- Joined
- Jan 28, 2003
- Messages
- 13,373
I’ll start off by making some excuses. Besides sighting in back In September and one coyote in November I’ve done very little rifle shooting in 2022. I did kill a cow elk in early January of 2022. Other than that this is the first year in my memory that I haven’t put several hundred rounds down range. Added to that about a month ago and all of a sudden I developed a horrendous pain in my upper left leg it was so bad that I was almost completely unable to walk. Turns out I might be in for a new hip joint, but several injections in the joint got me to where I was marginally functional.
Now that the excuses are made let’s get into the buffoonery. Day one found us in our unit at about 2:00 in the afternoon. It took my daughter and I about an hour to locate our first group of elk. It was a large herd of about 300 head consisting of young bulls and mainly cows. They were bedded in the middle of a wide open field about two miles distant. We watched them and eventually they grazed off into a draw and out of sight.
We were able to get the truck downwind and about a mile and half from the draw. I’ll shorten it up here, we got to a tree just over the draw and the elk started filtering out at about 200 yards. A big cow posed perfectly broadside I got rock steady off of my Viper flex standing rest. Then with great skill and incredible talent yanked back on the trigger like a panicked paratrooper pulling his reserve rip cord just before smashing into the ground! But to top it off my flinch was so complete that I also had my eyes closed when the rifle went off.
I missed her clean and the herd thundered off in a cloud of dust. My daughter and I went on a futile quest for blood sign, then walked back to the truck in the dark of night.
The next day we located the herd about five miles south of the place where I had molested them the night prior. After some hiking and ducking and dodging we found ourselves at 418 yards on a solid rest. I reached up turned my 2.5x10 NF to 10 power and spun 2.5 Mils into my turret, the trusty Steyr in .308 found the sweet spot in her vital triangle and I manually held a slight bit of elevation to make up for the extra 18 yards. I gently squeezed the trigger and watched the big cow drop to the shot like her strings had been cut. My daughter high fived me, I was basking in the glory and the sweet relief of redemption as I watched her lifeless form laying in the grass.
She lay “dead” for a good 30 second before I unchambered the round that I’d jacked into the gun after the first shot. As we stood discussing how we were going to get her back to the truck she suddenly came up on her front end, she was getting less dead by the moment. My daughter yelled for me to SHOOT HER AGAIN DAD! I calmly explained that I’d broken her back we’ll get a little closer and finish her off. With that all of a sudden she came up on her rear end wobbled a bit then took off at full speed this was the point that realized that she was completely undead! I off handed a snap shot as she launched and sailed it over her back raising a dust plume way past her. We watched her catch up to the herd and mingle in and the the herd disappear several miles distant off the unit onto private land.
We found some hair and one little patch of bloody skin where she’d been down. Buffoonery mistake number two. I didn’t look at my drop chart before dialing my zero for 400 yards, which with my load is 1.5 Mils, not 2.5 Mils! The bullet had hit her about an inch below the top of the back line and just nicked a vertebral process, monetarily knocking her out. A total rookie mistake but it got worse when I didn’t immediately shoot her again when she came up on her fore end! Of course I’d most likely have missed since I had the wrong firing solution dialed into my scope.
After that soul crushing incident we slogged back several miles to the truck and drove down to a road we’d watched the elk cross on their hasty retreat onto private ground. We found no blood or any other sign of a wounded elk.
After lunch we cruised just north of the boundary line for several hours looking. This is when I preformed the best and finest feat of buffoonery of the trip. We stopped at a water hole and decided to pop over the tank to see if there was any water in it. Since the water hole was directly down wind of our position and we’d made plenty of noise I decided to leave the rifle in the truck. There was no way any self respecting elk would not have departed the country, right?
As we topped the earthen dam to look, a bedded cow popped up at about 50 yards. I turned around and ran to grab the rifle from the truck and popped back up the dam. My daughter informed me that the cow had stood there at 50 yards staring until about 1 millisecond before I reappeared then bolted into the tree line. Just as a note this was NOT the same cow that I’d grazed across the back. This one was a yearling the other was a fully mature and much larger cow.
