The First Hunt

The night was full of bugles rattling through the hills and filling the early hours with song. I couldn’t sleep with anticipation of the day ahead and just smiled to myself as I listened to the elk all around us. My first elk hunt. My first archery elk hunt and they were screaming from all directions. Unfortunately we were limited to cows or true spikes since neither of us got drawn for a bull, but elk is elk.

I was so anxious. These animals are huge and I have no idea what is ahead of me. Will I see any? Will I get an opportunity to shoot? Will I be able to shoot if I do? We’re going to walk into the woods in the dark and I think that is freaking me out more than trying to shoot anything.

Finally we’re up, we’ve eaten and had our coffee. We have camo head to toe, packs, bows and we’re off. We cross the road with our headlamps on and head into the woods and up the hill through the brush. My heart is racing, thinking of whatever is standing outside my circle of light. I keep close at Kim’s heals but I soon begin to slow down. I think I’ve forgotten to breath and now I can’t catch my breath. It’s hard to pant quietly. We take a short minute for me to catch my breath and onward we go, mentally now I’m telling myself to breath in, breath out.

We get to a little bench where the bushes are all packed down and see remnants of something greenish/brownish covering a large area. Kim whispers that it was a gut pile (it was archery deer season too) and that a bear probably cleaned it up. My heart flipped. Great. I’m climbing up a hill in the dark in the brush with a little light on my head and a bow in my hand and I can’t breath and there could be a bear lurking behind every bush. Ugh! Maybe he’s not hungry anymore. We move on.

We break out of the woods into an area that had been burned and was more open. The dark was starting to fade and I could see more through the trees as they were all naked of their leaves and branches. We head further up the hill and make it to the ridgeline. The trees were slightly more dense and the fire grass had started growing and was about knee high with a reddish color.

We walk a little further and Kim stands me by a tree and has me nock my bow and get ready. He was going to go over to a tree about 20 yards away and do some cow calls. He calls a couple times and we wait. He calls again and shortly after we get a response down the ravine. We wait awhile more with Kim calling but we could tell the bull wasn’t heading our way. It was quiet for sometime and the cold was starting to seep in to my bones. I quietly set my bow down and turned slightly to my left to get some hand warmers out of my pocket. I stopped mid turn. A cougar was turning away from me not more that 10 feet away! He didn’t seem to see me and had come up looking for the cow that Kim was pretending to be. My mind went to jelly and I was thinking, I need my gun, I need to tell Kim, I can’t use my gun, we’re supposed to be quiet, I need to tell Kim.

Finally I was able to get Kim’s attention and I was making crazy cat scratching motions and had my gun out and he just looked at me confused trying to figure out what I was saying. He came over to me and I pointed and by that time the cat had walked 40 yards to the edge of the ridge and looked back for Kim to get a look. He saw my gun in my hand and whispered ‘why didn’t you shoot it?’ and I said ‘I don’t know. I just freaked out and lost it’. All I had to do when I saw it was reach down, grab my bow and shoot him at 10 yards as he was walking away. That’s all I had to do and my first kill would have been a cougar. But no. I choked so bad! I will never get that opportunity again in my lifetime. As I was recouping and getting my heart to slow down, we heard a gunshot coming from the cougar’s general directions and I just shook my head.

We walked up the ridgeline on a game trail, taking in the massive views while staying aware and quiet. The ground was getting noisier as the morning dew disappeared so we picked our steps carefully. At the top of another finger, Kim set me up again. About 40 yards down the hill there was a group of trees and I snuggled up in them with my bow at the ready. Remember, we can only shoot cows and spikes but we’re hoping that if we can bring a bull up he may bring some of his cows along with him.

Kim heads back up to a large tree at the top and starts calling. Immediately we get a response back and he is really close! My heart takes off and I’m in a position with my back up against the tree, partially facing uphill, bow at the ready facing down and I’m looking over my left shoulder at the downhill. Kim calls again and two 6 point bulls come crashing out of the trees right in my direction! They stop together just out of the tree line, both of their tongues out, smelling and tasting the air trying to find the cow. The closest one is 15 yards at best looking up at me and lets out a big holler that rattled my insides. Breath and don’t move.

They both move up the hill and the closest stops right in front of me so that I am now looking forward staring straight at him. He is between another tree and me, directly in the middle, not more than five feet away. I could smell him and feel his heat. I looked at his eyelashes and the mass of his antlers and thought I could reach out and poke him with my arrow. I thought for sure he could hear and feel my heart pounding in the air because it was deafening inside my head.

The other bull had stopped right behind me on the downhill slope and I could feel his presence. We stood like that for what seemed like an eternity but I didn’t want it to end. Kim made a soft call again and the bull in front of me moved ahead slowly a few feet. I followed him slowly with my head and the guy behind me must have caught the movement because he jumped and crashed off down the hill. My bull spooked forward about 20 yards and then stopped and looked back in my direction. I still don’t believe he saw me but he knew something was up. He huffed and stomped his front hooves hard on the ground and took off down the hill.

