What Was Wrong Here?

[Swede]

It was a warn afternoon early in the season. I stopped by a neighboring camp to see how the hunter there was doing. A man and his wife were camped about 200 yards from my trailer. I saw his wife standing outside as I started to drive past. I was heading out for my afternoon hunt.
I decided to stop, and walked to where she was by an old fire pit near their large tent. Upon my greeting she said her husband was in bed. At 2:00 PM I thought that a little odd. I may lay down and rest, but I don't get "in bed". After a couple of minutes he came out. I asked him how he was doing. He said he shot an elk that morning, but only wounded it. He had taken a shot at 60+ yards and hit it in the paunch. "It jumped the string". He gave up looking for it after less than an hour, and never went back. The next day he pulled up camp and left the whole area.

If I were that hunter, what all could you advise me to do or not do? Note: I just left and went to my tree stand, but the story still bothers me.

[oldnovice]

I would offer to help him look for it. That may just be the incentive he needs.

[Swede]

I would offer to help him look for it. That may just be the incentive he needs.

I would too, but the hunter in bed after chasing the gut shot elk for the better part of an hour, just turned me off. I would love to help him if he had backed out of the area and then took a nap or went to bed for a while. It has been my experience that going right after a gut shot elk is a losing proposition. The elk will bed down within 100-150 yards of where it was shot if left alone. If you chase it right away, there is no blood trail, as testified by the hunter, and the animal can go for a very long ways. Finding the animal is highly unlikely.

[Gypsumreaper]

Could have done 100 different things, don't know if there is a right or wrong in this situation. I'm an outfitter so anytime something like this happens if they are my Hunter we are back on the animal I will help them. Even if they are not I try to offer to help but sometimes people get a little upset at that. You can't make someone go look for something it's their decision. This situation if the Hunter says they will not put more time into the animal I will get license plate numbers, general location of the animal he shot, and be subtle about it getting his name and info then I will let the wardens know. I have seen this happen and then when they pack up and leave they go hunt another area where nobody knows what happened. Imo even if you shoot one and can't find it you gotta put in more than an hour looking, like you said go take a nap relax then go back at it or call in some help. If it happened to me and I had someone offer to help I wouldn't turn it down. But some peoples morals are a little different than others. He may have shot it and chased it right away and bumped him and as said above recovery becomes more and more unlikely. I have ended up hunting wounded elk myself in a situation like this after I called the wardens explained what happened what they said and their info then went in after the animal. If I can put a kill shot on the animal atleast he's not wasted, if I can find him dead then I can let the wardens do their job. But 100 different things to do and getting into a confrontation with someone is something I try to avoid. He may have punched his tag and went home, he could have moved to another area to hunt, he could have went and killed another animal. Who knows now. I have actually had somewhat the same scenario happen but I was packing in a hunting camp, ran into some guys that said they wounded one that morning and couldn't find it, I got their names had a little small talk about where they were at cause I was gonna hunt that evening and next morning myself. I actually found their flags where they marked blood followed them and got to the last one and 30 yards away laid the bull dead. The guys said they looked for 4 hours shot him at first light, let him lay for an hour then looked for 4 and decided they couldn't find him. I was quick enough finding him that when they hit the bottom of the trail the game warden was waiting, they must have figured I found the bull and told the warden they were switching packs to go get the bull and all that. They could have been I'm not sure but I'm not sure why they would lie to me, but if that was me I would have cleaned the bull first then went for different packs. I quartered the bull, threw him on my mules and took him down for the guys where they had to pay me for the pack out service. I don't think the warden fined them cause they were getting frame packs out of their truck and the warden watched them get ready to go back up when he stopped them. They may have seen him and knew I called so they better make it look like the right thing. I did hit them for a pretty good chunk of change for the full quartering and packing out of their animal and the warden figured that was prolly good enough since they lied to one of us with what they were doing.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[JKaboom]

Poor sportsmanship plain and simple on that guy's part. Could you have tried to offer some help or advice, sure but then you risk confrontation.

[OregonTK]

That's just plain wrong! He should have backed out and waited till about 4pm and went back in. That bull will lay down, yeah the blood trail will be minimal, but you have to try!

Years ago my brother hit a limb shooting at a bull and the arrow ended up in the paunch. Little to no blood, but we had tracks to follow. He hit it at 7-7:30 am and we began looking at 3-4pm. After hours of crawling on trails following tracks and occasionally locating a speck of blood we jumped the bull from a bed just before dark. We decided to back off and wait for daylight. The next morning we found the bull dead 125 yards from where we had jumped him the night before. The bull had probably died shortly after we had jumped him. We quickly butchered the bull, but some of the meat around the big hip joint was soured despite it being a very cold night. Wasn't the best eating elk in the world, but we stayed with it and salvaged the bull and the bears/coyotes only got guts and organs.

[Swede]

Oregon, when I started this thread, what you said is exactly what I was looking for. I had some thoughts run through my mind about the hunter's attitude, but that was not my point. He made some very serious mistakes as you pointed out. Gut shot animals are tough. You and your brother did everything you should have. As you said, it is still not easy and there is a lot of guess work involved about when to go back after them.
I have killed a couple of elk that I shot in the evening and could not find until the next morning. Both had a very little bone soured meat, but were salvageable. I did not notice any bad taste after trimming out the sour part.

