By my third year of elk pursuit I picked up enough elk and archery smarts to make me dangerous. One partly cloudy day with a steady cool breeze I worked downhill along a trickle of a creek, when I spotted a blue grouse in a pine tree, straight-ahead and level with me. I did not wish to chase my arrow 200 yards down the mountain, so I lined up that grouse with the trunk of the tree and tried a twenty-yard shot. Perfect shot. Stuck that grouse right to the tree trunk. I walked down to the tree and saw that grouse was 25 feet up in the air. Not having my son along with me, I had to fetch that arrow and bird myself.
While stripping myself of my canteens, holster, and pack, I withdrew a PVC elk whistle from my pocket. Out of frustration over the grouse, I blew on the elk whistle and tossed it on the pile of gear rapidly growing as I lightened my pockets. Climbing that slimy, slippery, sappy pine was a …. The branches were too small for my weight where the grouse was, but I was able to knock the arrow loose with a second arrow and the bird and shaft fell 2 feet and tangled up in the next set of branches.
Here I was, 20 feet off the ground in a sappy pine tree shaking the branches to get that bird and arrow loose, when I heard the challenging scream of bull elk bugle about one hundred yards from me. “Now what do I do?” I had already used up all the good four letter words on the grouse.
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| © 2006 Clary |
Blue Grouse, commonly found in Colorado's elk habitat. We have a saying,
"Where you find grouse, you find elk." |
I could visualize that bull elk trotting up while I was 20 feet in the tree, with my bow and all my gear on the ground. Just to rub-it-in the bull would probably walk up and urinate on my bow. With the whistle call I did, and the thrashing around in the pine tree for that grouse, the bull elk must have assumed I was a challenging bull, raking this tree. As it turned out the bull elk was busy wrecking a defenseless tree of his own. I could hear him breaking limbs and branches as I was hustling, (falling) down out of my tree and hurrying over to my equipment. I picked up my bow and the whistle, and with the wind to my face I decided to cut the distance in half between us before whistling again. The bull elk and I were on a twenty-yard wide ledge that almost looked like an old roadbed with numerous large pine trees scattered about. I went over the downhill side of the edge so the bull could not see me and trotted about sixty yards toward his tree thrashing.
The thrashing stopped as I came within forty yards. With my bow ready, I slowly worked my head up over the ledge to look around. I did not see any elk, so I blew on the whistle. That bull answered immediately from behind me, near where my pack was laying on the ground. While I had been moving toward the bull elk, he moved over to where I was.
Two seconds later, that bull charged up within ten yards of me, and promptly started beating up another helpless tree. This was the first bull I ever saw within archery range, a 5x5 nearly 260 Pope and Young points. I was mesmerized by the sight of this huge bull elk, growling, urinating, tearing up the ground with his rack and fore-hooves, and this poor aspen tree, whose trunk was about six or seven inches in diameter, its top being whipped all about. As branches and tree parts were breaking and falling around me, I was so scared I nearly wet my pants. I was shaking so badly that my arrow was rattling against my bow’s riser. In disbelief, I looked back and forth from that huge, man thrashing monster wrecking that tree, to my puny little arrow.
I had heard stories from hunters of elk doing this kind of stuff before they charged into a life or death battle. But seeing it play out before my own eyes only ten yards away was truly freighting.
Then that bull growled and bugled as he dug into the sod with his rack and threw the clumps of grass and dirt over his back. The bull was urinating all around as he tore into that poor tree again. I looked at my bow and thought, “How is this little stick of an arrow supposed to stop that?" Any second now that bull is going to thrash me in place of that tree. As I watched the treetop whipping ten yards in all directions, I knew without a doubt I was going to be next.
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| ©1983 Richard McNutt |
Richard Clary with the bull that nearly made me
wet my pants. |
Just when I thought I was going to pass-out from the stress of the confrontation, I got a terrific stroke of luck. The wind direction changed. That bull snapped his head up and looked right at me. At first I guessed I was going to die, but the coward of a bull turned tail and ran. I tried to take a step forward but fell right to the ground shaking like a puppy that heard a ten-gauge shotgun for the first time. An hour later I went to retrieve my pack, still shaking, and wondering why that bull did not kill me when he had the chance.
I never did tell the other guys in camp the whole story. Technically true, I told them that the wind had changed before I could draw my bow. I was afraid I’d have a 150-mile walk home if my cowardice were truly known. That night, after being reassured that the elk are far more fearful of hunters than we are of them, I was ready to try again.
That 5x5 bull came in to my call again the next day, this time I was with a close friend, and hunter Richard Clary, who was ten yards in front of me and got off a clean shot. That bull now hangs in Richard Clary’s den and his story comes later.
Continued...
Being Prepared