Manti Antlerless success

Well me and my hunting buddy both drew cow tags for the Manti and it was a great hunt. He just started a new job so our time was a little limited but we made plans to hunt the second weekend of the hunt. We set up camp late friday and made plans to go to a glassing point saturday morning that my family has had success at before. We made it there before light and stayed for about an hour with no elk spotted. We decided to head down to the bottom of the canyon and cover some ground so we could look into several different canyons where we had seen elk in the past. About half way down the ridge that leads to the bottom of the canyon a bull bugle rung out only a few hundred yards below us. We thought he might still have some cows with him and we did not want to scare him out of there so we stuck to the plan to get to the bottom and look up from there to locate him. We made it to the bottom and sure enough only a few hundred yards on the trail I had some elk spotted. 7 cows and the bull. they were a little over three hundred yards so my buddy set up for a shot they were up on a bench on a steep hillside and were in a thick patch of aspens. We sat and watched for a good 15-20 minutes and a good shot was never presented. They fed their way into a patch of pines about 20 yds behind where we first spotted them and bedded down. We Decided to just sit and wait them out. about an hour or so into the wait the bull started bugling and another bull with 3 cows busted over the ridge bugling back. They were about 500 yards out and out of range for us so we watched and waited to see if the closer cows would get up but they never did. It was very cool to listen to the two bulls bugle it out. Things settled down for another hour or so. about 11 Oclock I was watching the patch of pines and my friend was getting some branches for some make shift shade we were in an open field with no cover. I noticed one of the cows had stood up and was in a good shooting lane so I hustled him over to get set up. He had to move from his previous position he had set up to see the same shooting lane I was seeing just as he moved all 7 cows got up and started working west so he moved back to the original position. It was a little chaotic for a second but one of the cows cleared and gave him a good shot which he took. It was with 2 other cows and they ran down through some small but thick aspens and I only saw 2 of the 3 come out. I was fairly certain he had taken the one down. the other 2 were slowly meandering there way through the trees so I got set up for a shot and one presented it so I took it. I couldn't quite tell If if I hit her good or not so I stayed on her and when she cleared the trees I shot again and this time it brought her down for good. We made our way up the hill It took a little work but we finally found my cow and made our way to where I thought his had gone down and sure enough she was laying right where I thought. It was a great feeling but at the same time the realization came that we had 2 elk down about 1 1/2 miles from the truck and It was just me and him to get the work done. we started cutting around 2 and were packed up with some meat and all our gear a little after 5 I was impressed we made such good time. We went back Sunday morning with one extra guy to help us get the rest out. I was shooting a 30-06 with 165 Gr Nosler Partition It did some major damage to her front shoulder. My buddy was shooting a 270 with 130 gr Hornady Superformance His shot Placement was better and it did the trick perfectly. It was a great hunt and one I wont soon forget.