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It all started a few years back when both my boys drew this same tag. My older boy James tagged out at first light opening day, leaving us with the rest of the hunt to focus on getting Darren on one. Well he had several opportunities but just couldn’t close the deal. Fast forward to this year Darren wanted redemption, unlike the previous tag this hunt started out slow. It was hard to locate elk with crummy weather ,so we called on our “ace in the hole” Nate who was a huge help before , and he came through for us again locating a small herd. We got to within 350yds and Darren let the 270wsm bark, we hear the “thwack” and knew right away it was a hit. The cow drops and we think she is done, but then she stands back up and we see that the shot was in the front shoulder but a little to far forward. We decide to back out and spent the entire next day tracking her with no luck other than finding the blood trail and where she bed the night before, we tracked her into a huge canyon for about 1 1/2 miles from where she was bedded. Two days later we got into another herd with the bulls having a screaming contest. And we were able to get 120yds from one of the cows Darren let her have it and she didn’t make it 50yds and crashed! Check out the video I made of the hunt. I just started uploading to this channel, hopefully there’s more to come.

Hey guys, was wondering if anyone could shed some light on the August Cow Elk hunt in 27? I usually hunt Coues in 24B, took a nice buck two years ago, but the woodbury fire put an end to my favorite spots for the next year or so. Looking for a way to fill my freezer before I try my hand at a southern Coues unit for 2020, and this is the only tag I can draw/hunt due to my schedule. I'd love to take a Cow elk before the fall to take the pressure off exploring a new unit down south for grey ghosts. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. I plan on hitting the hills out there in March or April. Here's my 2017 Coues from 24B:

First time elk hunting and first time hunting 7W. Our scouting trip in July gave a few potential spots to camp and hunt but we did not see any elk at that time. When we arrived on Wednesday, 10/16, we were happy to see our primary camp location was still open and we quickly setup camp so we could get to scouting. We went out to our primary hunting area that looked promising in July but did not see anything moving and no real fresh sign. Thinking that maybe this area would be more suited to a morning hunt, we headed back to camp for the night. We were excited to hear a few bugles in the early night and went to bed feeling optimistic for the morning. Thursday morning scouting was very uneventful with no game seen at our primary spot. We decided our afternoon scout would be closer to where we thought the bugles from the night before were coming from. We didn't see any game that afternoon but decided that we would sit this area in the morning hoping to catch something in the field before they headed to bed down in the hills. We set up our blind with good views of a field and tree line. We had some downed trees in front of us and set up plenty of natural background to hide our silhouettes. No bugles were heard that night. Opening morning we head over to our blind and wait for the sunlight to start to peak over the hills. We were not super optimistic since we hadn't seen any elk and did not hear any activity the night before but to our surprise, at first light, we spotted 2 bulls and 6 cows in the far corner of the field. We watched them for a while but we could not get them any closer and they slowly made their way off into the hills, well out of our range. Feeling better that we at least saw some elk, we went back to glassing the area hoping for another chance. Within a few minutes, we spotted a bull and cow about a half mile away. My buddy let out a few cow calls and they immediately perked up and started looking our way. A few more calls and they both started heading towards us. We continued to call and they continued to advance. The bull was a beautiful 6x6, the cow was good sized and they continued to come towards us and our call. There was a barbed wire fence about 100 yards in front of us and the pair continued to advance. They quickly closed the distance to fence line with the cow in the lead. One last call and the cow jumped over the barbed wire. She was broadside and I squeezed the trigger of my 7mm Rem Mag. The cow gave a quick jump and started to bolt to my right, A quick cycle of the action and the second shot had her down for good. This was all by 0645 opening morning. I was extremely excited but almost sad that it happened so quickly. We got her field dressed, loaded in the truck and took off for Casey's Processing in Flagstaff where she weighed in at a nice 294lbs dressed and caped. We cut out a backstrap for dinner and headed back to camp happy with our success and looking forward to filling our other tag. That afternoon was uneventful but the next morning was very similar to opening day. We had a group of 4 cows that we were able to call in to approx. 150 yards and my buddy quickly filled his tag. 2 days, 2 cows, mission complete! I'm blessed to have such great hunting buddies, that helped me on this hunt and allowed me to take the first shot. Here's my girl.

