arffdog875
New member
I am finally getting to post a photo of my 4th season bull ( Actually my first branch antlered bull!) Up until now I have always meat hunted, have taken some spikes when they were legal, but mostly opted for a cow. The second day of CO 4th season my wife and I spotted this bull from about a mile away and decided to put a stalk on. We got to about 500 yds, spotted him feeding in and out of the cedars, decided to cut some more yardage. We got to 375 yds and he started getting nervous, so I pulled the trigger! He was on the ground at about 9 am and my wife and I finished packing him out about 6 pm! During the caping and quartering of this bull I had found a couple of absesses across his ribs and high on his shoulder. The next day, I was starting to debone the meat and found more absesses deep down by the bone, one was the size of a softball and it exploded all over the counter and wall! I threw everything back in the cooler and contacted the DOW, they told me to bring it in for a biologist to look at. After about an hour of him looking at all the meat and absesses, he came to the conclusion that this bull had been in a bad fight during rut and he didn't back out of the fight until he had been gored many times, and doubtful he would have made it through the winter considering how much infection as we found thought out the body. All the meat was rancid, DOW took and disposed of it! The biologist said if we probably would have gotten sick if we had eaten the meat, I have good memories of the hunt, just bummed that my family will not be able to enjoy the meat!