With the day winding down we decided to exit the area and try something new. I had effectively cleared the South portion of unit of any and all elk.
Now that the excuses are made let’s get into the buffoonery. Day one found us in our unit at about 2:00 in the afternoon. It took my daughter and I about an hour to locate our first group of elk. It was a large herd of about 300 head consisting of young bulls and mainly cows. They were bedded in the middle of a wide open field about two miles distant. We watched them and eventually they grazed off into a draw and out of sight.
We were able to get the truck downwind and about a mile and half from the draw. I’ll shorten it up here, we got to a tree just over the draw and the elk started filtering out at about 200 yards. A big cow posed perfectly broadside I got rock steady off of my Viper flex standing rest. Then with great skill and incredible talent yanked back on the trigger like a panicked paratrooper pulling his reserve rip cord just before smashing into the ground! But to top it off my flinch was so complete that I also had my eyes closed when the rifle went off.
I missed her clean and the herd thundered off in a cloud of dust. My daughter and I went on a futile quest for blood sign, then walked back to the truck in the dark of night.
The next day we located the herd about five miles south of the place where I had molested them the night prior. After some hiking and ducking and dodging we found ourselves at 418 yards on a solid rest. I reached up turned my 2.5x10 NF to 10 power and spun 2.5 Mils into my turret, the trusty Steyr in .308 found the sweet spot in her vital triangle and I manually held a slight bit of elevation to make up for the extra 18 yards. I gently squeezed the trigger and watched the big cow drop to the shot like her strings had been cut. My daughter high fived me, I was basking in the glory and the sweet relief of redemption as I watched her lifeless form laying in the grass.
She lay “dead” for a good 30 second before I unchambered the round that I’d jacked into the gun after the first shot. As we stood discussing how we were going to get her back to the truck she suddenly came up on her front end, she was getting less dead by the moment. My daughter yelled for me to SHOOT HER AGAIN DAD! I calmly explained that I’d broken her back we’ll get a little closer and finish her off. With that all of a sudden she came up on her rear end wobbled a bit then took off at full speed this was the point that realized that she was completely undead! I off handed a snap shot as she launched and sailed it over her back raising a dust plume way past her. We watched her catch up to the herd and mingle in and the the herd disappear several miles distant off the unit onto private land.
We found some hair and one little patch of bloody skin where she’d been down. Buffoonery mistake number two. I didn’t look at my drop chart before dialing my zero for 400 yards, which with my load is 1.5 Mils, not 2.5 Mils! The bullet had hit her about an inch below the top of the back line and just nicked a vertebral process, monetarily knocking her out. A total rookie mistake but it got worse when I didn’t immediately shoot her again when she came up on her fore end! Of course I’d most likely have missed since I had the wrong firing solution dialed into my scope.
After that soul crushing incident we slogged back several miles to the truck and drove down to a road we’d watched the elk cross on their hasty retreat onto private ground. We found no blood or any other sign of a wounded elk.
After lunch we cruised just north of the boundary line for several hours looking. This is when I preformed the best and finest feat of buffoonery of the trip. We stopped at a water hole and decided to pop over the tank to see if there was any water in it. Since the water hole was directly down wind of our position and we’d made plenty of noise I decided to leave the rifle in the truck. There was no way any self respecting elk would not have departed the country, right?
As we topped the earthen dam to look, a bedded cow popped up at about 50 yards. I turned around and ran to grab the rifle from the truck and popped back up the dam. My daughter informed me that the cow had stood there at 50 yards staring until about 1 millisecond before I reappeared then bolted into the tree line. Just as a note this was NOT the same cow that I’d grazed across the back. This one was a yearling the other was a fully mature and much larger cow.
With the day winding down we decided to exit the area and try something new. I had effectively cleared the South portion of unit of any and all elk.
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