Having a private land elk hunting guide service doesn’t allow for much time to hunt for myself. My elk hunting is directed toward clients and doing my best to find them an elk to harvest. If I get any time to hunt it is a day here and a day there, nothing planed just the hope that I can find an elk in the limited time I have to hunt. Even though I don’t have much time to hunt having a private land elk hunting guide service makes it easy to know where the elk are. My hunts are so limited I generally get to antsy, and try harder than I typically need to. One year we had a full boat of hunters booked for each season. I generally get a cow tag that runs a solid two months so I have ample time to hunt but couldn’t draw one on my second choice, so ended up with a fourth season cow tag. I only had two clients for forth season so I figured I would get them filled and have a couple days to hunt on my own. Turns out we didn’t get their tags filled until the fourth day, and by the time we got them moved out of the cabin and on their way, I only had one evening left to hunt. The last evening of the hunt I went to Cow Creek because that was where we were seeing most of the elk. I needed the meat so I was extremely determined to shoot a cow. I went down in the bottom of cow creek and hunted from Fort Norm, before too long I saw a big group of elk in west cow creek, before thinking I started my hike towards the elk. I was way to determined and should have let my private land elk hunting experience keep me in the blind. Ends up I hiked about 500 feet in elevation and about a half mile, I ended up spooking the elk. I was very discouraged, and only had about 45 min of daylight left to hunt so I immediately started glassing for elk. To my wondrous eyes I found a lone cow standing 30yds from Fort Norm, the same blind I was sitting in before I decided to go after the elk I spooked. I ended up shooting the cow from three hundred yards, and she laid dead fifty yards from Fort Norm.