It is hard not to feel for someone who has had misfortune on a hunt.
Who wouldn't?
The obvious white elephant in the room is when that person is someone with thousands of posts about their experience, marksmanship skills, hunting accomplishments, and pages of advice to others. That bragging sets the bar high for themselves. No one else is doing that but them. OK to play cowboy as long as it is not all hat and no cows. Torture elk with novice mistakes and then expect sympathy? No.
Private ranch with limited access in a state hunting program? Most of us would treat that with respect from the start. Can't get in range on a ranch? Flinging a long shot under those circumstances? Even if you were a public land DIY guy faced with the only shot opportunity of the trip are you gonna risk that? Ya gotta think your hunt still ends well if no shot is fired. Not so if it turns into a rodeo. If you really are, for lack of a better word, an 'expert hunter' how do you justify that risk over a cow?
So for whatever reason an accomplished hunter decides this is acceptable risk. Goes bad. Still - this could happen to anyone. The cardinal rule no matter what type of trouble you are in is don't make it worse. There is more to being an experienced hunter than hunting skills. Most do not get to that point without developing some better judgement and skills - for instance, - becoming experts at contacting landowners. Gotta think that nearly any ranch knows its adjacent ranches. If not - the phone number on his burglar alarm system will know to contact the owner for sure and it is often posted at the gate. Locked gate call CSP or county dispatch and get help. That's just a few offhand ideas. With a smartphone there are more possibilities.
Continue to hunt? Some years go by where I don't come across an elk carcass fully in tact that was never found by that hunter. Most years I find one.
What is worse than finding that carcass?
Finding a second carcass nearby. Hope he got the 3rd one.
Possibly even worse still is someone else finding it - someone not on the side of the elk hunter. But just tell them it's nobody else's business. If you are at that stage where you are supposed to be setting an example and showing leadership how is continuing to hunt doing so ... and over a cow?
One could empathize with young man making these mistakes who is doing his best to improve. On the other hand someone who talks themselves up but then devotes more explanation to their radio programming than their elk recovery - not so much.
Alamosa -
Your depiction of what happened doesn't jive with what I experienced.
I do a fair amount of practice at what most people consider long range. My favorite targets are clay pigeons at 500 and 600 yards, second favorite is the steel gongs at those ranges. Do I always hit them? Heck, no, but I rarely miss by much once I have a rifle and load dialed in. A few days before the hunt I had been hitting at 300, 500 and 600 yards with the rifle and load I used on the hunt. The shot at the cow was from a good, solid sitting position, off a tripod. We had walked up to our position without noticing any significant wind, nor had we noticed any while sitting in the brush, which we had been doing for some time. In my opinion the 7mmRM and 160 grain North Fork SS were more than adequate for the task at hand, based on 20+ years of using that rifle and 160 grain bullets for elk. Finally, I had - and took - a lot of time to prepare for the shot. Under the circumstances I did not, and still don't, consider the lasered 389 yard range to be a particularly long shot and certainly wouldn't describe what I did as " flinging a long shot". In fact, except for wind drift, I hit pretty much where I aimed. My error was in not compensating for a wind I didn't know existed.
Could we have gotten closer? Just as likely - or more so - we would have simply spooked the herd as we tried to cross the valley and ended up with nothing.
We could have kept searching after dark but chances of finding the cow that way were slim and none - and in fact when we returned the next day we found no additional blood past the orange flag we had put up to mark the last drop we found the day before. Do the ranch hands know the people on the neighboring ranch? Yup, and from what I've seen hunting the ranch four times now they don't get along at all. Cooperation, from what I've seen, is non-existent. Once an animal is over the fence it is gone, not because the other ranchers want an animal to suffer but because they all have hunters paying to hunt their land and don't want hunters from other ranches on their land disturbing whatever game that may be present.
Nowhere have I asked for nor do I expect any sympathy from anyone. It doesn't matter to me that I didn't' get a cow but I am not happy about causing one to suffer, either.
By the way, I devoted two paragraphs and part of a third to the recovery efforts and one sentence about what I listened to on the radio. Get your facts straight.
Edited to add�
While the title of my original post suggested the result with regard to elk, the post was about more than that and summarized the entire hunt. There were 1110 words in the post, exactly 8 of which dealt with what programs I listened to on the radio. According to my word processor there are 401 words dealing with the cow that we eventually lost. The final paragraph adds another 397 words discussing additional details of my pre-hunt preparation, the shot itself, evidence from the blood trail with regard to where the animal was hit and what I think went wrong. That makes 798 words related to the cow versus 8 devoted to radio programming, a ratio a hair shy of 100-1. Just putting some numbers to your contention I put �more explanation to their radio programming than their elk recovery�. Feel free to criticize me but as I said above, get your facts straight.
With regard to the shot the range was 389 yards with a good, stable sitting position using a tripod � not exactly a bench shoot but about as close as you can come in the field. Moreover I was able to take several minutes discussing the shot with my hunting partner and settling into the shooting position � it was not in any way a hurried shot. In 2013 and 2012 my elk were taken at 487 and 399 yards respectively. Both of those were also cross-valley and both were one shot affairs - so I had some recent experience suggesting a successful outcome was likely. I was the one behind the trigger and the one responsible for making the shoot/no-shoot decision. When I made the shoot decision I did so fully expecting to be breaking out the knives in very short order. Hind sight is 20-20 and you are free to find fault with my decision, but you weren�t there. My confidence level was very high and if a similar situation arises I will likely take the shot again.
