Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Managed to Score a Coupla' Tags

Alright, we rolled back in yesterday afternoon after a long, eventful, and ultimately successful hunt. Unfortunately, my youngest daughter was not able to go this year. I don't think I'd mentioned it before because we weren't sure if he'd be able to go, but I'd also bought a tag for my sister-in-law's nephew. This kid has had a pretty tough go of it for a lot of reasons and I was happy to grab him a tag. He's been elk hunting before but hasn't been successful.

We arrived at camp early Wednesday afternoon. Scouting that evening was great and we saw plenty of cow elk. They were a little stirred up from the bull hunt that just ended, but not too bad. We got into the elk again early Thanksgiving morning, and again that evening so things were looking great for opening day on Friday. You guessed it...not an elk to be seen Friday morning. Kids were a little bummed as they had an ongoing bet about who would get their's first that morning

Friday evening started out the same as that morning with no elk to be found. We kept working an area where we knew they had to be, and my daughter was able to connect with a big cow about 20 minutes before the end of hunting hours. It was a decent shot at about 70 yards and the cow didn't make it far, but she required a finishing shot. This was a first for my daughter as her 2 previous elk and 1 deer all died on the spot. My phone was taking really crummy pics for some reason, but here's one of the better ones with my daughter and my Dad:



Hunting for the next few days was a mixed bag. We were able to reliably find elk, but my sorta-nephew was a little slow on the uptake when we got into them and didn't get a shot. When he was able to shoot, he missed several times. We went back to camp and checked the zero on the rifle he had borrowed and it was close enough, but the scope on it had pretty fine crosshairs and was difficult to see on dark backgrounds...like elk hide in fading light. I had him shoot my MZ which my girl had used on her elk, and he did well and found the scope more to his liking. Back into the field with a couple more missed opportunities, and the kid was being pretty hard on himself. As I mentioned, he's had a rough road which I won't get into, but the fact that he was out there with us and staying after it is pretty damned awesome in its own right.

Lots of effort and time finally payed off in the last 10 minutes of the hunt! Kid made what looked like a great shot on a cow at about 100 yards. The elk all scattered and my daughter thought she had a line on where the hit cow had gone. Everyone involved got busy trying to find a sign she'd been hit, and it was virtually dark by the time the boy spotted the first blood. What followed was an awesome effort by the two yound hunters to find the cow. It took about 1.5 hours of tracking in the dark, finding combinations of blood and tracks which sometimes disappeared. On two occasions my daughter's ears were able to pinpoint where the cow was, and the boy showed a true knack for finding small blood spots. Everyone did their share and the end result was a first elk for the youn man! This late night elk resulted in us staying in camp for an extra day, but absolutely nobody minded one bit. This isn't the best pic but everyone was pretty tired on this last day of the hunt:



Overall it was a great time for all! My daughter got her third elk and my sorta-nephew finally he got his first (with a good little tracking story to go with it)!