Elk 2001

For those of you who have followed my quest for an elk, let it be known that I finally caught up with one that matched my tag this year.  I'm now a blooded elk hunter.

I went back to New Mexico again this past fall with Bear Creek Adventures, but this time I took a rifle rather than a muzzle loader.  It was a great trip as expected as This year my brother and Mike Clark went along.  The elk were hard to find again.  I saw a couple of little raghorns opening morning and they were the only elk I saw till the last day of the hunt.  It was warm and dry again this year and the animals were still up in their summer areas rather than where Eric has historicly found them. 

So we moved on the next to last day of the hunt to the areas where Eric had been seeing the elk all summer.  We split into two groups, each guide taking two hunters.  I ended up going with Dan, who'd guided for Eric the year before during the rifle seasons but I hadn't met previously.  He took us up to his personal little honey hole.   It seems that he'd hunted the elk on that particular mountatin for a number of years and knew just exactly where they were when.  That evening he sent me to watch a meadow where he said several elk had been successfully ambushed over the years.  Per my normal luck, I saw lots of fairly fresh sign but no elk.

We spiked that night not more that 300 yards from that meadow.  The next morning, right at first light we snuck right back to the meadow I'd been on the previous evening.  Lo and behold there was a bull and a couple of cows feeding peacefully in that little meadow.  It was just dark enough where it was hard to make out the antlers on the bull.  After watching him, Dan decided he was a legal bull,  on that note, it being the last morning of the hunt, I proceeded to lean up against an aspen and find him in the scope.

When I found him, he was quartering away and below me little at about 125 yards, I settled the crosshairs in line with his offside shoulder and squeezed off my first ever shot at an elk.  I was shooting my 300 Win Mag and thought I'd made a good shot but he just whirled and trotted about 20 yards, stopped and just stood there.  Dan had said it was a good hit but I went ahead squeezed off another one, it may have been a good hit but he was looking entirely too healthy in my opinion.  At the shot, he collapsed and Dan quickly told me not to shoot him again.  I guess he was concerned that I might just continue to bang away till I ran out of ammo. As excited as I was, maybe he had a right to be concerned.  As it turned out, both shots were right on the money, entering just behind the last rib and penetrating through to the off shoulder, undoubtably the first would have done the job but I sure felt better when he was down rather than standing there like he hadn't been touched.(more details on bullet performance.)  So goes the story of my one and only elk to date.

The other hunter that was with Dan and I, hunted hard throughout the day and finally got a shot as we were on our way out that evening.  They both thought he had hit him but couldn't find any blood or other indication as it was starting to get pretty dark.  They went back up the next day expecting to find him with little trouble, as it turned out they never did find any indication that the bull was hit.

Kris  and Mike were hunting with Eric at this time.  They got into elk almost as soon as we split up the previous afternoon.  Mike got a pretty nice 5x5 that evening after hearing him bugle and going after him.  Kris had an opportunity at +-300 yards but failed to connect.  The last evening he and Eric got into a herd of +-100 elk which contained several decent bulls.  While Eric pointed out several bulls as they paraded single file in front of Kris, Kris could make out anything but elk bodies through his scope due to the available light.  Being the sportsman he is, he held his fire with no positive target available.

All things considered it was a great hunt, the country was gorgeous, company was grand, and everyone had an opportunity on an elk.  I can't wait to go back and do it all over again.