Big Mountains, Big Bulls

My experience while hunting Idaho elk, outcomes, and lessons

The ringing silence of the mountain just before the sun rises. A soft breeze begins to blow the aspens that are illuminated by my headlamp as we march our way up the mountain. Finally, the sound we’ve been waiting for to direct us for the day - A bull elk bugling two drainages over and 1000 feet above us. This is what keeps us coming back through all the suffering on the mountain.

I’ve been hunting for 3 years now and this was my 4th elk hunt in those 3 years. To say I’m fortunate is an understatement! As you may have read in last week's article, if you love something and have goals, you’ll find ways to make them happen consistently. 

I didn’t grow up hunting, but as a kid, I remember playing Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts on Xbox and always dreaming of going to cool places to hunt cool animals. Back then, I had never so much as tried game meat, but I think one of the things that captivated me most from an early age was seeing the rugged, remote places that hunting can take you. 

It puts you in situations far from civilization and other people, making you match your wits against creatures whose everyday life goal is to not be killed by mountain lions, bears, wolves, and other humans.

Hunting an animal that survives years of being chased by all those predators only to be the one to finally hunt it down? And it provides me with a year's worth of meat? Sign me up. 

Vertical mountains, tons of elk.

Leading up to any hunt, I typically do A LOT of e-scouting. That is, researching maps of the area I will be hunting and studying terrain of where I think animals MIGHT be. Of course, I never really know what an area will be like until I get there, and this hunt was no different.

While months of research went into studying every nook and cranny of the area I was allowed to hunt, the mountainside we spent the entire trip on was discovered by chance when my friend pulled over for a snack and heard bulls bugling from the mountaintop.

Idaho is notorious for having mountains that are pretty dang near vertical, and this mountain was no different. It gained 1800 vertical feet in the span of 700-ish yards. So, yeah, it was steep! For the majority of it, the only way to climb up was to grab a bush in front of your face and use it to pull yourself up a few steps while trying not to fall backward and roll down the mountain

But since we were hearing elk, seeing elk, and getting into bow range of elk every single day, it made the struggle up and down the mountain worth it.

The first 5 days were intense. We began to learn the behaviors of the elk, what they were doing, and when. This is typical of bowhunting where you need to become intimately aware of the animals’ routines if you hope to ambush one and knock it down. 

On the 6th day, the elk randomly stopped bugling which made locating them a tad more difficult considering we couldn’t use our binoculars to spot them out on the thick mountainside.

An elk goes down.

On my 7th day, I got a satellite phone message from Eddie saying he shot and killed a calf elk (our tags were valid for “any elk” to better manage the population and bull-to-cow ratio, as this unit has an overabundance of cow elk). I made my way to him to help him break it down and move it into his truck. Although, since calves are the size of large deer, he didn’t actually need my help as he might have needed for a bull elk.

Once his elk was hanging back at our campsite, I needed to quickly devise a plan to get an elk of my own, as I only had one day left. 

I took a stroll on the mountain and stopped for a water break (remember, this mountain is brutal). During my water break, something made me look up… And what would you know there was a cow elk 97 yards uphill just grazing.

A few seconds pass as I stare at her and the bull elk we’ve been after, “Ol Raspy” as we began calling him, emerged. We gave him that nickname because his bugle sounded like a raspy wimpy bull - completely misleading to what his body and antler size actually looked like. He was the kind of bull you dream about. Big-bodied, powerful, with sweeping antlers.

He was at 88 yards - Too far for me to take a shot with a bow. Although, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to send one at him. As I ranged him at 88 yards and those thoughts of letting an arrow fly crept in, I noticed 5 branches coming out from the side of a tree that perfectly covered his vitals.

I’d like to think that was God’s way of saying, you aren’t ready for this caliber of animal, so stop thinking about it.

Ol Raspy began moving uphill at a slow pace for an elk, but Usain Bolt speeds for a human. I decided to not pursue him this time, hoping I’d have another shot at him in the next 24 hours before my hunt ended.

