UtahMountainMan
New member
Hey guys - just thought i would share a pic and story of my bow hunt this year. I always love reading about others successes on here so figured I would share mine.
I would be hunting on this tag 100% solo every trip, it was truly an "On My Own Adventure"!
I drew an out of state bull elk tag with a few points and was planned on focusing during the month of September during bow season to try and find a mature 6 point bull to hopefully get lucky enough to tag. My first couple of trips up there in September I was able to call multiple elk in ( around Sep 8th through 12th) but nothing big enough. Mostly cows, spikes, and a few raghorn branch antlered bulls. But I was in the mountains in September carrying around my bow with a tag in my pocket and listening to vocal elk all by myself. So I was pretty much in heaven.
I would experience a very challenging night during one of these hunts. It was just before dark and I was hunting my way back up the canyon towards camp and still had about 3 miles uphill to go. We all know how much fun it is hiking up the mountain in the dark for 90 minutes after a long day of not getting anything. It was about 15 min before dark and I heard a bull bugle up the hill to my right about 400 yards away. I knew I had time to get in on him before dark so I did what I always do: i dropped my pack, grabbed my GPS, marked by backpack and started basically jogging up the mountain to try and push hard to get on him before dark.
I got to within 100 yards but it got super thick and there wouldn't be a shooting lane unless i brought him to me, and even then i would only have about a 30 yard opening in front of me. I got him worked up and moving in but darkness set in and he never came out.
I turned back on my GPS and started walking to back to my backpack. When I left camp that morning the battery had 4 green bars indicated full charge. When I marked my pack I noticed that it was down to 2 bars and I figured I would change the battery that night. Well, guess what, the GPS was dead. And things just got better from there. The pack had my spare gps batteries, iPhone, my headlamp, my gatorades, jacket, and food. I started to panic a bit because I was about 2/3 of the way up a small mountain/hill on a sage brush side hill so it would be really hard to find my pack unless I walked right on top of it. I got back to the general area I had left it and began to search in the dark. I think finding a needle in a haystack started to sound like a simpler task after about 45 min of searching. I hadn't really paid attention to where I left it because I had it marked on my gps like i have done 50 times and i was in a rush after that bull so i didn't really make too many mental marks of where it was and where i was specifically moving uphill to the bull.
It had been raining that evening so I was already soaked to the core. Not ideal conditions to sleep out in the mountains with no provisions. It wasn't super cold but it was in the mid to high 40s that night.
I was pretty stressed out and decided the best thing to do was to try and get up to the ridge where the moon and stars hopefully would provide the best light. I had made a mental note of which direction camp was based on the stars as they started to come out and I could still see the mountains once I knew my gps was dead.
I will save the details but suffice it to say, a 90 minute hike out turned into 4 hours of stumbling uphill through deadfall in the dark. I was thirsty, wet, and nervous that i wouldnt find camp. My plan was to walk in a direction that should hit the road that was running perpendicular to the ridge line as that would give my the biggest margin for error if i was walking off line. For those of you that have walked in the mountains in the dark its extremely easy to feel like you are walking north but if the ridge slowly turns direction you don't notice and you can't tell. I ended up hitting the road, guessed that my camp was left, and hoped that i would hit it within 2 miles. I had come out only 200 yards from camp which was a miracle after the previous 4 hours. I was truly mentally, physically, and emotionally drained. But i survived lol.
The next morning I slept in until 7 and drove to the nearest town about 2 hours away to get a stupid new pack, jacket, headlamp. Also i had my laptop in the truck so i connected to wifi and let my wife and a few business associates and friends know that my phone was lost.
I never ended up finding my pack, or my phone, its still sitting up there. Im planning on going back in a week or two to grid it out and search again. I spent about 6 hours that day looking for it once I drove back to camp. The sage brush made it so hard to look for my small pack. So frustrating!!!
I headed back up this past Thursday afternoon and hiked into a good remote area about 2 miles but 90 minutes up and down a couple of canyons where I knew there had to be elk and no people. Sure enough, as i started to walk down the hill I spotted about 15 elk 600 yards in front of me on the other side of the drainage. I glassed over the bull, he wasn't huge but he seemed like he was probably big enough. I started working my way towards him but he was pushing his cows out of their bed and moving towards their evening feeding area. I bugled to see if i could get his attention to slow him down. It worked, AND it also provided 2 additional bulls, one up the canyon about 500 yards from me and the other down the canyon about the same distance.
