Bow hunting elk is a surreal experience. Every time I am in the elk woods, I learn something new about them and discover something new about myself. That is what makes it so addicting and thought consuming. I often find myself daydreaming about cool September mornings, screaming bulls, and anticipating the raw adventure that this magical month brings every year.
Utah offers an OTC (over the counter) archery elk tag that has an unlimited quota, making it a prime opportunity for Utah elk hunting enthusiasts looking to secure an OTC elk tag every year for a mere $55. But the downside of this being unlimited is it allows there to be a lot more pressure on the few units that are offered as OTC, which then in turn makes the success rate sub 10%. But every year even with these odds stacked against me, I venture into the backcountry with hopes of getting my shot on a bull elk.
This last challenging backcountry elk hunting season proved to be nothing short of an adventure. We started the trip by exploring a new spot that appeared to look good while doing my preseason e-scouting. We made the 5-mile trek with 3,000 feet of elevation gain to the spot that I thought would put us right on the edge of “good elk country”. While packing in I started to develop a blister on my right heel, that my stubbornness did not stop to let me take care of. This turned out to become a nasty pain that reminded me of its presence with every step. Even with this minor setback we pressed on and continued to explore this new spot. After 3 long days of hard hunting and turning up nothing but old sign, our buddy sent us an Inreach message that rekindled the fire. “We’ve got bulls screaming down in the canyon below us!” With that I knew we needed to relocate to where these elk are. We made the decision to pack up camp, hike out the 5 miles to the truck. We spent one full day getting home to replenish our supplies before heading back to give it everything we had for the last 4 days of the hunt
We got to the trailhead mid-morning with high hopes as we set off on our 6-mile journey to get back to where the elk were. We made it in roughly 4 hours’ time and set up camp before preparing to head out for the evening hunt. My good friend Daenen and I were chatting back and forth over our freeze-dried meals when I heard the distinct noise that any elk hunter would despise. An elk “bark”. I quickly looked towards where the sound came from and saw a 6-point bull cutting through the timber running away from us as hard as he could. We knew we wouldn’t be able to catch up with him, so we decided to push further into the drainage in hopes of finding bulls that were unbothered.
We set off down the trail with about 4 hours of light left. About a mile in we stopped to take a break, right as I took my pack off and sat down, I heard the tail end of what I thought was a bugle. I looked over at Daenen and whispered, “was that a bugle?” I decided to let out a location bugle to see if we could get a response. Right after my bugle we heard an answer from an unknown distance across the river and knew it was go time. We threw our packs on and headed across the river. We cut about 200 yards off the distance between us and the bull before letting out another bugle. I could tell from his response that this one fired him up. Heading through the deadfall infested hillside we kept our wind at the front of our minds. Like my grandpa always said, “you can fool an elk’s eyes, you can fool their ears, but you can’t fool their nose” This was a constant struggle as we climbed the walls of the basin we were in. Every bench and opening would have the wind swirling all over the place making sneaking in on this bull that much harder. We kept tabs on the bull by throwing out occasional estrus cow calls, and some bark chuckles in hopes of fooling the bull into thinking we’re a bull trying to round up a hot cow. This technique worked, as with every call you could tell his responses were getting more aggressive. Once I felt like I was within 120 yards of the bull I left Daenen behind to cut down on the amount of movement and smell as I tried to close in on the bull.
I pushed forward up the hill, trying to get on the same elevation as the bull in hopes that this would fire him up even more. I stepped out onto the edge of a small meadow on a bench on the hillside and looked up through the small patches in the timber and saw the bull 80 yards away raking a tree. I let out a small estrus cow call followed by a chuckle. This got his attention. I watched him come down the hill headed straight below me. I got ready as I knew this would probably be my one chance to shoot him. As he came below me, I looked ahead of his path and found a shooting lane that would put him at 20 yards from me with a clear shot. He stopped 5 feet before that lane and put his nose in the air and quickly flipped around and broke out of there.
That was it… We were busted… I figured it wouldn’t hurt to throw out a quick bugle to hopefully see if the bull was still interested. To my surprise, he responded! I continued to pursue the bull through the thick timber and deadfall bouncing from log to log trying to be quick and stealthy. I relocated him on a bench above a small ravine and started my calling sequence to hopefully lure him into bow range. I was standing behind a small pine tree that barely covered me, as I looked up the game trail to see him heading straight at me! As his head went behind a bush, I drew my bow and settled my pin in the spot that I thought he would come out from. The bull stopped with his head barely poking above a small pine tree and he knew something wasn’t right. In this moment at full draw, I quickly assessed the situation and saw a basketball size gap in the trees right where his throat was. In that moment I made the decision that a frontal shot would be perfect, having the confidence in the Ti Hybrid with its accurate design and lethal cutting I knew that I could make this shot. So, within a matter of seconds, I settled my pin on his throat and executed the shot.
There was that audible “SLAP” as my arrow and SEVR broadhead buried deep into his chest. He spun around instantly and took off out of sight. I had just released my first ever frontal shot on an animal. Unsure of how good the hit was, I decided to sit down and give the bull some time while I waited for Daenen to make his way to me. During the first moments I was very anxious, but an overwhelming feeling came over me that kept telling me to say a prayer to my grandpa. So, I bowed my head and took my hat off and asked my biggest fan for a little bit of help while tracking this elk. Not even seconds after I put my hat back on, we heard a loud crash followed by some smaller crashes about 100 yards above us on the hill. Not sure if it was him, we continued to give him time.
After about an hour, we started out on the blood trail. After 15 yards of tracking, we came across the beginning of one of the heaviest blood trails I have ever seen in all my years of hunting. Daenen who traditionally has a hard time on blood trails because of him being color blind, looked at me and said, “you know it’s a good blood trail when I can follow it!” We continued up the trail as the bull climbed through cliffs and dead fall leaving the intense blood trail to follow. After about 100 yards I looked up the hill with my headlamp and saw tines sticking up out of a thick patch of deadfall and knew it was him. Daenen and I celebrated as we had just accomplished an amazing feat. Taking a bull on Utah’s OTC tag.
Now the real work begins. As we stood over the bull in absolute awe of what we had just done, I reflected on the effort, determination, and sheer adventure it had taken to reach this point. Elk hunting demands grit and resilience, but the reward of such a profound experience is worth every challenge. I quickly came to my senses and realized that we needed to start working on processing this bull. When he died, he fell into a massive patch of recently downed pine trees making the already hard task of processing an elk even harder. We spent the next 6 hours skinning and quartering the bull out before finally finishing at 3 AM. We hung the quarters in trees away from the kill sight knowing that trying to get back to camp with that much weight on our backs in the dark would be extremely dangerous. So we took our gear and headed back to camp for some much needed rest after such a long day. We woke up in the morning recharged and ready to get this bull back to camp.
We spent the better part of the morning making our way up to the kill site to retrieve the quarters that we had hanging from the night before. After getting the meat back to camp we decided to debone all the meat from the quarters to save on weight for the long 6.5 mile pack out that we had ahead of us still. We spent the rest of the evening packing out with no real worry of time. This made me reflect on old time hunting parties and how they would spend time as a group butchering the animal to feed their families, and for a brief moment I felt that connection to our ancestors from years past. I realized that I was participating in something that less than 200 years ago was the “norm” and now it is an almost forgotten past time. I felt an overwhelming emotion come over me, it was a mix of pride, gratitude, and also comfort as in that moment I knew I was exactly where my spirit needed to be.
KC Davies- Brand/Sales Manager SEVR Broadheads
