The morning of September 9, 2007, I woke up at 5:50 AM. Camped in the middle of the Tillamook Forest mountains, I asked two different hunting partners if they wanted to go with me up my favorite road that particular year. They both said, “No,” so I went by myself. Later I found out that that would make the difference in me being successful later day.
When I was about half way up the hill on the closed road I wanted to hunt, I saw fresh elk sign so I started walking much slower and paying closer attention. The wind was blowing about 10 MPH, directly into my face. The farther I walked up the road, the fresher the elk sign got. Every time the road took a turn or bend, to my amazement, the wind stayed perfectly in my face.
The elk sign got so fresh while continuing up the road that I had a very good feeling about getting into the elk. Up above the three tops the wind grew stronger, strong enough to blow a good sized limb out of a tree. When the limb hit the ground with a crash, about 80 yards away, to my surprise, it fell close to a herd of elk. The crash made them move enough to make noise (limbs snapping and such.)
I stood still for at least 10-15 minutes without hearing anything at all- then suddenly, a single cow mew, then another and another. I believed the whole herd was within 50 yards at that point (about 20 head.) Suddenly they all lit up in song at once, and started walking parallel to me. They swung around in front of me to end up crossing the road, 45 yards in front of me.
You should know I’m hunting with a 65 Lb Savannah longbow for the first time ever. I’d wanted to go traditional for a few years. I finally bit the bullet and sold my compound knowing I would have no choice what bow to use.
A few cows crossed the road and circled around me but never going far enough around to catch my wind. By this time I have had many perfect broad side shots presented to me, but I knew I could only shoot out to 25 yards max. Then I could hear the herd bull glunking probably 10-12 times. I had never heard glunking in the woods before, only on hunting videos! The massive bull was hot. He stepped down onto the road behind two or three cows. He stepped out further and stopped, perfect broadside, 45 yards away. Then I thought about the fact that if one of my buddies with a compound was with me, the hunt would have been over right there. After sniffing those cows, he moved on to others. He started to trot over around where the first cows ran. I lost sight of him. This whole time, cows are talking all around me. The calls were longer and deeper than I had heard up there the week before. They sounded more estrus-like. I think that’s why that bull was so giddy- just running back and forth from cow to cow, bugling about 5 or 6 times. The cows at 45 yards finally looked at me. I was standing right in the middle of the road with nothing between us or behind me to break up my silhouette.
The large cow in that group looked right at me and I thought it was all over. I forgot my hat at home and had no face camo on. As soon as I saw her look at me I looked down at the ground to avoid eye contact. I watched her out of the corner of my eye, until she went back to feeding for about one minute then looked right back at me and I looked down again. That was repeated about four times.
I never saw which elk busted me, but the whole herd and herd bull bolted back the direction I saw them come from. Then I saw the bull running back and I noticed four cows still on the left side of the road. The bull was coming back to get those four cows. The bull was running through the woods on my right. The cows were running through the woods on my left. So I started running down the road right between them. The bull really covered some ground. He circled way up around in front of me to where I couldn’t see him anymore. He cut off the cows so they would end up crossing the road I was standing on 25 yards in front of me. Of course my mouth call was at home in my hat. So when the first two crossed the road I let out a deer bleat with my own voice. That did nothing to slow them down. Then the next two on the same trail crossed the road. I did another bleat to stop them. They wanted to stop as bad as the first two and kept on running! I looked back in the woods behind where they came from and I saw the herd bull running down the same trail the cows had just run down.
So without thinking I took five steps closer to the trail because I really wanted that 20 yard shot. As he stepped onto the road I did a much louder deer bleat and to my surprise he stopped in his tracks right in the middle of the road- absolutely perfect broadside, 20 yards looking down the hill to see where his cows were. I pulled the arrow back and as soon as I hit my anchor point on my face, I let the 670 grain log of an arrow fly (traveling about 180 feet per second.)
It buried itself deep into the side of that Goliath beast, standing about 6 feet tall to the top of his back. I could feel my eyes open as wide as they could as I looked at the side of that animal, noticing barely more than the fletchings sticking out of his side. I was quite surprised I actually hit him good- a little far back but middle body. He stood there at least a full second after he was hit. I don’t think he knew he was hit. He took off running straight down the hill, carrying my arrow the whole way I could see him. Once, he was out of sight and I couldn’t hear anything, I walked up to where I shot him and put one knee on the ground and thanked Jesus for the incredible hunt I had just received. I stood up, marked the tree where he ran down, turned around and walked straight to my pick up. I knew he was hit far back so I wanted to give him time.
That was 9 AM. I went back to camp to recruit help for tracking and packing. I returned at 11 AM or so with four other hunting buddies. The tracking wasn’t looking good with very little blood. I could hear others talking in the background, commenting about so little blood and the likelihood of not being hit well enough. But they didn’t see what I saw so I kept my spirits up. It actually ended up being a short track to the bull, about 100 yards, extreme side hill down. I center-punched his liver. He was a very respectable 5X6, but he had broken his third point on the right. I didn’t care… he was beautiful!
Once we all reached the animal, I asked everybody if we could pray real quickly. I was expecting them to not be comfortable with that because I didn’t know the faith of 3 of them. We were all standing around the elk. One of the guys stretched out his hands so we made a circle of hunters, hand in hand, and thanked God for this magnificent animal.
The guys back at camp had been talking to a logger every night on his way out of the woods as he drove past our camp. Keeping him posted on our current updates on hunting they told him I got a 5X6 missing a point. Two nights later he stopped in and asked my friends if the missing point was the third on the right. My buddies replied in astonishment, “yes!” but how in the world do you know that? Amazingly, he was talking to a co-logger of his that was hunting the same bull in the same area two weeks previous. He and his son could only get him into about 100 yards with a bugle. They had gotten him real worked up so that he was rooting around in the ground with his antlers. After the bull left the area the hunters walked up to where he was rooting and found a point lying on the ground, wedged partly under a tree root (looking like a right third.)
As soon as I heard this story, I drove up into the forest where they were logging and tracked down the logger who had told my friend about the broken point. I showed him the rack he had asked for me to bring up with me. The logger that had the point wasn’t there but I did get his name. I tracked him down and amazingly it was the point that my bull had lost- a perfect fit! Then later my taxidermist told me he could put it back and the points would still count for Pope & Young. He ended up scoring gross, 249 2/8 and net, 242 3/8. I never did enter it… maybe someday.
Topic: First year w/longbow 2007 (Read 1089 times)