My plan was to position myself in the middle of these 3 bulls and either let them work towards each other or try and bring one in. I figured getting in the middle would give me the best chance to potentially ambush one as they moved towards each other. It was obvious from their screams that they were doing just that.
I spotted the bull down the canyon from me at about 250 yards. Not a shooter. Dang it.
Next my focus was on the bull up the canyon. I kind of maneuvered that way and was cow calling and cutting off his bugles. It was working he was coming in. He stepped into an opening at about 350 yards and although he was facing me making it hard to see how big he was, i could tell by the backside of his antlers that he was a shooter. Im not a trophy hunter who passes a 325" bull for a 330" bull, i wanted a good mature 6 point and i could tell this was one.
I positioned myself where the wind would be in my favor and I could still keep an eye on him. We spent the next 5 minutes talking to each other and he continued working my way. My heart started to race once he was about 100 yards off. I tried to calm myself down. There was a wallow about 40 yards below my to my right and i could tell he was walking on a trail that would hit that wallow. So i got uphill from the wallow and knew he would walk about 25 yards below me. My plan was to let him walk past me so that he was quartering away from me allowing me to hopefully stand, draw, and shoot without him noticing.
You know how in hunting 95% of the time the plan doesn't work? This was one of the 5%. He walked right down that trail, 20 yards from me, my heart was beating so loud i thought it would scare him off. He stopped at the wallow just as i envisioned. I slowly stood, he didn't notice. I pulled back and he looked over at me but didn't seem spooked. I went through my mental progression I always tell myself. Got the bow level, anchored against my face properly, looked through the peep, found the correct pin, and took a breath or two. I let the arrow fly and it buried up to the fletchings right where i was aiming.
He turned and ran about 50 yards and dropped dead in his tracks within seconds of the arrow hitting him. My hands were shaking like I couldn't believe. These things always happen so fast.
I snapped a few pics by myself and spent the next 3.5 hours carrying the head back up to the truck. The next day i found a road that was a little further distance wise from the bull but it was not nearly the elevation gain. I packed out all the meat myself, something I had never done before on an elk. Made for a long but rewarding 24 hours.
I caped him out thinking i might do a shoulder mount, but because of the extra time it took to get him out and back to utah when I dropped him off to the taxidermist the hair was starting to pull out and it was a little bit too late to make it happen. Also, i thought i had left plenty of hide on the cape but i needed to leave a few more inches. So euro mount it is, he will still turn out great.
I would be hunting on this tag 100% solo every trip, it was truly an "On My Own Adventure"!
I drew an out of state bull elk tag with a few points and was planned on focusing during the month of September during bow season to try and find a mature 6 point bull to hopefully get lucky enough to tag. My first couple of trips up there in September I was able to call multiple elk in ( around Sep 8th through 12th) but nothing big enough. Mostly cows, spikes, and a few raghorn branch antlered bulls. But I was in the mountains in September carrying around my bow with a tag in my pocket and listening to vocal elk all by myself. So I was pretty much in heaven.
I would experience a very challenging night during one of these hunts. It was just before dark and I was hunting my way back up the canyon towards camp and still had about 3 miles uphill to go. We all know how much fun it is hiking up the mountain in the dark for 90 minutes after a long day of not getting anything. It was about 15 min before dark and I heard a bull bugle up the hill to my right about 400 yards away. I knew I had time to get in on him before dark so I did what I always do: i dropped my pack, grabbed my GPS, marked by backpack and started basically jogging up the mountain to try and push hard to get on him before dark.
I got to within 100 yards but it got super thick and there wouldn't be a shooting lane unless i brought him to me, and even then i would only have about a 30 yard opening in front of me. I got him worked up and moving in but darkness set in and he never came out.
I turned back on my GPS and started walking to back to my backpack. When I left camp that morning the battery had 4 green bars indicated full charge. When I marked my pack I noticed that it was down to 2 bars and I figured I would change the battery that night. Well, guess what, the GPS was dead. And things just got better from there. The pack had my spare gps batteries, iPhone, my headlamp, my gatorades, jacket, and food. I started to panic a bit because I was about 2/3 of the way up a small mountain/hill on a sage brush side hill so it would be really hard to find my pack unless I walked right on top of it. I got back to the general area I had left it and began to search in the dark. I think finding a needle in a haystack started to sound like a simpler task after about 45 min of searching. I hadn't really paid attention to where I left it because I had it marked on my gps like i have done 50 times and i was in a rush after that bull so i didn't really make too many mental marks of where it was and where i was specifically moving uphill to the bull.
It had been raining that evening so I was already soaked to the core. Not ideal conditions to sleep out in the mountains with no provisions. It wasn't super cold but it was in the mid to high 40s that night.
