The Rest of the Trip or How to Miss a Point Blank Shot

By Patty Wilber

Day 2.

Our tireless guide, Seasoned Hunter Friend 1 (SHF1), Chuck and me headed east for the morning.  As the sun started to rise, 20 or 30 elk came out of the trees at a run, and paused in a meadow giving Chuck just enough time to get ready to aim, but not enough time to pull the trigger.

 They faded into the forest on the far side.  We tracked them (up hill of course) but they’d vanished.

Sunrise from the cabin–we were tracking elk up hill about now–nowhere near the cabin. No lazy bone hunters here!!

We met up with SHF2 and Ernie.  SHF2 and I headed on for more and the rest headed back for lunch.

SFH2 showed me how to creep along and we eased up onto Deer Ridge.  We saw a rack (on a elk) in silhouette above us. And it was gone.

We crested the ridge and then followed the sounds of bugling along the southern side. Deer Ridge drops down a series of meadows rimmed by the white trunks and golden fall leaves of aspen, to cliffs above the Brazos River that drop 500 to 1000 sheer feet to the water.

We stayed high and eventually arrived at a saddle.

There were two bulls fighting to the south and one bugling in the trees to the north. We snuck towards the tree-bugler and at one point I stepped on a stick. The bull called out a challenge and I thought he might charge out of the timber.

He did not.  I think it would have been fun to use a bull call to see if we could coax him out, but we did not have one.

After a bit, he may have caught our scent or seen us, and he departed.

The area got quiet as it was mid afternoon, so we went a little bit south towards the fighting bulls (who were apparently resting).

We ate lunch and took a little snooze.

View from the snooze!

When we awoke we could hear movement in the trees and gradually the cows and calves began talking to each other.  There were amazing and nearly continuous whistles and squeaks, as if there were whales in the woods.  I had no idea elk sounded like that.

Soon we could see movement behind the trees and we crept out of our aspen stand to a solitary spruce that gave us cover.

The cows started grazing out of the spruce forest into a low spot of russet-colored dried bracken fern.  They did not see us.

We were about 75 yards away.

I sighted in on some cows to the left and then on a group in front of me.  I remembered Lesson #1:  If you have a shot take it.  But I was having a hard time getting a steady view.

I’d forgotten to brace my gun properly and there may have been the beginnings of an Adrenaline Issue.

I pulled the trigger anyway.

I missed.  Completely.  Elk boiled up from everywhere (who knew there were so many right there!) and were swallowed by the trees.

Another cow appeared, just a little farther away and paused, but now I definitely was having an Adrenaline Issue and I could not hold the gun steady because I was shaking too much.  SHF2 tried to talk me down, but it was no use.  The cow departed.

Lesson 3.  Sometimes you have time to wait.  In this case I could have waited a lot longer.  The elk were just coming out to feed, they didn’t know we were there.  There were a lot of them.  Waiting would have given me time to get a better shooting position and maybe an even closer shot.  But I had learned Lesson 1 just  the day before:  If you have shot, take it.  I didn’t have enough perspective to recognize the difference in the two situations.

It is true that most any SH would have made the shot I missed…

The herd was still in the trees however, so SHF2 went to try to move them back to me, and I practiced sighting on bushes and oh yeah, bracing my gun to get a steady bead… Practice does help.

Suddenly, I heard shots behind me and moments later SHF2 strode toward me!

Did you get one?

Yes! Right here!

A bull had appeared in the meadow at my back just as SHF2 was returning to tell me our new hunting plan!

We went to find his bull, and could not (for about three minutes).

He said: But it MUST be here!

I thought: Well, didn’t you make sure it was DEAD before you left it?

And it was.  Of course he had made sure!  The elk was just about 50 feet west of where we were first looking.

That was how I learned that SHF2 could also experience Adrenaline Issues. It is more effective, from a hunting perspective, to experience those AFTER successfully hitting your target.

This is a 5×5 (five tines on each side). He is already gutted at this point.

