I'm not very technically savvy so I hope the above link works. It's a video of my Colorado elk hunt a couple of weeks ago. I shot this beautiful bull on the first evening that I was there. We were hunting in western Colorado just north of a little town called Rico. This was my first elk hunt and it kills me that I didn't recover this bull. He was at 15 yards when I shot and in my head I thought that his last step straightened him up some but as can be seen from the video he was still quartering too hard toward me. I'm fairly certain that I got the front lung and liver. My arrow is 30.5 in and I recovered the broken part and there was blood up to about the last 8 inches so I got over 20 in of penetration. After looking at the shot we thought he would be dead in 100 yards. It was about to rain and dusk was about an hour away so we unfortunately decided to pick up the trail after 20 min. We bumped him at about 150 yards and that was the last time we saw him. We went back to camp after that and it rained hard the entire night. When we got back out in the morning, there was no blood, no tracks, nothing. We combed the mountain up and down, left and right about a mile each way but never found him. The area was very thick with lots of dead fall making it easy to miss him. It makes me sick but I just have to wait til nexy year.
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Bummer man. I know the feeling of loosing an animal, literally makes me sick. Unfortunately, it's part of bowhunting. Just think of all the forest critters that you just made their day though!! Yotes and possums hafta eat to
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Very sorry to hear this. At least you actually found elk, I never could get into them, bear and mule deer were plentiful, but the damned elk had been run out of the area I was hunting in.
Take a look at these links... and look at some of the diagrams drawn in them and where some of these guys shoot elk. I'm no expert by anymeans as I've never shot an elk, but I studied this very closely, and believe that you potentially may have harvested that bull had you shot him in front of the left leg up near the edge of his mane on that same angle.
Actually that wasn't a bad shot. You got all that lung, looks like both of em.
That elk is dead dead. Penetration was awesome. Only bad part is it hit that leg so very little blood. Thats an animal of a lifetime. I have sat here watching it over and over.
Sometimes it happens. I can't believe he went that far. I can almost feel your pain.
I tell ya what, this thread reminded me to not push an animal. That elk left for 3-4 hours would have not gone more than that 150 yards. We all make this mistake from time to time. Just a good reminder. But boy those 3-4 hours can feel like days.
Sorry you lost your bull-the phrase when in doubt back out keeps goin off in my head after reading your story. We have all felt how you are feeling-it sucks!
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Had the same thing happen to me in New Mexico, cept mine was quartering away. Got liver and one lung, the Bull didn't bleed a drop. Luckily I had the best tracker I have ever had the privelige of watching work with me. He tracked the bull for over a mile on sign that I couldn't even see and we were able to recover it. 5X5 that scores 321 1/8th. Proudly displyed on my wall. If your out there Primo thanx a million!!!!!!!!
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