Seeth's unexpected FULL fall of "good" hunts

Ok back to telling the events of last night.

So we had heard the moment when those two bulls met and at this point we are about probably 300 yards away from them. We get to the edge of this thick sage brush and watch the edge of the grass and sure enough, out steps a bull. He is a good 6x6 bull but not the one we saw alone. I tell my cousin I'd like to have her and I just keep sneaking forward while he stays back just keeping us in his eyesight which would mean staying 50 to 80 yards back. Once we get out of cover and can't sneak anymore, I'll give him a signal if I feel he should call to try and get something to happen. We proceed forward.

At this time, the bull that stepped out started to just feed and work his way away from the sagebrush edge. We still can't see the other bull or any cows yet but can hear him still buggling. We get to about 150 yards away and we catch cows start coming out into the grass followed by the big bull. Turns out this guy just stole those cows and this fact will end up being a key reason why everything worked that night.

We watched for a bit as they mulled around feeding and the bull screaming back and forth to now at least 4 other bulls in the area. We continue to get closer and when we are about 100 or so yards away and almost directly where they came out of the sagebrush a mature cow catches our movement with a quick jerk of her head and stares us down. We remain perfectly still and she is content to continue feeding after a few mintues of staring.

I tell my wife our only choice is for her to very slowly and quietly sneak out from the sagebrush and get into the grass and just hope they feed our way. There were a few dead sage bushes in front and told her to get to the last one. Over the next 10 mintues or so she does successfully without them noticing. I range a cow and calf that are indeed coming our way at this point. I get 80 yards. My wife is 25 yards in front of me. Things about to get good...
 
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Wow that is a beautiful bull and I am so glad she got it done. A friend and myself will be headed that way on the 5th for as long as it takes for him to get the bull he wants.
 
Cows and calfs are for sure feeding right into us. I'm not doing any calling and nor is my cousin. Plan is to just let everything play out naturally. The bull is about 80 to 100 yards away. I had a bunch of time to look him over with the binoculars that close and Icould for sure confirm its the bull my wife couldn't get a shot on that morning and then having a second chance at him ruined by another hunter. He is rubbing his antlers on some dead sage bushes and wallowing in-between buggling. He could care less about feeding like his cows. I'm watching him in the binoculars and I see him rub his antlers down in the mud and fling a bunch of it everywhere. Wait what? Where did his 5th tine go? He literally just broke it!

While I'm distracted watching the show this bull is putting on for us, I could all of a sudden not just hear the noise of elk moving through dry grass but something else. Something grinding. I glance to my left and here that first cow and calf were only like 10 yards away and I could hear them chewing! This means that those elk walked right by my wife and were literally between us but thankfully they were beyond where our scent was blowing. The wind was absolutely perfect for us.

I scan in front of us and now all of the cows and calfs are in bow range. I believe it was 8 total. I range the cow in front of the bull at 40 yards. Bull is no more than 10 yards behind her. At this point, my wife was stuck. There were cows literally on three sides of her and her only choice for a shot was a quick draw and shoot and hopefully the bull doesn't spoke as fast as the cows. She however didn't have a shot on the bull at this moment due to 4 cows/calfs constantly walking in front of him. She also wanted to wait for a closer shot knowing how bad it was going to be to draw and get a shot. I myself am going nuts. I'm shaking so much with excitement I can't hold my binoculars/phone steady. Everything I could see was finally coming together and it was only a matter of time before the bull presented her with a shot.

Then as often with archery hunting, something happens that just ruins an encounter. The cow and calf that are 10 yards to my left abruptly look up, direction away from us, bark and bolt. I glass over that direction and what do I see? A lady standing in the the middle of the grass about 200 yards away sneaking over to these elk!!! Well not really sneaking because she sticks out like a sore thumb!

The rest of the cows and the bulls head away from us but don't bolt. They get about 200 yards away and kind of stand there just staring not sure what to do. The lady gets to the opposite side of the grass in some brush and continues to stalk, right on past us.

My wife is pissed. This was try 3 with this bull and twice screwed by other hunters, not her own mistakes. She breaks down in front of me, literally says "I'm done. I don't want to hunt anymore. In fact, I don't want to ever do this again. I'm done archery elk hunting"

To be continued...
 
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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. :unsure:🤷‍♂️ 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.
 
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Photos, including some more sponsor shots for her, and we get him broken down which is always my favorite part. Something about being able to share the experience and recap it all with cutting up meat is just my pinnacle of every hunt.

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My wife sure looks sexy with a dead head on her back doesn't she? No doubt I married up lol

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We get back to camp around 3am and rather than go to bed, my cousin insists we celebrate first before going to bed. We were hungry anyways so I got some shredded pork warming and my cousin comes into our trailer with three glasses of this poured on the rocks

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We enjoy the good bourbon and continue to reminisce about the day before retired to get some sleep around 4am.
 
Today after waking up we had some coffee and a solid breakfast of eggs, hash and bacon. My cousin and I started cutting up meat to get into coolers while my wife went to get ice.

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We took our time getting that all done and decided to get everything packed up and head home early. As much as I would have loved to stay and do some waterfowl hunting with these extra two days we had planned to be there, I'm worried about the cape staying good for that long. I don't have my fleshing stuff along nor salt to properly take care of it myself right now so we just packed it all good with ice and we will drop it off at the taxidermist on the way home.

Right now we are in Cheyenne already headed eastbound and ending what has been absolutely one of the most fun, most exciting, most action packed, most highs, most lows hunts we have ever experienced. There is no doubt that our experience was highly enhanced by the fact that my cousin was able to be there. I kept joking by calling him "our guide" and his response was always that he is no guide but rather just the pack mule (although funny that come the moment we found the bull he was willing to claim guide title). Maybe he just didn't want to be the pack mule with loads of elk to take out. Anyways, his company as well as his knowledge of the area and elk hunting sure gave us an upper hand to be successful on this hunt and I can't thank him enough. I sure hope I can return the favor to him in a few months when we get to be together again for a late season deer hunt with his daughter in New Mexico. I'm already counting down the days!
 
I left out one little tidbit I forgot about, the broken tine.

I asked my wife if we should go back in there today and search until we find it so we can put it back on. She said that she didn't want to because it wouldn't be true to his character and the broken tine is just part of the story between he and I
 
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