This bow hunting elk tracking story doesn’t have an easy ending. Ryan shares a deeply personal and emotional story from this past bow season: a once-in-a-lifetime shot on a massive trophy elk… that didn’t go as planned.

Related: Brayden’s bowhunting elk story.

He walks us through the moment of the shot, the confidence he had in the placement, and the gut-wrenching days that followed searching for an animal that never turned up. It’s the side of hunting we don’t talk about enough: the reality, the responsibility, and the respect we owe the animals we pursue.

This isn’t a story of success, but it’s one every hunter needs to hear.

Ryan was sitting against a stump mid-morning, half-distracted on his phone, when a bugle that had been working him for an hour finally paid off: a mainframe 7×7 bull walked to within 33 yards. He drew, settled his 40-yard pin a touch high for the actual range, and released. Solid hit, but high and back. A second arrow at a guessed 55 yards found the spine area as the bull moved off, blood pouring, never gaining elevation as it disappeared into the clearcut.

Great blood for 300 yards, then it thinned out near a piece of intestine: a sign the hit was high liver and gut, not the clean double-lung pass-through everyone hopes for. The crew gridded close to 80 acres across two days with a handful of strangers who volunteered off a Facebook post. No bull, no second arrow, no closure. It’s not the first animal lost, and it won’t be the last, but every hour of that search mattered.

This is the one place the jokes stop. A clean miss is just Tuesday. Wounding an animal and not recovering it is the actual failure, and it’s on every hunter to do everything possible to find it: waiting the right amount of time before tracking, gridding methodically, and asking for help instead of giving up. Ryan did all of that. Sometimes it still doesn’t end in a recovery, and that’s a weight every bowhunter eventually carries.

For a hit that isn’t an obvious quick kill, give it at least 30-45 minutes before moving in, and longer if the shot placement is uncertain. Pushing too early can push an otherwise recoverable animal further away.

It often indicates a gut or liver hit rather than a complete pass-through. These shots are survivable for the animal longer and can result in a much longer, harder track than a double-lung hit.

Rules vary by state and have changed in recent years: check current Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife regulations before using or requesting a blood-tracking dog, since it was not legal at the time of this hunt.

If you’ve ever lost an animal you couldn’t find, you’re not alone: your time’s coming if it hasn’t already. Thanks for listening.

The post Ryan’s Trophy Elk Bow Hunt Gone Wrong | Road Hunter Podcast appeared first on Failed Outdoors.