Shots are fired.

I got back to camp around 4 p.m., just enough time to relax for an hour before I had to head out for the evening hunt. Considering Eddie’s calf carcass was lying around on the mountain and we had just seen a bear a couple of days prior, I decided that I was going to devote the evening hunt to sitting and waiting to see if the bear came wandering to camp. 

I rolled my pants up and made my way across the frigid river in my Crocs before putting my boots on and eating a dehydrated meal while hiding behind a log waiting for the bear.

A few hours passed, and it was now 7:45 p.m. I had about 20 minutes left of light so I figured I’d call it a night and hope for a miracle in the morning since that was my last chance to hunt. I gathered my things into my pack but was honestly not in the mood to cross the river again. Something told me to take the long way back to camp… 

After 50 yards of walking, I heard the unmistakable crunch of branches. Then, the weak whimpering bugle of Ol’ Raspy pushing his cows down the mountain to cross the river into the meadow. The herd was no more than 100 yards away.

I got on the satellite phone and messaged Eddie, “Ol Raspy is coming down the mountain towards camp. He’s going to cross my path and I’m going to kill him tonight”.

Within a minute, I could see members of the herd starting to cross the river, led by another bull. I saw one cow, two cows, three… pretty soon there were too many to count. I nocked an arrow and dialed my yardage to 55 and drew back.

I was starting to lose shooting light and Ol Raspy was still making his way down. I had a group of three cows standing in the open grazing. I told myself not to be greedy and I decided to take one of the cows. I put my pin on her and let an arrow loose.

Miss.

I’m not sure what happened with this shot. I was pretty steady, my yardage pin was perfect, but I missed low and left. I know myself, and when I miss during practice, I tend to miss left when I start getting tired. And to say I was tired would be an understatement after 7 days in the woods.

The entire herd spooked out of range to 80 to 90 yards by the river. Even worse they now all knew something was up and were looking in my direction with shooting light fading fast. The entire herd, EXCEPT Ol’ Raspy, that is.

Since he was walking so far behind his cows, when I shot my arrow and spooked the herd, he was just getting to the clearing. He did not like that his entire group of cows that he hoped to breed in a few days were now far away from him where another bull could come and sweep them up.

He let out a bugle and some chuckles to voice his displeasure at the situation, sending chills up and down my spine.

I’m 40 yards from the biggest elk on the mountain. One that dreams are made of. He’s about to walk out into the open where I can shoot him. I have about one to two minutes left of daylight. I range where I think he’s going to walk.

40 yards.

I knock an arrow and drawback as I hear the hooves marching towards the spot I have in my mind.

My arm is starting to shake from holding the arrow back for what felt like 10 minutes but was likely only 30 seconds.

Finally, the big creme-colored body of an elk steps out from the tree, my pin on the vital area. My mind goes blank and I let the arrow loose.

THWACK.

The elk goes down in a heap and rolls over with its legs flailing in the air. I couldn’t even tell you what happened next but I remember knocking another arrow as the elk gets up and begins what I hope is its final sprint of life.

I wait a few minutes and go check the spot where my arrow connected on the elk. My hands are shaking uncontrollably when I arrive at my arrow and pick it up.

My heart sinks. My arrow only got around 6 inches of penetration. There was a lot of blood, but it was dark red, indicating I either hit the animal’s liver (still deadly, but takes 5-8 hours to cause death), or I hit a vein in one of the front legs. Considering my arrow didn’t penetrate more than 6 inches, I had a sickly feeling that it was the latter.

The replay.

I called Eddie to help me begin my search that I knew was going to take us deep into the night. While he’s on his way, and even now as I write this, I replay that shot in my head. 

The more I replay the shot, the more I begin to fear the worst - that I wounded/hurt an animal without delivering a killing blow. When I drew back, I had my sight set at 40 yards. When I reevaluated where the elk actually was when I shot compared to where I was standing, it was closer to 45 yards. This would cause my arrow to impact lower than my aim point.

