- Joined
- Feb 25, 2012
- Location
- SE Idaho
it can get confusing. good story. I leave my rifle home if I don't have a tag. Keeps me honest and no awkward convo with the warden about my 2A right to carry. Just did a deer hunt with my buddy Corey a few weeks ago after my tags were filled and just carried my pistol.In 2021 my dad shot a bull and could not call his shot besides that he thought he hit the elk. He said it was not huge, but definitely legal, and by itself. He never saw it again after the bang. I heard him shoot and was on the same ridge glassing a different direction, so within probably 10 minutes I was looking at the same basin he was. I was probably ~150 yards away from him, and maybe 200 from where the bull was supposed to be (and on the phone with him) when I saw a little 5x5 meandering through the brush looking pretty healthy. I dropped the phone, laid down, and squeezed off a round. The bull stumbled 10 yards or so and tipped over.
I picked the phone back up and told him the bull was down, and that I'd come get him so we could hike down together to get to work. The bull's belly was easily visible through the brush from where we stood. I would say I don't know how he couldn't find it again after the shot, but in that terrain the animals seem to appear and disappear like they were moving through portals. Moving 25 yards changes what you can see drastically.
As we started downhill, I spotted a second belly about 50 yards from the one we were walking towards. Dad's bull had died a couple steps from where he shot it and I shot a different one that he had never seen even though it was on the same hillside.
I always think to myself thank god we both had a tag, but I also think to myself that I would not have been shooting at a bull, injured or not, if I didn't have my tag in my pocket. I also think about the possibility that we never saw the second elk, and proceeded to pack out the first without ever knowing there was another, larger dead bull just 50ish yards away.
So on Dad's bull, did it drop in it;s tracks?