I left home on August 27th for eastern Oregon and set up camp. Had two friends that were coming over later in the season, but I was on my own for a couple of weeks.
The afternoon of opening day brought a big rain storm that settled the dust and made the woods quiet, but the storm broke just before dark and produced a beautiful sunset.
The first two weeks brought close encounters and lots vocal bull, especially at night near camp.
The days began to run together, but every hunt produced something to stow away in the memory bank (and hunting journal).
The fresh rubs and wallows were showing up on an increasingly regular basis.
Then on Sept. 15th my friend Kyle and I found a huge double decker wallow and I decided I needed to hang a treestand next to the wallow.
So we went up to a saddle I had a stand hanging, packed it out and packed it into the new wallow. Finally had the stand hung and ready at 4pm, and my buddy left me sitting over the wallow for the evening.
At 6:20pm I heard something off to my right that sounded different from all the squirrel and bird noises that I'd been hearing. I took the bow off the tree step it was hanging on and stood up. Then through a small hole in the spruce tree on my right I spot black legs coming my direction. Then the elk came over to within 20 yards and stopped at a tiny clear stream to drink. I could finally see that it was a bull, and could hear it slurping and swallowing the water for 5 minutes.
Eventually the bull had it's fill and walked toward the wallow but stopped with just his head, neck, and shoulders exposed. The bull watched the area and moved his ears back and forth for another 4-5 minutes giving me time to relax and control my breathing. Then he stepped forward to the bottom of the wallow and turned his head to sniff the mud at approximately 10 yds. I was already at half draw and don't even remember completing the my draw...but in an instant my arrow buried tight behind the bull's left shoulder.
The bull took off to my left and crashed away through the downed logs. Within seconds the crashing subsided, then I heard a couple of groan sounds followed by another crash. A few seconds later I heard a strange sound I can't put into words, followed by silence. I knew the shot was good and the bull had gone down within 10 seconds or so.
After waiting a few moments to calm down and collect my thoughts I lowered my bow and climbed down. My arrow had hit a rib on the far side that prevented it from exiting, but there was still plenty of blood to follow. After 100 yds or so I found my bull.
My buddy was coming back to pick me up at dark, so I went down to meet him and it was dark by the time we got back to the downed bull.
While butchering that night we found the front part of my arrow inside the chest cavity and that the Woodsman Elite and penetrated through the heart.
This was the first elk I've taken from a treestand. Finding that wallow was a stroke of luck!
I was using my Blacktail 60# recurve, my own doug fir arrows footed with winge, and a 125 gr Woodsman Elite.
Topic: Oregon elk success. (Read 2655 times)
