First elk with a bow---first lost elk with a bow

Well, we got into the elk on Saturday and Sunday. We had bulls bugling and thrashing trees all over the hill on Saturday and Sunday.

Sunday morning we had a bull sneak in on us to within 60 yards before he made any noise. He bugled very short and then came in quick with his head down to our cow calls. He got to within 45 yards and winded us. Then we had another bull who wanted badly to come in to our setup but he couldn't make it across the ravine to us without being vulnerable so he just hung out on the far ridge (100 yards) in the trees and screamed at us. After about 30 minutes of this he headed out and up to the higher ridge about 800 yards away and bugled one more time. I think he must have decided to move his cows. Late afternoon on Sunday we set up a couple places with no response. At about 6:00 we setup on the bottom edge of a clearing where it dropped almost straight down into a creek bottom. The scrub brush was thick. I tucked into a bush and my buddy who was doing the calling was up the hill about 30 yards behind me. He bugled and immediately got cut off by a bull across the draw about 500 yards. The bull was upset that we were in his bedroom. He grunted and short bugled for about 10 minutes back and forth with my buddy. Then he started thrashing trees and pounding brush with his antlers. My buddy followed suit and beat the heck out a tree with a stick. That was all the bull could stand. He crossed the draw and made up the 400-500 yards in less than 2 minutes. He stopped to scrape two other trees along the way. I could not see him, but I could hear him. My buddy watched from his higher vantage point the entire time as the bull made the treck. At one point I thought my buddy was motioning me to come up the hill by him, but in reality he was telling me that the bull was comming up the hill below me, so when I stood up to climb up the hill my buddy all but threw rocks at me for almost blowing the hunt! When I got settled back in I immediately saw antler tips headed from left to right in front of me just below the lip of the "cliff" I was sitting on. I knew that there was no way that I was going to get a shot sitting down so I waited until his head was behind a tree and then I stood up and drew my bow simultaneously. As I stood at full draw, the bull stared directly at me, but he could not see me (except maybe my backpack sticking out) because of the tree. I could not see him except for his passenger side antler because his body was covered by scrub brush and his head was blocked by the tree between us. I was at full draw and wondering just how long he was going to stare at me. My buddy cow called once and the bull looked up toward him and took two steps up the hill. He stopped in the only opening I was going to get and was almost perfectly broadside. The brush was covering approximately 2/3 of the way up his side, but I was pretty confident that enough of his lungs were uncovered that I could hit vitals. I estimated him to be at 30 yards. I put my 30 yard pin just behind his shoulder at the very top of the brush line and squeezed the release. The arrow seemed to be in the air for an eternity. When it made contact it was slightly higher than I wanted it to be, but it seemed to be heading down into the animal at a fairly good downward angle. When the arrow hit the bull (a 5 x 5 satelite bull) made a left hand turn and immediately took off running straight down the "cliff" to the bottom. As he turned I could see the arrow's fletchings above his silouette, but it appeared that the arrow was approximately 2 feet deep into his body (of course this all happened in less than a blink so that whoe scenario could be slightly different than the reality of the hit, but that is what I remember seeing).

My buddy and I could not believe that we had just called in an elk to that distance and actually put an arrow in one. This is my first season of archery hunting and this was my first full day of the season hunting with a bow. We heard the elk running and then it stopped what we thought sounded like 200-300 yards down the hill and then a loud crash. We thought for sure the bull was down. We celebrated quietly with a fist bump and some giggling.

We didn't want to spook the elk, so we waited about an hour and then I had my buddy walk down to where the bull had been standing to check for blood while I stayed to direct him to the exact spot. When he got there I ranged it and it was actually only 26 yards. With the four yard difference and the slight downhill angle, I now knew why I had hit him higher than where I was aiming. There was no blood to be found in that spot so we circled out a few feet at a time in search of the blood trail. We tried simply finding a track and following it, but the extremely dry conditions and the vast number of elk tracks on the hillside coupled with the dwindling light and the thick brush gave us little hope of finding the elk that evening. We headed back to the camp for the night. Neither one of us could think about sleep yet. I headed to the top of the saddle in the car and called in some help to help find the elk the next morning. My dad headed up with my dogs(thinking if we couldn't find the elk by blood trail, we may need the dogs to help locate it). He was there by 1:30 that night. We ate some delicious pork ribs that night in celebration of the days hunt.

The next morning we walked back into the spot where we had shot the elk the night before. The five of us combed hard for blood. About 2 hours later my dad found a small puddle of blood (15-20 drops) where the elk had stopped for a second. Then from there we followed a very slim blood trail which consisted of only about 3-4 drops every six feet. The blood was darkish (I was hoping for light and frothy). We tracked the blood trail for 5 hours until it finely quit completely. All five of us searched the area for 2 hours trying pick it back up. It started to get dark on us again and we determined that I must have hit the elk high enough in its side that it missed the vitals and was only in the back meat.

I have never been so excited and dissapointed all at the same time. This was the single most exciting experience of my hunting career.

I post all of this because I want to know what you guys/gals would do. I know a few of you have the "consider my tag punched" opinion and I am not sure that I feel that way with this elk, because I don't think he is wounded that badly. He may even recover and live. I have wounded and lost a deer before (shot in the front leg, but continued to run for miles, never saw it again) with a rifle and I continued to hunt.

I am thinking about heading back up there Saturday one more time to see if I can locate him. If I don't find him or see birds in the area, I think I am going to continue hunting.

GPWDeer