The Elk Hunt

Wow, what a weekend. This is how it all started.

I had a tag in Arizona and my father in law and brother in law had tags in New Mexico. We were going down to meet my dad, my uncles Kevin and Cole Bigelow, and Cord. I had class at college till 2:20, my brother in law had class till three, so we decided to leave to go down to AZ/NM after class on wednesday afternoon. We headed down there and drove all night till 5:00 a.m. through the reservation. While we were heading to camp, Cole and Kevin had to try and burn the camp down. Cole started to pour gas on the fire and it caught the can on fire, Kevin grabbed the can and started running around because he thought it was going to blow up. He was running around and Cole was chasing him around the camp. They happen to catch the camp on fire and burn a whole in my dad's tent. Cord was laughing at them the whole time.
We made it to camp and we were thinking we would rest a little before we got going with hunting and we look around and everybody is getting up, putting camo on. They were like, so you ready to go? So we got our stuff and jumped into the truck and went hunting. My hunt didn't start till friday, but the other hunt started on thursday. So we went that morning and heard some bugles and tried to get up on some, but they were moving too fast. Then we went to another place and Taylor (Bro in-law) got a shot off but the bull jumped the shot. Then we were driving down this dirt road and saw this cow elk. We went to see if their was a bull and come to find out someone had shot this cow and it wasn't doing so well. So later on everyone went chasing some more bulls while Cord and I stayed at the truck. Soon a guy on his fourwheeler came by and we asked him if he had shot at a cow earlier. He said no, so we said because there is a cow wounded down there. And he was like, oh ya I shot at one and I've been trying to find it. During the course of about 4 minutes, we heard 6 different stories about what he did. But, if he was willing to take it, better than it going to waste. Hopefully he had the right tag. We saw some other bulls that night, but we couldn't get up on any of them.
The next day, I went with my dad and Cord and Steve and Taylor went with Kevin and Cole. We didn't see anything that morning, other than a nice Mule Deer Buck the day after the hunt ended and Cord had a tag. Then it started to rain, so we decided to take a nap. We woke up and glassed in front of the truck and we saw a nice 340 bull with 7 cows. We went after them and heard 2 other bulls in the area but we couldn't get close enough before dark. Those other guys had the opposite day, good in the morning, nothing at night but no shots. The second day we went to where we seen the bull the night before, walking the fence line and we heard the elk bugle and we set up and the cows came by at 30 yards, and some started coming out at 12 yards away. I had my bow drawn, ready to shoot and one of the cows caught us and the bull made a circle to where I didn't get a shot at it. It was the same 340 bull. Dangit. We stayed in the area and and sat in the same spot for 6 hours. We sat at the fenceline again and the bulls were coming to us and another hunter came and messed up everything, so I didn't get a shot. We got to camp and Steve had gotten a shot right at dark, and it made a hard hitting noise when he shot. Cole was with him and during that time the elk were rutting like crazy and bulls were running all over the place and Cole was standing up yelling shoot! shooot! And Steve was just flingin arrows.
We went back the next morning to look for it but there was no blood, the arrow just glanced off the shoulder. Then we started on our trip back to Idaho, we got back at 1:30 in the morning monday morning. And we about died of exhaustion the next couple of days.