In Colorado one year,I rested my forehand on a fence post and squeezed off a shot at a nice 5x5 bull elk that was standing broadside along the fence line, about 150 yards away. I was shooting a 180-grain Partition in a .300 Win Mag. Everything looked exactly right when the rifle went off, and even though the bull jumped and ran, I was sure that I would find him dead not far away.
I couldn't find any blood where he was standing, but there was about 3 or 4 inches of fresh snow on the ground. I could see where his feet dug in and the first big jump that he made. It was easy tracking, and I tracked him almost three miles through thick aspens and mixed conifer stands--all the way to the other side of the ranch I was hunting. He had jumped the fence and kept going in the same direction. I had never seen any blood and I didn't have permission to be on the next ranch, so I reluctantly gave up.
I walked back to the place from which I had shot, and looked up the fence line in where he had been standing. About five or six feet in front of the fence post on which I had rested my hand, there was a sapling about the size of a pencil oozing sap, with the top six or eight inches hanging by a thread of bark. My scope was a 3-9X variable that was set on 6X, and the little sapling was not even a faint blur in my scope!
