A couple of weeks ago I arrived for an elk hunt in Colorado. My hunt was on a ranch under the Ranching for Wildlife program. We scouted the herd that evening and identified two good sized 5x6 bulls. The herd was bedding down in a field about 1,000 yards from the road. The field was bounded on the west by a steeply sloping hillside, which led to the herd’s daytime bedding ground, on the south by a tree-lined gully, on the north by a broad shallow depression, and on the east by a deep gulch with a stream at the bottom near the road.
My guide and I arrived about a mile from the herd just before first light, and we worked our way into the gully and took up a shooting position in the trees and bushes at the top to the south of the herd. We identified one of the bulls from the night before at about 200 yards, and the herd, including about 20 cows, was grazing their way diagonally away from us toward the slope. The closest cow noticed us, but the rest of the herd was unaware of our presence.
I was shooting my 20” barrel BM450 with factory Hornady 250 gr FTX rounds through a Leupold 3x9-40 VXR scope. I was sighted in for 200 yards and shooting over a Primos shooting tripod from a kneeling position.
The bull was broadside with his left side toward me. My first shot was low, but the bull continued grazing. A quick second shot hit in the shoulder area, and the bull spun around with his left foreleg held up against his side. My second shot was to his right side quartering away, and you could hear the impact and see the animal react. I tried a fourth shot, but the bull was moving into the gully to the north showing only his head, and it was probably a miss. As it disappeared, it staggered, then recovered before dropping out of sight.
We waited a half an hour, with the guide expecting the bull to be down in the gully. When we got there, the bull had moved on, so we followed the blood trail, which was light and did not show evidence of bleeding from the lungs. After about 300 yards into juniper thickets, we saw a bull bedded down. As we approached to get another shot, but before we could get a positive ID, the bull got up and moved off out of sight. We decided to give it a couple of hours, then proceeded from the bedding spot in the same direction the bull had been moving. We did not see any further blood, but a large clot had been left at the bedding site. Our path led a little over 150 yards to the fence on the northern boundary of the ranch. However - and this is where it gets disappointing - the landowner on the other side of the fence would not give permission to enter his land to look for the elk.
We did a thorough search of the area on our side of the fence, in case the elk had doubled back to the herd bedding area. On the next day, we actually found blood on the fence a little west of the route we followed the day before. But again were refused permission to enter the next ranch’s land. Contact with the local Department of Wildlife officer did not help, as the landowner was within his rights to refuse permission to enter. We continued to scout the herd in the valley, but there was no sign of a wounded bull rejoining the herd. Our best guess is that the coyotes and magpies eventually ended up with an elk meal.
My guide and I went over the scenario several times. Since the guide had been watching the bull with 15x binoculars, we were sure of the two rounds hitting the bull. Our best guess is that they were ultimately fatal shots, but another scenario is that the first shot hit the shoulder blade and did not penetrate to the vital organs and that the second quartering away shot was high into the muscle. The big game manager at the ranch was a little skeptical that the 450 round had sufficient power at 200 yards (1486 ft-lbs at 1636 fps per Hornady’s ballistics calculator) to take down the elk, but he had never seen the BM450 round before and had no experience with it.
I would welcome any comments, even speculation, about possible scenarios, especially from those with knowledge of the terminal performance of the 450 BM FTX or experience hunting elk. Needless to say, this was a very disappointing outcome from my first elk hunt.