Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting The worst mistake on your elk hunt?

These days I�m pretty successful and kill one each year. It wasn�t always like that.
I could fill a book with my mistakes and the book would still be growing larger. I�ve probably formed a mental block on my very worst ones but these were some doosies.

Laid the crosshairs on the biggest bull I�d ever seen while holding a bull tag. Long but thin 6x7 antlers. �Click�. It was a sickening sound. I had been distracted when leaving the trailhead � too worried about making sure the younger hunters were set up properly and not paying attention to my own stuff. Not only was the chamber empty but the gun was unloaded! That bull was just unlucky. I somehow managed to fish a round from my pack, chamber it, and it found it�s mark.

Two nice bulls skirted the edge of a clearing I was hunting. I passed on a long shot because I knew my Dad and Brother were coming in from the other end of the clearing. The bulls walked straight into the ambush. I waited for the shot, � and waited. Nothing.
When I saw them later they said they decided to go another way.

Killed a cow on a steep grade. Since I was sure of my location I began dragging it downhill toward the trail. I was pleased with myself to have the cow right in the middle of the trail in one piece. It was the wrong trail. I ended up having to quarter it and hump it back up the same hill I�d just descended to get it back onto the correct trail.

Biggest mistake I ever made was not being in shape for the hunt.

Sleeping in & missing 1st light.

I forgot the toilet paper once. Key word is "once".

dragging my ass out of bed before first light.

Hunting buddy and I got 2 cows and a bull down on top of a mountain. We could see my truck through the binocs - barely. According to the maps it was 3 miles away on a straight line, somewhat further as we had to walk it.

Took out what we could the 1st day, straps and filets, hung the rest, then spent the next three days packing out what was left, bone out. Thankfully it was below freezing at night and the meat stayed cold.

I'll never forget picking up my pack the second day. It was the heaviest load and after laughing at my buddy trying to get up I immediately did a face plant in the snow. Redistributed the weight but was still barely able to walk with the weight. Took a few steps, figured I was making about 1 foot with each step, and already my legs were screaming "Enough!" Then the stupid engineer in me went to work - 3 miles times 5280 feet per mile, only about 15,840 more steps to go. Damn near killed us both.

Never again.

Missing the biggest bull I have ever seen. I badly misjudged how far away he was. This was before I had a rangefinder. I borrowed a rangefinder a couple days later. I thought the elk had been about 300 yds. Rangefinder said 440 yds.

How about when hunting 'European elk', aka moose? I was a tag-along on my partner's WY moose hunt. It was raining pretty hard & we had on rain gear, which doesn't help the hearing a bit. We sat on a log and he called a couple times. After about 15 min, we decided to move on. As we started walking away, all hell broke loose right behind us. A bull had sneaked in and was standing less than 20 yards right behind us and we hadn't heard him. Neither of us had turned around when we decided to move on.

+1. I don't know if I'll ever be in "good enough" shape for elk hunting. I'd continue to hunt until I was tired I suppose. When my body gets tired, I make mental mistakes. I'm getting better (and still trying to get better) at eliminating those lazy mental mistakes that I make late in the day/late in the hunt. Grr.

I guess my worst mistake was just having a cow tag, and having opportunities to shoot bulls. I've enjoyed learning from all the mistakes.

I did that once - but had I put in for bulls, I would probably have been sitting home with no tag at all. I had 7 really nice bulls in bow range before I got my first (and only) chance on a cow.

Hunting where there are no elk.. elk had left the area due to too many hunters flying up and down the roads.

(1) never go on an out of state elk hunt with several guys you don,t really know,for at least a year or more, and guys you have hunted with locally, because without fail at least one of them will be a lazy cheap bastard that won,t pull his weight or do his share of the work or pay his share of expenses as PREVIOUSLY AGREED TO IN EXPLICIT DETAIL, LONG before trip started.
once your on the out of state hunt , the circumstances tend to bring out the best or worst personality traits

(2)a good many times I could not afford both an elk and mule deer tags, and on those years when I just got the elk tag alone, it was almost an iron clad guarantee Id see a few real wall hanger mule deer.
but If I purchased a mule deer tag Id see dozens of crappy quality 3 and 4 point deer.

(3) not having snow chains and elastic cord clips almost always insured getting heavy snow.

#1 picking a waiting spot that I "liked" verses a spot they like
#2 looking left, right, left when I should have looked left, right, right.
#3 failing to realize that a mature bull can walk behind a thin tree and never come out the other side

I will add, the bull doesn't come out even when a cow elk, that the bull was following, did walk out the other side of said small tree only moments before.

Not "Hunting" every step of the way. Walking to a predetermined meadow and not hunting my way in cost me a chip shot at a herd bull. You have to assume there are elk every step of the way. I didn't in 2011 and walked up on the bull and his cows. They got a face full of human scent and made short work of picking them up and setting them down. Had I hunted my way in,watching the wind,things would likely have been different. But,I was headed to the meadow for my evening watch and figured it was too early in the evening to actually see elk. Won't make that mistake again!

Trusting my mare to let me walk up behind her on the narrow trail to turn her around. this happened going in to camp 2012

Oh DAMN! CoDave - you win. Hands down!

Biggest mistake I've made (off the top of my head) is staying too long in an area that doesn't hold many elk. It's hard (for me at least) to leave an area that is historically good or has been good early in the season, even if I'm not seeing elk anymore.



Yeah, big bucks will do that to. Hell, little bucks will do it if I've decided I'm going to shoot them when they come out

Had several not-being-ready-to-shoot facepalms. Can think of two different times that a cow stepped out w/i 100 yards of where I walked out onto a point just "to glass a bit" with a cow tag.