I was lucky enough to take this Colorado cow last week. We are still in camp and will be here for another 3 weeks but my elk season is over.
It was a morning hunt and I was sitting on one side of a very deep canyon talking back and forth with a bull over on the other side. It was after 8 o'clock and he sounded like he had lain down for the day and was simply squealing every once in a while because he was bored. I was not going to cross the canyon an try him because I have been suckered into doing this many times. They will answer until you get inside their area and then vacate the premises.
This had been going on for most of an hour when a cow and a calf came from my right and below me. The air was absolutely still and my scent had settled in the area. She immediately went on alert but was undecided which way to go. After looking in all directions, she turned broad side and looking away.
This was my chance, I picked up my Black Widow and slowly turned into shooting position. This is where thoughts went through my head about whether I wanted to take a cow or continue to hunt for a bull. My season would be over and I would have to quit until next year.
As you can see I have absolutely no will power so I came to full draw and picked my spot and released. The arrow hit mid rib and deflected slightly rearward. I immediately thought it had touched the side of a rib which caused this.
She headed off into the deep canyon at an angle and disappeared after 100 yards. I heard a crash to the left of where I last saw her and marked the area in my mind. After 30 minutes I eased down to where I thought she had turned left. A cow jumped up and disappeared around a point. Thinking this was a different cow I concentrated on where the crash sound came from.
After finding nothing I returned to where the cow had gone. I found blood immediately and sat down and waited some more. A while later after easing about 75 yards I saw her lying down in some tall brush and looking back at me. She got up again and moved out of sight.
I returned to camp and gathered some equipment and 4 friends to help with the retrieval. We were close to where I last saw her when she was spotted lying dead about 60 yards away. When we walked up to her we could see that bears had already found her and had dragged her a few feet. A front leg had been chewed on pretty hard near the elbow and there was a large patch of skin removed from her lower belly. She also had some claw marks that were through the skin but no meat was damaged. We felt we had interrupted the bears as we approached and ran them off without seeing them. One hour later and this elk would have been ruined. We were very lucky.
The arrow had glanced of the side of a rib as I suspected and went through the near side lung and then the liver. Bow used was a Black Widow with a CX Heritage 250 arrow tipped with a Tuffhead broadhead. Total arrow weight is 630 grains.
Topic: Colorado Cow (Read 1237 times)