She came in at 259lbs on the hook.

Well, I figure its been slightly over a month since I tagged out on my elk last hunt, so I need to post the story! My father, Jason, and his close friend, Steve, and I were all drawn and were able to prescout the unit we were drawn for - for about 3 weekends (2 weekends, plus a day trip). I was fairly familiar with the unit; however we wanted to become more familiar. Since I live and go to school up in Flagstaff and my father works down south, we had to make the scouting trips count. We became familiar with the unit, and made up a game plan to scout the two weekends leading up to the hunt, as a cold front was moving in. It was the last hunt of the elk season. We scouted, and had no luck the first weekend; only on the second weekend were we able to locate the elk and get some good glassing done. Fast forward to opening day, my father told me that he would begin hunting the low lands leading up to a nice draw that lead up to multiple fingers on a mountain side. I had school until 12:30 that day, and would not be able to get out until I was out of class, and had slightly over an hour drive ahead of me. Now I want to give a bit of background information on my father. He served 21 years in the military, and we always hunted together as a way to bond since he retired. He always insisted on me tagging out before him. Ive tagged multiple animals, and my father still hadnt tagged out on a big game animal yet. Hes had multiple opportunities; however he received more satisfaction out of seeing me tag out than tagging out himself. Hes getting older, and the military took a toll on his back, he openly admitted to not being able to hike up and down mountains like we have in the past. So I really wanted to find elk and try and get him on them first. I have been hunting and volunteering with multiple organizations the past couple years where Ive been able to get fairly familiar with hunting elk/deer, so I wanted to do my hardest to help my dad get an animal. Back to opening day, I got out of class at 12:30, and had two friends that were going to help me on my hunt, Jeremy, a close friend that weve gone on multiple hunting trips together in the past, and my friend Sam, an honorably discharged Marine that is going to school in the same field of study as Jeremy and myself. We got all of our gear together, and were on the road by 13:30. We arrived out to the rendezvous point around 14:30, and met up with my dad right around 15:00. My father told me he had been walking the juniper flats leading to the draw with his friend Steve and stated he was spent; he stated he had busted an elk earlier and wanted to glass for a while towards the mountain which he ran into the elk at. We started glassing at 15:10ish, we glassed a portion of the mountain which had a nice draw that was being hit hard with wind, leaving one side filled with snow, and the other side that was filled with junipers untouched by the snow for the most part We were able to glass the side filled with snow with sparse junipers, however due to the density of the junipers, we werent able to glass the side that was shielded from the wind. We glassed until about 15:55. I came up with a plan to walk up around the other side of the hill that was filled with snow, with the wind in our faces so we could hopefully peak over the finger into the junipers to get a better look at what is hiding inside the safety of the junipers. My dad looked me in the eyes and told me there was no way he and his friend Steve were going to make it up the mountain so I told him that my friends and I would walk the planned area and then glass the flats from up above to have a better view of the junipers below, then wed radio if we saw anything. Well, my friends and I set off. We walked around the mountain, up the side with the winds in our faces, until we were about ¾ of the way up the mountain. I told my friends I was going to peak over the finger to the next finger which had all of the junipers that we couldnt see before. Immediately upon doing so, I was surprised to see a bedded cow elk underneath a juniper, and then saw a couple more. I looked back at my friends and whispered I saw cow elk, and that we were going to radio my father. We radioed for about a minute and received no response. We saw the elk starting to get up and forage along the junipers. I made the decision that I was going to shoot one of the elk, as I had no radio contact with my father. My rifle I have is a long distance rifle, and Im comfortable shooting out to about 700 yards at a live target with it. We ranged the elk at slightly over 200, so I knew the shot would be fairly easy to make. I snuck up behind a juniper and got into the prone position and deployed my bipod to make the shot. The elk were feeding fairly close to one another, and there wasnt a safe shot for a minute or two. As soon as one cow elk broke from the pack, I told Sam I was going to shoot her. He told