I used a Cabela's 4-Seasons popup blind while elk hunting in New Mexico a few years back. A physical condition will not allow me to walk far at all, so I had to pack the blind in on an ATV. I set it up about 40 yards from a well-used elk trail that ran just on the other side of a barbwire fence. In front of me wasa small open area about 60 yards across which opened on the edge of the fence. On the other side of the fence was a cedar tree and then a fairly large open field. I set my blind up beside a cedar tree. In back of me were some small pines and a few scrub oak. Inside my blind I put a fold up chair, a set of shooting sticks, and oxygen bottles for my condition. In that unit all you could use was a muzzle loader. I got to the blind, parked the ATV beside another cedar tree and used camo/burlap bag to break up the outline of the bike. I loaded the smokepole in the dark, sat down on the folding chair, unzipped my window and waited for the world to take up outside. Throughout the day, about ever three hours or so, a pickup truck would drive up the road the locals called the Big Sandy (and for good reason). About 4 p.m. I glassed a hillside about 450 yards away, put the glasses down, looked at the hillside I just got through glassing and spotted movement. It was warm inside the blind. I picked the binos back up and put them on the area where there was movement. Sure enough, a cow was looking directly at me. I think I stopped breathing for a few seconds and my heart began to thump. She moved behind a scrub oak and another cow elk face replaced hers. She too, looked at me. In all there were six cows, a spike bull and a really exceptional 7x7 that would easily go 350 B&C. I got fairly accurate judging elk while I lived in New Mexico. I knew that the elk were on a game trail about halfway up that hill, walking toward a fence, the very fence that ran in front of my blind. The way I reasoned it, the elk could get to the fence and go right, which would put them walking away from me to the south, or, they could turn left and walk in front of me. Also, they could just jump the gate in the road, but elk don't really like to leap over fences. My heart pounded as I waited and the sun sank lower and lower into the horizon. Just as I was starting to think they had turned right, I saw the brown tell-tale look of an elk leg standing behind the small bush katy-cornered from my spot on the outskirts of the small clearing. They were on the other side of the fence. My heart leaped into my throat. My tag was good for either sex. Suddenly I spotted the bull elk, the big boy, pushing the cows into the open field. Bulls will do that. If there's any danger out there waiting, the cows will be the first to get it and the bulls will disappear into the bushes. The cow just seemed to burst out from behind the bush to the cedar tree about 50 yards from my stand. I put the fore=end of the rifle in the shooting sticks, gently poked the black barrel out of the window opening and waited. The movement didn't even seem to bother the elk. One by one they came into view, walked to the cedar tree and began to munch on the tender grasses in the area. It was getting more and more dark and I was thinking that I ought to just shoot one of the cows and be done with it, but that big 7x7 seemed to be calling to me. The little scrub bull stepped into the opening and trotted briefly toward the cows a few yards away. Every elk that came into the opening looked directly at me and the blind, and every one of those elk didn't see a think to spark a flight of danger. The sun was down by that time when the bull stepped out, walked stiff-legged to the cluster of elk munching grass in front of the cedar tree, turned his butt directly facing me and began to feed. I did not want to attempt a Texas heart shot, so I waited, and waited, and waited. Just as the seconds were clicking down on the last possible shooting light, the bull turned broadside. I put the iron sight just in back of this elbow on his front legs and squeezed the trigger. Through the smoke I saw elk legs going everwhere. My heart was beating so hard I momentarily thought that the heart attack I had two years prior to my elk hunt might come back to haunt me. I waited and waited. Then I unzipped my blind, got to my ATV climbed aboard and began to make my way through the woods to the road, through the fence and back up along the fenceline to the cedar tree. No elk lay on the ground. My atv headlings began to do grid searches as I looked and looked for elk, for blood, for anything. Visions of that magnificient animal's head in a shoulder mount in my apartment back in Grants started to slip from my head. That elk was no where. I drove back around to my blind, gathered up my stuff thinking I would come back out in the morning and do a better search. Just for the hell of it, I drove my ATV from the window of that blind to the cedar tree in a direct line until I got to the fence. It was the same path my 485 grain Hornady Great Plains bullet backed by 100 grains of Triple 7 had taken. I took out my flashlight and peered toward the ground. Just then, I spotted a shiny glint in the fence. A closer inspection revealed a .50 caliber piece of the top wrap of the top strand of barb wire was missing. I had shot the damn fence and my bullet had gone zinging off somewhere other than toward the bull elk. I went back out the next day and spent several hours looking, but could never cut a blook sign. I followed several sets of elk tracks, including the largest. I guess I should have cut that lenght of fence off and mount it for my apartment wall. Anyway, If a whole darn heard of elk can't spot you sitting inside a blind from 50 yards, the darn things works. That is my story and I'm sticking to it. Tom Purdom
