Just got back from my annual bowhunt to a wilderness area that I've been hunting for 20+ years. My son couldn't make it this year due to a business committment but my son-in-law joined me again. We got a late start because he is never ready on-time but we made it to the trailhead by late afternoon. It took us about 2-1/2 hours to hike the 5 miles into our base camp and we were hit hard with rain most of the way. As we set up camp it was starting to get dark and the rain let up. Bulls started bugling in 3 different directions. It bode well for our morning hunt. As I was putting in my last tent stake I heard splashing from the creek 10 yards from camp. I thought my son-in-law was getting water for us to filter for dinner. I looked toward the creek and saw a fairly large black bear running up the trail toward my tent and me. He was looking down creek and not towards me as he ran. My heart jumped as he ran straight toward me. When he got to about 2 feet from my tent he finally saw it and me and took off like a shot through our camp and beyond. I yelled "bear" to my son-in-law who had a bear tag. He grabbed his bow and ran after the bear, only to see his rear end as he disappeared into the woods.
The bulls bugled all night so we knew the warm weather was forcing them to be active nocturnally and wouldn't be as active during the day. Hard to sleep when they are bugling in all directions. Next morning the sky was clear and temp was at 42 degrees. We started hunting toward the nearest bull bugling. He was apparently bedded down on a steep aspen hillside above our camp and was not going to be coaxed into my cow calls. We saw him that evening and he was a beautiful ivory tined bull with several cows.
There was no way we could stalk this bull with the vision he had on that aspen hillside so we moved on to the next bugling bull. He turned out to be a large body 5x5 by himself looking for cows. As we were closing our distance to him silently he took us by surprise and came directly toward us. He caught us in the open and we had to hunker down behind some 4' high willow bushes. I didn't have time to deploy my cow elk decoy but decided to try cow calling him anyway. He instantly bugled and started tearing up aspen branches and prancing back & forth. He became suspicious after a while of not being able to locate the cow elk making the cow calls and finally took off into the aspens above us. Darn it. But at least we were getting action and that's what it's all about to me. No more action that day except getting to watch a coyote as it was hunting near us.
Next day broke clear and beautiful after a night of elk bugling near camp. There was no bugling this morning and no answers to our bugles or cow calls so we decided to do some exploring to some areas we have never hunted. We normally try to stay within a mile of our base camp so that we can haul meat reasonably easy back camp to cool down. Today we decided to go further and ended up hiking 3 miles further back into the wilderness area. Turns out that it was incredibly beautiful and ideal looking habitat for elk with lots of downed timber, deep dark forest and plenty of water holes. We saw lots of sign of elk as we started back toward camp hunting as we went. At about 2-1/2 miles from camp we saw a 4x4 raghorn that presented a decent broadside shot. From about 20 yards I drew back my 52# Stalker Stickbow Coyote longbow and my arrow, tipped with a Cutthroat broadhead, did a complete pass-through both lungs. It was fun to watch my green Nockturnal all the way. The bull jumped a little but didn't take off so I put my second arrow through him as he quartered away from me. That arrow went through his heart and he tumbled over and kicked for a minute.
It took my son-in-law and me just under 2 hours to completely bone him out. He wasn't very large, maybe the size of the cow elk I shot last year and the year before, but he'll be tender eating. It was getting to be late afternoon so we were worried about bears getting into the 2 quarters at the kill site as we packed out 2 quarters to base camp. So we decided to try to pack out all 4 quarters at once. OMG that was a tough one. We figured we each carried 100# of meat on our hunting packs down the steep decent through downed timber and lush vegetation. That was so much weight that my toes jammed into the fronts of my boots no matter how tight my laces were. Very painful and I will definitely lose several toe nails but we made it by dusk back to our base camp. We put each quarter of boned-out meat into a 10 gallon zip lock bag and set them in the creek to chill out.
Next morning we hiked out over 200# meat and our camp packs to an intermediate camp site 3-1/2 miles in from our vehicle at the trailhead. It took us the rest of the day to recuperate. The following morning we made 3 trips each down the final 3-1/2 miles to our coolers and then home.
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Topic: Colorado raghorn down (Read 1160 times)
