Last Day Success Stories

[Khunter]

2023 third rifle elk in Colorado. No legal bulls all week. Last day worked our way to a ridge and glassed the opposite hillside for a couple hours with no luck. Hour or so before dark we heard elk up high in the thick timber and decided to hustle up there to try and intercept them. We made our way thru the valley and start climbing, as we stop for a breather a bull ripped a bugle behind us 318 yards on the ridge we had just left! Pretty sure he was letting me know he wanted to go home with me! So with half hour of shooting light left I went prone and dropped him where he stood!View attachment 303337

Why do grown ups blot out their face in pics. Kinda get why some guys obscure their minor child face but not seeing what harm would come from showing your own adult face. Sure wrecks the photo to show a faceless blob. Almost better to not post a pic than to post a wrecked pic.

congrats on last day bull all the same.

 

[elkfanatic]

Why do grown ups blot out their face in pics. Kinda get why some guys obscure their minor child face but not seeing what harm would come from showing your own adult face. Sure wrecks the photo to show a faceless blob. Almost better to not post a pic than to post a wrecked pic.

congrats on last day bull all the same.

My son was along on that trip and when I wanted to post our hunt story he didn't want me to post a pic of him with his cow so I blotted out his face and he gave me the ok to post it. Guess I'm not sure why I blotted out my face? Maybe so he doesn't feel bad about having me blot out his? Anyway here you go.

 

[rogerthat]

Why do grown ups blot out their face in pics. Kinda get why some guys obscure their minor child face but not seeing what harm would come from showing your own adult face. Sure wrecks the photo to show a faceless blob. Almost better to not post a pic than to post a wrecked pic.

congrats on last day bull all the same.

I disagree. I couldn’t give two craps what the hunter looks like unless I’m trying to figure out who they are and where they are hunting. Animals and critters are interesting. People…not so much to me.

 

[bigsky2]

My dad and I cashed in our Colorado deer points in 2020 and 2021, and both of us filled our tags on the last days of the hunts. I had a 3rd season tag in 2020 and we hunted hard with favorable weather but weren't finding anything bigger than 170's. On the last day, we decided to split up. I would go hike in to a closed trail that paralleled a nice drainage that bucks had started to migrate down while my dad would go glass a big open sagebrush/aspen basin. If I didn't have anything going for me by noon, I would head over and meet my dad. I got to my trail in the dark and there were two vehicles parked there. It was the wrestling team from the local college, and they had killed an elk in there the day before and were waiting for daylight to go pack it out. Since they were just packing an elk out and not actually hunting, I knew they would be making a lot of noise and would have all the deer in the timber. I didn't really have a backup plan, so I went to meet my dad early. I ran into some elk hunters on the trail who had seen a 180's buck at daylight. They had just watched him go into a little isolated patch of timber. It sounded really promising, so I quickly headed that way. I got to the spot where the buck had been, and there was a guy parked on the road. I pulled up and he told me his buddies had just shot the buck and were dragging it back to the road. Luck is not on my side this day. I checked a few more spots with no luck and then went and met my dad at mid afternoon. He had seen several nice bucks that he pointed out to me and one shooter, but it had bedded on private. We were hoping he would come back on public towards evening but daylight was fading fast and it was looking like I would head home to MT with an unpunched tag. I glassed way across the basin and spotted another buck with a few does. I asked my dad if he had seen that one, and he said he hadn't. We put the spotter on him and decided he was about as big as anything we had seen so I went after him and got him killed with about 5 minutes of legal shooting light left.


Since we didn't see anything real special on my hunt, my dad decided to apply for a 2nd season in a little better unit in 2021. The dates were later than normal for 2nd season. My dad arrived a day or two early to scout the unit and I wasn't able to head down until the opener. As I was driving to Colorado on opening morning, my dad texted me and said he was watching a buck that he should maybe shoot. I told him not to let me not being there affect his decision of whether to shoot or not. He ultimately decided to pass the buck up. The first morning I was there we spotted a 190's typical dream buck on a brushy hillside. Almost as soon as we had seen the buck, another hunter came up the trail behind us, so we quickly put away our optics so we didn't give the buck away. The guy stopped to chat and we tried to end the conversation as quickly as possible. When he left, we looked back at the hillside but couldn't see the buck. The other deer that had been there were still visible so we thought the buck was likely still right there somewhere. We hiked over and got in shooting position on a little knob across from the buck. We sat there all day and never saw him again. We basically spent the rest of the hunt looking for that buck. There had been a snow storm right before the hunt that had the deer more visible, but the weather quickly turned as soon as the hunt started and it got nice again. We think the buck just timbered up again once it warmed up. It was kind of a curse spotting him so early in the hunt because we felt like we should commit to hunting that deer, and we didn't get to see much of the unit being focused on him the entire time. On the last morning, my dad went back to the knob across from where we had seen the buck while I went to glass another area about a mile away. Shortly after daylight, I heard a shot in the direction of my dad. I texted him asking if it was him that shot. He said he did and told me to come over. He was still on the knob when I got there. He said he had a solid rest and thought he had made a good shot but the deer disappeared in some brush and he never saw him go down. I stayed back on the knob while my dad had me guide him in to where the buck disappeared. He found him piled up and told me it was the buck he had passed up on the first morning. We definitely milked our hunts for all they were worth. I got the bucks lab aged, mine was 6.5 and my dad's was 7.5.

