Imagine, if you will, that it's a frosty morning in the high western mountains.

Elker bugling around you, you have a favorite rifle in your hands and you're stalking a big bugling bull.

This is a tag that you've applied for for 12 or 15 years and finally drawn. And you're with a good outfitter, a capable guide on a special area

that produces tremendous bulls. You get close inside 200 yards and take a careful shot. That bull

reacts perfectly to the bullet, clearly

hit, clearly absorbs a lot of impact authority.

Reacts in a way that makes you think he'll be dead inside the pine grove that he dashed into.

You give him a few minutes and go take up the trail.

There's some hair, where you shot, where the bullet shaved it off. There's some

drops of blood. Leading into that grove of pines, it becomes sparse. The bull joins a harem and they work their way down

off the side of a canyon, up it and then out the other side. And you're finding maybe a drop of blood every 50

to 100 yards. And by the time this elk has gone a mile and a half, you're both marveling at your guide's

tracking ability and you're now aware that you very probably will not recover this bull.

For three more days, you try and track,

you get up high and you watch for birds moving, you glass throughout the day,

you do everything you can to either find the bull if he's dead, right? Or find him again if he's still alive so you can

shoot again. The end of the season comes because you have to, for legal reasons, you leave your rifle home, but you don't quit

searching. And you go back whenever you can for another two weeks to glass for birds and look for this specific big bull and you never

find him.

What happened?

Well, usually in a case like this, it's the Hunter's fault. And by the way, this story actually

did happen to a friend of mine. He was actually the dad of a boy I grew up with.

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