[stringunner]

Obviously! If he knew he made a bad shot in the moment or quickly realized it after finding no blood initially, he should have back out and waited several hours before trying to track/find the elk.....

However, I think sometimes those of us whom have been hunting for a while and have learned this stuff, what seems so obvious to us, isn't that obvious to newbies. I'm realizing this as I am training my young sons up to be hunters. They ask questions constantly, and I'm happy to teach them because I know, they don't know and are learning, that's the whole point. However, last year my brother who is older than me and who has hunted a couple years in his life but harvested nothing and to my knowledge never even shot at an animal was asking me some of the same questions or types of questions as my 7 year old. It became obvious to me then, that despite my brothers age and ability to learn much on his own from sites like these or books or magazines, he hadn't. He didn't hunt with us this year, but it was a good reminder to me, that just because it seems obvious to me (what I've learned through several years of experience and study) doesn't transfer to everyone especially to newbies.

I have no idea Swede about this guys level of experience and knowledge as I never spoke to him, perhaps you gathered more info from him during your conversation, but maybe he simply didn't know how or what to do in this situation. Hard to say. I do think however, anyone in the woods hunting, who knowingly shot an animal that could not be found, and especially knowing it was shot in a place that that it will likely die, would give more than an hour. But then again I'm making assumptions about what I think should be a given, when in reality it may not be. Sounds like I'm letting this guy off the hook and I'm not, I'm actually still really disgusted about this situation and too have been thinking about it since you shared it with me at camp days later.

[Swede]

Stringunner: You are completely correct. I made some assumptions based on "my knowledge". I really don't know what he knew or thought. Why did he give up so soon? I don't know. Maybe I should have offered to help, but after he hunted for the elk right away, I thought it very unlikely to be found. The key is not to try and analyze the hunter, but as you and other's mentioned, discuss what he did wrong. Hopefully others can learn from this experience and do better when it is their elk hit in a bad location.
Some hunters have a formula for determining when to go after a gut shot animal. I don't have an exact one, but I will carefully back out of the area and usually wait several hours. If it is shot in the morning, I like to have an hour of daylight left to look for it. If I shoot it in the evening, I fret all night and go in first thing in the morning.

[saddlesore]

I find it is pretty hard to second guess someone else.The only fault I can find is shooting a stick at an elk at 60 yards and expecting the elk to not move.

This past ML season,I shot a cow elk at about 50 yards,maybe less .I knew it was a good shot .She took off on a death run and I thought I heard her go down. I flagged where she was when I shot her and found blood, a lot of it, at about 15 yards.

I tracked her about 50 yards,following a good blood trail.Then nothing, zip,nada. This was in 4 ft high weeds, , a lot of downed timber. I looked for 2 hours, up and down the mountain,back and forth , did a 50 ft grid for at least a hundred yards out and still nothing.Followed every game trail in the direction she headed. Finally got my hunting buddy on the 2 way and we agreed to meet back where we had the mules tied,about a 1/2 mile away.

We had some snacks and rode the mules back to where I had initially shot her.Taking up the blood trail again, which I had flagged, we came to the same spot that the blood stopped. Sitting there scratching our heads,my buddy looked over to the right about 8 foot and saw two very small spots of blood on a log. He took about three steps and exclaimed, "hell she is laying right there in that brush". Close inspection you could see a patch of hair less than 8" of diameter.The rest of the entire elk was hidden by dead pine branches that she had fallen thru and then the live stuff on top of her had folded back over. We figured she had staggered over to the right as she was dieing and then flipped thru the brush. It took us a half hour to clear a little bit of brush and then almost an hour cutting the live limbs back enough so both of us could pull her over a log and out far enough to process here. If we had not sat at the mules thinking things over while we had the snack I would have given up on finding the elk,figuring I must had nicked her.

This was taken after we had cleared most to the dead stuff away and some of the green limbs. She was buried between the two logs.



This was taken after we had cleared all the limbs away and dragged the elk to where we could work on her. looking back to where she had fallen.

[cohunter]

Wow, Saddlesore! That is some story and picture! This makes me think back to the only elk I've ever lost - Rifle season I hit a cow and we immediately found blood followed for 50 yards or so and then suddenly nothing. We spent the better part of a day looking for the elk, but I wouldn't be surprised after seeing that picture if she had fallen through some thick oakbrush on the side-hill and been buried in the brush only feet from where the blood trail disappeared. Tracking conditions were tough, very dry, very hard soil... Hmmm... Makes me wonder! Next time the trail dries up, I may try a square yard grid near last blood! A ten yard or so grid would have totally missed that cow!

Another insight... if you know the hit was questionable, sitting is super important! I learned this lesson firsthand this year. You can read the story here. viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8004

[saddlesore]

Cohunter, I only wanted to emphasize that crap happens and a lot of times we don' t know the full story so it is hard to judge someone for sure.This year will be my 50th year of hunting elk. I started in 1966. I have killed a lot of elk and lost a couple. I forget the circumstances of most of those kills, but I remember everyone one of the 3 that I lost.

