Amigos y amigas — this report was sent to me by a friend, Kirby Kohler, who doesn’t have internet:
Without question, I enjoyed the best elk hunt of my life in New Mexico this year. On the night of the fourth day while in the tent, I told my partner that we could quit right now and it would be the best hunt of my life. With the future unknown I added to grand hunt by arrowing a nice bull the following morning.
The bull I killed came in to two cow calls and a little bull scream. He charged across an aspen bench that had been my core area over the previous several days, and stood stately in front of me, complete with irritated eyes and drool dangling from his lips and dripping from his nostrils. We had a 45-second period where it was just he and me separated only by the 3″ fir I was standing behind and the mountain air. Once I was at half draw and had to let down because I was shaking so bad. To my surprise the bull finally gave in and turned and began to bugle while at 14 yards. It was then that I sent the arrow through his chest. He bolted and I called to stop him and he stopped, looked my way, and died. He went only 50 yards and it took only 6-8 seconds for him to expire.
The Abowyer Brown Bear single-bevel and 680-grain shaft certainly did the job. The arrow penetrated 27 inches with just the nock and a little bit of the fletching visible. Extreme FoC is something special when it comes to lethality! I haven’t even gotten this good of penetration with whitetails shooting the same bow but standard arrows. My pack out turned out to be over 5 miles one way. It took me the next two days to get him out on my own, and it was amazingly difficult, but I enjoyed every second.
The path of the arrow through the bull was quite impressive and I’m sure I will get a scolding from someone. But under the duress of having a drooling, irritated bull at 14 yards, I was all predator. That is the only way I can rationalize my behavior. The bull was facing me and when he turned his head and neck to my right to bugle in that direction, his chest angled slightly to the right. The arrow entered between the brisket and the right humerus, cutting a rib in half and then passing through the anterior lobe of the right lung, through the anterior part of the heart, and through the posterior end of the left lung, and lodged in the 12th rib on his left side. All but the nock and an inch of the fletching was inside the animal. By this path, you can tell the animal was slightly angling toward me. I will never say that I planned on taking this shot; it was instinct and autopilot taking over.
The arrow was a Traditional Only Easton carbon shaft that totaled 680 grains. The arrow with the fletchings and shaft equaled 305 grains and the broadhead (175 gr brown bear), adapter (100 gr steel), and insert (100 gr brass) totaled 375 grains.
As I was quartering the animal, I thought about documenting the whole process with photos of the quartering process, but unfortunately I did not. Since I was committed to quartering the animal and packing him out myself, I was pretty focused on the job at hand. I had to pack him out over 5 miles one way. I was pretty much a basket case!
–Kirby Kohler
