Fireside Stories: How I Killed My Smallest Bull Elk on The Best Tag I’ve Ever Had – Part 2 of 3

Read PART ONE: Fireside Stories: How I Killed My Smallest Bull Elk on The Best Tag I’ve Ever Had – Part 1 of 3

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes

First Day of The Hunt

Skip the travel that I did: driving hours to the closest airport, hopping on an airplane, connecting flights and layovers, another long drive to my parent’s house (they live right where I’ll be hunting), and late-night planning. Skip all of that and you are with me as we load and haul the horses in the dark to then drive to where we set up camp at the mouth of a large canyon. After briefly saying hello to my friends and fellow hunters, sleep comes fast. But 4:00 a.m. on the opening day comes even faster.

Five of us ride up the creek bottom for miles with a narrow path illuminated only by green light from small headlamps that bounce on our heads as the horses walk. In the dark, willows reach out and whip me in the face. Green light illuminates cattle eyes here and there, along with other fictitious creatures, until they are also identified as cattle.

Calling

Just before legal shooting hours, we arrive at the planned rendezvous location and do some cow-calling and bugling in hopes of hearing a bull scream a reply. Jolene’s dad, Derek, lets off a particularly bad bugle that sets me giggling, along with Jolene’s boyfriend, Warren. Meanwhile, Jolene lifts the edge of her beanie cap that was previously covering her ears and she points down the canyon, questioning the rest of us, “Did you hear that?”

Well, the answer is no, because Warren and I were giggling and Don and Derek’s hearing is sabotaged by years of shooting guns with no ear protection. We, unfortunately, didn’t put much stock in Jolene’s claim of hearing a bull bugle, so we rode on as light bathed the steep sagebrush hills around us.

A Great View

Riding to a point where we could see most of the large bowl at the head of the canyon, as well as a lot of the country behind us, we got off the horses and began glassing. It was not long until Derek spotted a group of 7 elk on the ridgeline above where we had our rendezvous that morning. Unfortunately, we were now 2200 yards away, according to my SIG Kilo 8k ABS rangefinder. After setting up the spotting scope and identifying one mature bull in the group of raghorn bulls, cows, and calves, we decided to explore the country ahead of us while that group fed toward a pocket of timber on the backside of their ridge. While doing this, we’d keep an eye on their progress just in case we needed to find them later.

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As we progressed, stopping periodically to glass-timbered ridges and rocky peaks, we found ourselves on a sage hillside when I suddenly spotted something with my naked eye. It was a brown spot that was too interesting to not take a closer look at. I swung off of my horse, pulled up my binoculars, and immediately identified a mature branch-antlered bull elk at what we’d later range to be 380 yards away on the opposing hillside, near the ridgeline. Here’s where things got interesting on opening day.

Harvesting the First Bull Elk

Jolene and Warren both see me and understand the situation by my reaction of grabbing the rifle out of its scabbard. As I quickly set up my tripod and got into a shooting position, they tried whistling to get Derek and Don’s attention as they continued to ride along in front of us. Based on experience, I know it takes more than that to get their attention… likely because of hearing damage (wear earplugs please). If this were a very large bull, they’d have had a surprise as I woke up the whole mountain with my 338 EDGE before notifying them.

However, I found the bull in my rifle optic standing broadside and identified no more than the fact that he was a branch-antlered bull but was not quite large enough to catch my interest. At this point, I directed my attention to Don and Derek to turn them around with a hushed, “Hey!”.

Bull Elk 380 Yards Away

That bull elk stood on the hillside 380 yards away without so much as moving a muscle for the next 5-7 minutes as Jolene decided that she wanted to kill this bull. She got her gun out, dialed the elevation for the shot, and remained calm as I helped her try a dozen different shooting positions until we were comfortable and confident that she was stable.

Because of the wrangling of the horses that was going on during all of this, Derek joked that this bull was a Fish and Game decoy… and I was inclined to believe him after Jolene sent her first round 380 yards to that ridgeline with the impact nowhere to be identified while the bull remained frozen in time. Jolene again changed position because she found the last one to be too “shaky”. After another 1 or two minutes, she sent a second 150 grain Nosler Partition across the canyon where it connected with her bull’s front right shoulder.

