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Old 01-29-2017, 09:30 AM
Xbolt7mm Xbolt7mm is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: south calgary
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Originally Posted by DiabeticKripple View Post
Was out Thursday and Friday for the last cow hunt of the year.

We got one cow early on Thursday, just a lone cow all by herself in the bottom of a coulee. Wasn't the cleanest kill, but I'm not sure how she didn't die quickly. 150yd shot broadside with a 180gr soft point out of a 30-06. As it ran away I saw blood gushing out of the side, it went 50yds and laid down so we went back to the truck and when we got to the elk 15 mins later it was still alive. Another shot ended it quickly. We thought for sure she would expire in a minute or two once she laid down. After gutting her, the shot hit the liver and a lung. We felt terrible.

Friday we got into the NWA and we put on over 10km seeing everything except elk. Coyotes, Whitetails, Mulies, a million Pronghorns, and a couple Grouse.

We were driving down the road and got a tip from another hunter saying a herd was a couple k due east of us. So we parked the truck and started walking, we walked another 5-6km and found the herd, about 40 elk with 3 spike bulls. We stalked to about 250yds from them and that's as close as we could get. I let the 139gr GMX rip out of my 7mm Rem Mag at a cow and I missed. There was a strong crosswind and I misjudged it. The herd ran about 100yds away and stopped, I reloaded and sent another at the lead cow and this time it was perfect. It was about 350yds and I double lunged her. She ran 50yds over a hill and expired. Blood everywhere.

The herd ran away from us and over another hill and we heard a few more gunshots. We pushed them right into another group of hunters and they connected on one.

We were 3km from the truck so the work began, we quartered the elk and tried packing out everything as far as we could. We made it about 500yds before we had to drop the meat. We made a waypoint on the GPS, and headed for the truck to get the sled I brought. Got back to the meat an hour and a half later, and had it at the truck another hour later. Wasn't easy dragging the sled on the ground without snow. All said and done at the end of the day we did 19kms of walking.
Congrats, you did well, there were only about 23 elk in total of all three days taken. Our elk was the same as your second one, 3 km back in the nwa and two trips, sled was a beast to pull, 11km total with packs and sled. I found this hunt to be a hunt and not a cull at all. I've never worked that hard for an animal in my life. We shot it at 11am on Sat and was back to the truck with all the meat at 5pm. I can only guess that the early hunts must have been considerable different than the last one. We had to get a plan in place to get back to the most remote area after scouting the herd on thurs and fri and then find an area in there that would hold game and go after them. It wasn't anything like every one complained about when they talked cull, Anyways congrats cuz not many were successful.

Last edited by Xbolt7mm; 01-29-2017 at 09:39 AM.
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