I want to take a minute and explain what time it is right now. It is 1:40am. By the time I finish this post it will be sometime later, we'll see. Why am I up so late? Well I'll tell ya
I am crashing really hard after one of the biggest adrenaline rushes of my life which took place just hours ago. Not even 2 miles from the house. Yes it does involve elk, a bunch, and no I did not harvest one.
It was one of my top 10.....heck maybe even top elk 5 encounters. I figured I better get the Livingston hunt finished before jumping in on what went down last evening. I will start a new thread about that hunt. So let's get back to the Livingston hunt.
As you may recall we left off wondering if we should go back down towards a Bull we were talking to earlier or go further up the draw towards our original destination which is into the area where my friend was hoping we may run into a herd Bull he has had encounters with in the past 2 or even 3 years.
We deside to keep going up. Great more climbing
We go maybe another 1/4 mile or so and start catching the scent of elk. We slow down a bit and keep our eyes peeled for movement. A little ways further we come across a dry wallow. Boy does it real smell. WOW! As we are checking this out I checked the wind and the morning thermals are starting to shift up hill and to our right. I ask my friend if there was a saddle up ahead because it looked that way to me. He looked at his GPS and tells me yes there was. To me it looked like the draw was bending back to our left. So based on the wind/thermals I tell my friend I think we better climb up the left side and come down to the saddle from there. Once we start up the left side, those thermals will carry our scent up the left side of the draw and not the right side where the elk may be. It took us, or should I say me, a while to get up there. It was pretty steep. We ease down to the saddle setup and call a few times. Nothing! After all the climbing, nothing?
So we decided to eat lunch and discuss what to do next. After maybe 10 minutes we hear this big roaring sound.
My friend immediately is thinking Grizzly and I am thinking Bull Elk. We sit and listen. After awhile it happens again, but this time there is a slight moan at the end. 
That's definitely a Bull. Okay what do we do now? It's mid day and pretty warm for this time of year in this area. The elk don't like heat any more than I do. We decided to setup and try and get him to come in close. After 20 minutes nothing shows up and we start back towards our packs and out of nowhere a cow call sounds off close. Down and to the right of the Bull. So we setup again and do some more cow calling. After another 20 min session, still nothing. What? These things are toying with now. We then go back over to our packs and ponder over what to do next. All we can do is wait a while or head down. By now it is almost 3 in the afternoon. We noticed that the weather was changing. The wind was starting to blow and some clouds where moving in. The forcast was for 60% chance of rain the next day. My friend suggests we wait another 30 minutes before moving closer to the elk. Heck, we are here now. Maybe the cooler air will help us out. I don't think we made it to 30 minutes. We moved across the saddle and up the other side to the base of the high meadow we wanting to get to. Then we started side hilling towards the elk. We came upon a small game trail and the area looks good for another calling session. My friend puts his decoy below the trail and I move up to a line of fallen timber. If the Bull does come down he will have to walk around the fallen trees where the small game trail is. I thought it was perfect. Once I get setup my friend started cow calling. It has been quite a bit since I had Bulged at lunch time. Only cow calling from now on. It didn't take long a the Bull started getting worked up. He started bugling pretty good and we could hear him racking trees once in awhile. He was being cautious and didn't want to come in. So I started calling, mixing in some soft calf mews and then some lost calf calls. That helped! Cow calls started coming from up the hill. The Bull really goes nuts! One of his cows is now leaving, he can't have that. I see movement out in front of me, then some more. I hear lots of noise and crashing. At first I thought we were busted, but soon realized that the Bull had just ran down a hooked the cow back up the hill where he wanted her. Darn thing, your supposed to come over here! So I do more cAlf calls. Now he's the interested one. He started bugling very frequently. So I just kept on, then my friend started cow calling again and I stopped. That was it the Bull was hooked
All the sudden I see antler tips. Here he comes! I raise my Elk Seeker longbow and am ready to draw. The Bull is walking up and along the fallen trees, just like I wanted him to. Wow, what a site. This Bull was tall with very white tips. His overall antler color was light brown. He gets to about halfway along the fallen trees and stopped looking by me towards the calling. Nuts! Now he is wondering what's going on? I don’t see another elk. He couldn't see the decoy. He standing at about 20 yards and just like the Bull the day before, he is quartering to me to much. I wait, he looks. Then out of nowhere we hear a very little tap or pop sound. The Bull spins around and was gone in a flash. What happened? That little bit of noise? It must have been a twig or a pine needle falling from a tree. I hardly heard it.
Just goes to show you how elusive these Bulls can be at times. We gave it our all and now on to the next one.
Well it is almost 5pm so we grab our stuff and head on down hoping to run into the Bull we had heard earlier that morning.
Looking back down to where we need to go.
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. After eating we head to camp to get some much needed rest.