We walk back to my cousin and he is just as upset. Apparently he saw her coming from like 500 yards away and did everything he could to get her attention. Twice he noticed she was looking through binoculars directly at him and he did everything he could do to signal to her that he was there. After talking with her later that night, apparently his hand signals was telling her to go for those elk.


I think she was full of it. We caught her lieing to us and what she did, walking directly in the open, directly at these elk just doesn't make sense. Maybe she just doesn't know basic hunting skills.
Anyways, she is about to slightly redeem herself with what she does. We watch her as she stalks to where the cows went and I dont think she realized where the bull was as he got separated from those cows by about 200 yards. He could see her moving as she wasn't being very careful staying hidden (I mean we kept an eye on her easy so I'm assuming the bull could too) and I told my cousin that I bet he isn't going to head that way because she is going to walk right between him and his cows. Let's do something, we will sneak back up to where we were and you make a bunch of cow calls. Let's see if we can get his attention and get him to come over here. We didn't screw things up, he had no clue we were here.
We get there and my cousin is already making some cow calls. He has the bulls attention. In fact holy crap here he comes! Within a minute he covers over 200 yards and I whisper to my wife I have him at 100 yards. Get ready. Draw when he is in front of the bush in front of you. 32 yards. She draws. I whisper "no, let go, not yet too soon" good thing I did. He stops and bugles. Seconds pass, maybe 10, idk too hard to recall these moments that exact! He takes a step and I say, draw. 38 yards I tell her. She is drawn for ever. Well seemed like it. He won't stop. I cow call. Doesn't work. I hear my cousin buggle (he heard my cow call and realized I was trying to stop him and throws a hail mary) and the bull stops and rips a huge buggle, chuckles and all. I whisper 45 yards and after holding her draw for probably 30 or more seconds, an arrow finally flies. I watch and hear the arrow whistle through the air and the best sound ever, thwack!!! Not the hard pounding sound of arrow on bone but rather that sweat sound of arrow slicing through good tissue. I didn't exactly see the impact but I know it was a hit midsection. Bino up and I watch. My wife is praying "please go down, please go down. Mister elk, please go down. Come on mister elk, please fall o..."
"Hell yes, he's down, he just toppled over"
I think my cousin and I said just about the same thing at the same time.
4th chance at him and it finally came together.
I can't even fully explain nor will I share the next moment between my wife and I.
We walk over by my cousin and he is beyond excited just like me. Hugs, smiles, few cheers of good joy. We glass a bit but it's getting quite dark and just can't see anything moving or where he went down. We gather our things, go to the point of the shot, find blood and set things down. It's now just about fully dark, headlights now needed.
I tell my cousin about how I saw him break his tine and in the hour we wanted to wait just to make sure he is dead, we decide to go look for the tine. We find 2 good spots where he for sure was rubbing in mud but with it being dark, it was hard to pinpoint and be in the exact spot and we don't find it after 30 mintues of looking.
Times up and we begin to track. Not amazing but a good blood trail for 50 yards and then it turns sour. Speck here, speck there, running elk track that must have been his. 100 yards of tracking that took forever, 45 mintues or so. He jumped a small creek and thankfully that opened him up a bit but after another 100 yards, all blood was gone. We searched around for 10 mintues without finding anything and then all of a sudden I hear my cousin yell those feel good words "hey thats him right over there" - flashlight pointing and revealing his antlers.