me he was on her and said to shoot when ready. I waited for her to turn, and she gave me a perfect broadside shot. I slowly exhaled, and held my breath on my exhale, just as my father taught me to do, and gently squeezed the trigger, holding right behind the shoulder. The shot rang out, I racked another round in, and I was immediately back on her. I saw her jump and begin limping up the hill. She was bleeding very well but was still standing. I told Sam I was going to shoot again and let one more shot out, which dropped the cow elk down the mountain. Sam said he saw the impact coming from pretty close to where the blood was pumping out from. The shots were about 3-4 seconds apart, and suddenly, you heard my dad yelling on the radio, did you shoot? Did you shoot? I got up and gave my friends hugs and told them how much I appreciated them being there for my hunt. I quickly got on the radio and told my father, elk down, there are still more up here. He exclaimed, Thats my boy. You rock buddy. I told my dad that the elk were still feeding and were looking around, so he might be able to make it up. My dad hustled, however didnt make it in time before the elk ran up the finger over the other side of the mountain. We quickly set into gutting, and took pictures of the bullet group, less than an inch apart. I gave my dad a hug and told him that I loved him and we prepared for the photo op. I cleaned the elk up, showed my respect, and gave the elk her letzebissen (last bite). We hunted the remainder of the weekend before my father and his friend Steve had to return to work. We had multiple close calls, however my father wasnt able to connect. Regardless of my father not tagging out, I still had a great experience and treasure any moment I get to spend with my friends and most importantly, my father, out in the field. Thanks for reading! The pictures are: the elk where she fell until she was pinned under a juniper. My father is the one with the orange beanie. Steve is the gentleman standing on the right side of the picture in the camo beanie. Sam is the one on the left, myself in the middle, and my friend Jeremy on the right. Showing respect to the animal. The shot group is also pictured.

My son and I are heading up to unit 10 for the Dec. 5 cow hunt. We were able to get a couple of weekend scouting trips in earlier in the year. But now with snow I understand the elk move out of areas we scouted and are hard to find. Has anyone recently been up there and can lend us a little insight about where we could go now?

That was Awesome! The day before we left the valley for my wife’s cow elk hunt, a good buddy called me up and told me that a group of hunters were camping in my intended spot and were planning on setting up a ladder stand near the trick tank where I already had set up a blind a week ago for my wife. Past posts on CWT dealing with the dilemmas of “public land hunting” racked my brain as I began thinking about a plan B for my wife’s hunt, which I had never previously considered. Fortunately, my buddy was the perfect ambassador and after a short conversation with the other party, they agreed to set up their stand elsewhere. A little before 4:00 am, I rolled out of my sleeping bag and cranked up the Buddy Heaters in our pop-up tent trailer to tame the encroaching cold that had slipped in around us during the night. I excitedly told my wife that it was time to get up and dress for her first hunt. She rolled over in bed, looked at her watch, and calmly responded that she had seven more minutes to sleep, based on the schedule I had planned for her the night before. After layering ourselves in multiple tops and bottoms that we previously washed in scent-killer laundry detergent, I grabbed a few extra blankets, a couple of folding chairs, and we headed out the door. After a short five minute drive, we exited our Jeep and began hiking through the woods towards our blind. Although the full moon was still up in the air, the tall trees blotted out its light and we walked quietly through the cold, dark foreboding shadows to our destination. We climbed into the blind at 5:00 am, right on schedule, and prepared for the seemingly endless wait for the legal shooting hour to arrive. The wind was gusting incessantly, which caused the branches on fallen snags to crack and break, thus increasing our heart rates and giving us false anticipation of approaching game. Finally, daylight came, and with it…nothing. My trail camera had shown cow elk in the area practically every day of the last week between 6:00 and 6:15 am. But, it was now 6:30 and I was growing impatient. I had wanted everything to work out perfectly, like clockwork for my wife’s first big game hunt. I wanted it to be picture perfect, so she would fall in love with hunting, just as I had. ---But, I should have known better.