I spent several days trying to get into bow range of this guy in September and he was extremely good at staying just out of reach. The open country I was hunting in didn't lend itself to archery hunting but I thought if I could get it done with a bow in open country, that would be a great accomplishment and if I couldn't, I would get to put my new 264wm to work and work it did! I got off work early on Thursday and decided to head out for the afternoon. My hunting buddy Bryan got off early as well and went with me. After a 30 minute drive and an hour hike, we were on top of the mountain glassing from a favorite perch. The biggest challenge we would have was the wind that was starting to gust over 30 mph. About 2 minutes after we sat down so glass we found a herd of elk on an open hiltop about 425yds to the south. We quickly did the old paper-rock-scissors to see who would get the shot should there be a shooter in the bunch and I pulled it off with paper! We glassed the herd and soon found a bull we felt was a shooter and started to set up for the shot and the wind really started to get after it. I didn't feel comfortable at that distance with that much wind so I decided to try to close the gap a little. We crawled to a rock pile and decided we were out of cover so it was now or nothing. Bryan ranged him at 365. I layed the rifle over a rock, dialed the elevation turret, figured a 2 mil hold for wind and sent the little 140gr Accubond across the canyon. On impact the bull broke down hard on his front end. He made an attempt to stand back up but with busted shoulders just couldn't do it. I fed him another for insurance and he was done. I found one slug under the hide on the off side and the other passed through. We had to take pictures after sliding him down into the bottom cuz I left my camera in the truck. As an added bonus we were actually able to get the little truck into the bottom and found a washout to back up to and we actually slid him into the bed whole! I had to share that little bit cuz in my experience, elk don't come off the mountain like that! Anyway, sorry for the novel story but this is my first nice bull and I'm pretty excited about it!
