If Ole So and So Wins This Election, I’m Leaving....

The shot looked perfect on the video.
The cinematographer is just giving you some drama:cool:
 
Now, all my confidence is shaken and I have a total different take on the situation. We walked up the hill far enough to look at where the cow entered the timber to confirm I hadn't made a lucky shot and she wasn't laying there.

It's almost dark, we have an elk still on its feet heading into a timber patch about 200 yards wide by 400 yards long. If it goes further than that, the higher portion of the ridge is thick timber and steep.

I made the decision to pull out and come back in the morning with the hope that the elk would bed quickly and I could find her dead just inside the timber or finish her off.
 
She took my truck home andI spent the night in the back seat of my Suburban. The snow and wind arrived around midnight. Thankfully, it was more wind than snow. I woke up to 15 degrees and about a thirty mph wind with an inch of freshly fallen snow.

A different approach from another road put me within about 3/4 mile of the patch of timber where the elk had disappeared into. I headed up to search, hopeful but not confident. I figured if I didn't find her dead or bedded fairly close to where she disappeared, I probably wouldn't find her at all.
 
The snow erased all chance of finding blood or tracks, so I was left with a general direction of travel and looking for semi-flat areas where she might have bedded.
I took a track close to the bottom in hopes that she would head downhill and bed. Several hundred yards up the canyon and no sign so I headed higher up the ridge. The way the terrain lay, I didn't think a wounded elk would climb further up the canyon without bedding if it wasn't pressured.
 
Closer to the top of the ridge, I found an obvious trail that was probably the trail the healthy elk used as their escape route. I thought I could make out tracks in the dirt under the snow, but no way to be sure. I checked all the possible branches a bleeding elk could have brushed up against in hopes of finding a clue the wounded elk came this way but no luck.

I ended up back where I started from and took a mid-line to search the center of the ridge. Converging trails and a lack of probable bedding sites took me back up to the top where it seemed obvious the elk had to have gone out that way.

It didn't seem like a good idea to walk the same path twice so I dropped down a few yards to a lesser used trail and started back up. I'm about an hour and half into the search and there is no sign, no fresh tracks in the snow to indicate the herd is still in the area and my confidence is completely shaken. I'm pretty sure this is going to have a bad ending without a recovery. I'm running all the things I could have done differently in my head and not coming up with any conclusion other that 2020 must be a thing or this is some kind of karma from not voting for the proper Ole So and So.
 
Back near the end of my previous loop, I felt the need to ask for some help in finding this elk so it wouldn't go to waste. I'm not kidding or exaggerating when I say that 30 seconds after I breathed that prayer I looked down to see a patch of hair about forty yards away. It was an elk, bedded beside a tree. Head up, alert, alive. Decision time and it needs to be quick.
Do I shoot and hope it's the same one? Do I wait to see her move and see if it limps?
I don't know how anyone else would answer that question, but for me the fact I had walked within fifty to sixty yards of this elk three times over the past hour and seen no tracks and a swirling wind that should have spooked it, led me to conclude this had to be the cow that limped into this timber the night before. I didn't want to risk waiting for her to walk if she stood up.
I backed up a step and found a spot to shoot through.
My wife had brought my 30'06 with her and when I shot the elk made it to her feet and then tipped over on her nose. Done.
 
Her bed and where I shot from. It was now @ 11 a.m. and obvious this elk hadn’t moved all night.
But as I went down to her my confusion began to grow. This was a calf. I was certain I had picked out a mature cow to shoot at last night. ???????
I checked her left front shoulder to see if there was a bullet wound.
There was. At least one and it appeared to be two. One low in the brisket that seemed to be pussy and infected. Another one was 6” up from her hoof that had broken her leg.D6F48442-2138-4928-835C-93B20B0E7BEF.jpegA6E6AC83-3A33-49A0-9516-B24547939C98.jpeg
 
Regardless of my confusion, I had an elk down that needs to be taken care of.
I built a fire and notched my tag and got to work.
It was pretty cold and I had to build my fire up several times.
Here the worst effect of my poorest decision of the day kicked in. I had taken off my MR Metcalf and set it down on the hill when I started to work on the elk. Uphill from the fire.
Boys and girls, pay attention. Gravity is real. Fire is hot. Backpacks do melt when they roll downhill into the fire.
😡😡😡😡🤯🤯🤯🤬😱😱
 
The calf is butchered, the pack is melted and I am growing in certainty that my first shot from the night before was not at the elk that I had just killed.
Was it possible I was correct thinking I had made a good shot on a big cow that might be dead down on the ridge below me?
 
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