2012 MT Public Land DIY elk/muley

[student]

Scoot,

First off, I love your stories and how well you incorporate the pictures and narrate the play by play of your experiences in the outdoors.

Would it be possible to edit the title to indicate when the story was last updated? I find myself checking the thread everytime I see new activity only to be dissappointed.

[Scoot]

...only to be dissappointed.

Shucks Student, dissappointment is my middle name!!!

Honestly, most days will be updated between 8:00 and 10:00 AM. After that, it's basically a bunch of questions and comments by others and smart aleck replies by me. The actual additions to the story come on week days in the AM typically. I hope that helps.

[engfish]

And the Fan Club grows.

Let me know how all those new hunting trips go over with the Missus...you Big Talker.

"Hey honey, the guys on the forum are going to fund some additional hunting trips..."

"So that I can write about..."

"Sorry guys...my wife says I'm lucky I'm not living out on the back yard already."

You are entertaining, though.

[Scoot]

LOL- Engfish you've pretty well got me figured out!

My wife's pretty great though- if I had a free hunt thrown my way, she'd work out the logistics with me on the home front and make sure I got to do it.

[Scoot]

Day 4

Jon and I went into the big basin near camp. This is the area Gabe and I drooled over while studying the maps- it looked to have it all! There was a nice North facing slope, some flat areas in the bottom, some small open parks, streams running on each side of the bottom- it looked great! Before we left I said at camp that I would shoot an elk this day. In all honestly, I had a feeling, but I had no idea whether that feeling applied to me or either of the other guys shooting a bull that day.

We slowly worked our way along the North facing slope, about ½ way down from the top. Occasionally we’d bugle or lost cow call to try coax a response out of a bull. After lost cow calling, I heard light chuckling 120 yards ahead. It was windy and tough to make out, but it was definitely a bull chuckling. Jon grabbed my shoulder and whispered, “Was that a tree?” Just as I was about to answer, the bull chuckled again and we sprinted into action. Jon ran ahead of me in the shooter position and we both moved in to what we thought was about 80 yards from the bull. This was playing out to be the type of calling scenario I love- get in a bull’s living room and make him mad! That’s exactly how it played out…

I dropped one more whiney estrus call and waited. Two seconds later, the bull responded with a bugle. Instead of letting him finish trying to bugle in this cow, I cut him off with a wicked, loud, screaming bugle of my own. …and just like that, he came storming in! We immediately could hear his hooves pounding the mountain as he came in to fight this bull for the “lost cow”. The mad bull streaked from 80 to 35 yards in about one second- you could still hear the echoing of my cut off bugle ringing through the dense canopy above and around us. Just then, however, I felt the fickle mountain winds blow at the back of my neck. Jon felt the same and hoped the bull would show himself before it was too late. However, the wise old bull tip toed out of there almost as quickly as he came running in and we never heard from him again. In fact, even though he was approaching chip shot range for Jon, neither of us ever even saw the bull. Wow what a rush! So close…

As we discussed what our plan was next we heard a different bull bugling down in the lower part of the basin below us. We dropped 1000 feet of elevation as fast as we could, crossed a small creek, and found our way up a tiny finger ridge near the bottom of that part of the basin. Just as we got up on the flattened out top of the little ridge, we heard a stick snap and looked intently at where it came from. A few seconds later Jon whispered, “There he is.” I immediately saw a bull making his way down the sidehill, across the creek, and towards our direction. I sneaked up about ten yards to find an open area that’d provide a shooting lane to where he was headed. Jon was three steps behind me and we both had arrows knocked, releases hugging the D loops, and we were on extremely high alert. The bull came up out of the creek and walked on a path that would put him 20 yards ahead of us. He stopped behind some small evergreens at 30 yards and surveyed the situation. Just as he started to slowly walk from his stopping point towards my shooting lane ten yards ahead of him, I felt it again- the wind blew from the back of my neck directly towards the bull. “This isn’t going to come together”, was all I had in my head. However, the bull walked forward and as he did he went behind another evergreen tree. I drew my arrow back, locked into my anchor point, and waited for a second. My pin found his shoulder as I could see parts and pieces behind the cover of the pine needles. “Is Jon going to cow call to stop him? Should I cow call to stop him? Should I just shoot him as he slowly walks?” I decided on the latter- he was moving pretty slowly and my pin was locked onto his shoulder blade. He made his way into my shooting lane and I started to squeeze my release- as I sit here typing I can still see my pin held steadily on the back of his shoulder and feel the breeze on the back of my neck blowing directly towards the bull.

