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GJMauro12

Brothers First

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Sorry in advance for the long story, the plan was to keep it short and simple.

 

My brother Jimmy, drew his second archery bull tag in a row and we were hoping to get his first bull on the ground this time around. I am going to skip the story ahead to the last day we hunted or I could end up writing all day. It was the last Saturday of the hunt and we found ourselves in the same spot as the morning before. We were out there an hour or so before light and were hoping the elk were going to exit the meadow in the same direction as the day before. We weren’t hearing close to the amount of bugles as we had heard in the exact same spot the morning before so we decided to jump areas. When we drove around to the opposite side of the meadow just at daylight and we saw a herd of cows crossing the road with a really nice bull in tow. We drove past them and jumped out to hear at least 6 different bulls bugling. We took off down the hill somewhat paralleling the bull that was still crossing the road. We hoped he would take the ridgeline down to the meadow at the bottom so we hauled butt in hopes of meeting again at the bottom.

When we got to the bottom, it seemed like the elk were going to stay right above us the whole time. We hadn’t done much calling for most of the hunt and today we had decided to get aggressive. Jimmy went back up about half way while I stayed at the bottom bugling and raking. He could see a bull pacing the back and forth across the top but he didn’t want to come down. Eventually that bull looped around him to try and get a better look at me and then silently exited the opposite direction of my brother.

 

The whole time we had been working this bull, we had a lot meaner sounding bull screaming on the hill right behind that we had been ignoring. We figured if he hadn’t come down this whole time we might as well get on top with him since he was still talking to us. We hustled to the top and ended up busting some cows but could still hear the bull not too far off. We took off after him and when he sounded off the last time which sounded like he was right on top of us we got down and I ripped off one last bugle and that bull decided he wasn’t going to mess around anymore.

Here he came charging over the hill at a quick pace and the direction he was heading he would have ran Jimmy right over. The bull went behind some trees from my angle so I looked to see if Jimmy was drawn yet and just as I looked he was releasing. I pulled the binoculars up to see if I could see any blood on the bull as he turned to leave. He got to the top of the hill and stopped and all I could see was his antlers peaking over. Then he darted off over the hill out of sight, and a moment later I hear him crash.

 

I crept up to where Jimmy shot from and we decided to walk up to where the bull was standing when he shot. We didn’t walk 20 yards and could see two guys sitting in the direction we seen the bull heading last. After fumbling back and forth with hand signals we slowly walked out to where they were pointing to see the bull laying tangled up in a group of trees. Andy and Tim met us at the bull to congratulate Jimmy and said they got a lot of it on film. They had been sitting on the road (that’s about when we realized we were 100 yards from the road and so was the downed bull) and watched the bull follow his cows across the road away from us. They blew a cow call and the bull came back to the road and when I bugled that last time he came running. Our theory was he came back to their cow call thinking he had forgot a cow on the other side of the road and when he heard the bugle he must of thought he was losing a cow because he came in with an attitude.

 

Andy and Tim helped us pull the bull out of the tangled mess he landed himself in to get him set up for some photos. We exchanged information and they were nice enough to put the video onto a thumb drive and mail it to us.

 

This was Jimmy’s first bull and first archery kill. We aren’t the best at scoring but it looks like he is right at 300”.

 

Big thanks to Andy and Tim for sending us the video. We really appreciate it and congratulations on your bulls!

 

 

Video of the bull crossing the road:

 

 

Video of bull coming back:

 

http://www.youtube.com/edit?ns=1&video_id=UmBKsLZ3aEg

 

Video of him tipping over:

 

 

 

 

post-4673-0-42259500-1380742402_thumb.jpg

 

 

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/>Guy, it's your turn next year. Congrats to you and your crew!

I might have to wait a little longer than that. I've been trying to pull a unit 27 tag.

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Great story! Congrats!

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Great Story, congrats

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