What’s more, my aim point was at the heart - a rookie mistake. You see, an elk’s vitals, the lungs in particular, are huge. So big, that it’s almost hard to miss when you are standing so close to them.

The heart on the other hand, while still in that vital section, is towards the bottom of the chest cavity only a few inches away from the big powerful muscles and bones of their shoulders. With this type of shot, there is a chance a big and powerful piece of bone or tissue can inadvertently move in front of a potential kill shot and save the animal’s life.

Looking back, it occurred to me in that split-second moment that I let the arrow loose, the corner of my eye caught another elk entering my frame of vision to my right - massive-bodied Ol’ Raspy.

It turns out that as smart and wily as these old bull elk are, they aren’t much of gentlemen.

You see, at first, I thought it was only he and I left on this side of the river. Turns out he had one more cow with him that he sent into harm’s way first to test the waters and see what predator may have spooked the rest of his harem.

The elk I shot was one of his cows. She was much smaller than he, leaving me less room for error in my shot process that I had already botched in more ways than one.

The nighttime search and lessons learned.

Eddie and I searched for 4.5 hours that evening, following the blood trail that became tiny droplets of blood towards the end, barely distinguishable from a speck of dirt on a rock. We spent another few hours searching in the morning and then I searched alone for another two after Eddie headed home.

There was no more blood trail to follow. It simply dried up.

I sat there on the side of the mountain imagining all the scenarios that could have happened. Is the cow elk dead and I just can’t find her? If I did shoot her where I think I did, in the low shoulder, is she still alive? 

The latter is very likely. Elk are big, powerful animals who can take a lot of punishment. But that does not make me feel any better about what happened. I’m still thinking about it and will likely always remember that feeling of wounding an animal that I wanted to give a quick, peaceful death.

This is the unfortunate reality of bowhunting. This is the unfortunate reality of life in the wild.

As much as most people in this world would like it, nature and life are not peaceful and they are not forgiving. Nature is a violent, violent place where you must be strong in order to survive, much less thrive. Things like this happen every day on the mountain between animals.

I can mope and whine about missing out on my first elk and my first bow kill, or I can realize that this is part of nature’s violent circle. It’s supposed to feel disgusting and shitty when you wound an animal and if it doesn’t, there might be something wrong with you.

But that feeling is also a huge motivating factor to never want that to happen again and drives me to be better next time. Because there absolutely will be a next time. 

Take Action

There is a lot for me to take action on as I write this article. But for you the reader, I’ll have you ponder this:

When you look at the food on your plate, try to realize what and where it came from. Even you vegans, there was death and pain involved in that plant-based meal of yours whether you like it or not.

Many people in the hunting community use words like “harvest” when they describe taking an animal. I hate that. I use the word “kill” because it is much more of a raw and real description of what is happening. You are killing something else so that you have the nourishment you need to continue on. Something is dying so that you can live.

This is tough because no one wants to cause another living thing pain. But as adults, we also must accept that this is a necessary part of life. While wounding an animal is never part of the plan, it is something that WILL happen to every hunter at some point - likely multiple times. 

It feels shitty. I still feel bad about it. But, there is no more raw and real emotion than to fully grasp what you are doing when you pick up a weapon with the intent to kill another creature for your survival. 

If you eat meat, I’d encourage you to try hunting at least once at some point in your life.

There’s nothing that makes you feel more alive and human than the highs and lows of being in that tunnel vision focus between the life and death of an animal that could feed you for a year.

Or you can keep buying your food in plastic where someone else has to do the dirty work for you.

Up to you.

I would love to know how many of you would be interested in hunting sometime. I’ve thought of putting something together for readers if there was interest.

Anyway, enough of the writing. I have another elk hunt in 2.5 weeks that I need to get sharp for.

-Sebastian