I have hunted elk with the bow off and on since about 1999. Before that I've mostly hunted deer. I've read and enjoyed all kinds of elk hunting stories. Some of the stories on TradGang have been amazing. Most involve hunting in the mountains in Sept during the rut; the quintessential elk hunt. We have decent elk hunting here in Saskatchewan but to be truthful I'm pretty envious of the elk hunting in other places. Maybe it's one of those grass is greener things. In Saskatchewan we basically have two kinds of elk hunting. There are farmland elk which are on a limited draw and we also have general elk licenses which are good for our northern forests and the forest fringe. As elk have returned to the plains and farmland we've have more chances to hunt elk and in some farmland zones the bulls had a decade or more to grow huge. I personally got to handle and measure a prairie 6x6 a few years ago which had been poached. The poacher was caught thankfully and the antlers confiscated. A friend and I measured them right around 400 typical inches. What an animal it must have been!!
Anyway, from a bowhunting perspective, the farmland zones, besides being very open with little cover, are extra tough for a bowhunter because you are lumped in with the rifle and muzzleloader hunters. That makes it extremely difficult, because once the elk hear a few shots they may run for miles and you may never see them again or they run onto posted land and are off limits. One year I was drawn for cows in a zone where I grew up and though I hunted hard with bow and rifle I never actually saw a cow the entire season. I could have shot numerous bulls every time I went out of course!!! Sometimes that's hunting.
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Our archery specific season runs usually from 20 August until 4 Sept and we are restricted to the forest and forest fringe zones. This is the kind of elk hunting that I'm most familiar with and I call it chasing Ghosts of the Forest. At this time of year elk hunting in the forest here also involves two other challenges. Bugs and Heat! At times the two in combination can be almost unbearable. It has been by far the most frustrating hunting I've ever attempted. To me the closest thing in the elk world to hunting here is probably hunting Roosevelt Elk but I don't know if it typically has the mosquitos that we have. I doubt it. Maybe you guys want them??? :) Our boreal forest along the southern edge rivals coastal rainforest for it's denseness. So it can be pretty challenging from that perspective too.
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Sounds challenging but also like a lot of fun! A dream hunt for most including myself, you are very lucky!
More to come....just having trouble loading photos.
:campfire:
Because they are hard to hunt, our elk numbers have done very well and I've had a fair number of 'encounters' with elk in the forest. I've called in several nice bulls over the years despite the timing of the season but I could either only hear them approach through the brush or just get glimpses of them. I once had a nice 6x6 at 4 or 5 yards and all I could see through the hazel brush was his eyes and top of his head and rack. He stood there for quite a while and then decided to circle me and finally smelled me; leaving me with my heart pounding and no shot. Mostly though, you go for days without seeing or hearing much of anything resembling an elk. That's fairly common in elk hunting though no matter where you are I think.
I spent the summer obsessing about elk and shooting my bow and last week packed up my little trailer for a week of ghost hunting. I'd had gone up earlier in August to talk with landowners and find a place to camp out for the week. I found some great locations in a new to me area and a farmer who was very nice and said I was welcome to camp anywhere on his place I liked. His land bordered the forest and it looked like elk were coming out in a few different spots into his oat fields and alfalfa. Over the years I've realized that the real chink in their armor is their weakness for agricultural crops. So I've turned to hunting them like giant whitetails using natural ground blinds or tree stands. Not my favorite kind of hunting but probably the most effective at generating shot opportunities.
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That's my Lone Wolf hang on stand. Pretty hard to pick out and very easy and quick to set up.
In this particular area given the winds and terrain it seemed really best to hunt in the evening so you didn't end up spooking them out of the country. I got up early in the morning anyway and checked fields to see if they were being hit. One morning while checking an alfalfa field edge I heard some crashing in the bush along the field edge in front of me. In a few seconds, out popped a cow elk racing across the field. I was standing there wondering how I spooked her when all of a sudden out came a nice sized grey wolf in full pursuit about 20 yards behind her. They raced across the field and into the bush just above the farm. Pretty incredible......and probably part of the reason I saw almost no deer and very few calf elk in the area.
Most mornings I was seeing elk in the fields so I kept adjusting my stand location to where they may come out that night. An easy to use and set up tree stand is a real necessity for this and I can highly recommend either Lone Wolf hang on stand and their climbing sticks. Of course, some mornings I saw nothing so I could only guess where they may be.
