Day 3 started off a bit frustrating. Driving into the parking spot Jeremy got stuck, and then Casey got stuck trying to pull him out. It was truck after truck and they all got stuck... you know the story.
Tate and Paulie and I went hunting but all we turned up were bobcats and deer. It was a beautiful morning though.
By 11am all the Dodge trucks were finally unstuck and everyone on Team Dodge wanted to go back to camp for lunch. They were also out of ideas on where to hunt. I begrudgingly made the mile trudge in the snow back to them to help out. Casey had about 24 hours left to hunt and as we sat in camp and shot the crap I was really feeling the time crunch. Nobody wanted to go back to any previous areas we'd been, and nobody was too keen an hiking very far to a glassing spot, so I opened a Coors (or two) to relax and looked at Google maps trying to turn up a sleeper. Finally I picked a spot that looked like it had potential and wasn't a bad walk. On the way in Casey could see I was frustrated and he said relax Jake, I'm having fun, if we don;t see any more elk the rest of the trip I'm happy.
We parked the truck and 100 yards later we had a herd of cows across the canyon. Good sign. Casey stopped and opened a sack of Beech-Nut and apparently we all thought it looked like a good idea. We took a chaw with Casey, for luck, and I said Casey stay here and glass this spot, I'm gonna go find you a bull over here. Maybe 50 yards later, making my way slowly up the canyon, I looked down and saw a bull crossing the bottom, heading for the open side of the hill. I got Casey on the radio, told him to come to me. He was there in about 60 seconds and by that time two bulls about the same size were bee-bopping up the other side, no idea we were there. As Casey got set up with his fancy 28 Nosler, I looked the bulls over and said they are about the same, give me a minute to assess.. Casey said I don't care, I'm gonna shoot the one in front. That worked for me. I gave him a range of 280 yards and stopped them with a cow chirp. One shot, two steps and three seconds later that bull was on the ground. Casey with the Beech-Nut bull:
He was a pretty good 5 on his right side and should have been a 6 on his left but was pretty busted up. We had a friendly bet whether or not he blew up the heart. Casey said he must have, I said he was too high and instead probably blew up the aortic trunk:
I was the winner. Great shot. 180gr Berger Hybrid at ~3200fps about half way up the body in line with the front leg blows up aortic trunks (no exit BTW):
This was a pretty easy pack-out, relatively, and we got the whole thing back to the truck right about dark, thanks to Jeremy. As soon as I got the first front and hind legs off he threw them in his pack and smoked up the hill to the truck and came back for another over-sized load for the final pack-out. He earned the nickname Moose for his heroic efforts and many beers were drank in his honor. Many of them by him. Us taking a victory breather:
Celebrations were had back at camp, beer cans accumulated, elk burgers were grilled. Three bulls down, one more to go:
