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Well, I just wanted to share one of my latest and most exciting hunts. On Sept. 15th my friend Mark and I went into the Frank Church Wilderness in ID on a drop camp hunt. The first night, after unpacking, we split up for a short evening hunt. I went up to a saddle above our camp and Mark went into a valley a short way from camp. On my way down from the saddle as the sun was setting, I heard a shot. We were so far into the wilderness area I knew that it was Mark. I waited a few minutes and called him on our radio. Sure enough, he had already connected with a Black bear. He needed a little help so I dropped some things at the camp and went to where he was. We had most of it done when the rain and wind came up. We decided to finish up the next day. After waking, Mark urged me to go hunt. Now that it was light and he would have the rest of the day, he would take care of the bear alone.

I left for the saddle. Upon arrival I had a number of Elk bugling all around me! It was like one of those videos! By 10:00am I had called in a small 5x5 but had decided to let him go for the next year. Although the bulls would answer my cow calls I was unable to call in any other bulls that day.

The next day Mark went with me to the same area. Again, the Bulls were very vocal that day which kept us excited all day. By about 4:30pm we had a bull answering our cow calls. He seemed to be around 400yds away. We had called to this bull for around 15 minutes and it seemed he was not coming any closer. We jointly decided that I should try to stalk the bull while Mark continued to cow call. As soon as I stood to go to the bull, he bugled to let us know he was on his way in! We could tell that he was quite a bit closer than the last time we heard him. My humble words here cannot do justice to the excitement that my friend and I were feeling! Those of you who have called in any game animal know what I am saying. At this point I sat down pronto. Mark was using two different hand held cow calls, and I was using a mouth diaphram. We continued calling as the bull made his way in. It wasn't long before I saw him. As I raised the Blaser R93 (.300wm) Mark laid down on his back to make himself invisible. The elk came in quickly, running, always obscured by brush or trees. When he was about 30 yards away, he slowed to a walk. Now I waited until I had a shooting lane of about 6 inches between small trees. At the shot, he went down immediately. I jumped up, reloaded, and got into a position to fire again if needed. The elk was down for good, but not dead. A couple of finishing shots were required to move the process along.

Mark doesn't know why, but he started his vid cam earlier and got all of it on video! Listening to that Bull screaming at us on the video is almost as good as being there.

This was my first bull Elk. First Elk called in. I'm pretty much an expert now..

We tried for the rest of the trip to get an Elk for Mark but were unable. I'm confident we'll connect for him next year.

Cheers,

Armbar. [image]

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