“100% Success” is a new film by the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation that looks to define hunting success as more than the harvest of an animal.
Tim Compton is bowhunting elk in New Mexico. He’s searching hard for an elk, and one of his objectives is to fill his family’s freezer. But does his definition of hunting success ultimately hinge on harvesting an animal?
That’s the question “100% Success” seeks to explore and answer.
“Anytime you go out and you pursue a quarry, you have an objective, and that is to go out and hopefully be successful and bring back meat for the family,” Compton says.
Compton reflects on the challenge of bowhunting:
“The wind has to be right, and they got to be coming in, and not knowing where you’re at, and you gotta have a good shot and at close proximity. So, there’s a lot of things against you. That’s bowhunting.”
Compton and his partner see a lot of elk, even getting close to some of them. One time they inadvertently walk up on a bedded bull, but the little things seem to prevent them from connecting.
The wind isn’t right, there are cows between them and the bull they want or they’re just a few days shy of full rut and can’t quite coax the bull to come to them.
After five days of hunting, with elk all around, they go home with empty hands, but full hearts.
“If you could go out in the woods and have success every single time, it wouldn’t mean as much,” Comptons says. “We had 100 percent success, except for one thing: we just didn’t have the kill. Past that, this has been a wonderful hunt.”
Like what you see here? You can read more great articles by David Smith at his Facebook page, Stumpjack Outdoors.
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