Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Neighbor's first elk

My son's friend that live a few houses down drew a general season bull tag here in Arizona. His dad asked me to guide him and I readily agreed. We set up camp on Wednesday and scouted that night and most of Thanksgiving day- taking a few hours in the middle of the day off to eat a dinner of pork loin and stuffing. Couldn't fit a turkey in the grill

We got into elk on Friday morning but had people climbing all over us. We passed the raghorns we saw.

We moved to another area and Dallin missed a shot at a big 6x6 that really bummed us out.

Saturday morning we went to a new place to me. I found two bulls feeding, one of which was 360-370 class bull. He could not get steady enough to shoot through the window we had. I was pulling my hair out!

We saw some other bulls but now he was set on a 6x6.

Saturday night we went into a meadow that I usually hunt the September hunt in but it was crazy warm at 9000' and I thought they might still be in there. We checked two meadows and decided to try a third which was tucked in between two ridges. I spotted a lone bull feeding about 3 pm. Dallin knelt down and shot. He missed. He shot again. He missed again. The bull was broadside about 120 yards away. We told him to take his time and shoot once more. This time he hit. The bull took off running and I couldn't see the hit on him since he swapped directions.

He was using a 168 Amaxs in a 300 Winchester with a funky Vortex scope.
To shorten up a lengthy story I will just say that we tracked this bull until dark over 2 miles -almost back to the truck . When he hit a log road that I knew we could easily drive to I called it off for the night and decided that he needed to bed down and hopefully stiffen up. We went back this morning and parked at the blood. We jumped him in 20 minutes. We were in north slope old growth timber that had deadfalls and crunchy snow everywhere. We tracked him by hoof tracks mostly as blood was very sporadic. We found where he had spent the night and bled profusely. He still was able to jump deadfall that we had to climb over. We had to get him this morning as dad was going home and wanted to help.

I finally cornered him when he made a tactical error and got into some rocks and a cliff that had deadfall he couldn't jump over. I had Dallin leave the magnum with the funky scope and use my 260AI. I had loaded 140 Game Kings which have killed a lot of stuff for me.

He threaded a bullet into the last rib which went through the vitals and through the off shoulder, making it through the scapula and ending up at the skin. The bullet did a couple of cartwheels and ended up in more rocks!

This was the toughest tracking job I have ever been a part of. We were worried many times that we had lost the bull but somehow managed to pick up blood and carry on.

The Amax had exploded on the shoulder and not making it to the vitals. I cannot recommend that bullet for elk hunting!

Here is the excited hunter and the weary guide!




Here is the hero shot with his dad. He wanted me to make it look even bigger!




All of this hunting was at over 9000' and we had only patches of snow in the north slopes. Morning temps were teens and highs were high 50s. Very warm for this country and this late in the season.