As a "hunter" it is your RESPONSABILITY to make a quick and clean killing shot. Nuf' said ?

Wait for a shot at the vitals. Getting skunked is better than wounding one.

Well, 25 years ago I made a mistake that turned out okay. I was headed up the mountain on opening day just at daybreak. A kid I passed in the dark was headed up the same mountain about a quarter mile away. This hill jumps vertically out of a flat valley. It had been logged off part way up several years earlier. Just as it got light I spotted a mule deer on the face of the slope in front of me. I scoped her and noted how odd it was to see a muley so low that early in the year. Then a couple of big bright things moved on the hill right above her. Elk. They stepped out of sight and I waited for them to reappear. They really had no place to go that I couldn't see them. Or so I thought. After several minutes I elected to shoot into the jackpot where I last saw them to get them moving and wake up the kid across the hill from me. I never saw them again but the kid opened fire with five or six rounds. Didn't sound like anything connected. He was slightly above me and we could exchange words while getting up to the spot. Said he saw five or six cows (they were legal) but felt he had missed them all. They had stepped to the back of an old logging skid trail on the side of the hill and he could see them but I couldn't. As he reached the skid trail, he turned and hollered down, "Well, here's your bull." Huh? I said no it had to be his. I couldn't even see anything when I shot. Just wanted to sound the alarm and move the elk (both of which were accomplished). He must have shot that elk. No, the kid was absolutely sure he didn't see a bull. Apparently, I broke that bull's neck and that's why the cows just stood around. In this case taking the shot wasn't really unsafe but it was a pretty dang stupid thing to do. I could have just as easily hit him in the butt, blown off a front leg, etc. Ironically, the bull had survived a shattered front upper leg from the year before. His leg healed up crooked and one hoof was worn right off. But there wasn't a mark on him anywhere. Probably hit by a car. I had a nice piece of meat to fill the freezer for the winter but it was nothing to be proud of. By the way, the kid wouldn't even take a steak. His dad and grandad shot a beautiful whitetail buck just over the hill from my bull (and sent their bullets zinging over my head as I was gutting it - they couldn't see me from where they were shooting).

One of the top 10 rules of firearm safety is: Be 100% sure of your target and what's beyond it.

In that situation, not only could you not see your target (the vitals), but you could not see what was beyond it. No, I would not have taken the shot.

Carney

Sorry you didn't get your elk, but I would have done the same thing. Last year down in Colorado, I spotted a decent 3x4 deer feeding up a meadow surrounded by does at about 250 yards. I kept trying to get a better look at his rack and worked my way closer. I got inside 150 yards, which is a MOP chip shot with a .30-06, and decided that he was not the buck I was after. As the does got nervous, I looked behind the buck in the brush and 10 yards back there stood a buck whose slab-sided body made the 3x4 look like a yearling! Due to the cover and the doe herd, I had made it about as close as I was going to get and never could get a look at his rack. Either his head/rack was down in the grass and shrubs or up in the oak brush. I had an either sex tag in my pocket, so he was a legal shooter since there are no point restrictions in that unit. I could not bring myself to shoot at a deer without positive antler I.D. I moved a few feet to my right and then he was gone. The body size was a monster. I still second guess if I should have shot him.