IT’S MY YEAR

It’s My Year by Jake Garness

My love for hunting with archery equipment all started when I was just a little boy. I remember when my mom or my dad used to carry me around the mountains in a backpack to archery shoots with my family. I’ve always enjoyed the great outdoors whether I was camping with my family or out trekking through the mountains hunting for big game. Some of my favorite animals to hunt are the whitetail deer, the antelope, and of course the great rocky mountain elk. While I enjoy the long hot late summer days chasing antelope through wheat fields and coulee’s or sitting in tree stands or ground blinds for the elusive whitetail, my favorite has always been the bugling, rut crazed elk.

I’ve hunted elk for 12 years with archery equipment and never could connect for one reason or another. In 2020 I drew an archery bull tag for the Missouri River Breaks. We scouted various times during the summer, once seeing 28 different bulls in two days. We set out some trail cameras and thought I had the season all figured out. There was surely not a lot of water around besides the river, so that changed the elk travel patterns throughout the summer. Hunting season finally rolled around and while there were opportunities, it was difficult to get away from work as much as I would have liked. I had multiple attempts, but all failed in harvesting of an elk. The elk beat me once again for another year, with archery equipment. 2021 rolls around, same area with the same tag, as I am committed to harvesting an elk in this area. Similar to 2020 weather with water limited, as well as with information from last year, I had a better idea on how to hunt them and where their hangout spots were to be. I took Thursday and Friday off work for opening weekend so we could get in, set up camp, and scout for opening morning. Seeing lots of elk on these two days, I had a pretty good idea how I was going to hunt them opening morning.

Opening morning I woke up stoked to start our hunt. We made coffee and had some good ol’ gas station chocolate donuts and we were off to find some elk. Our camp was about one hour from where we decided to hunt. On the way to our hunting location, we had a nice six-point run across the road right in front of us in the dark, which was a great way to start off opening day. We got to our spot and planned to hang out until daybreak as we knew there was lots of hunters and traffic in the vicinity. We hadn’t been sitting long and it was a constant stream of vehicles and hunters. There were probably about 15 people that started walking way before light in the same general direction that we were headed. We could see headlamps all over in the bottom and thought those elk that were in here last night might be gone. We thought the morning hunt was over.

Daybreak finally came, and my dad and I decided to go for a walk down the ridge overlooking the river bottom to see where the elk had gone. All the people we saw that morning were off to our right, in the bottom, leaving no one on the ridges which created an escape route for the elk. Dad and I didn’t make it 300 yards from the truck, and we were into the elk. We looked down just glassing and we spotted a 5-point in an old slough feeding a few hundred yards away. While we were not even in shooting distance yet, I still started to get excited and get the shakes. As we soon found out, there was more than the lone bull; the rest of his buddies were with him at about 250 yards straight below us. Dad and I hustled down the hill, staying in cover to see how close we could get before we ran out of cover. As we closed the distance, we lost sight of the elk, as we no longer had an advantage of elevation on them. At about 100

yards from where we believed they might be, my dad stayed back while I crept up closer to the end of the finger ridge. As I continued to close the distance, I was slightly lower than the ridge top, but I could look over and down the other side. Suddenly, I’m right in the middle of a group of about 50-60 elk. They were grouped up to my left with a couple of decent bulls leading the group with some rag horns and spikes single-file right behind them.

I noticed a trail in front of me that the elk appeared to be walking down at about 38 yards. I had no cover to get any closer, so I decided to get set up and ready to shoot if I had an opportunity. I was going to be a little picky when it came to choosing which bull I was going to shoot, as it was only opening morning. There were still elk coming out of the brush and around the hill, so I had plenty of time to get ready, but that allowed for excitement to also set in. I picked the bull I wanted to harvest; now all I needed him to do was read the script and come about 20 yards down the trail. As though my wish was coming true, down the trail he came. I drew back, slowly stood up, and cow called to stop him. As I cow called, the arrow was already airborne and on its way toward the elk.

Meanwhile, my dad couldn’t see any of the elk up close, only ones well out of bow range from where we were. I had tried to give him slow hand signals, but he wasn’t understanding, so he still didn’t know about the closer herd of elk.

While the arrow was airborne, everything appeared to be in slow motion and the arrow flight looked perfect, until the elk ducked at the last second. I watched my arrow go right over top of him. I was upset at myself and knew that I had messed up a great opportunity on opening morning. The rest of the herd dispersed and disappeared out of our sight quickly. My dad told me he didn’t understand most of the hand signals I was trying to give him, but what he did understand was that things were about to happen when I drew back my bow.

It was a little foggy, so it was difficult to see the elk at times, but we kept track of them to try and make another play on them either later that morning or save it for the afternoon hunt. He and the two other bulls finally meandered into the brush, so we decided to go back up to the truck as the elk had all disappeared. It was a brisk morning and there was dew on the grass. I shot at the bull around 7:30 and started walking back around 10:30 as there was no valid play on the elk.

We started to make our hike up the hills and back to the truck. It was too late in the day to go all the way back to camp, so we ate lunch and hung out on the top of the hill for the afternoon, waiting to see if some elk would eventually come out to feed. The elk did come out, and they weren’t far from where they had been that morning. We utilized our spotting scopes and bino’s to watch a couple of bulls way over on the other side of where the brush meets the trees. Around 2:00 the wind shifted so it was perfect to hunt the drainage. I decided I was going to dive off the top and go get set up for the evening hunt, while dad and grandpa stayed up top to watch and hang out with some other hunters that came to chat.

On my way down the ridgeline, I was in my own world, out in the great outdoors chasing one of my favorite animals with archery equipment. As I headed into the bottom, my sour feeling from the morning hunt had started to change. I had one of those butterfly feelings in my stomach and I felt that something good was going to happen this evening. I got in the open trees and found a good heavy, beaten trail to sit by, so I set up about 25 yards off, and waited. As I sat there, I could hear a couple bulls sounding off occasional soft chuckles. I threw out a couple soft cow calls about 30 minutes apart, but nothing showed up. I could hear the elk behind me and what sounded like horns rubbing against the thick brush. About 4:00 I slowly packed my stuff up and made my way closer to the brush line and out of the trees.

From where I was, I could look down the brush line and see the edge of a couple meadows, so I figured I would just slowly walk towards them and look over those meadows. As I was slowly walking across the crunchy fall leaves from the trees, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I saw a big tan and brown body feeding in the back of one of the meadows. I slowly bring my binos up and it’s a nice rag horn 5. As though a repeat of that morning, my heart again started to race and the adrenaline was starting to flow. I got to a big lone tree, about 50 yards from the meadow, and I dropped my pack, took my boots off and stripped down the extra clothes I didn’t need. The bull was at about 90 yards and it was in taller grass in the meadow with some spotty brush around the edges. In order to close the distance, I was on my hands and knees crawling around and through little brush piles to try and move in closer for a shot. Well, little did I know there were seven other bulls still in the brush nearby. As I was slowly sneaking, I would be out of sight at times, but as I came around another little brush pile there would be more and more elk in the meadow—more eyes and noses.

As I’m sitting there watching these bulls feeding, I have bulls from 45-80 yards and most of the smaller bulls were closest to me. Yet again, I was trying to be selective and wait on some of the more mature bulls to feed over. I sat there for close to an hour with all of them feeding back and forth, some friendly calling and sparring going on, in and out of the brush. I was very careful about watching how much I moved because they would pick their heads up quite often and were alert. I was sitting there, tucked into a little patch of brush with a couple of shooting lanes and yardages mapped out in my head. The bulls started to feed away from me into the brush one after another and I thought my night was done. As I sat there for what seemed like an eternity, which was probably only 10-15 minutes, I started to see the tops of horns through a patch of willows where they entered. I was trying to stay a step ahead and was strategizing how I could get around them and head them off to possibly get a shot, when seconds later they were coming single file towards me.

My bow was now in my hand and arrow nocked. I had the yardages memorized, and I had a small rag horn 4-point at 25 yards. The elk were pushing each other around but coming closer and closer. At one time I had another rag horn 4 straight to my left at 14 yards but I had seen a 5-point that I was going to try and shoot. The bigger bulls walked straight to me and stood at 28 yards broadside. As they were feeding in the “red zone,” the wind switched just a little bit and the rag horn 4 to my left caught my wind, with head and nose straight in the air.

At this moment, I felt like this could be my final seconds for an opportunity, so I decided it was go-time.

I slowly drew back and picked the nice 5-point out of the group that was perfectly broadside. I told myself I needed to calm down, as I was shaking too much. As I became steadier, I settled my pin where I wanted it and the arrow was on its way. I pinwheeled him! I watched him run off by himself while the rest of the group ran elsewhere. As I watched him run, I couldn’t see any blood in the 80 yards before disappearing into the thick willows. I began to think that I missed him, but I was certain I watched that arrow hit him perfect. I sat there for about five minutes in awe while waiting for the herd crashing to stop. As things settled down, I walked over to where he was standing, but still thinking I could have missed him. Bright red blood covered my arrow from broadhead to knock, as well as on the grass. With the angle of how I was sitting and the height of the elk, it seemed as though my arrow exit could have been a little bit high.

Meanwhile, my dad and grandpa were up top watching the whole thing through the spotting scope. Even though they couldn’t see me or my location, they assumed I had shot, because all of a sudden “elk scattered everywhere”. My dad told my grandpa that he thought he saw one either lay down or tip over in the brush. Even though they weren’t right there with me when it happened, I thought that was pretty neat that they got to watch through the spotting scope from a distance.

After I walked out to where they could see me, they could see my reactions and my dad was already unloading his pack and soon to be on his way down the mountain to help if needed. Dad didn’t get there to help until almost dark, but even with only headlamps, the blood trail was very easy to follow. Come to find out, I hit the artery that runs down the spine and got the top of one lung. The elk went into some thick willows and ended up only running about 100 yards before expiring.

Once we got to the elk, it was quite the experience gutting and quartering him in those thick willows. We originally tried to drag him out of the willows, but that option quickly went away. We got him quartered out and what we wouldn’t be able to haul in backpacks that night got hoisted into nearby tall trees. We hiked out in the dark by headlamp to the truck. By the time we got back to camp that night, it was almost midnight and we had left camp around 4 am that morning. While I was still on “cloud 9”, it had been a long day, full of experiences. We slept in the next morning to catch up on rest as well as to try to not mess up any other hunters in that same area. We retrieved the remaining bags, packed up camp and were headed home with my first trophy bull elk taken with archery equipment. This will be a memory with my dad and grandpa that I will never forget, and I will cherish forever.