A little side note about our accommodations on this trip. We each packed in about 42-45 lbs of “stuff” to where we camped. The majority of this weight was made up of our tents, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, our food, and the packs themselves. There were a number of other items we all carried, but the lion’s share of weight came from the items mentioned above. Here’s a quick look at some of these items in action.

Here’s a look at camp.

Inside one of our tents- pretty minimalistic, as you can see…

Here’s a look at our food, which consisted of some kind of breakfast bar in the AM, trailmix and a peanut butter/bacon sandwich for lunch, and mountain house meals in the evening. We used small portable stoves that weigh next to nothing and take up little space- they’re pretty cool little gizmos. There are lots of options for these and the three of us actually carried three different stoves. Here are a few pics of some of the food and food prep equipment.

My grub for the day.

Jon’s food for the day.

Evening grub with stove in bag.

[Scoot]

The peanut butter/bacon sandwiches don’t do too well at the bottom of a pack over the course of a week or more.

Mmmmm… doesn’t that look good?!? …and that’s a pic of one on the second day of the trip! They got much worse!!!

Jon’s stove.

Me making a little food at night- don’t I look like a completely wiped out pile o’ poo?

Gabe “cooking”.

Back to the story… Almost simultaneous to my shot, the bull took a firm left-footed step and snapped his head in our direction. My arrow was in flight and the bull was stopped, locked up, and looking and smelling our way. He had smelled us, but just a microsecond too late. “Whack!”, the arrow made a very loud noise at impact and I almost immediately turned to Jon and said, “Man, I hit him in the back of the shoulder” (well, that’s the G rated version of what I said). Jon tried to find an opening for a second arrow, but the bull had wheeled and looped around and away from us just a little too far away for a shot. Jon quickly cow called and then the mountain went silent.

I had a frustrated, irritated, disappointed kind of reaction- I’d just been given a gift of a chip shot opportunity and I figured I’d blown it. Far, far worse than missing an animal is hitting one poorly and given the sound and what I’d seen, I was sure I’d done just that. We marked where we last saw the bull in between some trees about 60 yards away and we sat down to discuss the details of what had just happened. Essentially, Jon saw none of the shot or where the impact was- he was immediately behind me and was looking for a shooting lane just past mine, in case the bull kept going forward and I missed or failed to get a shot or even if I hit him, Jon figured he might get a chance to get a second arrow in him.

We waited for 30 minutes and agreed to track him up to the point where we had a strong visual on him. We heard him go further than this, so we knew we could at least start on the blood trail to that point and not worry about bumping the bull from his bed. Once we reached the point where we’d seen him last, we would stop and wait for at least two hours from the time the bull was shot.

We recreated the shot and determined where the bull was when I shot. This is the view I had when I shot. The bull was just beyond my bow (you can see the arrows and cams just past the big log). It’s hard to tell from the pic, but I had a very open shot at the bull- he was well above the sticks towards the bottom/middle of the pic and to the right of the bowed branch in the background. It was an easy shot at an even easier distance and I’d managed to mangle it.

After impact, the bull wheeled back behind the bow to the left, then across to the right, making a big, wide semi-circle before he disappeared. I’m colorblind, so I’m little help tracking. Jon, on the other hand, has sharp eyes and is a good tracker. He found no sign of blood for almost 15 minutes, but soon I spotted my arrow about 20 yards from where the bull was hit.

This will give you an idea of how much penetration I got on the shot. There’s about 3-4 inches of blood on the arrow past where it broke off, so we guessed I’d gotten 12-14 inches of penetration total.