Here is another that took a lot of time to find and more to get to it. They all don't fall in an open meadow.

[Swede]

Without questioning a person's character, we can still use this as a learning tool. We have discussed leaving the elk alone to die when gut shot. Maybe someone has a rule of thumb they would like to share. What is a reasonable time to search for a wounded/gut shot animal, and how would you search when there is no blood trail?
Where I hunt, and where the gut shot elk was, the forest is not generally very dense. There are draws and darker timber patches that can hide a downed animal. Sometimes rock outcrops and depressions in the ground can obscure a person's vision and hide an elk.
This I am confident of: A gut shot elk will die. It has been my observation that if left alone they bed close to where they were first hit. If you are patient, you have a great chance for a recovery of your animal, and it will be still usable. If you mess up, your chances are greatly diminished. Before I search for the elk, I will try to get help if possible. After waiting hours then returning to look for the animal, I would search 4-6 hours fanning out. I would be looking for blood or other sign, and attempting to catch scent of the critter, from where I last saw it and going in the general direction it was traveling. After 4-6 hours in relatively open forest and finding nothing to go on, I will leave and return again when I can. I will be looking more for birds, coyotes or other scavengers as well. I will go to prominent points to look out from. I am no longer looking to recover the elk, but to just satisfy my soul.
Years ago I lost one that doubled back and went strongly uphill after leaving the herd. I finally found it, looked at it for several minutes, pulled out my arrow that was still in its side, and walked away. Still, I looked three days for it. As Saddlesore wrote, you don't forget those you lost. For information, I did not punch my tag after finding the bloated elk.

[TurkeyBowMaster]

One of the worst mistakes a bowhunter make is in choosing terrible equipment that eventually leads to lost game. Poor tracking skills is something some cannot help. A lack of will is often bred into people. Poor shooting skills is something some have to live with. But purposely shooting equipment that leads to lost game is something everyone can avoid...its all about making better choices. When I compared the Slick Trick that was on an arrow I found with my Simmons, its like comparing Pee Wee Herman to Hulk Hogan. Given the trouble I had tracking the elk I shot with the Simmons, there was at least some doubt that had I shot him with the smaller Slick Trick I possibly would have lost him even with the double lung shot. The SImmons put two really large holes and there was considerable amount of blood, but the tracking conditions was not the best and it really turned into a challenging track job. There is just nothing like the combination of the best penetrating head one of the largest heads all wrapped into one, plus it doesn't fly bad for a head of its size.

Oddly enough, getting someone to try a different head is probably harder than getting them to try a different woman, and quiet a few bowhunters have tried more wives than broadheads. Sure, some heads require sharpening skills...but in my opinion, any man who cannot turn a flat piece of medal into shaving sharp is lacking basic man skills.

[cohunter]

Saddlesore, All I meant in reply to your post was that your picture and story was really eye-opening to me - I learned a lot from that picture of an elk lying in the sticks. You're absolutely right, it's hard to judge what went on when somebody says they 'wounded' or 'couldn't find' an elk. Personally, I'm going to change my tactic blood trailing slightly if I can't find new blood. In the past, I've focused m energy on every inch of soil along the same path/direction of travel - following logical directions of travel. Seeing that picture, I think when I fan out from last blood I'll continue to do that, but I'll also look in the thickest brush all around the last blood - we've all seen an elk fall over and they don't always continue in the direction of forward momentum - this post made me realize how close we might have been to finding that cow I lost years ago.

[Timber]

I have never gut shot an elk but unfortunately I have hit a couple deer to far back. I never lost one. It is hard but you have to give it time to die. They usually do not go very far at all but you need to sneak out of the area and just give it time. Not sure this guys version but probably inexperienced and lazy.

[stringunner]

That's why I like this site and some others. There is much to be learned by sharing stories like this. As in my post above, whether the newbie is 7 years old learning the ropes or almost 40 and learning the ropes, the questions can be similar and the experiences shared help answer those questions. I believe that is why Swede brought this one forward, not to judge the guy but to gain more perspective as to how best to move forward when a situation like this presents itself.

As to TBM's thoughts on equipment, that is very much debatable considering the amount of diversity in quality equipment coupled with personal preference. I've tried equipment some guys swear by and not had great results, just as others would use equipment I use and find it subpar to their liking.

[TurkeyBowMaster]

Stringgunner have u ever tried the Simmons? If you can tune it to shoot and sharpen it, it will impress you in how it performs. The only negative is a byproduct of why it penetrates and that is that it doesn't produce the hide stretching action at penetration, therefore the hole it creates in the hide is only slightly larger than the head itself. The sheer size of the head means the hole is still large, just not twice as large as the diameter of the head as some with blunt tips create. It also doesn't make a sound when it hits..it slices through without making a sound. You just cannot depend on impact sound to confirm a hit.

[Lefty]

Too many hunters give up because of lack of easy sign or tracking knowledge,.. then get depressed

There are also times I feel we are responsible to help others.There are also times we just cant help out at the moment.