The following story is of my very first successful archery big game hunt. After ten years of bowhunting elk with my father without so much as a shot opportunity, my confidence and, if I’m being totally honest, interest in bowhunting was beginning to come into question. Nonetheless, throughout the five day hunt, I enjoyed the beautiful country of the west, focused on the lessons that were presented to me, and finally got my shot at filling a tag. This hunt is what I attribute my outright obsession with bowhunting, archery, and the pursuit of western big game to. After tasting that irreplaceable, indescribable feeling of triumph, my life shifted to begin revolving around hunting with my bow. I wrote this story in September of 2014, enjoy.
The day started just like all the other Colorado archery elk hunts of the last ten years. Waking up to my father's alarm clock in that old 1960's camper, lying half asleep, secretly wishing for silence as he stands up. 5:00 am shakes my weary body too quickly, it reflects on the ridges and plateaus I forced it to ascend the day prior. Water begins to bubble within an aluminum coffee pot as the darkness tells us to remain inside. Steam pours out onto dry oats as a glass of orange juice stands by observing. The late September air is sharp and brisk as I lumber down the creaky wooden stairs to crawl into my cold, damp hunting clothes, saturated with the morning dew and the scent of pine. Within our changing tent, the Coleman lantern provides some heat, but my muscles remain tight until the initial chill subsides into the warmth of my two layers of camouflage. By headlamp and a small mirror I create the black and green diagonal lines across my face with sticky face paint. It's day five of my southwestern Colorado archery elk hunt.
Home sweet home
My father John introduced me to bowhunting at the age of 15, when trips were more of an inconvenience than a privilege. As I observed the vibrant yellow of changing aspen leaves, distant glimpses of the golden tan of elk moving through the timber, and the rugged, unforgiving beauty of elk country, I began to see that I had much to learn.
Throughout the years I'd had my fair share of close encounters, including a spike at two yards, a doe at four, and a 360-class bull at 15. I'd never had an opportunity to draw my bow on an elk, but that was all about to change on the morning of September 25th, 2014.
Descending “The Hill”
We set out from camp at 7am, the sun supplying just enough light to see our descent down "the hill", an old logging road that winds down a steep hillside lined with head-high pines, and eventually opens up into a large meadow in the bottom of a vast canyon. A small creek runs through the bottom, winding and babbling under deadfalls and alongside pine saplings and vibrant green ferns. Both sides are steep and the woods are thick, the ground still damp from evening's humidity. Trails carved into the hillside provide a corridor for both us and the game we pursue, encircling vegetation forcing me to replace each game track with one of my own. As we follow the creek, the woods close in on us until our route becomes impassible. We head up the daunting hill to our left and hit an elk trail littered with deadfall that only the long legs of a wapiti could overcome. Walking along, a fresh set of tracks catches our eye, the edges cleanly pressed into the earth, soft from the repeated impressions of hooves.
We reach the top of the plateau and begin to walk an old irrigation ditch that winds through thick pines and fifty-foot aspens. As we walk along as slowly and quietly as we can, cutting up and down the hillside around the tree-littered irrigation ditch, down the hill I spot a small spring with what looks like a possible wallow. We head down to investigate. A clear trail heads right down to it with huge pines and trash can-diameter aspens on all sides of us. As we circle the edges of the small spring, our feet leave impressions that appear out of place in the soft moss among dozens of elk tracks. Down the hill we can see the creek trickling through the bottom some 400 feet below between gaps in the massive pines. Suddenly in the distance we hear an elk chuckle. So many emotions occur all at once, hope, skepticism, excitement, nervousness. My father and I creep up the hill to sit beside a few aspens and he lets out a bugle. We take turns cow calling a few times before sitting in silence for around ten minutes. No response. We stand up to move on and then the elk yells back with a bugle that sent chills up my spine and a slight grin appeared on dad's face. Dad bugles back and I walk down the hill to an aspen with a small bush beside me. I nock an arrow and get ready. As my dad rakes a tree behind me to enrich the idea of a bull with two cows, the nerves start to kick in. I picture all the possible entries the bull might appear from. Silence again. "Let's move up." My father says. So I begin to stalk my way forward as quiet as possible, while my dad proceeds to step on every branch in front of him while he advances. I wish he would've told me he wanted to sound like an entire herd of elk before I nitpick my steps around the smallest of twigs. Another bugle sounds off in the distance, he's getting closer! We get to a small clearing with a spring at the downhill end and thick timber between it and the irrigation ditch. I kneel next to a large pine as dad sets up fifteen yards behind me. Another bugle sounds off. This time I could tell he was less than 100 yards away. The shakes start up. My dad answers, then I let out a cow call. I'm kneeling in front of an aspen, with two big pines about five yards to my left and a down tree five yards in front of me. Then my dad whispers three words I'll remember forever, "Here he comes!" That intense, adrenaline fueled chill races through my body like it was shot from an epi pen. I catch movement about 40 yards away on the other side of the small meadow. A cow elk wanders to the edge of the timber and stops. I see the bull trot through an opening in the thick stand of timber between me and the trail above me then out of sight behind another stand of pines. The cow continues forward past a tree I had ranged at 20 yards and into the meadow coming right at me! She stops at 15 yards and has me pinned. My dad lets out a soft cow call behind his back with his hoochie mama call. The bull comes crashing through the timber, I pull back on my 62 pound PSE Nova as slow as humanly possible and look out of the corner of my eye to see the cow still burning holes through me. The bull continues down the hill and stops in a small opening, eight yards away! The two pines to my left are the only thing between him and I. I lift my bow to his vitals and look through my peep sight, only to see a perfect glare from the sun filling it up and making my pins invisible. I look at the bull, slightly quartering to me, look at my pins, look back at his vitals and let my arrow fly. My orange fletchings vanish into the right side of his chest as he crashes up the hill and out of my sight. My dad let's out a bugle and I follow with a series of cow calls. We join up on the edge of the clearing and go over the mayhem that had just occurred. As we're talking we hear a loud crash in the distance. My heart skips a beat. I'd never drawn my bow back on a big game animal, let alone shot at one.
The old irrigation ditch, now essentially a trail
Thirty minutes pass and we begin to follow the trail of upturned earth and blood spots. Fifteen yards and the trail disappears. My heart sinks and mind races. Did I hit him good? Are we even going to find him? I turn downhill and find a drop of blood, then another, then a log COVERED with blood. I look to my right down onto the irrigation ditch and see my bull lying dead, on the trail!!
My very first big game animal with a bow is a 6x6 bull elk that my father and I called in together! We celebrate, take pictures, and thank God. After eight hours and four trips, we had ten game bags full of meat. What a truly amazing experience, after five days of seeing absolutely nothing, we hear a bugle and the events that followed were, in my mind, nothing short of magical. Everything worked, from the calls, to the wind, to the shot (which ended up being heart, right lung, and liver). My first elk ran less than 50 yards before expiring on the trail.
In years prior, and even this trip, I've questioned if I would ever get a shot at an elk. Persistence and a positive attitude go a long way, and having my father by my side for it is something I'm eternally grateful for. The elk woods aren't an easy place to be, but come September, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
My father, John and I this past season