Fifteen minutes later we still had no sign of blood, but I spotted a fishy looking spot on a log that Jon soon confirmed was blood. From there it was nearly all Jon- he tracked pinhead sized drops of blood and hoof prints in the tiny yellow plants and dirt for over 60 yards. The going was extremely slow and by the time we reached the point where we’d seen the bull last, it’d been nearly two hours- not a good sign. I wish I’d have taken a couple pics of the pinhead sized drops Jon was tracking- it was really impressive! I didn’t have my camera when he suggested we take a pic of one spot he found and forgot to take a pic later- dang it!

After being stuck for almost 15 minutes I looped ahead hoping to find something. I spotted a couple of questionable marks on a rock, but saw this a few yards later- even I can identify this with my colorblind eyes!

From there we had about 60 more yards of a pretty good blood trail. However, the floodgates seemed to open up after that and Jon was literally tracking at a fast walk, seeing blood all over the trail five and ten yards ahead of him at a time. Sixty yards of this and we found the bull! We’d have never found this bull without Jon’s sharp eyes and awesome tracking job- I owe him big time! Here’s his final resting place.

I've got several more pics of the bull that I'll share, but I've got a friend who's a photoshop expert who's working on cleaning up the pics a bit. All he's doing is removing the blood from the pics so they're a little more presentable. I'll either wait until I get the cleaned up version of them to post them or, if I don't have the tweaked up versions soon, I'll post the originals then swap them out once I get them cleaned up. Either way, I'll have them posted in the next hour or two.

[CrewJones]

Great work !!! that looks heavy !

[DonBo]

Awesome, awesome, awesome! Was a little dissapointed when you were squeezing the release only to break away for sleeping bag and mushed sandwich photos, but this was a great (and quick) follow up. WTG Scoot!

[student]

I thought it was a regularly scheduled commercial break sponsored by bacon and Mountain House. Great read, makes me want to get out into the woods.

[Scott K]

Good job guys!

[jerkin'm]

Sweet story, almost like being there...am I blind, or did the antlers fall off when he hit the ground???

[BRULEDRIFTER]

I see no bone, nor do I see a "package" either.

Either way, sweet story and congrats on connecting! Uber jealous!

[Scoot]

Hey, don't you guys be commenting on my bull's "bone" or his "package"! He's got both bone and package. It'll make a lot more sense when I get the pics posted. DTro generously offered to fix them up for me and I should be able to get them posted today sometime.

[student]

That right there is funny.

[dukhnt]

Awesome story and great tracking!! Keep it coming.

[DonBo]

Wondering what kind of "Photoshop" job we'll be seeing? Just givin' ya hard time Scoot. You've come to expect nothing less.

[Cheetah]

Am I blind, or are the antlers missing?

[Scoot]

I thought it was a regularly scheduled commercial break sponsored by bacon and Mountain House.

LOL- now THAT's funny!!! I wish was I had Mountain House and bacon as sponsors. Of course, with a world wide shortage of bacon on the horizon, they'd probably drop me in a heartbeat... Plus, I'd have to be honest and talk about what Mountain House does to my (and Jon and Gabe's) GI tract- they'd drop me in a heartbeat. I'll spare you details, but it's really not pretty...

[Scoot]

Am I blind, or are the antlers missing?

Blind. I'm working on the pics that'll make it all make sense. However, in the pic above, you actually can see some antler. However, it's not what you'd expect to see...

[jerkbait]

Cool beans Scoot, Congrats!!!!! I am loving the story as well. As I usually do with your stories.

[sticknstring]

Sweet - elk chops in the freezer - congrats Scoot! Now the work begins!

[Sifty]

Just got into the ofice and the first thing I do is to see what direction the hunt will go today.

Congrats on the bull the shot and the find.

BTW if you work somthing out with the bacon sponsors I want in.

Sifty

[Scoot]

Thanks to DTro, you folks get to see the rest of the pics today! Thanks again, Darren!

I’d noticed when I saw him first coming into my shooting lane that not only did he just have one normal side to his rack, but that he had a goofy club on the other side. Here are a couple shots of this goofy club to show you how non-typical he is.

