In this particular area given the winds and terrain it seemed really best to hunt in the evening so you didn’t end up spooking them out of the country. I got up early in the morning anyway and checked fields to see if they were being hit. One morning while checking an alfalfa field edge I heard some crashing in the bush along the field edge in front of me. In a few seconds, out popped a cow elk racing across the field. I was standing there wondering how I spooked her when all of a sudden out came a nice sized grey wolf in full pursuit about 20 yards behind her. They raced across the field and into the bush just above the farm. Pretty incredible......and probably part of the reason I saw almost no deer and very few calf elk in the area.
Most mornings I was seeing elk in the fields so I kept adjusting my stand location to where they may come out that night. An easy to use and set up tree stand is a real necessity for this and I can highly recommend either Lone Wolf hang on stand and their climbing sticks. Of course, some mornings I saw nothing so I could only guess where they may be.
On tues. I moved my tree stand to a trail that looked really good to me and I had some trail cam pictures of spikes and cows using it earlier in the summer. I sat it that evening and it was a nice quiet evening and for once the bugs weren’t too bad. By sunset all I’d seen was a family of ruffed grouse and thought that was going to be it for the night. We can legally hunt until 30 min after sundown and at about 15 min past, I could hear a big animal coming down the trail. I just ‘knew’ it was an elk. My only concern was how dark it was getting and whether I would be able to see it well enough to shoot. To practice for this very thing, during the summer I made some cardboard cutouts shaped like deer/elk and would shoot at them in my back yard once the sun went down. I found I could shoot well in low light but really had to concentrate extra hard on picking a spot. As it approached I could see it was a spike bull and I could actually see him really well. I knew instantly I would shoot if I could. He came down the trail as expected, but instead of turning on main trail where I would have a broadside shot he came on a smaller path toward me at an angle. At 12 yds I stopped him in an opening with a low soft grunt, hit full draw, concentrated hard on a spot just behind his shoulder and released. I could see the arrow disappear tight behind his shoulder but because of the angle I also knew I’d probably only get one lung at best. He immediately spun and ran back a bit to where he’d come from and stood still. I couldn’t see him but knew he didn’t have a clue as to what happened. After a bit he moved off slowly and I could hear him breaking brush for a ways and then stop. He did this a couple of times and I then I could hear really labored breathing and gurgling. After a few minutes it grew quiet, so I texted my buddy and told him to meet me at the truck. We gave him about 45 min and then took up the trail. We couldn’t find the arrow and so started looking for blood. After a few minutes of looking we finally found a few specks of bright bubbly blood about 10 yds or so from where I’d shot him and the trail got better from there and was really a pretty decent blood trail. After a few minutes of trailing and sometimes losing the blood for a bit we found him about 50 yds from where I’d shot him.
Topic: Ghosts of the Forest (Read 826 times)
