BORDER BULLS - Full Film

he's coming he's coming the tree right in front of [Music] us [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] oh [Music] right now is the calm before the storm for me elk hunting is a mental escape into a place that really offsets the craziness of the world we live in it's peaceful refreshing but i'd be lying if i said it also didn't bring about this excited restlessness we knew this hunt was going to be challenging but honestly that was what was most appealing about it andrew and i dedicate ourselves year round to being our best and right now is when we get to put all that work to the test nothing compares to the anticipation of a bow hunt and the opportunity to release that one perfect arrow by now i've released hundreds of them visualizing success and patiently waiting for the chance to match wits with an 800 pound bull elk the elk live here year round hardened by long winters and hungry predators as for us we're just visitors visitors set on gaining the upper hand even if it's only for a short moment in time hopefully just long enough to turn year-long visualization into reality hmm just came up the ridge a little further and looks like a fairly nice six point just around the face here so i'm just gonna throw the spotter on him and see what happens when he's on a hill where the sun's just starting to hit it so the wind's probably gonna kind of switch around so just be patient and try to wait till he gets in a little better spot try to put a move on him maybe call him in he might actually turn around and go back into that dick or two i suspect he's going to do something if he likes yeah i feel like bad thing is if we whatever you think straight downhill the whole time attempt number one didn't go as planned we waited a couple hours for the wind and it's swirling and we set up and it was just going straight down into where we think he's better but what's elk hunt in the mountains if you could play the wind perfectly every time you kill a lot elk zero the elk one on day one and honestly that's usually how the game plays out bow hunting elk seems to have about a 10 success rate so it's far from a guarantee regardless of how skilled you might be that said both andrew and i really didn't have any doubts in our head about killing elk so the goal of this film was to go to idaho kill two bulls with our bows come back to montana and do the same thing and we realized that was going to be quite the undertaking but as hunters we really like to challenge ourselves and this project definitely fit the bill even though it was going to be a tough thing to do we felt confident that if we hunted hard and hunted smart we could pull it off but until you go out there and do it you really don't know [Music] [Music] up to this point the hunting has been tough we have been in elk every day but they're not making very many mistakes and the bulls aren't talking a whole lot so our game plan is just cover as much good elk country as we can move spots if needed and try to find a bull that's going to make a mistake [Music] [Music] so the reason we're in idaho is that we were actually in the same basin exactly one year ago andrew was hunting i was there shooting some photos we'd camped in the bottom of the drainage and over the course of the morning had proceeded to get a bull worked up and followed him into his bedding area came in super silent i didn't know he was coming i made one step to get out of the sun and he was here um and i break it up nice bowl unfortunately andrew didn't kill a bowl that trip but that's not how we first got to idaho in 2016 i drew a limited entry rifle tag in montana and i still wanted to bow hunt elk idaho was right next door so i bought a tag and on my third morning hunting got into a total rut fest [Music] thank oh oh so that's where the idea came from and based off of our past experiences we felt like this was something that we could totally pull off [Music] [Music] [Music] we were just creeping through these trees and ran into a bowl down there you just like 70 yards and i tried to thread the needle through this little gap down here and i hit the branch it was it was close but my arrow had the branch and deflected so no dice onward and upward the hunting in idaho was tough we were in elk and seeing bulls every day but they just weren't super receptive to calling every time we'd try spot and stalking it seemed like the wind would screw us over and the weather was either super hot or snowing and sleeting it seemed like and i guess that all boils down to just a bunch of excuses and anybody can do that that's easy what's not easy is keeping your head in the game knowing an opportunity can happen at any point and when that happens a lot of people screw things up when they when they're actually taking the shot especially when it gets later in the season and guys haven't been shooting their bows as much for andrew and i we really take pride in trying to be the best we can be and we shoot you around we spend countless hours refining our setups getting in the reps but most importantly we practice in the field a whole bunch especially on the hunt so that when we get a good opportunity the arrow's going into the bull's vitals [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] wow [Music] we're not in idaho anymore uh montana it is montana it is idaho whooped our butts didn't kill any elk so pretty disappointed but it's kind of like second quarter of the game uh in montana and hopefully find some bulls night number one yep i have uh come out and scouted it but this is kind of andrew's spot so game on game on let's go this is a good place to start [Music] nice oh he came in a little bit and spotted a bowl straight off the bat he's over there harassing a couple of cows and bugling a little bit so in elk so that's a good start where the elk will go the wind will blow be nice if they were just cranking wow [Music] [Music] these docker uh they're doing a good job of staying alive right now man like that's 1080 spinner straight to your hand it's the bowl killing special how about that cuz you can't buy a sandwich that's pretty good it's pretty good but jack weights like it's going out of style this winter are you all right we just spotted four bulls about mile and a half out so we're gonna strap our packs on freaking bomb down in here there's a lot of country that we can't see so we're figuring we'll probably run it out before we get to these bowls but uh i will say it's pretty weird september 24th and four bulls are hanging out together so it's just been an odd year for us but maybe tonight will be the night we just spotted another really nice bowl he's with a smaller five points so there's definitely a lot of elk in here well we got to 84 yards of the big bull 56 yards of the five point but in these bottoms the winds just i think they i figured something was up and went over the top so what do you think i think i'll come in if we cut distance he's breaking the ground i'm flying down you ready andrew get up there and just try it [Music] ah uh wow he's going down he's freaking down oh my god oh my god picture perfect i mean picture freaking look at my leg dude i got it together for like one split second i was like dude okay oh finally dude yes dude yeah