After some congratulations and “atta boys” we took some pics and then went to work. Here are a couple of hero shots of us and the bull.

Most importantly- a shot of me and a great friend with a bull we’d worked hard to lay our hands on. Jon and I have had many, many busted hunting and fishing trips together- individually we often do well, together we’ve traditionally struggled. Not this day though- we’d done it and finally broken the jinx in a big way! Although maybe not a great picture, this is a great picture to me.

I’ve talked about the gutless method a few times on this site, so I remembered to take some pics of this (a few anyway). Here are the pics that should give you a decent idea of what to do when taking care of an elk (or deer) with the gutless method. First, cut the fur off down the line of the spine and skin the front and back shoulders. You can pull the skin off in between them or leave it on and cut around it (we took it off here).

Next lift the front shoulder by lifting it up and cutting the connective tissue underneath (this one’s easy)- remove the entire front quarter this way. Next, cut down to the pelvis between the two back quarters. From there cut outward until you find the ball joint (hip joint)- cut the connective tissue and remove all the other connective tissue that holds the rear quarter in place- remove rear quarter. Both quarters are removed in this way in the pic below.

Next, cut out the backstrap. Finally, and unfortunately I forgot to get a pic of this, make a small cut (5” or so) just behind and along the edge of the last rib and reach along the inside of the spine and remove the inside tenderloin.

Flip the bull over and repeat. After this is done remove the neck meat and horns (I bring a Wyoming Saw for this) and you’re good to go.

Jon and I put the front quarters in his pack and the backstraps, loins, and rack on my pack. We bagged all of rear quarter meat and brought it down to the stream below us to hang in a tree. Here we are as we were about to take off with our first load, headed for the coolers and ice at the truck. Look how happy we look! Little did we know what we had in store for us over the next many hours…

[Scoot]

Just as we’d planned, we took the 60-65 lb. packs of meat down the basin and towards the truck. Unbeknownst to us, the knife ridge and rim of the bowl that formed the basin came together sharply as we approached the bottom, the side walls not only got steeper, they closed in on us, giving us an almost claustrophobic feeling. Additionally, the stream started to get stronger and bigger and we worried if we’d be able to cross it if we had to. Worst of all, however, were the blowdowns. I wanted to take some pics of them, but the further we went, the worse things got and soon we started to wonder what we’d gotten ourselves into. Wondering turned to worrying and several hours into our pack out we began to realize how dire our situation was becoming. The sun was headed to the horizon quickly now, the temps were already dropping fast, we didn’t have a lot of clothes with us, we were drenched in sweat, and we’d used my space blanket to remove the meat from the bone of the elk. It was becoming increasingly clear that the ridge we were following wasn’t going to the lake we thought it did and that we’d have no established trail to walk up on when we got to wherever we were going to.

We both had multiple ways to start a fire and we’re not scared of the dark, but the mountain side was so bone dry that we were afraid to start a fire for fear that we’d burn down half of Montana! On the way down to the bottom we found a somewhat open area and were fortunate enough to see the opening the truck was parked in. It was well over a mile away and we lost sight of this area as night fell and darkness swallowed us and our surroundings completely. We finally reached the bottom of the basin and were greeted with a crossable stream (good news) and a nearly vertical wall on the other side of it (not so good news). We took a break, had something to eat, and filtered some water for the remainder of the climb.

At the bottom near the stream we realized we only had a little over half-a-mile to go to the truck. However, we had well over 1000 feet of climb in that half-mile and some of it looked like it was going to be a problem. Just getting up the first 30 yards of the river bed proved dangerous, exhausting, and demoralizing. Once we got past this point though, the slope went from nearly impossible, to really difficult, which was a wonderful improvement! Our mantra became “just keep pecking away” and we did just that. However, at a scant distance of .39 miles and with many hundreds of feet left to climb (maybe 600 or 800) Jon started to get sick, likely from exhaustion and dehydration, and my legs began to turn to mush. We’d traveled a long ways while dangerously tired and we’d already risked injury- banged legs, knees, shins would be bad, but with that much weight and being as exhausted as we were I was afraid of falling and smashing a head on a rock or being impaled by one of the millions of the spear-like broken limbs that stuck out from the deadfalls. We finally decided to drop all of our meat and gear and make the final push to the truck without any of it. It was very tough going and we were shot. However, but we got to the truck in the dead of night- exhausted, beaten, battered, and bruised- but alright.

