I heard the smack of the arrow hit and saw the location as he was running off. The arrow didn't look to have very much penetration, but it wasn't flopping around either while it was running. It was in timber so I couldn't see very far, but he wasn't limping in the little bit I could see him and he didn't stagger forward when the arrow hit. Will that tell me if the arrow broke through the bone? I waited a full hour before I started tracking. I tracked the blood trail through the timber for about 500 yards that took me about 5 1/2 hours until I finally lost the trail. In some places the blood seemed to be several large splotches (mostly on leaves or branches he would brush against), but often it was just a small smudge or a drop here and there. I often had to take a lot of time searching for the next blood spot - it definitely wasn't a trail I could just walk along. There seemed to be more blood after he brushed branches...I'm guessing from scraping the blood clot off from the wound area. But towards the end there wasn't even blood up higher on the branches that he brushed against like there was at the start of the blood trail. He never did bed down and traveled horizontal across the hill side, never going much up or down, even when he crossed multiple game trails. I kept on waiting for him to get on a trail and go up or down, but he continued just straight across. He definitely didn't stop and was hours ahead of me. I tracked from 2pm to 7:45pm and the blood was dry on the leaves during the last portion of the trail. I never did find the arrow.
The ultimate question in all of this detail, is there a good chance that he wasn't mortally wounded? I've read and heard lots of stories of elk surviving a shoulder blade strike. If he was mortally wounded then I will count him for my tag. But if it sounds like he has a great chance of surviving then maybe I'll keep hunting. I feel terrible about this and want to be an ethical hunter and do the right thing.
Based on the info available, I would likely keep hunting unless I felt my shooting or equipment isn't ready.
In my opinion, hunting for me is still about the meat and not the sport. I spend roughly $100.00 dollars a year on hunting ( broadheads if needed, tags, gas) I hunt until I have the meat on the ground. If I wound an animal, I will look good and hard for it but don't punch my tag until I see it on the ground with my own eyes.
I'd keep hunting.
You never know another hunter may get him? See it happen a lot in the taxi/butcher shop.
You're hunting animals to kill them, not taking their photo. No matter what happens wound/kill/etc it is not a good day for the animals.
As far as your hit goes my personal guess is he...could be living, could be dead, or could be in the process of dying. Almost impossible to know without more evidence.
Keep hunting.
That being said, put in some hard long hours toward recovery...jdee gives a good reason why!
Best of Luck, Jeff
Scap hits are normally high hits. Possibly high lung, they can go a long way on high lung.... maybe just one lung and they can go a long LONG ways on one lung. Too high and you're outside the chest cavity and just a meat hit. How much arrow was out?
I have bowhunted for plains game in southern Africa and made what I figured was a well placed, mortal hit; the rule is 'you hit it...you buy it', whether $300 for a warthog or $3000+ for a sable etc.
Even with a blood trail that Ray Charles could follow, my arrow got 18"+ of penetration tight behind the shoulder, and we never did recover my warthog...felt sick to my stomach, I can tell you
Good luck and good hunting
Kenneth
The picture shown is a misrepresentation if the elk is on a hillside with a leg forward.
But Glunt is absolutely correct, too.
JMO, continuing to hunt after you've wounded and lost an animal is not at all unethical - unless you make a habit of it. Where it becomes a problem is with the people who don't make a serious effort to recover the animal, don't make a serious effort to learn from their mistakes (such as they may have been), and consequently end up driving the wounded/lost mortality figures that the managers have to work into their equations.
Enough people screw up, and sooner or later it'll have to translate into fewer tags or fewer days for everybody else. Of course, by the same token, when advances in the equipment increase the hunter success rate, it should logically translate into fewer tags and days, and that's what the Old Guard was concerned about as modern archery gear got more and more advanced and the popular conception of a "long" shot went from about 35 yards to whateverthehell it is these days...
I recall when Randy Ulmer opined that 35 yards was really the hard-and-fast Ethical Maximum range for bowhunting, period - regardless of how good you are on targets or what species you were after, and that was back when he was cleaning up at various target-shooting championships, the exact nature of which escape me at the moment.
