The Trouble With Elk

Wayne told him, with some short cow squeals, "Don't pay attention to us, Mr. Bull; we're just some elk ladies dressed up in old leaves carrying some funny, sharp sticks." Elk aren't so smart. The fool of a satellite nod­ded his head and meandered off.
    Then the big one bugled again. He was 80 yards to our front. Wayne answered, and on line, we moved in. We saw him, or parts of him, at 60 yards. He was working out on another tree. Every time his head went down, we took two steps. Sucker, I thought, this time the chuckle's on you. One of the tenets of turkey hunting is that a wary gobbler will not cross a barrier—a stream or a road—to come to a call. That doctrine may well hold for elk, too. It certainly applied to a record-book 6 x 6 down in that forsaken Colorado canyon. He raked that tree until we got to the edge of—the ditch—a 10-foot-deep rocky scar. We were too far away to shoot. We could creep no closer without being seen. And he wasn't going to cross that thing no matter how much Wayne insulted him with blustery bull talk or tantalized him with seduc­tive cow chatter. When he had decimated the tree, I thought I saw him look up at us; I know I saw him pee all over the ground. A biologist might say such a gesture is part of rutting behavior—scent marking and such. I say it was the elk's punch line. It pays to have a sense of humor when you're bowhunting for elk.