By Justin Jenness
Justin Jenness won our 2014 Eastmans’ Forum Elk Hunt Story Contest and received a custom belt buckle. Click here to enter your story in the 2015 contest and have your story published here! **Forum Story Contest Rules**
Over the years I have learned that elk hunting is one of those things that will provide a man or woman with some of their highest highs and lowest lows. Let me be the first to say that by no means do I have everything figured out when it comes to bow hunting elk, as at the young age of 32 with only 10 years of bow hunting experience, every single year seems to throw me a curve ball. 2014 was no exception and I learned some of the most valuable lessons during this season.
Every year it seems like I start to get the itch earlier and earlier when it comes to beginning the preparations for the next season. Inevitably it always starts in the winter with getting my bow dialed back in and shooting in the garage at 15 yards, waiting for the warmth of spring to motivate me to get back into the hills. As soon as April and May roll around I find myself in my honey hole, along with my nine year old boy and my best friend looking for those dropped bones. Spring of 2014 was great for shed hunting as we found around 30 elk sheds and 20 deer sheds in just a few days of hiking. The anticipation that builds every spring after finding those big matching sets of bone is almost too much to bear and it makes the preparation that much more enjoyable, knowing what caliber of bulls made it through another year.
As the summer rolls along I start getting excited for archery antelope, as in Montana, it opens on August 15th and this turns out to be some of the best scouting for elk that I do every year. I know, now you are asking yourself how can a guy hunt antelope and scout elk? Let me explain how this came to fruition. Every year I find myself scouring Google Earth during the winter, always looking for that backup spot just in case other savvy hunters find the areas that I am hunting in. Four years ago this was the case. The added hunting pressure along with the passing of my father limited both my success and time in the field. With the last day of the rifle season, I decided to try out an area that I had looked at on the map for a couple of years. I was successful in shooting a rag horn bull right before dark. I still didn’t know anything about the area, but when I went in to retrieve my bull the next day I came across seven other bulls, with two being the type that a guy just doesn’t see every year. I knew right then that I had to spend the time to learn this area like the back of my hand. This area is one that when you drive by it, all you see is pretty much sagebrush ridden, flat country and you would think that it could be good antelope hunting, which it is. But once you get in about two miles, the sagebrush gives way to breaking hills with large timber patches, AKA “elk heaven.” Trust me, if I showed you the area in person you would probably call me crazy for claiming that there were large herds of elk out there. However, the wealth of elk has been apparent, as my hunting partner and I have pulled five bulls in three years out of this small area.
The 2014 archery season kicked off and I was able to be standing next to my hunting partner as he arrowed a great bull after I called out the yardage for him. The pack out was heavy, but it is always a labor of love, knowing that his family was going to eat well this winter. The area we hunt seemed to not have as many elk as it had in past years, but we were still seeing elk every single day, so I kept hunting hard. I took some vacation from work during the third week of September, as that seems to be a magic time of year. This year there was no moon during this week, which I thought would kick the rut off well. Little did I know that the third week of September was going to have record high temperatures, all the way into the mid 90’s.
All of the preparation, scouting and shooting had come down to the third week of September and I now found myself sick to my stomach that the weather was not what I had expected. I have learned that the weather is one of those things that provides hunters with both great anticipation and disheartenment. I still tried to make the most of my time by hunting hard in the mornings, as the elk were rutting good early in the day. September 24th was no exception and the mercury was predicted to hit around 95 degrees. The morning hunt was great and we were able to call in a gorgeous bull, but just couldn’t get him to commit to leaving his cows. We watched this bull take eight cows up the sage flats into the timber around 8 a.m., with three or four smaller bulls harassing him the whole way. Once he was onto a ridge that has thick timber and that the elk often like to bed down on, we worked our way to the base of the coulee and began to cow call, hoping one of the smaller bulls would come down to investigate. This never happened and we decided to just sit and wait, since the wind was good, hoping that the elk would move down to water.
We had been hunting hard for several days at this point and those early mornings caught up with me, the next thing you know I woke up and it was 1 p.m. It always amazes me how hard I can sleep on the ground, in the woods, but yet some nights in my own bed are miserable. Once we were up and awake we ate a quick lunch and decided to hike out of the area because the heat was brutal. We hiked about one mile around the area that we had last seen the elk so as not to bump them, allowing us to attempt to find them the next morning. As we were walking up another ridge that elk often like to bed down on, I looked to my right and spotted a bull at about 50 yards, feeding in the timber. The wind was perfect and I thought that I could position myself to get a good shot at this bull.