On tues. I moved my tree stand to a trail that looked really good to me and I had some trail cam pictures of spikes and cows using it earlier in the summer. I sat it that evening and it was a nice quiet evening and for once the bugs weren't too bad. By sunset all I'd seen was a family of ruffed grouse and thought that was going to be it for the night. We can legally hunt until 30 min after sundown and at about 15 min past, I could hear a big animal coming down the trail. I just 'knew' it was an elk. My only concern was how dark it was getting and whether I would be able to see it well enough to shoot. To practice for this very thing, during the summer I made some cardboard cutouts shaped like deer/elk and would shoot at them in my back yard once the sun went down. I found I could shoot well in low light but really had to concentrate extra hard on picking a spot. As it approached I could see it was a spike bull and I could actually see him really well. I knew instantly I would shoot if I could. He came down the trail as expected, but instead of turning on main trail where I would have a broadside shot he came on a smaller path toward me at an angle. At 12 yds I stopped him in an opening with a low soft grunt, hit full draw, concentrated hard on a spot just behind his shoulder and released. I could see the arrow disappear tight behind his shoulder but because of the angle I also knew I'd probably only get one lung at best. He immediately spun and ran back a bit to where he'd come from and stood still. I couldn't see him but knew he didn't have a clue as to what happened. After a bit he moved off slowly and I could hear him breaking brush for a ways and then stop. He did this a couple of times and I then I could hear really labored breathing and gurgling. After a few minutes it grew quiet, so I texted my buddy and told him to meet me at the truck. We gave him about 45 min and then took up the trail. We couldn't find the arrow and so started looking for blood. After a few minutes of looking we finally found a few specks of bright bubbly blood about 10 yds or so from where I'd shot him and the trail got better from there and was really a pretty decent blood trail. After a few minutes of trailing and sometimes losing the blood for a bit we found him about 50 yds from where I'd shot him.
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I was pretty stoked to say the least. It was a nice quick clean kill despite only catching one lung. Penetration was from just behind the right shoulder with the arrow exiting through the stomach and in front of his left rear leg. It was a delayed pass through, in that the arrow must have been hanging out the off side and got pulled out or fell out about 20 yds down the trail as he moved off. It was too dark to see just how far it was hanging out.
I shot him with one of my Schafer Silvertip bows that draws about 55 lbs and used a Beman Bowhunter 400 shaft with 100 gr. Brass insert and 125 gr. HellRazor heads. These arrows weigh around 510 gr. in total. Despite these being fairly short 3 blade broadheads I shot through almost 3 feet of elk with them! The head still shaved hair when I found it. Super sharp heads and a perfectly tuned arrow are the best things you can do for penetration. Good luck to everyone else this fall!! Good hunting, Rick.
:clapper:
Congrats on a great animal :clapper:
Congratulations. Job well done.
Nice work congrats. That 45 minutes waiting to take up the trail must have been hell!
Beautiful looking bow too.
Congrats!!!!! Nice story telling too.
David
Congrats!!!!! Nice story telling too.
David
Congrats. And nice story.
congratts! :thumbsup:
You give me hope of meeting up with a Rosie this year.
Congrats on the elk! Great story and pics too.
Congrats !!!!! :thumbsup:
nice! I gave up for a few days, with the heat being in the high twenties, low thirties off to try tomorrow on my piece of Saskatchewan heaven.
:bigsmyl: :bigsmyl: :bigsmyl:
Thanks for the story, and congratulations on your elk. :clapper: :clapper:
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Luke
Great story with a super ending!!!! :clapper: :clapper: :clapper: :clapper:
:thumbsup:
Thanks for sharing! Congrats!
Enjoyed your description of the challenges and the pics. Congrats on it all coming together for you with your elk!
Congratulations!!
Thank you for sharing with us.
We'd never know all that's entailed on getting an elk without folks like you who share the hunt with all the details.
Great read!
God bless,Mudd
Good goin'
I hunted Saskatchewan in 1993 for "jumpers" (Whitetails). What a place!
Nicely done neighbour!
Great job Rick. :thumbsup: Having grown up there, Saskatchewan mosquitoes are one of the things I don't miss. :archer:
Great description, of what sounds like a great hunt
congrats, thanks for the story
Congrats on the elk, and fantastic story. The pic of the elk out in the wide open was gorgeous.
Congrats! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Great pics and story, congrats on the bull! He looks like a tasty one...
Thanks everyone, I'm glad you enjoyed it. One thing I should add is that I used a lighted nock. Some may not like them and your animal probably won't be eligible for Pope and Young but if they are legal I highly recommend them. You can see exactly where you hit an animal in low light. If nothing else they are just a blast to shoot in the back yard when the sun goes down....
And yes, he tastes great. Once we found him that was my biggest concern. We did him gutless and had him in the truck in no time. Temps dropped down nice and cool that night and we had him in the freezer the next day so the meat is great.....
awesome elk congrats on hunting him in those type of conditions
Well done mate...well done.
ak.
You can name your bow Ghostbuster.
Very nice Sir!!
Cool, congrats!
That is OUTSTANDING!!!
Excellent!
Fantastic, and the story telling style kept me drawn in.
B-E-A-Utiful!
Thanks for sharing.
Nice story telling. Thanks for taking us along. Congratulations.
Way to go . :thumbsup:
Thanks for sharing your adventure. :thumbsup:
awesome Bud :clapper: :clapper: