It was the morning of my last day, and the elk had started bugling again after losing 1-1/2 days to rain and another to simply no bugling. My hunting partner and I drew cow tags in Unit 8 near Williams, AZ. This morning when my partner exited the camper to water a cactus, he heard bugling that sounded like it was less than 300 yards from camp. He's in his 70's and didn't feel like chasing them any more, but I jumped out of the camper without breakfast, grabbed my Optima Pro and pack, and headed out after them.
The elk were on the move, and it was hard to catch up to them. I didn't even have to call to locate them because a couple of them kept bugling. As I approached them, I jumped a couple of cows within 100 yards. One hesitated and I trained my rifle on her front shoulder. The 300 grain Gold Dot went sailing, and I was sure I had a good hit--but she took off running along with the what turned out to be 3 other cows and 3 calves. I reloaded the Optima and followed in the direction I saw them head. Just a short distance, I saw my small cow laying down behind a log, just 40 yards from me. She tried to get up, but it was obvious that her front leg or legs were broken, and she continued to lay there. I raised my rifle, aimed at her head, pulled the trigger, and it went "click". I had forgot to put a new cap in!
Right then, she got up and hobbled down Sycamore Canyon
https://www.google.com/search?q=syca...2F%3B640%3B424 Yeah, it's almost the Grand Canyon. I quickly installed a new cap and headed after her. I was seeing quite a bit of blood, and she was headed down a game trail. But pretty soon the blood just stopped, and the trail did too. I continued down the canyon, zig-zagging, hoping to find more blood. I finally got to the bottom, but no more blood. So I started back up, zig-zagging again and saw one splotch of blood, but no trail. I went back down again and then back up. By then, I was panting and seeing nothing. I checked my GPS, and found that I needed to go across this finger of the canyon to get back to camp, so I went back down to the bottom and up the other side.
I was sick. I couldn't believe I had lost her! Never again will use a shoulder shot when I could have a perfectly good lung-shot. My whole purpose of hitting her shoulders was to avoid that canyon scene that I knew was several yards away. Arrgh!