I wish I’d taken some pics of the mess we were in, but as things began to look more bleak pictures became the last thing on my mind. In fact, I’m pretty sure Jon may have beaten me if I’d tried to take pics of what was going on. You’ll have to trust me- it wasn’t pretty. When Jon and I have to constantly remind ourselves to “not panic” and that “we’ll be ok if we spend the night on the mountain”, things aren’t looking too peachy. We also worried about Gabe- not so much that he was OK, but more that he’d have a pretty miserable night wondering what ever happened to us. Worrying about him worrying wasn’t much fun, but there was nothing we could do about it. We agreed that he is a level-headed, bright guy and he’d stay calm, operate as if all was alright, and maintain an even keel. At least that’s what we hoped…

[mrklean]

Great job

[Scoot]

Over the weekend I got flack from a couple people about having my pictures photoshopped. My bro-in-law told me he thought I'd shot a cow and I only had the goofy rack photoshopped on the bull (he was just giving me a hard time). Another friend made similar comments. Just to show you what was done, I'll post an original and the photoshopped version.

Here's what the original of Jon and me with the bull looked like.

...and here's what it looked like after it was photoshopped. The only thing that was done was to clean up the blood. Much of the blood is cropped out of both pictures. I have no problem with blood and I appreciate it's part of the deal when one bowhunts. However, I prefer to remove as much of it as I can when I take pictures. I wiped off the elk's mouth and entry wound as much as I could with wet wipes. However, I ran out of wipes and there was still blood in both places. Without a stream really close, we called it "good enough" and took out pictures. Also, being colorblind, I didn't even see the blood on the ground when we took the pics- turns out there was quite a bit of it. However, thanks to DTro, that got cleaned up!

So, just to set the record straight, the pics above show the bull I really shot- no artificial enhancements to the rack or the bull, just a little cleaning up of blood is all.

Another thing I got asked about is how the rack of this bull compares to the first whitetail I ever shot? Well, there certainly are some interesting similarities- check out the rack of the whitetail I shot in 1984 at the tender young age of 12.

The whitetail's club hung a lot lower than the bull's, but there certainly are some similarities!

[Scoot]

Day 5

Jon and I got up after sleeping poorly for about three or four hours. Even though we had slept miserably in the cramped truck, we felt quite a bit better. We drove the truck as far as we could and walked down and got the meat, rack, and gear we’d left late the night before. From there we hoofed it back to camp, out to the hanging rear quarters, back past camp, and all the way to the truck. After not seeing Gabe in camp either time we assumed we’d see him at the truck- we talked about how he’d have our basecamp tent set up for all of us and that he’d have the stove all ready to cook us up a burger or two. We were very ready for a burger and thought we might even have a celebratory beverage too. However, just in case we were wrong we left a note in Gabe’s tent so he’d be clear on the happenings of the last day-and-a-half and what our plans were tomorrow.

Just before sundown we once again made it back to the truck. All was quiet. We could tell Gabe had been there by the shifting around of some of our gear and we knew he knew what had transpired over the last 24 hours, at least in a rough sense. He had to have seen the rack, that our frame packs were gone, that our hunting packs were there, and that two coolers were loaded up with elk meat, didn’t he? Again, we assumed so…

It was getting dark, we were shot, and we had over four miles back to our little spike camp from the truck. We’d just put on almost 20 miles hauling out the bull I shot and we were hungry and tired. We decided to eat, crash in the truck (again), and head for camp in the AM. This would cost Jon yet another morning of hunting, which I felt badly about, but he was as tired as me and our bodies were pretty well crushed at that point. Our feet, in particular, took a major beating over the 36 hours of packing out the bull. From the time we knocked the bull down to the time we got back to camp ready to hunt again, we’d covered 23 miles, almost half of which we were hauling meat and horns. Here’s a pic of Jon’s big toe, which was starting to get infected (caution: not a pretty sight! Look away if you don’t care to see yuckiness).

