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.
So you didn't post for sympathy nor to find how to correct or improve. Clearly no room for that.
Just for readers enjoyment then?
If you've gotta go on forever recounting your practice, bullet, etc. and seeking approval of that then do you really believe in it yourself? Endless talk of distances and calibers and calculations make it clear those elk are being reduced to mere targets. Any actual elk behavior, strategy, observation, connected to this 'hunt' is nowhere to be found. Sometimes you can't approach them. That's why it is not called a harvest.
The aspect of neighboring ranches making money from this public resource and causing elk lives to go waste so that they may do so. Now that is something I certainly AM interested in hearing more about.
