Well my wife was able to take her first bull elk this year.
It was a great hunt that we were lucky enough to end up with a amazing experience and a bull that will be a challenge for her to better anytime soon. To top it all off her story was printed in the #155 June/July Elk issue of Eastman's hunting journal. I have to say that talking with Dan and Scott at Eastmans was a enjoyable experience for both Kime and I. If fortunate enough to have another cool hunting story I would not hesitate to submit it to them.
Thought I would share a bit about it as well here and a couple of pics. She choose to hunt a hard to access wilderness with her saved points and was rewarded with a great bull for Colorado. Hunting close to home is nice it gives a great advantage to scouting and it was also made only better to have my father join in with not only the scouting, as well as the pack out, but he was also watching through a spotting scope when he said he saw all the elk run and he knew something had happened. The pack out was brutal and I would not do it again with out horses as it was a 12 mile round trip for the 4 friends as well as my father who made the entire hike.
The bull was pre scouted as my father was first to find him again after the archery season and we were happy to see he made it through. The difficulty of hike to scout him as well as foggy weather made the week before opener hard with 0 sightings. On the Friday before the opener the clouds lifted and as I was looking at a real nice 300" class bull my phone rang. "Found him" my father said and my wife was just gitty until we started the hike the next day.
She was able to kill him in the first hour of shooting light opening day - 1st rifle season. He had a few other bulls around him that were bugling back and forth and while Kime and I agreed that she would shoot any legal bull a small 4 point went unnoticed as she was concentrated on the bull she got. A couple well place shots from her .257 Weatherby and the bull did not go 30 yds. This caliber is starting to impress me as it shoots so well with so little recoil and everything I have seen shot with it has gone 10 - 30 yards.
Good times and my family is just finishing up the steaks off of him now. The burger will be gone with in the month and while I hate to see it all gone it means it is just about time to start looking again.