Bull Elk Movement

At this point, the bull finally moved, lifting his front leg and stumbling into the timber. We stayed in position, watching the trees for any sign of an escaping bull, but saw none. High fives all around! “I saw the front leg lift. it looked like a heart shot!” Derek states excitedly.

About 15 minutes later, we arrived at the scene of the crime. Figuratively speaking, of course. Here Derek and Jolene took the old 270 and followed the bull’s tracks into the timber. Tracks from other elk crisscrossed the whole mountainside in the loose pine needle covered soil, where no blood could be found anywhere. Putting their best tracking skills to use, Derek and Jolene found the bull minutes later, bedded with his head still up and bleeding out from a double lung wound. Still on the ridgeline, Warren, Don, and I heard a turkey call that came from Derek. This signaled for us to come to them; they had likely found the bull. Before they could decide to shoot the animal again or wait for it to expire, the bull laid his head down to never pick it up again.

Emotional Roller Coaster

Jolene found this experience to be quite emotional. Starting with the high of killing her first bull with a gun that meant a lot to her personally, moving into anxiety as we rode toward where we no longer could see the bull, shifting to despair as Derek and herself followed tracks with no blood, it reached a boiling point where a few tears were shed when she saw the struggling animal still alive in front of her. Anybody who has hunted for any period of time has been here in her shoes.

These feelings suck. Everything was done right: she used an acceptable rifle caliber (to many), paired with a time-proven and field-tested hunting bullet, within a reasonable and ethical range to make a fantastically placed shot in the vitals. Still, this would leave the bull elk with a less-than-acceptable death. All of us met up at the dead bull, Jolene’s excitement was restored as the whole group of friends then congratulated her.

Later that day, the emotional roller coaster again headed downhill as Jolene and Don walked out with the quartered elk loading down their horses. Though that’s a bit of a strong way to put it, the walk back to the truck was long and hard and both Don and Jolene weren’t exactly excited for it. While they headed out, I was experiencing turbulent feelings of my own; we were in prime elk country and I hadn’t seen nearly as many elk that day as I’d been accustomed to seeing there in October. What was going on?

Day Two of the Hunt

The horses were tired from traveling over the steep terrain at the end of the first day of the hunt. This was a problem because as long as we continued to hunt, we couldn’t give any of the horses a rest. After all, there were five of them and also five of us. On the second day, it was brutally apparent that a second bull needed to be killed and it would be best if Derek were the one to fill the tag.

We set out that morning at 6:00 a.m. to get back up into the head of the canyon where the elk were to be found. A repeat of the morning prior’s train of green bobbing headlamps in the dark and equally stinging willow whips to the face as we rode down the creek bottom. This time, we took a different turn at the rendezvous point. We made the left, knowing that it would take us up into the canyon where we spotted the mature bull the morning before. However, we also knew that it was an incredibly steep climb into that area and we’d be committed to hunting a much more isolated area than the day before.

Moving Quickly

Even though we got up later this morning, things moved more efficiently and we made good time up the trail. The canyon became narrower and steeper the further up we went until there was nowhere to go but up. It was at this point that Jolene’s mule (our five “horses” were actually four horses and a mule), decided he didn’t have much energy left and stopped listening to any of her commands.

At this point, we lost some time as Don, Derek, Warren, and I had to stop and wait as the mule made his way up the mountain at his own pace. Jolene was doing what she could to urge her mule on, but all 90 pounds of her was not enough to persuade the stubborn creature. Unfortunately, this continued through the whole day.

Missed Opportunities

As we crested the barren ridge we were on, Don spotted a bull on the horizon in front of our little possie. I was one of the first with a gun out after a glance with the binoculars showed that the elk was a branch-antlered bull. The one in sight was feeding approximately 500 yards away. With his binoculars also still up, Don whispered to the group, “That’s just a five-point and I can see a spike further back. There’s probably a bigger bull in that group.” With a 500 yard stretch of sagebrush ahead of us, we formulated a plan where myself and Derek would walk on foot to the ridge where the unaware bulls had just disappeared over the opposite side.