Prior to moving up the ridge I decided to glass quickly, just to make sure no other elk were bedded down where I was about to move to. After looking up the ridge and not seeing any elk I took two steps and up jumped two cows and a massive bull at just 15 yards. When I glassed up the ridge I had looked right over the top of the elk not thinking that there was anything that close to me still bedded down. I instinctively let out a cow call and stopped a cow in a perfect shooting lane, the rangefinder reading 37 yards. The bull was right behind her, but standing in the timber, I knew he was going to step into the same shooting lane so I just sat and waited. A few seconds later the bull took two steps and another cow call, while at full draw, stopped the bull broadside. My arrow flew true, but just before reaching its intended target it hit the smallest of twigs. The bull jumped when it heard the arrow strike the twig, but I still remember seeing my fletching hit the bull in a perfect spot.
Not knowing where the shot was for sure, we decided to wait the bull out. We found some blood very close to where I hit the bull and thought it would only be a matter of time before we were packing out another bull. After waiting an hour and a half we started tracking the bull and the blood trail was impressive. It was large enough that you didn’t have to track at all, you could just walk as fast as you wanted while following the blood trail. After about 400 yards we reached an old fence. It appeared the bull couldn’t get himself over the fence to follow his cows, I knew this was a good thing. Then the bull did something that I never saw coming. He followed the fence line for over half a mile out into the middle of the sagebrush until he finally got the determination to crawl over the fence, which was evident by the amount of blood covering all three strands of barbwire. At this point we were around ¾ of a mile into the tracking job, all while following a massive blood trail and still had no elk. We sat and took a break and contemplated what our next move should be. The elk hunter in me was saying that I needed to back out and give the bull more time, but the meat eater in me was telling me that I needed to find the bull ASAP so that I could get the meat deboned and on ice. The meat eater prevailed and we continued tracking the bull as he made his way back into the hills and timber.
As darkness began to set in, our tracking slowed down as the blood became harder to see. Just before dark my partner said, “Look at that!” I looked up to see the bull standing up out of his bed and walking up the hill like nothing was wrong. This was one of those moments that my heart felt like it was in my throat and all I wanted to do was break down and cry. I couldn’t believe that it had been nearly five hours since I shot this bull and seeing the amount of blood he had lost that he was still up and moving. We walked up to where the bull had been bedded down and the blood spot was massive, again making me question everything I thought I knew about elk. I marked the spot on my GPS and saved the track we had followed which said we had gone a mile and a half from where I had shot this bull. Having no other choice, we hiked out knowing that we would have to wait until the next morning to take up the trail again.
After tossing and turning throughout the night we finally made it back to where we had jumped the bull. This time as he left the area he was not bleeding as much, so the tracking job was a lot slower than before. Several times we had to split up and make large loops trying to find the next spot of blood. The longer this went on the less confident I became, knowing that our chances of finding this animal were declining fast. After about a quarter of a mile of tracking my partner said that he was going to make another loop around a small point and he asked me if I wanted to make a loop in the other direction. I think he could sense my lack of confidence in making another loop, so before I set out in my own direction he stated that if I didn’t want to walk that way I could just follow him. After taking two steps I ran into his back, as I had my head down looking for blood. I asked him what was going on and he asked if I was going to put my hands on my bull. Lying there, only 10 yards away, was the bull of my lifetime.
Elation! I am not even sure that this word describes the emotions that I felt in that moment, but that is one of the things that I was experiencing. I have never been so grateful to find an animal and it was apparent through the unexpected tears that I could not hold back, no matter how hard I tried. Upon inspecting the bull I saw that my arrow had hit him just in front of his left hindquarter and exited in his right armpit. There was no explanation of why that bull had gone so far, other than he had a will to survive. I now have so much more respect for the toughness of elk and will force myself to make sure the shots I take are good, not marginal. The animals we hunt deserve this and to take a marginal shot on an elk is just like using them for target practice.
2014 didn’t end with my success, I was also able to guide my 12-year-old daughter to her first cow elk and to her first whitetail buck. The fulfillment I had in shooting my largest elk was no comparison to how proud I was of my daughter for the success she found this year. I can’t wait to spend more time with my children in the field and teach them some of the lessons I have learned the hard way so that their lowest of lows in the field are hopefully limited.