Believe it or not, the picture doesn’t really do the ugliness of his foot justice- LOL. Fortunately for all of you reading this story, you can’t see the oozing of green puss in a picture like this… My feet didn’t look much better. After doing surprisingly well for the first few days, they turned to hamburger over the course of getting that bull to the cooler. I had blisters in all the usual places and some in places I’d never seen the before. Isn’t elk hunting fun!?!

After the long haul out with the meat, Jon and I discussed the possibility of finding a packer if we were lucky enough to take another elk. I brought up the idea because 1) Jon and I were shot and we knew hunting would be pretty difficult for a day or two, and 2) because I felt guilty that I’d eaten into so much of Jon’s hunting time hauling out the bull. Jon agreed this would be a good idea and before we left the truck, we sent my brother a text message asking him to try dig up the name of a packer. Rod can sleuth out just about anything online and I figured he’d round up the name of a person or two for us.

I previously mentioned that on the walk in we stumbled into a wallow that some elk were headed towards. We thought we’d discovered a gold mine at the time. However, that didn’t turn out to be the case- there were wallows everywhere we turned in this country! With so many wallows to choose from, it was a needle in a haystack to pick the one that’d get hit on any one particular day. Here are a few pics of the many, many wallows we saw on the trip.

[paceman]

What do the elk do in the wallows? Waht is there purpose?

[Scoot]

Bull elk are said to "wallow" when they come in to a wallow (a wet spot on a mountain that elk have been using)and pee into the water, roll around in mud, paw the ground with their hooves, and rake their antlers in the mud/water. Peak wallow time is from about mid Aug to mid Sep. If it's hot, wallow action tends to be better. Also, once the cows come into heat, wallows get ignored more because of the bull's priorities.

Exactly why an elk does it is impossible to know, but the act of wallowing seems to get them fired up and preps them for the breeding that is soon to come. During early Sep it's not uncommon to see a bull elk all covered in mud as he does his thing around the mountain.

[Scoot]

Day 6

After eating and cleaning up a little, Jon and I made our way back to camp and waited for Gabe to show up. Remember Gabe? We wondered if he’d remember us at this point! It was Wed at noon and we hadn’t seen him since Mon at 5:30 AM. After ditching him for so long we wondered how his “solo backpack hunting trip” was going! We felt terrible for disappearing for so long and hoped he understood there was little we could do about it.

Just as anyone who knows him would predict, Gabe strolled into camp with a smile on his face and a congratulations for us taking an elk. We told him the story about the bull we shot and the pack out, then inquired about his last couple days. Here’s what he told us…

Gabe hunted NW of camp on Monday morning- he had a very interesting day. He heard a bull grunt 300 yards ahead, so he moved in to a reasonable distance and started cow calling. Soon, a decent 6x5 was slowly and silently moving in on him. The bull stopped at 50 yards and wouldn’t commit to coming any closer. Meanwhile, several cows were coming towards Gabe. Suddenly, a beautiful 6x6 herd bull came tearing in, screamed a wicked bugle, and chased a hot cow down the mountain at break-neck speeds. Gabe only saw him for a little over a second, but he could tell he was the stud of the mountain.

The 6x5 was still nearby, but wouldn’t come any closer and Gabe was pegged- he couldn’t move in on him any further. This stalemate lasted for almost ten minutes until the herd bull and the hot cow came back up the mountain, and they swept the whole harem of cows with them. The 6x5 shot out a few nervous grunts as if to say “show yourself” to the calling cow (Gabe). When didn’t show, the bull lost interest and faded away.

Random filler pic.

