Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting How to tell meat went bad???

I think you nailed it. You missed the heart in the chest cavity.

139 grain 7 mm bullet would not be my choice in a cup and core type bullet. I tried em, in the 7 mm 08... not too impressed. ( 140 NP)

I am glad you find the meat delicious!


Timber Runner....could you describe your dry ageing techniques?
I am super interested please!

Thanks John

It would be unusual for a elk to go that far with a heart destroyed. It would be unusual for a heart to to be so destroyed that you could find nothing of it. I think your thought about just not finding it is probably correct. I'm also wondering about what the actual distance the elk traveled was, considering your track on OnX includes circling looking for sign. Which that would seem like a pretty normal thing to do when trying to follow a trail.

All that said elk are tough and can do some amazing things. And halting the tracking due to getting dark and not wanting to continue to bump a wounded animal is also a very reasonable decision, that lots of hunters make every year.

And getting follow up shots, especially on a cow in a herd, can also be tough.

It's cool that you didn't give up, found the elk, and that most of your meat is good.

My current hypothesis is to neck Up the 308 case.......more mass, less velocity, makes me focus on getting closer.

Bottom line: wife got her first elk and the vast majority of the meat is in the freezer, the fried tenderloin for dinner last night was DELICIOUS.

We did have a "lessons learned" for next year:
- She did move to find her first shot, that was a lesson learned from not getting a shot the day prior.
- She should have moved faster to get a second shot
- She should not have taken an off hand shot, but moved more to get a solid rest. I believe a second bullet in the chest would have put that cow down right there (and given us a downhill pack to the truck)

There's a couple topics like this, so I will give more detail to what happened, what we found etc.

Gun: 7MM-08 shooting off the shelf 139g Interlocks from Hornady.
Shot distance: about 100 yards.
At the shot, the cow froze, among the rest of them. This prevented an immediate follow up as neither my wife nor I could 100% figure out which cow it was.
After a few seconds the herd spun 180 degrees and went back the way they came from, except one cow.
that cow, all I could see via binoculars was one rear leg angled at about 45 degrees like she was struggling to stand. Told my wife to shoot again.
She did, after moving to get an opening and missed (she tried an offhand shot, which was a mistake)
cow SLOWLY walked off about 15 yards and briefly stood there, all either of us could see was the butt end, Wife tried moving for an open angle and cow walked off.
Blood at shot site was great, in a wide splatter pattern so I figured at least the bullet went through.
Where she walked off across snow was EASY to follow. Woods where about 25% snow 75% pine needles as temps had been 70 during the day.
Tracked for about an hour until dark, about 300 yards according to the OnX tracker. Couldn't fine next blood in failing light, I was thinking liver hit so we pulled out
First light, tracked another 250-300 yards (OnX track was not a straight line as we were doing circles looking for blood). Found cow around 9 AM
Entry side bullet hole was seemingly perfect in the armpit creast/shoulder blade, about 1/4 to 1/3 up the body, exit side about 4 inches back from armpit crease/shoulder blade

After doing gutless and bagging the meat, when pulling the inner loins I noticed zero blood in the back of the body cavity and the diaphram was in tact. so I sliced her open and went through the diaphragm. The chest cavity was a bloody mess, here's what I found:

- Entry side lung was a destroyed mess of bloody jelly
- Exit side lung was mostly in tact, I pulled it out and it was hit, the back edge was a ragged mess, but the majority of the lung looked fine.
- I couldn't find anything of the heart.
- liver and guts and diaphragm 100% intact

Did I simply not find the heart and it was essentially a single lung hit? Possible, it would explain how she went that far, but I couldn't find it.

Not having a functional heart may also explain the spotty blood trail, no pump working so no good blood flow. Neither entry or exit hole looked plugged, in fact when I leaned on the chest to move around the cow, you could clearly hear air escaping.

Bottom line: wife got her first elk and the vast majority of the meat is in the freezer, the fried tenderloin for dinner last night was DELICIOUS.

We did have a "lessons learned" for next year:
- She did move to find her first shot, that was a lesson learned from not getting a shot the day prior.
- She should have moved faster to get a second shot
- She should not have taken an off hand shot, but moved more to get a solid rest. I believe a second bullet in the chest would have put that cow down right there (and given us a downhill pack to the truck)

I think we made the right move pulling out. We weren't sure of the shot, couldn't find blood and I was concerned about jumping her. Even in full daylight it took us close to 2 hours to find her. The blood trail had gotten pretty weak and on pine needles in the dark we wouldn't have found her.

So there ya have it, did I miss the heart during the autopsy? Possible, but it's a big thing in a mostly empty chest at that point, could have missed it, but I looked.

I have a picture that shows the entry hole, but don't have an on line picture place so can't link to it