10-01-2006, 09:15 PM
Well, thought I would post the story and pic's from my dad's 2006 Elk hunt. Sorry fisherman, as much as I like catching fish, nothing compares to Elk and Deer hunting lol.
Day 1- We thought we would start off by hunting an area where we had heard a deep raspy sounding bugle. It was in an area that was covered with aspens and little open area. Suprisingly, it was close to a road but I guess you go where the elk are.
After getting there at day break, we heard an ATV coming up the bottom of the canyon (we never knew there was an ATV trail), that pretty much screwed up our area for the morning. We decided to try another area and was able to get some response.
Several times a bull would get within a few hundred yards. It was so thick we couldn't see farther than 50-100 yards. A few times we could hear it walking and raking it antlers.
We had similar results that evening (from the same bull). We were frustrated and had heard there were some other bulls in a nearby area. We then decided to try a new area the next morning.
Waking up the next morning we had both changed our minds. We decided to go after this same bull once again. The night previous, we had seen a bedded cow and heard other cows in the area. We then decided to get in the area in the dark and wait until daybreak.
As we worked our way that morning daybreak was coming faster than we expected. We want to try and be right on the herd at day break. Just then we heard a bugle within a few hundred yards. By this time, we could see well and shooting hours were upon us. I decided to blow one call from our "Hoochie Mama". We had an immediate response from a cow. I responded, another response from the cow. This time it was much closer. We had no more than set up and stopped, when I saw the cow. It was looking for us. We had just stopped in time. Otherwise, we would have been seen. The cow was broad side, 50 yards away. The bull followed right behind.
My dad was whispering "there is a small tree in the way, I only
have a small area to shoot". "I do have a front shoulder shot". I am not sure why he was telling me this since I didn't have a gun or a tag lol.
He shot, hit high in the front shoulder. The bull was down. We waited quitely and softly cow called. The cow actually stopped for a moment. One more shot to finish the bull and that was the end of our hunt.
He felt fortunate to take this bull. Not sure of the score but it looked good to him (which is all that matters).
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Day 1- We thought we would start off by hunting an area where we had heard a deep raspy sounding bugle. It was in an area that was covered with aspens and little open area. Suprisingly, it was close to a road but I guess you go where the elk are.
After getting there at day break, we heard an ATV coming up the bottom of the canyon (we never knew there was an ATV trail), that pretty much screwed up our area for the morning. We decided to try another area and was able to get some response.
Several times a bull would get within a few hundred yards. It was so thick we couldn't see farther than 50-100 yards. A few times we could hear it walking and raking it antlers.
We had similar results that evening (from the same bull). We were frustrated and had heard there were some other bulls in a nearby area. We then decided to try a new area the next morning.
Waking up the next morning we had both changed our minds. We decided to go after this same bull once again. The night previous, we had seen a bedded cow and heard other cows in the area. We then decided to get in the area in the dark and wait until daybreak.
As we worked our way that morning daybreak was coming faster than we expected. We want to try and be right on the herd at day break. Just then we heard a bugle within a few hundred yards. By this time, we could see well and shooting hours were upon us. I decided to blow one call from our "Hoochie Mama". We had an immediate response from a cow. I responded, another response from the cow. This time it was much closer. We had no more than set up and stopped, when I saw the cow. It was looking for us. We had just stopped in time. Otherwise, we would have been seen. The cow was broad side, 50 yards away. The bull followed right behind.
My dad was whispering "there is a small tree in the way, I only
have a small area to shoot". "I do have a front shoulder shot". I am not sure why he was telling me this since I didn't have a gun or a tag lol.
He shot, hit high in the front shoulder. The bull was down. We waited quitely and softly cow called. The cow actually stopped for a moment. One more shot to finish the bull and that was the end of our hunt.
He felt fortunate to take this bull. Not sure of the score but it looked good to him (which is all that matters).
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