It was late afternoon so we gutted him, propped open the body cavity  and had to come back to pack him out the next day, Day 3.

Here is a factoid I learned at Elk Day on 10/14 at the Valle Caldera in the Jemez Mountains.  Obsidian can be flaked to an atomic point, sharper than surgical steel. Thus, a skilled woman could skin and dismember an entire bison or elk with just one small, flat, and really sharp rock.

(I also learned that a hunter took a 7×8 bull off the Valle Caldera on 10/13.  7×8.  Wow. I am going to put in for the elk draw there for 2013!)

SHF1 (Peter), SHF2 (David), and me. Peter is tying a diamond hitch and I am in the middle of tying my box hitch. Squirt was again packing the neck, some day packs and some rocks.

Alameda says: i get the head again? sigh. David on the left, Peter on the right. Not a bad background either! The canyon for Barlow Creek is just over the edge there. The Brazos river is to the left (out of the picture obviously).

The guys took the horses to meet a truck and I hunted to that same spot.  Didn’t see anything.  It was 2 pm by then and too late to hike back to the cabin only to have turn around and head out again, so SHF1 and I went to Grass Mountain.

It was not as close as my feet had hoped.

We saw a some animals but no good shots.  We sat on a knoll for a hour watching in opposite directions.  SHF1 can sit on his knees.  Six knee surgeries make that not possible for me.  I sat on my butt and practiced sighting my gun (brace!).

Two pronghorn antelope sauntered by below us.  Didn’t even see us.  If I’d had an antelope permit, I’d have been good!

It was windy and dusk was falling. I started to get cold.  (Look of disgust from SHF1!!)

We snuck back towards a meadow.

SHF1:  Make sure your gun is ready because there may be elk in this meadow.

We eased over the edge and there, where the trees met the meadow, was a bull! (I had a cow tag…so could only practice sighting)  He may have heard us because his head came up and he moved into the meadow, but behind a small tree.  I eased forward and tried to rest my gun on a branch, but as it was a down hill “shot” the branch was too low.  The bull retreated and then,

started to track up the hill TOWARD us.

He came so close I could see the brightness and vitality in his eye, broadside.

A bird called in trees and he spooked back into the spruce!

We hunted until dark (and saw a marten and a had a coyote trot parallel to us  for a while us as we hiked without ever seeing us, so stealthy we were!)

Day 4.  SHF1 (our indefatigable guide and ever gracious host, who’d taken his elk on Day 1 but was still up at 4am every morning to help out us newbies), Chuck and I hiked up and up and up to nearly 12,000 ft on Elk Ridge. It was here I got my best look.

I climbed (some more)  up a rock slide into a gap in the rock and 25 yards away a cow appeared.

I sighted in and my gun was steady!

(I must have braced–I’d been practicing after all), but there was a big rock in my sights along with the cow, so I took one (smooth, quiet) step right and had her again.

That was when I saw the calf.

It was little.

I didn’t shoot.

The elk-fevered part of my brain regrets this.

The maternal side does not.  (The maternal side won, after all).

They spotted me and headed through the rock slides to their herd of 10 or so and were gone.

SHF1 and Chuck heard them but did not get a visual, so it was my own little amazing “moment”.

Those were the last elk I saw.

On Day 5 we gave it one more go.

Chuck was able to sneak right up on a cow (he had a bull permit!).

I rode Squirt out with my gun  and pack to place I’d been wanting to go on the far east side of the ranch.  I saw quite a few mule/black tail deer and a lovely herd of …bushes… growing peacefully near a few bovines that missed the cattle drive out.

The bushes looked like elk in the dusk. Really.

And then we had to come home.

Loading the tack room of my trailer–not done yet!

SHF2 (David) and SHF1 (Peter) with their antlers.

The two bulls weighed in at lb 320 (David’s) and lb 325 (Peter’s) at the butcher.  I was there for both!

What an exciting and challenging week!  The best!