I was pretty stressed out and decided the best thing to do was to try and get up to the ridge where the moon and stars hopefully would provide the best light. I had made a mental note of which direction camp was based on the stars as they started to come out and I could still see the mountains once I knew my gps was dead.
I will save the details but suffice it to say, a 90 minute hike out turned into 4 hours of stumbling uphill through deadfall in the dark. I was thirsty, wet, and nervous that i wouldnt find camp. My plan was to walk in a direction that should hit the road that was running perpendicular to the ridge line as that would give my the biggest margin for error if i was walking off line. For those of you that have walked in the mountains in the dark its extremely easy to feel like you are walking north but if the ridge slowly turns direction you don't notice and you can't tell. I ended up hitting the road, guessed that my camp was left, and hoped that i would hit it within 2 miles. I had come out only 200 yards from camp which was a miracle after the previous 4 hours. I was truly mentally, physically, and emotionally drained. But i survived lol.
The next morning I slept in until 7 and drove to the nearest town about 2 hours away to get a stupid new pack, jacket, headlamp. Also i had my laptop in the truck so i connected to wifi and let my wife and a few business associates and friends know that my phone was lost.
I never ended up finding my pack, or my phone, its still sitting up there. Im planning on going back in a week or two to grid it out and search again. I spent about 6 hours that day looking for it once I drove back to camp. The sage brush made it so hard to look for my small pack. So frustrating!!!
I headed back up this past Thursday afternoon and hiked into a good remote area about 2 miles but 90 minutes up and down a couple of canyons where I knew there had to be elk and no people. Sure enough, as i started to walk down the hill I spotted about 15 elk 600 yards in front of me on the other side of the drainage. I glassed over the bull, he wasn't huge but he seemed like he was probably big enough. I started working my way towards him but he was pushing his cows out of their bed and moving towards their evening feeding area. I bugled to see if i could get his attention to slow him down. It worked, AND it also provided 2 additional bulls, one up the canyon about 500 yards from me and the other down the canyon about the same distance.
My plan was to position myself in the middle of these 3 bulls and either let them work towards each other or try and bring one in. I figured getting in the middle would give me the best chance to potentially ambush one as they moved towards each other. It was obvious from their screams that they were doing just that.
I spotted the bull down the canyon from me at about 250 yards. Not a shooter. Dang it.
Next my focus was on the bull up the canyon. I kind of maneuvered that way and was cow calling and cutting off his bugles. It was working he was coming in. He stepped into an opening at about 350 yards and although he was facing me making it hard to see how big he was, i could tell by the backside of his antlers that he was a shooter. Im not a trophy hunter who passes a 325" bull for a 330" bull, i wanted a good mature 6 point and i could tell this was one.
I positioned myself where the wind would be in my favor and I could still keep an eye on him. We spent the next 5 minutes talking to each other and he continued working my way. My heart started to race once he was about 100 yards off. I tried to calm myself down. There was a wallow about 40 yards below my to my right and i could tell he was walking on a trail that would hit that wallow. So i got uphill from the wallow and knew he would walk about 25 yards below me. My plan was to let him walk past me so that he was quartering away from me allowing me to hopefully stand, draw, and shoot without him noticing.
You know how in hunting 95% of the time the plan doesn't work? This was one of the 5%. He walked right down that trail, 20 yards from me, my heart was beating so loud i thought it would scare him off. He stopped at the wallow just as i envisioned. I slowly stood, he didn't notice. I pulled back and he looked over at me but didn't seem spooked. I went through my mental progression I always tell myself. Got the bow level, anchored against my face properly, looked through the peep, found the correct pin, and took a breath or two. I let the arrow fly and it buried up to the fletchings right where i was aiming.
He turned and ran about 50 yards and dropped dead in his tracks within seconds of the arrow hitting him. My hands were shaking like I couldn't believe. These things always happen so fast.
I snapped a few pics by myself and spent the next 3.5 hours carrying the head back up to the truck. The next day i found a road that was a little further distance wise from the bull but it was not nearly the elevation gain. I packed out all the meat myself, something I had never done before on an elk. Made for a long but rewarding 24 hours.
I caped him out thinking i might do a shoulder mount, but because of the extra time it took to get him out and back to utah when I dropped him off to the taxidermist the hair was starting to pull out and it was a little bit too late to make it happen. Also, i thought i had left plenty of hide on the cape but i needed to leave a few more inches. So euro mount it is, he will still turn out great.
Attachments
Last edited:
