Live Hunts - Arizona Archery Elk Hunt - September 22

Live Hunts - Arizona Archery Elk Hunt - September 22 - Day 1

Friday - September 22 - Day 1
Arizona Archery Elk Hunt

Welcome, everyone, to our 4th live hunt of 2000. We're expecting this hunt to provide a lot more elk action than our last live hunt in Colorado a few weeks ago. I won't say what unit we will be hunting, except that it's roughly in north central Arizona. It's a great unit with good numbers of elk and some really nice bulls.

I'm hunting with Arizona Wildlife Outfitters, owner Don Martin. My guide will be Bruce Hudson. Don Martin has been guiding another hunter in a different part of this unit for the last week and they have been seeing lots of elk and lots of good bulls, but the dry conditions, and the lack of a really strong rut so far should make things interesting.

Thursday P.M. Hunt
My guide, Bruce Hudson, picked me up at my hotel about noon today. We headed out to the area, and I was excited to hear that Bruce had seen about 25 elk this morning, including a borderline shooter 6x5 with nice ivory tips and sticker off one of his points. We heard some weather news that was possibly good and possibly bad at the same time. There is supposed to be a front coming in, but it's only calling for wind and clouds, no rain. Since it's dry here, a good rain would cool things off and probably get the bulls a little more active. We'll see what happens.

Our camp.

After a lunch/dinner of Beef Stew and french bread at camp, we headed out and got into the field about 4:30, going to an area that Bruce saw a whole lot of elk a few weeks ago. Well, apparently hunters had been there since the season opened, because there was very little fresh elk sign. We did, however, see a spike, 2 cows and 2 calves feeding up out of their bedding area onto the meadow we were in. A photo of the spike is below. We were hoping there might be a good bull in the group but there wasn't. As the evening got late and we headed back to camp the wind really started howling, so the front is here. Off to bed since we're getting up at 3:30 tomorrow morning.

Here is the spike we saw this evening.

Here is a nice rub we found.

I'm glassing a bedding area below a big meadow.

Friday A.M. Hunt
Well, the wind howled all night long, but no rain. Despite the noise on our camper, I was able to get a pretty good sleep last night. We went out this morning about 4:30 a.m., and despite the fact that the wind was blowing at about hurricane force (it seemed), there wasn't a cloud in the sky. We walked about a mile to our hunting area, sat for about 20 minutes until the sun started to show some light on the horizon, then started still hunting through the shadows of timber on the edge of a big meadow. A lot of the elk in the area we are hunting feed at night in a very large series of meadows. At first light they filter up through the draws into the area we started out this morning, to go to bed. And in the evenings, they go back down to the meadows. Our hunt, at least for the first few days, is going to center around trying to intercept elk going to and from this series of meadows.

Evidence of a good crossing.

Bruce inspecting the heavy evidence on the ground of the crossing.
We were walking along a fence about 6:45 a.m. when Bruce saw a lone elk about 400 yards away feeding slowly through the sunlight back towards their bedding area. So, we snuck about 50 yards closer to a thicket and got out our binoculars. We started watching, and within about 10 minutes about 10 cows and calves had materialized. They were walking pretty much single file. We knew with that many cows there had to be a bull there somewhere too. Sure enough, after about 10 cows and calves had passed, a muddy nice 6x6 walked into view. From that distance, he looked about a 300 class bull, definitely something to take a second look at. After the bull came about 8 more cows and calves. We made a quick plan. Bruce was pretty sure he knew where they were headed, and there was a draw over there that they might funnel through on their way to bed. So, we went back the way we had come that morning and worked our way beside a large fallen Ponderosa that gave some cover overlooking the draw Bruce thought they might use. It took us probably 20 minutes to move over there, probably a half mile. During this time the bull bugled about 10 times. Nothing real excited, just a bugle. Well, just as we were working our way to the fallen pine, we heard the bull bugle again, sounding like he was probably 200 yards or so away, but definitely working in our direction. The plan seemed to be working well. Just as we were starting to kneel down the fallen pine we heard a cow mew, and she was definitely closer than 200 yards, she sounded like she was under 50. Right then I saw her, and I don't know how she hadn't spotted us, but she was moving along a trail about 30 yards in front of our pine cover. We ducked out of sight just in time as she moseyed on by. About 20 yards after her came her calf. At this point I was kind of in limbo, as I wanted to be about 10 yards closer to that trail, but I could see more cows moving along the trail who would see me if I moved. I didn't have an arrow knocked, but I did have my digital camera out to try and snap a picture. Well, about 3 more cows crossed in front of me on the trail, then all of a sudden the I see the bull out of my peripheral vision, and he is fixing to be right in my shooting lane. All this time Bruce was about 15 yards back of me and couldn't really see what I was doing. I was still as a stone, and that bull didn't stop a bit, just trotted right by in front of me behind what must have been a hot cow. Well, Bruce cow called and that bull came to a halt on a dime, turned his head and looked right at us. I still didn't have an arrow knocked, and wasn't about to do that and try to draw with him looking right at us. Bruce had ranged a tree just on the other side of the trail at 35 yards, so the bull was probably just over 30, in my range, but I prefer closer. Anyhow, there was no way I was getting drawn on this bull. At close range we saw that he was smaller than we first thought, probably in the 260 class. A good bull, but not what I was looking for on the first morning of an Arizona trophy bull hunt. I was glad just to watch him, and he got my heart to pumping. That was the closest I have ever been to a nice bull like that. He watched us for about 10 minutes, then after seeing there was no cow there, he got nervous and started trotting off after his cows.

The arrow indicates where the bull was standing when he
looked back, at a little over 30 yards.

If you strain your eyes, you can see the bull trotting away,
and if you really strain, you can see the outline of his rack.
Well, after that close encounter I took a few minutes to calm my nerves, and we started wondering what had become of the rest of the herd, because there were definitely cows that didn't come by us that were with the herd earlier. We walked about 10 steps and spotted the rest of them. They had peeled off from the other group and were working towards a different bedding area, and were about 200 yards off when we spotted them. Plus, there was a different 6x6 bull with them. In Colorado I would have shot him in an instant, but not on this trip, not on the first day. He was a bit smaller than the bull we had at 30 yards. We hunted the rest of the morning still hunting our way back towards camp. We saw multitudes of sign, including some elk trails that had no grass on them because the elk had beat them down so hard to the dirt. Lots of fresh tracks and scat. No more elk sightings this morning. The wind was howling bad all morning long, but still no clouds. To give you an idea, the weather forecast for the area we're in said there had been wind gusts of up to 50 mph. Check out this evening's hunt on Day 2 of the Live Hunt, linked below.

The second group of elk in the distance.

Me holding a nice 5 point shed we found.
Go to Day 2

e-mail Joshua Flournoy

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