My 2018 Elk Season

[Logan T]

Hey guys, I’ve gotten a couple people asking to hear the story of my elk season this year. Heres the long recap of it. I don’t have near as many pictures this year, but it was a short and sweet season. Away we go.

Opening day rolled around on September 1 this year. Justin and I headed out early that morning to get to our glassing point before daylight. Once it’s bright enough to see through the optics and scan the area around us we immediately saw elk about 1.5 miles away. A fair number of cows and some descent little bulls. About 20 minutes goes by and all of a sudden I spot a 380” bull in the same general area and the plan set itself- close the distance on him. The elk weren’t talking a whole lot, but it was the earliest that the season has ever started. We load up our packs and took about 15 steps on our way to the 380 bull and all of a sudden Justin sees elk right below us 300 yards. “Big Bull” he says, and sure enough, there was a toad. He was with 4 other bulls, and he was a stud. He was significantly larger than that bull we were headed off to hunt, so plans changed. Long story short here, that group of bulls hit a thick timbered pocket and we planned be patient with that group of elk and hunt that bull that evening. With no conceivable way to sneak in on that big bull with the other eyes he had with him, we weren’t going to push it and risk blowing him out of the country.

We ended up deciding that we didn’t want to sit on that little pocket for 13 hours when there was other shooter bulls a mile away, and so we skirted that pocket and headed towards other elk. On our way towards the other bulls, a freakin plane decided to come and buzz us and the area we were hunting repeatedly. Having seen that plane before, a lot, I knew for a fact he was hazing elk back onto whatever property that person owned. Apparently he didn’t have enough elk on his place, and decided that he should go fly over public land and haze them back to his property. We just hoped he wouldn’t take all these bulls we had been seeing. I took out my phone and ended up getting pretty good video of him flying around in front of us. While I was videoing, Justin was watching him through his binos, hoping to read his tail numbers so we could report him to FWP. That plane got to about 100 yards or so from us in the air, and neither of us could pick up any tail numbers, it appeared to not have any. We watched him fly around for 10-15 minutes and he finally left. Luckily, the big boy next to us never came out and took off, that we could see, and some of the bulls we had been headed towards were still there and didn’t seem too bothered. Long story short, we ended up getting into 8-10 small 6 points, but never did see that 380 bull again. That evening we split up to hunt that pocket where the bigger bull went into, but never did see him again.

This guy is a real A-Hole.... with a capital A

Either the next day or monday, we did end up seeing that 380 bull again and were able to close the distance on him. He was pushing a couple cows and headed to the area we had watched him leave previously. We busted butt getting over there and got to within 200 yards of him. He had split from his cows and was bugling and looking for more. I went forward to get set up and all of a sudden I had a little raghorn trying to run right over me. He got our wind as we crawled out of a little cut and it must have swirled behind him. He was running right towards me and so I ran forwards trying to cut him off from where I thought the big bull was located. He turned and ran back quartered away from me, and ended up picking up the big guy and our night was over with.

The next weekend things were heating up. We ended up seeing a bull that we saw last year. We called him the “crown bull”. He seemed smaller than he was last year, but was a shooter none the less. He had lost his extra tine up top, but appeared to put on a couple more points down low. He was a 6 on his normal side and on the other side had at least 6 points down low below his 3rd. The wind was never right and conditions just weren’t right to stalk anything that weekend. But the elk that were around were becoming more vocal. We also saw a good 6x6 that weekend, but watched him from afar.

The "Crown Bull". These two pics are from last fall

The other good 6.

 

[Logan T]

I went out solo in the middle of the week, and ended up getting on the crown bull. After a cat and mouse game, I cow called and he came RUNNING into 15 yards. I was at full draw, he was straight in front of me and just behind a hill, and all I could see was the top of his head and his antlers. He came so fast that I had no time to adjust my set up location and he was on top of me. He ended up leaving, and I dogged him for 10-15 minutes but he knew something wasn’t right. He just couldn’t see any cows. I was jacked and disappointed that night. To come so close to such a unique bull and be at full draw, only to have him stop short of a shot opportunity was disappointing. But such is bowhunting.

