Elk .... Let's see them!!!

Got my bull. Pulled out the day before opening day due to the weather. I finally got back down the following Thursday. After about an hour of hiking and glassing I found my bull and made it happen. With the drought, the weather coming and everyone having a hard time this year finding elk I was happy to get a nice bull. I left home at 7:30 that morning and was back that night at 11.
 

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After my parents and I came soooo close during archery season (a herd bull and a cow narrowly escaped death during archery) and thoroughly paying our penance to the elk spirits, we evened the playing field with the rifle. I was able to get some ranch access for cow elk this weekend. Mom got her first elk (just in time before knee surgery this week) and both Dad and I got our second elk. In fact, Mom and Dad doubled in the same field from the same shooting position. Was a special weekend together filling the freezers. Your hands end up hurting after completing the gutless method three times in two days.
 

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Would you say you get calls to track bulls more than cows?

By the time a call is made are most of those elk too far gone to be salvageable?

Tracking dogs fascinate me, pretty sure I’ll be training at least one of mine in the future for it.
This is our first season of tracking elk, and I have only received one call for a cow, about 15 for bulls. My dog had a really hard time with the cow, as there were 40+ other cows with it, and only a few drops of blood. That track didn't result in a recovery, but she did find two deer that had been poached the day before and left behind (their locations were reported to game warden). Not sure if the elk wasn't mortally wounded and had left the area with it's herd, or if my dog was just frustrated from the difficulty of the track, and decided to track the poached bucks instead.

Only one of the elk we recovered wasn't salvageable. It was in September, and I couldn't get there with a dog until the next day. It was shot in the morning, and I was called that night after they had spent the afternoon searching. Unfortunately, it was about 75 degrees the day it was shot.

Start training that dog! Tracking is so fun and rewarding...I'm definitely addicted!!
 
PEAX Trekking Poles

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