Archery elk season opened in Montana today. My son (John) and I went to one of the spots we have consistently seen elk over the last several years. We were in position right at legal shooting light. He was setup about 50 yards behind me and was doing the calling -- I was the designated shooter. We run a sequence of several cow calls followed by a lone bugle every five minutes for about an hour. Right after the first series (about 5 minutes into the hunt) I heard the pounding of hooves in the timber about 40 yards in front of my position – couldn’t see a thing. Thought I’d been made and was sure that would be it for this setup – not so. About 10 minutes later I saw a cow moving slowly thru an opening on my right about 25 yds away. I hunkered down a little more and waited to see if she was alone. A decent 5 point bull was right behind her. He stopped (for about 45 seconds) with his front half behind a small bunch of pines while the cow continued towards my son. Just as she cleared the pines, she must have winded me because she swapped ends and bolted back towards the bull spooking him in the process. They moved a short way down the slope in front of me. The bull gave a bark and a couple of chuckles, while they both watched my position intently. All of the sudden, a spike bull moved into the area where the cow had spooked and immediately swapped ends and disappeared downslope.
John continued to call and the elk circled down below his position – he moved towards them and the 5 point started bugling back. Using a combination of cow calls and bugles, John managed to get a shot at the the 5 point (actually a small 6 point). We gave him over an hour before trying to find him. A little over four hours later we found him several hundred yards from where he had been shot. The blood trail was sparse at best and in some extremely dense undergrowth (boggy and up to our thighs in places) – it was hands and knees in spots and very slow going with continuous backtracking. Each located blood spot was marked with orange tape. After more than 4 hours it started to rain and hail, washing away what little blood sign there was. Using the back trail line of orange tape markers as reference, we worked our way in the direction we thought the bull had taken and found the bull about 5 minutes later.
I used a lot of “We” and “Our” above – it was mostly John – the boy is a bull dog when it comes to hunting. When it was all done, he said “I wish you had shot him when you first saw him”. I told him I get as much, if not more satisfaction when he gets the shot. He said “I know”.
This is the area we hunt -- photo from several years ago and a little later in the fall.