I went out again the next afternoon to a different spot with the plan to glass all evening to try and find something to hunt on the weekend. When I got to my glassing point, elk were going bonkers below me, about half mile away and down in a canyon. It sounded like Jurassic Park down there. I picked up some good bulls with cows above the canyon, but most of the chaos was down in the timber. On the outskirts of the herds of cows were some better bulls, not quite rutting yet, but staying close to everything for when that time came. One bull in particular caught my attention. He was somewhere in that 350 range. He had ok beam length, but his 4th tines were impressive and he had dark antlers with white tips compared to everything else I had seen so far. He also had a little “hiccup” on his left main beam after his 5th point that was easy enough to remember. With the wind wrong, I stayed on my point and glassed until I found a good bull. He was in that 370 range, and was about half mile from the ruckus with another little six point. I decided that I was not going to pass up any kind of stalk opportunity on a 370 bull and tried to close the distance before dark. That attempt failed, I heard him or his buddy let out an ever so quiet bugle right at dark, and they were only 250-300 yards away across the canyon but out of sight. I got out of there that night and was hoping elk would still be around for the weekend.

Justin got back Friday evening and we went out to where all the chaos was a couple nights earlier. It was still going wild. We could only see a couple cows but the bulls were bugling like crazy down in the canyon again. We made our way down into the canyon with a good wind. We decided what our play was going to be, and went to put it into action. We were a couple hundred yards from the nearest bugling bull and were going to swing down into a better wind then make our way into the middle of all the chaos. We took a couple steps forward to the top of a little finger, and right where we wanted to go were a couple other hunters, 120 yards from us. Cancel that plan. But it’s public land and those guys had a lot more elk near them than we did us. So we just crept forward towards the nearest bull, keeping as much room between us and keeping them in line with us, as the wind was blowing in our face but very slightly angling towards that direction. That night ended with no shots. The bull in front of us was only 80 yards away and was not something we were willing to shoot. We had some more elk come in front of us but down in a coulee where we couldn’t see, once the other hunters set up and called with their hoochie mamma for the last 30 minutes before dark. We got out of there after dark, and went unknown to those guys. I’m not sure how they didn’t get within range of anything, as there was elk talking and running around all over the place near them.

The next morning (Saturday) we went to the same general area, but a different direction from where we went the night before when we saw those guys, as we saw the camp those guys had the previous night on our way out. We were following bugles in the timber and still hunting our way towards them. We hit a bench and I saw a bull within 100 yards of us. Justin got set up and I dropped back to call. It took 10 minutes for him to get from 100 yards to 50 yards, but he did come within range of Justin and he shot, but missed. His arrow deflected off a branch and the bull got away clean. We kept our plan and continued on.

The middle of the day was slow, but that afternoon we saw a bull come to a waterhole we had been watching. He was bugling and tearing everything up and just completely covered himself in mud. He headed back towards where he came from and we just dogged him for a mile and a half. He was bugling once every minute or two at least I’d say, and we just followed and played catch up. We got to the last bench we were going to cross and decided to set up and try calling. Before I dropped back to call, I walked to a little higher spot on the bench and saw a tree flailing all over the place within 200 yards of us. I signaled to Justin the direction it was and began calling. I was cow calling for about 10 minutes and that bull was just screaming at me the whole time. He finally decided to check me out and I saw his head pop over the far side of the bench. I was in the timberline on that bench and so I backed up and kept calling. I was moving around, using different calls, trying to coax him another 20-30 yards into range. The bull started barking at me, then he’d bugle. Bark and bugle. He did that for a couple minutes trying to get me to show myself, and turned to leave. Right when he turned, I hammered him with a bugle and he turned right back around towards us. So then we screamed at each other for a little while. I started raking trees, jumping on dead cedar trees, snapping anything that would possibly make a noise, all the while bugling and doing some cow talk. Justin said that as soon as I started playing WWE, that bull came into 50 and he smoked him! We waited just over half hour and went to find him. The bull ran maybe 60 yards and was dead within a minute of the arrow being released! We relived what we just did, took some pictures, quartered him up, hung him in a tree, all the while with bulls bugling around us.

