looking well ahead of you. Glass through the timber. Treat it like a stalk or a still-hunt.

I feel like I already knew these things but in reflecting on the hunt these are what comes to mind as things to remind myself of.

Thanks everyone for letting me vent here. That trip was one I’ll never forget. I got completely spoiled. I look forward to next September where I can hopefully bring the experience gained this year back into the same Elk woods…Maybe it will be just as awesome with new adventures to share and if the stars align, a full freezer.

Drew


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Great hunt and story. Unfortunate about the ending.

I would add to your list is to eat some food while you wait after the shot. This accomplishes the primary reason we eat, energy...but also slows you down, causes purposeful decisions and may bring you out of your current high emotional state and create a calmer decision process.

Additionally, if you have OnX or something similar, get a range from where you are at to where you last saw the animal, with a range finder. Use the tool on OnX to put a waypoint in and use that as a guide for where to go look if there is no prominent blood trail to follow there.


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[Steeliedrew]

Great hunt and story. Unfortunate about the ending.

I would add to your list is to eat some food while you wait after the shot. This accomplishes the primary reason we eat, energy...but also slows you down, causes purposeful decisions and may bring you out of your current high emotional state and create a calmer decision process.

Additionally, if you have OnX or something similar, get a range from where you are at to where you last saw the animal, with a range finder. Use the tool on OnX to put a waypoint in and use that as a guide for where to go look if there is no prominent blood trail to follow there.


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Good tips. eating food would have been a great way to kill some time. I certainly had no shortage of it at that time in the day. taking the boots off would have been good too. Anything to keep my planted in the shot location for a while. I really wish I would have analyzed how hard it was raining sad sat tight for a little while longer, and then been much more cautious of looking ahead of me.

I just took a look at the waypoints from the tracking job and actually turns out I shot the bull at 12:47pm. First blood was at 1:27pm but I had probably started looking for blood already by 1:00-1:05pm due to being freaked out by the rain. I followed the trail a little over 300 yards til I hit last blood at 3:07pm. It was pin drops at that point. He had gained about 100ft elevation when he got up to the saddle. I looked at my call history. i had actually found what I thought was last blood at about 2:20pm and made a phone call to my buddy. Then at 3:07pm that’s when I marked true last blood. I made a call to my wife at 4:00pm to let her know I hit a bull and was about to start gridding the hillside til dark.


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[Steeliedrew]

Here’s a couple pics of first blood. You can see rain on the leaves. This is what got me looking too soon.


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