In order to buy preference points or apply for special hunts in Utah you must buy a nonresident hunting license. Once you have invested that much money in Utah you might as well go and hunt there if you enjoy the high mountain country. So, Ii bought an over the counter archery elk tag and an archery deer tag and applied to draw out an antlerless elk rifle season tag. For the nonresident, there is a 100% chance to draw out the cow elk tag if you apply for the right area.
My archery elk hunt was successful and my archery deer hunt was lackadaisical being as elk was my primary target. After killing the elk with the bow I drove the couple of thousand miles back home and spent two weeks with family and then drove back out to Wyoming to shoot antelope. From Wyoming I went on over to Utah to hunt cow elk with my rifles. I was using two different rifle s and that seemed to be the flaw in the plan. The way I work is the same as I did in RVN, in the evenings when things are quiet, I mentally review the day’s events and develop plans for the next day or modify existing plans. Nothing is spontaneous with me. So each evening I would pack my gear and get whichever rifle I was going to use ready. It seemed that the elk had some inside intell and if I had the long range 18# rifle they would show up at 100-230 yards for fleeting offhand shots. Twice I missed neck shots with that rifle at ranges under 200 yards because there was no place to get prone and I had to shoot offhand. If I carried the short range rifle (about 700 yards max accuracy) the elk would be out beyond 1000 yards. I also missed twice with that rifle because someone, and I am not going to mention any names, forgot to spin the dial down and left it one rev high (10 MOA). At 524 yards the shot went 4 feet high!!! How could I miss such a chip shot. Back at camp checking the rifle’s zero told the sad but true story.
So anyway once I got the Laurel and Hardy stupidity out of the way, I actually managed to kill an elk at 425 yards right at dark one evening.
This is a video shot the next morning.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Microcys.../5/tJWxXbEzz4Q
The weather was really nice and I packed the elk out in my T-shirt.
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