yeah yeah yeah that's a freaking dream right there dude look at that shot there is just nothing like bow hunting man you like struggle all season in in i mean 10 minutes we find him again after we bump him rage kill him it doesn't get any better [Music] [Music] me [Music] hmm [Music] [Music] oh [Music] elker hard burritos not hard [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] sure enough cow jumped the fence got my wind and we'll have to try to get them tomorrow what's going on right now all right let's come to that point where the rally stash must be created [Music] it's getting serious straight buddy good luck bro [Music] what's andrew driving away leaving us better kill a bull make him proud so [Music] so [Music] [Music] unfortunately the clock never stops ticking and as time drags on you start to feel this mounting pressure but for me being this deep in the season just meant i had to stick to my guns of finding a mature six point out here october is usually a good time to find big bulls but for whatever reason they seem to disappear i kept hunting hard but season came to a close and i hadn't filled my tag there's a lot of words to describe how i felt but stoke definitely wasn't one of them at this point it's pretty easy to get down on yourself you know we wanted to make this film with four elk kills and we have one and honestly i wanted to throw the talon but this isn't the first time that i've struggled on a hunt and it definitely won't be the last failure whether you want to call it that or not is something every hunter is going to face and how you handle that adversity to me really dictates the kind of hunter you are and honestly the kind of person that you are it's it's this moment it's the moment where you're tired you're beat down you're worn thin you feel like you're kind of blindly thrashing for this goal is when all the mental and the physical preparation really play a huge role in ultimately finding success so [Music] [Music] ah the deal is that we did see bulls this morning [Music] saw two bulls in a kind of open meadow about four miles as the crow flies that way i just lined it out on onyx and it's probably almost seven miles hiking to get back to him so that's not totally awesome but we did see bulls we're gonna glass some more and then maybe hike up on this ridge back here and just look at some new country over the top of the ridge [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh well did not see a lot this afternoon got over and glassed into a lot of new country didn't see a small bowl but that's been about it so we're gonna start working down to the truck the second truck it's about three miles away see if we can pick up anything along the way if not in the morning we're gonna go back and look for those bulls just kidding up the mountain been hiking for over like an hour and a half glassed up in that clearing or we saw the two bowls last night or yesterday morning actually there's an elk in there so we're kind of climbing side hill and cutting the distance we just know we got to get closer got to get at least 800 yards and then 12.75 shoot i just don't know if we're gonna be able to like get to him before he gets in that timber all right well we got up here got sputter on this bowl and he's a good looking bull i probably would take and shoot him which is awesome the problem is he's 250 yards we're probably gonna have to sit here all day and just get set up and hope he comes back out again like he did last night so we'll probably glass the rest of this hillside make sure we're not missing anything but fingers crossed no one comes in bumps them today and he comes back out well we're just sitting in the snow posted up watching this bonus bed at least for a couple hours just make sure there's any other hunters around or gun shots that doesn't go somewhere so just had a little pizza and i'm just gonna wait this bowl out and hopefully get side hilled in here find a good shooting position and uh just wait him out snuck across the mountain here and got to a spot we think you can build a good shooting rest should be about 6 60 to 7 30 so we're going to get settled in fingers crossed that bull comes out tonight and gives us a good broadside shot mush dash is going to up much interest in here just going to do one two three four five six if it's hundred seven if it's seven i'm gonna trigger a dead bull well we finally got a rest built that i feel good about we tried a couple things that just didn't feel right at that distance laying prone for me is the best way to get a good clean shot so now the backpack stacked up everything's set out ready to rock and roll so at this point we're just waiting on the bull to come out got about three hours till he showed up last night so we got a little bit of waiting i just saw a tiny tiny glimpse of the bowl coming left so hopefully he comes out so [Applause] oh you got him he's down just to the right of where you were he's right by that little he's literally 50 yards i both didn't come out until about 10 minutes before shooting light and now it's one of the hardest shots i've ever had i hit him pretty good but hi i think i spined him as he went down rolled down the hill but got back up and missed him on a second shot and then we just heard him crashing over in the trees so we're gonna have to head over there came up here found him uh pretty excited definitely pretty tired so uh it's been a long battle to get to this point find a mature six point and put my tag on him but we're excited gonna try to work him up get a couple of the hindquarters back to the truck tonight and then come back tomorrow and we gotta find the rest of his beam he's missing some beam is fifth and sixth this fourth was already broken off prior to this but yeah just a really pretty bull excited to have gotten a crack at him and put him down and yeah we're gonna get to get to work and man it's gonna be a long night all right just hit the truck got a bunch of meat uh it's three hours it's one we're gonna filter some water get to bed and then we'll be back up on the mountain here in no time get the last load [Music] oh made it up the mountain got to the bowl so we're gonna take a little jaunt up the mountain see if we can find the back half of his left antler so hopefully find that tape it up skin his head out and load up and head back to the truck i found it a little extra antler got a little sticker coming off that's pretty cool he lost this about 30 yards like roll number two boom snap almost got caught under him when he was falling or something just [Music] packing that bowl out of that hole physically hurt but it also gave me everything i was looking for for me it was war with the elk and i stayed persistent and came out on top honestly i wouldn't have it any other way the rattlesnakes coming out of horizontal and you hit all the layers just like they're mining for tasty goodness you

Channel: Stone Glacier

Views: 245,949

Rating: 4.836431 out of 5

Keywords: Border Bulls, elk hunting, montana, idaho, elk, bowhunting, bowhunting elk, stone glacier, zack boughton, andrew whitney, archery elk hunt, diy elk hunting, backcountry, camping, ultralight

Id: 7nWkIvGZtAw

Length: 43min 7sec (2587 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021