Justin's Bull

 

[Logan T]

We went to a glassing point before daylight the following morning just to see what was around before we hiked in to retrieve Justin’s bull. Daylight came and below us was a handful of elk. When we could see through the spotter, we saw the crown bull, and we got excited. He was in a very stalk-able position and we were contemplating our route to him. He turned his head while we were looking at him, and big time disappointment arose. He had broken off his main beam on his normal side, just above his 3rd point. That was a huge disappointment. We kept glassing for a little while, and saw what appeared to be a good bull about 2 miles away, but also the wrong direction from the meat we hung in the trees. I told Justin that bull looked like that “hiccup” bull and if he was, I’d shoot him if the opportunity presented itself. We watched him disappear into some timber with his cows and made a plan to try to get closer that evening after we retrieved Justin’s bull.

That evening we were glassing and didn’t see anything for a while. We heard a couple faint bugles but nothing was out moving. Right before we started making our way towards where we thought that good bull was, we saw elk moving a mile below us. Pull up the spotter, and there is ol’ crown bull again. Of coarse. So we packed up our spotting scopes and started making our way towards where we saw that good bull that morning, hoping he hadn’t moved too much. We made our way to the end of a bench and right below us in a little canyon was a beautiful small 6 point with a cow and two calves. He knew something was up on the bench where we were, but he didn’t know it was us, so he circled around below trying to catch our wind. We backed up and he never did, and so he started barking and bugling at us, trying to get us to show ourselves, but we didn’t make a peep.

After that had gone on a little while, another bull started bugling, right where we had wanted to get to, and just on the back side of the canyon across from us where the little bull was. Unfortunately for that small 6, he was being too vocal and the other bull started coming towards him and his cows. With an hour of light left, we started moving our way down the face of the canyon after the little bull took his cow and two calves around the corner and saw the other bull that had been bugling. He appeared across a different larger canyon and was on the rim, looking down at the little bull and his cows. We got to the bottom of the face we were on and sat there watching. The bull that showed up turned out to be the bull with the hiccup in his beam, and Justin said to move forward and he would stay back. I could only go ahead of him 30 yards before there was no more cover, and Justin was backed in a hole that was filled with thick cedar trees.

We watched this hiccup bull slowly make his way around the rim of the canyon coming our direction for some 500-600 yards, walking, bugling, raking brush and posturing. The whole time he was 60-80 feet straight above the little bull, who followed him from below the whole time. The little bull was saying “yeah you stay up there” and the big bull was saying “I’m gonna take my time, come around and down and then kick your butt and take your cows”. When the bigger bull was almost down to the bottom of the canyon, Justin cow called to try to get him to come to us. At this point he was about 110 yards away. That cow call just got the big bull more excited, knowing he had at least one cow behind him, and the show started. As Justin called, the cow and two calves, and one more cow started trotting straight to us. They crossed the bottom and left the little bull, and then the two bulls trotted, ran back in forth -left to right if front of us-, bugled and talked mad to each other. The big bull was probably 4-6 feet higher than the other bull, who was in the very bottom of the canyon. The lead cow came to within 20 yards of me, while the two bulls were running back and forth, screaming at each other and putting on one of the coolest shows I’ve seen out in the elk woods.

After about 10 minutes of this, the cow started barking since she had not seen any elk, and moved off to 72 yards. She was barking and mewing, not scared, but looking for whatever was making the cow calls. She was looking right past me towards Justin. She was there with the other cow and two calves for a couple minutes, the bulls still putting on the show, and then Justin bugled. The bigger bull whipped his head around and bugled at us. He stopped chasing the smaller bull around and you could see him try to figure out his next move. Justin bugled some more and started breaking anything he could without moving too much. The bigger bull suddenly decided he was going to pick up those cows and came running to them. The bull and cows and calves stood there for a little while, at 72 yards perfectly broadside, considering what he should do. 72 yards is not a shot I want to take, so I waited him out.

