This weekend however was even more crazy. With Friday being the last day of my archery elk tag I planned on taking the whole day off to hit the mountain hard and maybe, with any luck, draw some blood. With all the action lately and finally nailing down a pattern on a new herd of elk I felt pretty good going into the weekend. I've spent so much time helping locate big bulls that I havn't placed myself in any decent location to shoot a cow or spike. However, my plans quickly changed when my brother called me up and said he got permission to take his wife hunting this Friday for her CWMU bull. With the elk screaming almost every day, and the chance to carry a rifle on the mountain it wasn't a hard decision to pass up the last day of my hunt to help out on this hunt. This would also mean that my uncle would be left to himself to try his luck at getting in on a bull.
With young kids we opted to hit the mountain really early friday morning rather then leaving them all with my wife for the whole night. We had about a two hour comute to get on the mountain, and we hit the hunting grounds just as it was getting light enough to see. I hadn't even gotten off my 4-wheeler before I saw a small herd of elk moving over a nearby skyline, and sure enough there was a decent bull in the group. We quickly got in position on the ridge behing us and waited for them to come back in view. Soon after a bull started feeding out of the trees ahead of where these elk were. We knew it was a different bull because the other one was grouped with his cows. However it was still too dark to see how big he was so we just watched as he walked into the trees. Not long after that the group of elk I spotted earlier scrambled out of the tree's. The were in a hurry to get into the next group of trees so we didn't get a good look at the bull, but knew he was probably a shooter for the area, so we decided to follow them into the tree's. He was bugling a lot so it wasn't a problem at all figuring out how far they were ahead of us. We followed them for close to 600 yards until they stopped in a thick wooded area. Sadly we couldn't see very far into the trees and ended up pushing them farther up the canyon before we got close enough. Rather than continuing to push them farther up the canyon we decided to push onto the other ridge and see if we can't spot them across the canyon.
As we reached the other ridge we started tossing out some bugles and cow calls to get them to keep talking, and it worked like a charm. We found that the elk continued farther up the ridge and dropped down farther into the revine between them and us. There was also a bull answering every call just up the ridge from us so we pushed up to get in a little closer, hoping to see a glimpse of him. And yet again as we got close to him he spooked and ran up the canyon a little ways. He wasn't spooked to badly however because he continued to answer every bugle we gave him. We snuck up the ridge another 200 yards and continued to call, this time however we were staying put. There's no way we were being quiet enough to get in close on him. Then all the sudden he poked his head out right in front of us. He was only 50 yards away and standing there looking right at us. Took us a little by supprise because we didn't think after already pushing him once, that we'd be albe to call him in. Amanda however had a little case of bull feaver, she had her sights right on him and even started to squeeze the trigger, but then at the last moment hesitated and he turned and moved back into the tree's. None of us really saw how big he was but knew that if it had 6 points (which I'm sure it did), then it was a shooter. We got a few laughs out of it though. This is Amanda first big game hunt and so it's understandable that she'd be a little hesitant to pull the trigger. But she promised us that she'd never hesitate again.
Here's a tiny audio clip of one of the bull bugling, not the best audio cause it was off my phone, but still way cool to hear. I love sharing things like this with people that don't get the opportunity to hear it themselves.
Bull Elk
We took a lunch nap and then started to bugle again in the early afternoon to wake these bulls back up. Both bulls started bugling back almost immediatly. It was very apparant that they didn't was some new bull running around they're mountain steeling cows, by the way they were cutting off our bugles. We located the first bull we chased this morning on the other side of the canyon, almost the same place we last heard him. He was feeding slowly down the canyone with his cows. This time we got a pretty good look at him and saw he was a good little 6 point. Definatly a shooter. I opted to stay on the ridge to keep track of them, while my brother and Amanda took off up the other ridge to get on top of them. They worked they're way into the thick tree's the elk were hangin out in and started to play the waiting game. However, it wasn't working, these elk weren't moving out and the sun was starting to set, so we decided he need to rip a bugle. With them being only a couple hundred yards away we didn't really know if he'd just up and leave or actually come out to see what's going on. It must have pissed that bull off because after a couple bugles back and forth like that, the bull left his cows and marched up to give them a piece of his mind. He walked right out in the open and presented a pereft shot. Amanda placed it perfectly through his front shoulder and almost dropped him in his tracks.
It was great watching a new hunter who's never shot at any type of big game in her life really throw the hammer down and get excited about it like that. We couldn't get her to help us clean the animal but we did get her to sit on the bull for a fun shot. I know it's kinda tacky riding your kill, oh but it needed to happen.
Here's a couple pics on the mountain of Amanda and her first big game animal.
Not long after she dropped the animal we got a call from my Uncle who drove a good distance down the canyone to get us on the phone. Turns out he was having a bit of luck himself and was going to need help getting his bull off the mountain too. I think it's neat that even though we were separated but billions of tree's that they shot they're bull just a couple hours apart. We managed to get Amanda's bull cut quartered and hauled off the montain all in one night. We didn't get in bed till about 3 am but it was plenty of rest to get back up the canyon saturday morning to help my uncle finish cutting up his bull and hauling it off the mountain.
Since I couldn't be in two places at the same time to bring you both the stories, I made sure to get part of his story recoreded into a little 5 min audio file for your listing pleasures. Both bull arean't monsters but for an archery tag and a tag drawn with 4 pts they're two bulls to be very proud of.
Here's the audio clip, and a few pictures of Marvin's bull.
Marvin's Story
We also got them toghether for a few shots saturday afternoon to finish the story off.
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