We lost an Elk 2 days ago. Towards the end of the day, my buddy and I split up (I was headed home to take my wife out to dinner) and headed back to the ranch on our wheelers. He spotted some elk up a steep hill side. He put a sneak on and got a shot at about 100yds broadside. The elk did the wobble for about 7 - 8 seconds, two stumbles and down it went with a bounce. He said it kicked a couple of times and went still. He figured he could catch me before I left and took off for the ranch. Well I heard the shot and got back on the wheeler and headed back up the ridge. When we got back to the shot site, it was gone!. We looked in the dark for an 1.5 hrs and he went back with his wife for a couple of hours later that eve. Four of us hit it the next day from 6:30am to 1:30pm looking. It had a fair amount of blood at the site of the shot and where it went down. A pretty good trail for about 75yds and then nothing.

In my experience, when an animal starts to wobble and go down, it is loosing blood pressure due to excessive bleeding. Elk do not give up their feet very easy (they may lay down) and when they do, it is over.

The lesson here is: Under NO circumstances ASSUME the animal is dead until you physically touch and check the animal.

As you can imagine, none of us are happy about this. My buddy is kicking himeself pretty hard for not reloading and checking. This was his first Muzzleloader hunt.

Man that is tough. I hunt with a bolt action and use the old western lawmans philosophy if it still moves hit it again.go back in a week and have a look the smell should lead him to the carcase he may retrieve the antlers. but i guess you fellas got to be carefull of bears etc. we only have flies and wasps to worry about. good luck.

What load were you using

Thanks for passing on a lesson learned.

You are right, Elk are hard to knock off their feet. I have hunted them for years and have seen them get hit real hard and they lost a vast amount of blood but I've seen them somehow keep going.

1895ss:

You are absolutely correct, 8 years ago hunting Elk in Wyoming I shot a nice bull with my 340 weatherby 250gn and the bull went down on his front and as I chambered another round, I was stunned to see him get up again. It took a second shot to put him down for keeps. After we dressed the animal, we noticed that the first shot had completely broken the right shoulder and yet he still got up, it amazes me the tenacity of these animals.