WOW!! Thanks for all the accolades Brothers, I'm overwhelmed. I just hope you don't get bored with the rest of the story!
Anyhow, I killed my last bull in '11 on No Name Mountain,(that's a made-up name to prevent spot burning), and then had a bit of a dry spell in '12 and '13, I didn't draw in '14. I saw a bunch of bulls those years. One morning my son bugled in 3 bulls in a half hour time period, the first was a bit smaller than I wanted, the second was a nice 6x6 that walked by at 20 yards in a thick aspen grove that offered no shot opportunity and then spooked when he saw my son, and third was a beauty of a 6-pointer that came straight in to me and turned to his right and stood there with a tiny bit of clear snot running out of his left nostril with his left eye trained on me 10 feet away! After he winded me and ran off I literally had to sit down.
Then there was the non-typical that was scent following a cow that passed in front of us 5 minutes earlier, when he got to 15 yards I rose up to shoot, he spotted me, I froze, satisfied I was nothing to be concerned with he resumed his frantic search. I drew back picking a spot on his left side, and just as I released he spun to his left and my arrow clipped him on the point of his right shoulder! AHHH!!
This year was going to be different. Big bull or nothing. I'm closer to 60 than 59 and elk hunting is for the young studs right? The end of my hunting tunnel is getting bigger and bigger. The neck/back injury I sustained 30 years ago is making it harder and harder to pull back my old second-hand Black Widow with the 63# limbs on her.
When I first went West in '76 it was all new. New smells, new trees, new animals, big hills, big mountains, Big Sky. And just like my Traditional Archery journey, it's been about chasing my youth, an old man trying to find the magic again.
I've also evolved into a more Spiritual person, maybe not so afraid of my own death, feeling more of a Brotherhood with everything that suckles it's Mother's teats and bleeds red blood, more of a part of the Great Spirits' plan and nature itself.
8/31/2015. I arrive in Jackson, WY where my son summers as a fishing guide, and it's good to be back. We lost our private land access to NoName after 2011 and have been hunting various other public lands ever since. The kid hunts with me the first couple days of the season and we get into some elk. It's all about conditioning now anyhow, just start wearing off the boot rubber. Hunting is going to heat up this weekend, new moon, The One Fly is on and he has to work, but after that look out. We have some unfinished business with a couple monster bulls we played cat and mouse with back in 2013.
Enough of the tangent stuff, off to bed now, story to follow.
Topic: 5X7 WY BULL, rest of the story on 6 and 7 (Read 5062 times)
