Son and I went for elk this morning. It was about 45 deg, some mist, wet grass, and still some smoke from the forest fires. My son was doing the calling, and I was the designated shooter. I was about 75 yards in front of him. We run a sequence that entails cow talk, sleezy cow, and lone bugle -- repeat every five minutes for about an hour. On the third sequence, I heard a lone cow call from about 40 yards in front of me. She slowly moved in until I could see her broadside behind some small pines at about 10 yards. I didn't have real good cover, and she must have noticed me -- she stopped, and pointed her nose right at me and raised her chin slightly. You could see her nose working for about 20 seconds -- she didn't appear to like my sihloute (sp?), turned, and trotted off. About a minute later, a spike bull showed up at about 15 yards (can't shoot spikes in the area we hunt). He caught my image straight off -- you could almost see his eyeballs pop out of his head as he turned and trotted off (he was too inexperienced to be real scared). A couple of minutes later, as I was trying to be stealthy while changing positions, I heard another elk trot off -- never saw that one, but it couldn't have been more than 20 yards from me.
After an hour, my son worked his way thru the timber, and had a cow elk about run him down. It happend so fast, he said he had the bow at full draw, and was waiting to see if it was a bull when she stopped broadside about 15 yards from him -- too early to shoot a cow -- still six weeks of archery season remaining.
Great day.
Paul