But there he was, a Champ Target Archer and Veterinarian (who would presumably hold himself to a fairly strict, yet still realistic standard when it comes to animal suffering), saying 35 yards was the ceiling. Just something to think about, maybe, for all those who think of 70 yards and up as "normal" bow hunting range.... Hell, I've got pretty good eyesight and I don't think I'd hunt with an iron-sighted RIFLE if I was expecting to shoot 70 yards unless I was also expecting all of my shots to be out on the sage flats in decent light, but as usual, I digress........
And I guess the short-of-it-rewriting-the-game-management-math-book answer to whether it's unethical to keep at it is a question of what happens when the rifle season hunters run across enough bow-killed carcasses that they start raising hell with the DOW (and blaming bowhunters for the scarcity of deer and Elk, even though the rest of the herd has just migrated to winter range or holed up a half-mile or more off of the easy access). And what about public opinion among those who take the riflemen's word for it as to bowhunting loss rates?? ('Cuz if you don't think THAT matters, ask a trapper, bear hunter or houndsman!!!)
Long & Short, an act is Unethical when it does harm to another hunter's opportunity to have a safe, enjoyable and successful hunt. You don't have to wound, kill, or harass every animal in the area to ruin The Other Guy's day/season, and you don't have to resign yourself to staying in camp all day or shooting only pictures in order to ensure that your efforts don't detract from somebody else's trip. You just have to think beyond what is good just for yourself and consider how much better or worse of EVERYBODY would be if we all responded the same way under similar circumstances.
Truth be told, I would most likely have taken a harder-line stance on punching that tag were I still in the shoes of a resident hunter who (in a state like CO) could punch the either-sex tag and head into town to buy a cow-only tag as my penance for having lost one. But I moved away and have accumulated a few reality checks over the years... Right now, a non-res cow tag is looking like a Major Purchase to me - let alone the airfare, etc....
But reality check: I wouldn't be any less careful or diligent on a resident cow tag than on a non-res bull tag, because what matters to me is getting it right in the first place. Layering a financial penalty won't change my personal standards, and I really doubt that it would change how the OP here conducts himself. And I know for damn sure that no Slob who can't even be bothered to make serious tracking effort is going to comply with that kind of a legal requirement, so at that rate it's like most gun control laws - you only punish the non-offenders.
ElkNut1
Several years ago I took a really nice 300 class bull that looked a little skinny in the legs to me. After cleaning him I found a 2blade broad head buried halfway in a rear ham. He was following 16 cows so he still had some mojo.
On one case, a shoulder hit simulation similar to this real case, I laid out a blood trail with an eye dropper and 6 ounces of mock blood...about 3/4 of a small paper coffee cup. This trail led for about 300 yards and was surprisingly easy to follow.
So anyway, distance isn't necessarily the final factor.
Basically, if the arrow doesn't hit anything vital (and that does include stomach and intestines), they most likely survive just fine. If you do hit something vital, you will most likely find them if you take your time and proceed cautiously on an "iffy" hit.
If you really hit something vital, as in lungs and/or heart, you either see them or hear them go down.
You may very well likely hit the big solid bone just below the shoulder blade (scapula), or even the joint of the two. Also, sounds like you made one hell of an effort at trying to find him, way more than some people would. You know you're going through great lengths when you're on your hands and knees looking for that little speck of blood that keeps you going. You did the right thing, and you'll do the right thing whether you quit hunting or continue on. It's your choice and no one else's, and NOBODY is qualified to call you out if you choose to proceed with your hunt.
As far as I'm concerned, ethics discussions belong in university philosophy classes and usually just tick people off because of someone else's superiority complex they have.
Elk are tough, one year my nephew hit a cow on a Dec rifle hunt in the muscle part of the front leg - the tricep for us. At the time we didn't know it because she was bleeding like a stuck hog, figured she would be piled up at the base of a ridge. After trailing blood up the mountain for 500 and some change yards (verified via range finder and line of sight) she kept going and joined up with the others she was with.
She wasn't mortally wounded as the blood stopped but the tracks didn't. She was doing just fine heading up the side of the ridge in 8" of snow.
As an aside, this is another example of where a recovery dog, if available and legal, would be invaluable.
Pinhead spots of blood.... good chance cut some lung.