He started pushing the cows into the bottom and went around the knife finger I was up against, so I slowly ran up to the corner where I saw them again. They had stopped in the bottom again, and I ranged the bull quartering away at 56 yards. I drew, the bull turned perfectly broadside, and I let the arrow go. With the wind in the bottom, I watched my arrow dive just a little right before it hit the bull. I hit the bull just above his leg bone where it angles forward, and didn’t get great penetration. The bull wheeled around and trotted for 20 yards and stood there bleeding. I could see I didn’t get great penetration, and he started slowly walking up the hill he had just came down before he put on the show with the little bull. With a good steady wind, I decided to try to get around him and get another arrow into him. I watched him lay down in the middle of the hill in some thick timber and made my move to get above him. I was creeping up to where I thought I could see him and glassed back at Justin. He had his arms out imitating the antlers and was indicating the bull was tipping his head and laying it down on the ground. After probably 10 minutes of slowly creeping up towards the bull, I saw him doing just that with his head. He was sick but still alive. I got into a position where if he got up and moved, I would get a shot. If he stayed down, it was only 10 minutes till dark, and I would back out and we’d find him in the morning. The bull was obviously hurting, and slowly stood up and tried to walk up the hill some more, but couldn’t, so he turned and started walking right at me, turned again and faced up a little draw and layed down at 42 yards, broadside to me. I was at full draw since he was trying to stand and as soon as he layed down, I put my pin right in the middle of his lungs, shot and hit him perfectly. The bull slowly got back up, and within 10 seconds stumbled and fell down the sidehill into a pile of ceder trees. It was done and I was stoked.

I backed out, met up with Justin, found my first arrow and still gave the bull 30 minutes even though I knew he wasn’t getting back up. We couldn‘t believe what we had seen there for 20 minutes, or that we got the bull we had wanted to get on that night. The show we witnessed and how everything played out textbook perfect (other than the arrow catching the wind in the bottom right before impact and having to get another arrow into him). We walked back up there and the bull had fell into the perfect position for an old warrior to die. Head resting against a downed tree, chin on a branch, just like we had propped him up. My second arrow blew completely through him and had ended it. We took pictures, got him quartered up and in a tree and just like that our season was over, on the same weekend, only two weeks into archery season!

How we found my bull

Getting hands on him!

Getting the pack ready for the hike out

 

[Logan T]

The experience we had the night we killed my bull was one that I know I will never forget. I’ve seen some amazing shows put on by elk before, but to be within 100 yards of those two bulls doing their thing for that long and then for everything to work out perfect and the way it did is something that I hope to see again, but realistically know the chances are slim to see something like that. Luckily, I’ve got a lot of years left ahead of me, Lord willing! Now we both just have to figure out what to do for the next 11.5 months!

Thanks for reading, I know it was a long one! And after typing this up and the story I wrote last year, I think that everyone should do the same. I had no intentions of making this a yearly thing, but now I think that I am going to type up a recap of every season and save them all in one place. Down the road it might be a fun thing to put together in a “book” (very informal and just for personal use). It might get pretty neat looking back through them in 30, 40, 50 years from now!

 

[tntrker]

WOW, thanks for sharing and CONGRATS to you both!!

 

[weekender7]

Awesome hunt, recap, pics, bulls the whole 9 yards, or was it 56. KILLER!

 

[Ross]

Great write up and another great bull congrats Logan

 

[nrh6.7]

Great write up, thanks for sharing!

 

[Scrappy]

Thanks for for taking us along.

 

[elkguide]

What a great time. Congratulations.

 

[Disco14]

Thanks for sharing- great read and congrats on two awesome bulls!

 

[Pelagic]

Talk about dinner and a show! Congrats on a great season for both of you.


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[Studd muffin]

Congratulations, and thanks for sharing. I enjoy reading stories like this.

 

[Bm22]

Congrats on those bulls. I know score isn’t what it is about but for my learning purposes what size are those bulls?

 

[Cinch]

Excellent... congratulations to you both...

 

[jvonbank]

Thanks for sharing the hunt again - great recap and elk!

Jared

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[ChrisAU]

Awesome story!

 

[Downeaster]

Fantastic. Thanks for sharing.

 

[JPD350]

The epitome of an elk hunt, congratulations!!

 

[ndbwhunter]

Congrats on an awesome hunt! I can't see the photos for some reason. Anyone else not seeing the photos? I've tried three different browsers.