I stepped out from my hiding spot and crumpled to me knees laughing and thanking God for camo. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would ever be that close to an animal that big and he wouldn’t be able to see me. I am a true camo believer through and through! Amazing! Kim came down the hill with a big grin and said ‘how’d you like that set up?’ ‘It couldn’t get any better than that! Unless I could have actually shot him, but amazing!’ We spent a little bit sitting there talking about it and going over all the details and how he just kept thinking ‘please don’t pet it, please don’t pet it’ and all the while I was thinking he was going to see me and stick me to the tree I was leaning on!

Keep in mind, this is within the first two hours of my first archery elk hunt! I’m thinking it doesn’t get any better than this! Well I was wrong. This goes on until dark and while I’m not going to tell you every detail, I am going to tell you the best ones so please forgive how long this gets but please stay with me because they really are ridiculous for all happening in one day!

After encountering the two bulls we keep hiking along the ridgeline, stop for lunch in a nice ravine and then move along. We ran across a very well used game trail so we followed it. The dirt was pounded to dust with use and we could smell the elk. If you haven’t had the opportunity to smell elk, well it stops you in your tracks and immediately you are checking the wind for where it’s coming. It’s an awesome smell!

The trail starts down over the hill and we nock our bows, silence our steps even more and walk with a crouch so we are less likely to be had. As we come to the edge, Kim in front, we see the path heads straight down the side of a hill and there are elk bedded all along the hill. I spot the bull bedded to the left and then a cow spots us and off she goes. They all jump up and start crashing through the trees, dust flying. Kim shoots from the ridge down at the lead cow about 60 yards. I didn’t even have time to raise mine. They were gone as soon as they were had. For the size of them, they can book! And it sounds like a freight train when they do!

We cussed a little and did the ‘shoulda’ thing of ‘we shoulda taken more time, we shoulda snuck more to the edge’… Those cows are the guards and are always on the lookout for movement or smell and it only takes a second to be had. Exciting though. After grumbling a bit and replaying what happened, we went down to find his arrow. He was pretty sure it went under her belly and didn’t hit and indeed, that’s what happened. We found it and wandered around checking out their bedding area. The devastation these animals can do to an area is just amazing and the poor trees that get stripped from rubbing their horns is crazy to see.

We decide at this point it might be time to head back to camp, have a well deserved beer and head out again a little later. That being said, it took us another hour to make it back to camp through the scrub and bushes and down trees of the path we chose to go. I thought for sure as I was pushing my way through brush taller than me that at any moment I would come face to face with a bear. Thankfully no. It all comes with learning an area and we know better than to take that route again.

Later that evening we headed to a wallow close to our camp and set up just back in the trees where we could see the field. For those of you who are not familiar with a wallow. It’s an area of a little spring that the animals have found and beat it up so much that it has become a big mud bog with pools of water. They come in to get a drink and roll around in the mud to get the bugs off and cool down. It’s like the local hang out.

We found our area and set up on a log with a good view and range point. Looking downhill we could see the field and the wallow and then around the back of us was a great area that was pretty open with burnt trees and fire weed like what was around when the cougar visited. Kim has a cow butt decoy that he has named ‘Lucy’ and he walked her out about 30 yards behind us so all the big boys could see. He also has her doused with scent, so she was pretty stinky.

I told Kim to hold up a minute before he started calling because I had to pee. I go off a little ways and do my little squat and I hear a rustle behind me. I slowly look around and there is a big bull with his head stuck out between the bushes looking at my bare butt and tilting his head, like he’s trying to figure out what the heck I am and what he should do about it.

I try and get Kim’s attention but his ears aren’t real good (and has since been forced by me to get hearing aides to especially use in the woods), and he’s starting to call, which gets me a little rialed up. I finish what I’m doing as quick as nature allows and skitter back to Kim whose totally oblivious. I told him what happened and got on him for calling before I was ready and he laughed and thought it was great. Ya, so funny.. Good gravy!

We hear rustling in the brush a ways away so we stop our talking and focus on what we’re doing. Through the trees I can see movement and see a bull in the distance. He stops and bellows and that just gets Kim going. He starts calling. Pretty soon there are a couple bulls hollering back and forth. We had positioned ourselves behind some of the trees so we could watch better what was coming for Lucy and have a clearer shot if given an opportunity. Unfortunately, none of the bulls had spikes or cows with them and while all this was pretty amazing, I was getting irritated that we were spending so much time with animals we couldn’t shoot. Again, though, all of this was pretty amazing.

Kim was in heaven playing with these bulls. At this point there were three in the area and he made his way over to Lucy and pulled her out of the ground. He started walking her over more in their direction, standing behind her so they wouldn’t see him. At this point I said I’d had enough. I slowly moved out of that area and back to my downed tree, put my bow to the side and watched the show and kept an eye on the wallow, which we might have better luck at.

As Kim got a little bolder with Lucy, I start to get concerned and worry that the bulls are getting too close. At some point Kim finally looks around to see where I am and I motioned for him to cool it and leave them alone. He plays a while longer, sets Lucy back down and comes back over. I told him I was tired of playing with the bulls and we both laughed because it was such a ridiculous statement. How often do you get to ‘play’ with bull elk and get to see them so up close and personal?

That day and the rest of our week there, hooked me on hunting. Seeing the animals, smelling their scent, sneaking our way into their environment. It’s exhilarating and exhausting but totally worth it. One of these days I may be able to bring one of these big guys home.