--- Shame on me. I did know better. Hunting is never picture-perfect. In fact, it is the unpredictability of the game, weather, and other factors that draw me back into the field year after year. If hunting wasn’t so difficult, I wouldn’t enjoy it so much. Nothing good was ever easy. At 7:00 am, I told my wife to open the blind and retrieve the radio outside so I could contact my buddy to see if he had found any elk and to touch base with him, which we had planned to do every hour starting at 7:00. She had unzipped the door, was leaning out of her chair, and was reaching out to grab my hunting bag, when I spotted a mature cow that had materialized from out of nowhere right in front of our blind. I grabbed my wife and pulled her back into her chair while whispering, “Big cow, you’re going to take this one.” I reached down, grabbed our camcorder, and turned it on. I told my wife to take the shot when she gets a chance. BOOM!!! I didn’t even get to lift the camcorder up to my face. I looked up and saw the elk breaking away into the forest. In three seconds, it was gone. My wife was completely beside herself and totally bummed out that she had missed the broadside cow at 30 yards. I told her that “buck fever” attacks every hunter the first time they put crosshairs on their quarry and not to worry about it, that she would have another chance in an hour or two after things calmed back down in the forest. I told her that we needed to check the area for blood; just to be sure that she had missed the cow. We left the blind and went to the spot where the cow was grazing. We could see her incoming tracks and what we thought were her exit tracks, but found no blood in the area. We disagreed on the exact exit route of the elk, so we followed multiple sets of tracks out of the area searching for any sign resulting from a ballistic impact on the elk, but found none. I radioed my buddy and he insisted that we should continue to search for blood and that sometimes a cow might go a hundred yards before blood eventually hits the ground. I knew he was giving us false hope, but it made my wife feel a little bit better. He joined our search which led us all over the surrounding area, but again to no avail. About two-and-a-half hours after the shot, our radio silence was shattered when TJ announced, “I got blood.” That sentence broke my concentration and I looked down at my radio and turned it up a notch and asked TJ to repeat what he had just said. Again, TJ stated, “I got blood.” I looked up and amazingly replied, “Well, I got elk.” “It’s right here, ten feet in front of me, staring right at me!” At that instant, the wounded elk jumped to its feet and took off like an Olympic runner sprinting through the trees. We gave her an hour, then started to track her from her last resting spot which contained two large puddles of blood-soaked grass that were the size of paper plates. We were very optimistic about recovering my wife’s cow for a couple of reasons. First of all, the cow had only gone about 50 yards from the original site of impact to where she had bedded down, which indicated that she must have been hit pretty good. Secondly, during the following two-and- a-half hours of searching for any blood sign, we had invariably come within 20 yards of her multiple times and she never got up and left, which also suggested that she was close to expiring. Thus, we carefully followed a clear blood trail through the woods stopping every few yards to glass ahead of us under the trees in hopes of spotting her carcass. After tracking her through a couple of tricky areas over a 200-yard exodus, I glassed the dying elk lying in the grass on the edge of a ravine. My wife put a final stalk on her cow and ended the pursuit with a five-yard head shot from her .40 caliber Glock. It was over! My wife had harvested her first big game animal on the opening day of her hunt, which would inevitably bring us back home to our twin girls that very same day. A special thanks to TJ, who shared in our short, but memorable hunt. It was great having you around to help in the skinning, butchering, and packing out of my wife’s elk. In addition, I wish to thank the forgotten hunters who backed out and let us hunt that spot opening morning without argument or discontentment. After packing out the elk, we stopped by to chat with the group and I invited them to freely use my blind. I left to up in the field and explained the elk patterns that I had documented on my trail camera to leave them with the best possible chance of successfully filling their tags as well. Do unto others…isn’t that what the good book says? Author’ Note: I kept badgering my wife all day long to find out if she enjoyed the hunt, if she liked hunting, and whether or not she would do it again. Her responses to my questions were very non-committal and ambiguous, which had me somewhat worried. Finally, about an hour into our drive home she blurted out, “That was awesome! That was the most amazing thing! Now, I understand what you go through in the field when you’re out hunting. I want to do this every year!”