Right before we reached the ridge that was our goal, the five-point bull ran up a hill next to us, stopped, and turned back. The shot ranged 200 yards and Derek was ready to kill the bull, but I faced the internal struggle of a bird in the hand vs two in the bush. I told Derek, “There could likely be a bigger bull over the ridge if that is the smaller satellite bull.” We continued to walk toward the ridge while the five-point bull slowly worked his way up the hill and out of sight. We had every good opportunity in the world to kill that bull, and once we crested the ridge, we wished we did. There were no other bulls in sight.

Not Ready To Give Up

Derek and I glassed the close hillside and spotted nothing noteworthy, except for some raghorn bulls that worked their way out of the canyon. A bit defeated, we started our short trek back across the sagebrush bowl toward the now-approaching horses and the remainder of the group. As they got closer, one of the most unexplainable things happened: A hoarse scream echoed through the cool air behind us. Whipping around, we saw a whole herd of nearly 30 elk running down the very same point that the five-point had disappeared over earlier. Led by a bugling six-point bull, the herd trotted right toward us!

Was this elk rutting and attracted to the sight of the horses standing in the open? Did we interrupt something else? I’ll never know. What I do know is that the bull ran down to a patch of trees and stopped, looking at us as the rest of the herd ran past him and continued over the other ridge that Derek and I were just sitting on top of. Unfortunately, we were all but caught with our pants down in the open and we were not set up to shoot.

Just Shoot the Bull Elk Already

I wanted Derek to shoot the bull because he was just smaller than what I was looking for. While standing, keeping the bull in my rifle’s crosshairs, I whisper-shouted to Derek, “Shoot him!”. Derek had his crosshairs on the bull, but the different angle that he had provided him with no opportunities, except for a 2-for-1 shot on the bull that also included a cow. We stood in the open until the bull decided that he was not in a place that was safe and ran off, making a clean getaway.

The middle portion of this day went by in a whirlwind of binoculars, spotting scopes, snacks, and midday naps. This combination turned up twenty-three mountain goats, eight elk, including three mature bulls several miles away, and a couple of deer. But we couldn’t reach any elk in the amount of daylight that we had left, and we also lacked the horsepower to pursue them. Our best bet was to find a bull bedded down in one of the north-facing treed hillsides Don and I spent hours scouring these locations we knew we could reasonably get to.

While eating a late lunch, the sun shifted into the right position and I finally saw the unmistakable golden glow of a bedded bull within the trees. I got it in the spotting scope, placed antlers on it and mentally marked the location so that I could guide the others to what I had found. I got the group together and we made our plan of attack

The Second Bull Elk Hits the Ground

Finally, the bull got up around 5:00 p.m. and the whole herd started to move. “I bet they are going for water.” Don speculated as they worked their way toward the head of the canyon. “That one bull is a five-point but there is also a raghorn bull in there.”, he followed up with. At this new information, I pulled out my rangefinder and ranged the elk. They were 2100 yards away and the ridge across from them that we could get to for a shooting position was 1400 yards away. This meant that it would be a 700 yard shot from ridge to target, but they would likely move even closer while we got into position. After explaining this, we made moves and got into position.

At the ridge, we relocated the herd of elk getting water in the creek at the head of the canyon. It was barely over 500 yards to the elk, but the sagebrush was just high enough that the 15″ tall bipod I had would not provide enough clearance for a shot. I clipped the rifle into a tripod and gave Derek some quick pointers on how to best shoot from this position. As the bull moved from the creek, Derek sent a 300 grain Sierra Matchking across the canyon from my 338 EDGE and the bull dropped in place, mid-step. I may have even exclaimed something like, “Hell yeah, that’s why I shoot them with a 338!”

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We’ve Got One More To Go

After a short celebration of fistbumps and high fives, we had little daylight left to get to Derek’s bull, pack him into the horses, and walk out of the deep canyon that were in. As evening kills often go, we ran out of light before we finished processing the bull. That night, we walked out on our feet while the rest of the group ponied our horses with the elk out ahead of us, little green lights bobbing down the canyon.

To read more about the three elk that my party killed, watch for part three of, “Fireside Stories: How I Killed My Smallest Bull Elk on The Best Tag I’ve Ever Had.”

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