Opening day of black powder, my friend Keith and I headed into the same spot that I have taken many bulls, including the one I got on Sept. 14th. We were at the end of the road, 2 1/2 miles behind the gate, by daylight. There were elk there. We seen 4 leaving a 20 year old clearcut, and heard one bugle.
We got into the timber, above the elk, and it got about as uneventful as one could ever imagine. 10 minutes in the timber and we heard a "pop", just below. I chirped. Keith spotted a bull looking our way. I could not see it. Keith said it was big, but coming from a guy who has never killed an elk, I wondered what his "big" meant. The bull turned to walk away, I chirped again. Keith says "he is coming towards you", in a loud whisper, as we were 20 feet apart. I still could not see the bull.
I scooted across the hill, 30 feet further from Keith than I had been. I peeked down around some trees and seen one half of an elk face and one half of his antlers. I motioned for Keith to come over. He did. He got out around the trees that were blocking and could see the elk, but no shot, 70 yards but bad angle. The bull turned to walk away which opened up his left shoulder and Keith let fly. Bull down. We hooted and hollered.....bull back up and gone.
I will try to shorten this, but he broke the bulls shoulder and it took a chase and a few more shots. When it ended, the bull had ran directly into an 8" fallen cedar that was at an angle and leaning up on an old rootwad. The elk was trying to run over, pretty much a cliff, but this log held him back. When he expired, he was stuck right there, head downhill, and not much that we could do.
Another hunter heard the shooting and came to our rescue, but the 3 of us had no chance to pull this big guy back up the hill. We, eventually, had to tie the bull up, saw the log out of the way, swing his head around and tie it to a tree and then slowly lower his rear-end down to where we could clean it.
The whole process was horribly slow. I killed my elk by myself. I gutted, skinned and boned all the meat out in 3 hours or so. It took Keith and I over 5 hours to do his. We were doing it on this steep slope with, virtually, one place to stand. It was bad, but it was a successful hunt and Keith took his first elk ever, a fine 5X6 Roosevelt.
Blurry pic but it shows how steep it was below the elk.
From above the elk and the log we had to remove:
Cutting the log out of the way. Elk tied up. This pic does not do the steepness justice, but trust me, if we had not tied him up and then cut the log, the elk would have gone another 70 or 80 feet over the edge.
Keith preparing to gut the elk, after we finally got it into position:
Finally, hours later, Keith and his first elk. We were pretty tired by now and still packed it out over 2 miles to finish the day, but, we had help this time.