A little after noon, Gabe heard antlers crashing. He made his way towards the noise and he found two bulls, the 6x5 from before and a smaller 5x5, passively clanking their horns. They’d drop their heads and shake their racks back and forth gently. Before Gabe could get into bow range, the bulls both bedded down. He sneaked into about 40 yards from the 5x5, but he got pegged and the bull boogied out of there. However, the 6x5 was only another 15 yards away. He stood up when the 5x5 left and wondered what was happening. Gabe softly cow called twice and the bull came in on a string. Gabe came to full draw as the bull cleared a small pine tree- the bull caught Gabe’s movement and stopped in his tracks 15 yards away and facing him- the standoff began. Three minutes later, the bull won. Gabe, not feeling good about the shot, let down his draw and the bull whirled and was gone in a flash. It was an intense, heart thumping interaction that Gabe was thrilled with. In total, it was quite a day!

Random filler pic.

Tues was basically a bust for Gabe. Because we didn’t show up at camp the night before, he climbed the tallest mountain around to see what was going on. As luck would have it (maybe bad luck as it turned out), Gabe saw Jon and me driving the truck to as close as we could to where we’d dropped the meat the night before. He headed down to try to help us pack out. He had no way of knowing that we only had a short haul to make (retrieving the meat we’d dropped) and we were long gone by the time he made it there. Long story short was that he never found us and that we ended up missing each other between the camp and the truck all day. He got back to camp late on Tues and didn’t hunt that day.

Random filler pic.

Wed morning Gabe again hunted N and W of camp. Gabe ripped off a locator bugle in the cold, crisp morning air. After no response, he took a step to leave and an unseen elk blew out of the wooded area below him. Later, he was cold calling, he got up to leave and was immediately busted by the 6x5 he’d had the standoff with the day before. The bull tore out of there and wasn’t seen again that day either. Gabe and this bull were getting well acquainted and the bull was consistently coming out one step up on Gabe. He considered the bull his nemesis and really wanted to drop the string on the 6x5.

Random filler pic.

Wed afternoon Gabe and I teamed up and went down to the area Jon and I were at when we shot the bull. This evening represented a turning point in the trip to me- the bulls went quiet that night. They largely quit bugling on their own and they stopped responding to calls as readily as they had prior to this. We wondered if this would just be the case for the evening or if it would last for the duration of the trip. Unfortunately, the latter was mostly the case.

Random filler pic.

BTW, even though I had a muley tag unpunched, I had left my bow in the case at the truck. I figured if there was a crack at a muley, one of the other guys should get it. With my elk tagged filled, I was a “hauler and caller”. Most of the time prior to shooting the bull, I looked like the pic below, but afterwards, this is pretty much how I looked all the time that I wasn’t sleeping or eating. I'd carry my call in mouth, chewing on the back edge of it as I walked around the mountain looking for elk.

Jon had a tough night that evening too. The elk had seemed to turn into ghosts. It’s amazing how this can happen- you can be in an area where you’ve seen and heard a bunch of them, but when they go quiet it’s like the whole mountain is completely devoid of the dang things. It’s like they become invisible and completely silent, even though you know they’re still around. Although Jon didn’t find a single elk that night, he did manage to fling an arrow!

Random filler pic.

While slinking through some sparse evergreens up high on the mountain, Jon noticed the grayish side of a mule deer up ahead. He went into “sneak mode” and got to within 40 yards of the deer. He could see it was a doe, but he’d never shot a muley and she was broadside and in range- game on! The winds swirled and the doe had him pegged just as he drew his bow. Although she didn’t run, she was on pins and needles. Jon took careful aim, centered his pin on the back edge of her crease, and squeezed the trigger. The arrow flew perfectly and went exactly where Jon aimed it- it rang out in the cool evening air, “Whack!!!”, as loud as could be when it came to a stop. However, with the doe on high alert, she was about five yards down the trail by the time Jon’s arrow made it to where she was standing when he shot. I’m not sure what the limit is on pine trees in MT, but Jon center punched a fine one with his shot. He unscrewed his arrow from the tree and headed back to camp, with his tail tucked between his legs.

In all honesty, his tail wasn’t tucked at all- he’d made a good shot, but the deer jumped the string pretty badly. Not much he could have done…