So I bought all the food necessary to feed myself and two of my buddies that were coming to help. Packed everything up and left this past Wednesday to get up to the area that I was going to hunt. I would be getting there two days before my hunt started to see if I could find a bull to hunt.
I got to the area that I wanted to hunt in about 1.5 hours after I left my house. I set up camp, ate some dinner and went to bed. I woke up early in the mornig with a plan to find a good high spot for my afternoon/evening glassing session. I rode around and found a point on a mountain that had a clearing on it that would offer a wide range of glassing ability over four different meadows that were separated by ravines that shoot out from a mountain to the west of me.
I get back to camp, eat some lunch and get set up for my afternoon of glassing. I get to my glassing point at around 4pm, set up the tripod and start glassing. At around 6:40 PM I see some cows coming out of one of the ravines and grazing into one of the meadows. This meadow was about 1 1/4 miles away from me. The last elk to walk out was a bull but I could not see anything but the main beams since he was so far away. I could tell that he was not huge but wasn't tiny. That is the only herd that I saw that evening.
The next day my two buddies arrived and we decided to see if the 9 cows and bull would come out again this evening. We decided to ride over to a hill with a rock outcropping that was closer to the meadow that they came out on the previous evenin that I had spotted them. We get up to the rock out cropping and the herd pops out of the next ravine south from the ravine that they came out of last evening. This was good as they were actually closer to us this time. We had the spotting scope this time so we could see him quite well. He was a 6x7 that has devils points growing on the brow tines on each side otherwise he would have been a 5x6. He would only score 300-310 though. We didn't see any other elk come out that evening. We watched them graze toward a tank as it got dark. We figured that they would spend a lot of time at that tank and then graze back to their bedding area in the morning. My wife had advised me that our freezer was empty and that I had better not come home without meat. I thought this bull would be just fine for me.
We got up early before sunrise and headed back to our glassing point and when it got daylight, we started glassing. We immediately spotted the elk and the bull was ranged at 690 yards. By the time I got all set up the bull was now at 720 yards. There was a 6 mph wind comin from my 3' O clock. That put me at 13.5 MOA for elevation and 1.5 MOA right for windage using my 338 Lapua and 300 gr Bergers . Dialed it in and got on him. Squeezed the trigger and my spotter called a perfect hit right behind the shoulder. I saw the impact through my scope and confirmed that it was a good hit but the elk was not going down! Now I usually wait for a deer to expire after I double lung him but I took the advice of people on here that elk hunt a lot. I shot until he dropped! I put 1200 grains in that bull before he hit the ground! He soaked them up like a champ! The reason for this is I didn't want him walking into that ravine, dieing and Falling all the way down it! His body still has 2 bullets inside him (would have been three but I found one on the offside) as they didn't exit but the first round did exit. The reason I know this is because I could see blood coming out of the exit as he tried to walk away from me after the first shot. That bullet did not hit any ribs so I am guessing that the other bullets hit ribs and did not exit because of it. I didn't gut the elk so I left the other two bullets behind.
Fastest hunt that I have ever been on.
I got to the area that I wanted to hunt in about 1.5 hours after I left my house. I set up camp, ate some dinner and went to bed. I woke up early in the mornig with a plan to find a good high spot for my afternoon/evening glassing session. I rode around and found a point on a mountain that had a clearing on it that would offer a wide range of glassing ability over four different meadows that were separated by ravines that shoot out from a mountain to the west of me.
I get back to camp, eat some lunch and get set up for my afternoon of glassing. I get to my glassing point at around 4pm, set up the tripod and start glassing. At around 6:40 PM I see some cows coming out of one of the ravines and grazing into one of the meadows. This meadow was about 1 1/4 miles away from me. The last elk to walk out was a bull but I could not see anything but the main beams since he was so far away. I could tell that he was not huge but wasn't tiny. That is the only herd that I saw that evening.
The next day my two buddies arrived and we decided to see if the 9 cows and bull would come out again this evening. We decided to ride over to a hill with a rock outcropping that was closer to the meadow that they came out on the previous evenin that I had spotted them. We get up to the rock out cropping and the herd pops out of the next ravine south from the ravine that they came out of last evening. This was good as they were actually closer to us this time. We had the spotting scope this time so we could see him quite well. He was a 6x7 that has devils points growing on the brow tines on each side otherwise he would have been a 5x6. He would only score 300-310 though. We didn't see any other elk come out that evening. We watched them graze toward a tank as it got dark. We figured that they would spend a lot of time at that tank and then graze back to their bedding area in the morning. My wife had advised me that our freezer was empty and that I had better not come home without meat. I thought this bull would be just fine for me.
We got up early before sunrise and headed back to our glassing point and when it got daylight, we started glassing. We immediately spotted the elk and the bull was ranged at 690 yards. By the time I got all set up the bull was now at 720 yards. There was a 6 mph wind comin from my 3' O clock. That put me at 13.5 MOA for elevation and 1.5 MOA right for windage using my 338 Lapua and 300 gr Bergers . Dialed it in and got on him. Squeezed the trigger and my spotter called a perfect hit right behind the shoulder. I saw the impact through my scope and confirmed that it was a good hit but the elk was not going down! Now I usually wait for a deer to expire after I double lung him but I took the advice of people on here that elk hunt a lot. I shot until he dropped! I put 1200 grains in that bull before he hit the ground! He soaked them up like a champ! The reason for this is I didn't want him walking into that ravine, dieing and Falling all the way down it! His body still has 2 bullets inside him (would have been three but I found one on the offside) as they didn't exit but the first round did exit. The reason I know this is because I could see blood coming out of the exit as he tried to walk away from me after the first shot. That bullet did not hit any ribs so I am guessing that the other bullets hit ribs and did not exit because of it. I didn't gut the elk so I left the other two bullets behind.
Fastest hunt that I have ever been on.
