When I first started hunting elk I was in a good area. Lots of opportunities to mess things up. I was able to hunt down there for 3 years and had some truly awesome experiences. Thinking back, I should have killed a few of those elk. Several times I can remember the thought of actually shooting didn’t occur to me until the opportunity was gone. I suppose I was just awestruck at being that close to such a great and big animal after hunting whitetail my whole life.
Then I moved to the dense conifer forests of north Idaho and those ample opportunities turned into maybe one real chance a season, and that’s if I was lucky. Hunting in a game poor region where you can’t see more than 40 yards most of the time makes you hard on yourself when you screw up that once a season chance. But that’s exactly what I did last year.
I had a nice 6X6 walk by at about 15 yards, came to full draw, and put the arrow right behind the shoulder. A little low but it looked good. Complete passthrough, two streams of blood like it was poured from a bucket. But try as I strained, I never heard the crash we all listen for. That was at around 8 in the morning. At 7 that evening, the light began to fade under the closed canopy timber so I broke off the trail which, by that time had dwindled to pure sign, tracks and rearranged vegetation, confirmed only by a pin speck of blood every 50 – 100 yards.
Went back next morning with my partner and together tracked him until dark again. Close to 2 miles if I remember correctly until the track merged with a bunch of other elk that’d been there overnight and obliterated the bulls track.
When I saw where the arrow was, I was sure he’d be down within 50 yards. I couldn’t, and still can’t, figure it out.
So with that lingering in the back of my mind we decided to head back down south, to fresh country. I was pleased to get back into an area where you could bump into multiple elk in a day instead of maybe one a year. They weren’t bugling yet when I killed the spike, not responding to calls much either. So it was down to ambush, whitetail style. Find where they are and where they’re headed and get between. I was after this group the evening before but they gave me the slip after hanging out on a ridge all day waiting for the thermals to switch. But I knew where to be in the morning.. And that, as they say, is the rest of the story.
