Wow! Late in the last millennium...

by Paul , Tuesday, April 05, 2022, 08:46 (899 days ago) @ JimT

Gene was a good ol' boy and a prayer partner of our ministry. The last year I qualified for a Colorado resident's license he bought me an elk tag and got a local to guide me on private land. I had picked up an old P17 Enfield a few years before at a gun show. Someone had sporterized it back in the 50's or 60's (going by style) and I had a Simmons scope that my wife had bought me for my birthday the same year I'd got the rifle. A local 'smith installed the rings and scope for me and I'd taken a small forkhorn mulie with it the year I'd acquired the rifle. Anyway, Gene got me set up with Ted, Ted got permission from his brother go guide me on some of the family's acreage that his brother wasn't guiding paying customers on at the time of my hunt.

So I drove up to Ted's place and we had a grand time. Although we were raised on different continents we share a lot of similar outlooks on life and have had a great time over the years just being "good ol' boys, never meanin' no harm..."- but thankfully with no trouble with the law. Anyway, we were all over that piece of the western slope of the Rockies and only finding sign for the most part. My tag was either bull or cow but I was after meat, not horns. Plus, I figured to leave any horns for paying customers.

As so many hunting stories go, it came down to the last hour of the last day I had to hunt and we were up on a sandstone bluff overlooking one of their pastures. And finally we saw the elk coming down out of the trees, several hundred yards away. So back to the truck we trotted and drove down to the back of a hill that was between us and where the elk should be when we got there. Of course, time is of the essence so I did my best to sprint up that hill with that heavy old rifle. Got to the top and there were the elk, about 150 yards below us. I was gasping and wheezing and trying to get an idea of which elk to shoot. I saw a nice fat cow off to the side with her head down grazing and I took a rest over a tree branch, tried to steady my gasping lungs enough to get a decent shot. Once I was sure she was in the clear I squeezed the trigger and she raised her head to look for the source of the BOOM! And that's when I realized that "she" had antlers! There was a sage bush behind him that masked the presence of his antlers while his head was down. Fading light is not your friend in such situations. I had two problems - there was an antler point restriction AND I'd just put a bullet in that elk! A quick look at the antlers through the scope revealed 5 points - a legal bull, for which I was relieved, to say the least.

Meanwhile Ted was saying, shoot him again! Shoot him again! He'd been rooting for a bull the whole time and I'd not told him my plan to take a cow instead. Now, I'd read about elk taking shot after shot from Howitzers and walking off to be lost. So I'd done something that I regret to this day - I bought a box of 180 grain factory ammo and that's what was in the rifle. Well, it couldn't be helped and so I shot him again. This time he went down right in his tracks and Ted was ecstatic. I was relieved. And that's when I came to understand the advice that I'd been given about shooting elk. The best place to shoot an elk is next to a pickup! Ted went back down for the truck and I went down to look the elk over. And that's when I found that the first shot had missed completely! I never saw where it hit, but with my wheezing it either went over him or under him, but it definitely didn't hit him! The second shot, the one that did the job, went a bit high - but was perfectly placed anyway as it clipped the bottom of the spine, sending shards of bone down into the chest cavity, shredding the lungs and bleeding him out right there. It also went on its merry way leaving a nice exit hole. Very little meat was lost and my handloads would have done just as good of a job - which is why I regretted having given in to "everyone says" and buying that factory ammo. That's the only big game animal I've ever taken with a factory load.

Ted got there with the truck and we gutted the elk then wrestled it up onto the flatbed and hauled it back to the ranch headquarters where we hung it to cool 'til the next day. That elk fed us well and I gave a lot of it away as we were heading to Coffee Country soon after.