 

[Raisin Bran]

My dad and I cashed in our Colorado deer points in 2020 and 2021, and both of us filled our tags on the last days of the hunts. I had a 3rd season tag in 2020 and we hunted hard with favorable weather but weren't finding anything bigger than 170's. On the last day, we decided to split up. I would go hike in to a closed trail that paralleled a nice drainage that bucks had started to migrate down while my dad would go glass a big open sagebrush/aspen basin. If I didn't have anything going for me by noon, I would head over and meet my dad. I got to my trail in the dark and there were two vehicles parked there. It was the wrestling team from the local college, and they had killed an elk in there the day before and were waiting for daylight to go pack it out. Since they were just packing an elk out and not actually hunting, I knew they would be making a lot of noise and would have all the deer in the timber. I didn't really have a backup plan, so I went to meet my dad early. I ran into some elk hunters on the trail who had seen a 180's buck at daylight. They had just watched him go into a little isolated patch of timber. It sounded really promising, so I quickly headed that way. I got to the spot where the buck had been, and there was a guy parked on the road. I pulled up and he told me his buddies had just shot the buck and were dragging it back to the road. Luck is not on my side this day. I checked a few more spots with no luck and then went and met my dad at mid afternoon. He had seen several nice bucks that he pointed out to me and one shooter, but it had bedded on private. We were hoping he would come back on public towards evening but daylight was fading fast and it was looking like I would head home to MT with an unpunched tag. I glassed way across the basin and spotted another buck with a few does. I asked my dad if he had seen that one, and he said he hadn't. We put the spotter on him and decided he was about as big as anything we had seen so I went after him and got him killed with about 5 minutes of legal shooting light left.
View attachment 305944

Since we didn't see anything real special on my hunt, my dad decided to apply for a 2nd season in a little better unit in 2021. The dates were later than normal for 2nd season. My dad arrived a day or two early to scout the unit and I wasn't able to head down until the opener. As I was driving to Colorado on opening morning, my dad texted me and said he was watching a buck that he should maybe shoot. I told him not to let me not being there affect his decision of whether to shoot or not. He ultimately decided to pass the buck up. The first morning I was there we spotted a 190's typical dream buck on a brushy hillside. Almost as soon as we had seen the buck, another hunter came up the trail behind us, so we quickly put away our optics so we didn't give the buck away. The guy stopped to chat and we tried to end the conversation as quickly as possible. When he left, we looked back at the hillside but couldn't see the buck. The other deer that had been there were still visible so we thought the buck was likely still right there somewhere. We hiked over and got in shooting position on a little knob across from the buck. We sat there all day and never saw him again. We basically spent the rest of the hunt looking for that buck. There had been a snow storm right before the hunt that had the deer more visible, but the weather quickly turned as soon as the hunt started and it got nice again. We think the buck just timbered up again once it warmed up. It was kind of a curse spotting him so early in the hunt because we felt like we should commit to hunting that deer, and we didn't get to see much of the unit being focused on him the entire time. On the last morning, my dad went back to the knob across from where we had seen the buck while I went to glass another area about a mile away. Shortly after daylight, I heard a shot in the direction of my dad. I texted him asking if it was him that shot. He said he did and told me to come over. He was still on the knob when I got there. He said he had a solid rest and thought he had made a good shot but the deer disappeared in some brush and he never saw him go down. I stayed back on the knob while my dad had me guide him in to where the buck disappeared. He found him piled up and told me it was the buck he had passed up on the first morning. We definitely milked our hunts for all they were worth. I got the bucks lab aged, mine was 6.5 and my dad's was 7.5.
View attachment 305947

Great story! Nice bucks!

 

[hank4elk]

Just finished a write up.
2 years, last day success.

 

[nastynate]

Why do grown ups blot out their face in pics. Kinda get why some guys obscure their minor child face but not seeing what harm would come from showing your own adult face. Sure wrecks the photo to show a faceless blob. Almost better to not post a pic than to post a wrecked pic.

congrats on last day bull all the same.

Some of us look better that way

 

[gouch]

I killed a cow elk on the next to the last day of a 4 1/2 month long season but the only thing I ever killed on the last day was this little buck. I had pass on or blown my chances on several deer and this guy was just desperation. I was pretty proud of the shot though. Well over 100 yards on a skinny little deer facing me head on. By far the longest shot I have ever taken with that gun.

 

[Carl 9.3x62]

2022, missed two other bucks, smaller than this one which I lucked into on the last morning of the season.

 

[bigsky2]

2022, missed two other bucks, smaller than this one which I lucked into on the last morning of the season.View attachment 306160

Beautiful deer.

 

[Raisin Bran]

2022, missed two other bucks, smaller than this one which I lucked into on the last morning of the season.View attachment 306160

Pretty buck!