Timberstalker
Veteran member
Great bulls everyone! I posted my brother Roy's bull on the Oregon thread but may as well post it here too!
Elk Success Thread!
- Thread starter ScottR
- Start date
Winchester
Veteran member
Take Em Bucks N Bulls
New Member
- Aug 21, 2014
- 48
- 0
2014 Northern California Stud. My friend killed this bull on the 5th day of the 2014 northeastern bull hunt. We grossed him @ 376" Opening morning a lot of fun, we had 10-12 bulls screaming all the way around us. At one point we just had to sit and wait for the bulls and cows to give a chance to move. We chased this bull every day, finally on the morning of day 5 he finally gave the Bill Dozer a great shot at 100 yrds.
Kodiak32
Active Member
ElkTrout
Veteran member
Here's a pic of my sons first Bull, shorts and all. I have been on a lot of tough Elk hunts with the average pack out over 3 miles. So, when I got a call saying the Elk were in my former in-laws field, I picked my boy up from school and ran him out there. There were two legal Bulls in the herd. The bigger Bull, 5x5, was mixed in with the herd, so we opted to take the safest shot, which was this 4x4. He made a perfect shot and the Bull only went about 50 yards. It was nice being able to drive right out to the Bull, then have Grandpa come out with his tractor to load it up. Perfect day.
RICMIC
Veteran member
I only became active on this forum this year after my deer hunt in Colorado, so I thought I would add a photo of my 2013 Wyoming elk hunt. This was a guided hunt in a wilderness with a great outfitter that I had some success with in the past. Six of us traveled west from Minnesota, and the morning of our ride in to camp found us sitting in Bubba's having breakfast during a monsoon. Jackson ended up with almost 5" of rain that led to some in town landslides the next spring. We finally launched and rode into two feet of fresh snow in the mountains. The outfitter said that he has never seen this much snow so early (Sept. 25th). We found that the cook tent had collapsed, so we all pitched in to put it back to working order. That night before opener we were dumped on by one to two more feet of fresh snow.
Let me tell you, it is great fun riding horses and mules up a mountain, on barely existing trails in feet of fresh snow. When you are sitting seven feet in the air, your face and body do a magnificent job of clearing all the snow off the overhanging branches. Snow can be a good thing when hunting elk, but we were in the highest camp, and the dumping prompted the local elk to move on out. My brother had a chance at a 5X5 that had a couple 4X4s with him, but he was used to shooting whitetails at 50 yards, not elk at 230. I waited, primarily because I didn't want this hunt to end on the first day. Dave refused to get up early on the second day and repeat the bushwack up the mountain. Dammed if he didn't nail a great 6X6 right near camp that morning.
Everything became real quiet during the next few days as the weather warmed and the snow started to melt. After a couple days with no elk spotted by anyone, I was starting to think that busting our butts and fighting our way through the snow every day made about as much sense as going to Walmart to look at girls. Well, I guess at Walmart you can occasionally find a beauty, and so did I on the top of that mountain. Elvis the mule tried to kill me twice on day three, but we reached an understanding. I told him that if he gave me any more trouble that I was going to tag him as my elk, and eat him over the course of the next year. Elvis rolled his eyes at me, and I believe that he knew I was serious.
On day four, my guide Lando and I had done some walking through the big timber in the morning, trying to find where the big boys or even the cows were hiding. We were back at the horses having lunch. Lando was on the radio talking to one of the other guides, with his lunch on his lap when he picked up his binos to look over the mountain slopes a few miles away. Lando looked at me and mumbled (he was still chewing his sandwich) and said, "Do you want to kill a huge bull" DUH! He had spotted a big bull hunkered down below a cliff, 3 1/2 miles away. Game on.
We rode the horses about 3 miles to the base of the ridge, and then spent the next hour and a half slip-sliding our way on the stairway to heaven. It was great fun when we reached an open area that was in clear view of the resting bull and we literally slithered our way through the deep snow. I think that we were actually hidden by the trench that we made as we clawed our way uphill. Finally, we were on the top of the same ridge that the bull was on. We could no longer see him, but we had cover as we snuck our way through the trees to close the final 500 yards. Some sentry cows spotted us and we were almost busted, but they eventually moved on without spooking. We knew we were close, but still couldn't see the bull because of the 30' cliff directly below us. Sneaking and peaking was the procedure for the next ten minutes, when out of nowhere there he was just below us.
The 6X6 bull was up from his bed and was starting to feed, and didn't have a clue that his days of chasing girls were about to end. The .338 spoke and it was hard to miss at 59 yards. It was like the whole world dropped on that bull. DRT The pack out was another adventure. The other guide with some of my hunting partners showed up to help, and I wish I had a video of those two young guides bob-sledding the headless bull down that mountain. If we had been on a DIY hunt, we would never have been able to get into this area, never have spotted the bull, no hope of getting to it on time, and would have had to spend the winter in order to eat the whole thing in situ. The bull was an old heavy horned 6X6 with a club brow tine. I like character on my elk.
We ended of two for six, while the lower camp tagged out by day four. I'll be back, count on it.
Let me tell you, it is great fun riding horses and mules up a mountain, on barely existing trails in feet of fresh snow. When you are sitting seven feet in the air, your face and body do a magnificent job of clearing all the snow off the overhanging branches. Snow can be a good thing when hunting elk, but we were in the highest camp, and the dumping prompted the local elk to move on out. My brother had a chance at a 5X5 that had a couple 4X4s with him, but he was used to shooting whitetails at 50 yards, not elk at 230. I waited, primarily because I didn't want this hunt to end on the first day. Dave refused to get up early on the second day and repeat the bushwack up the mountain. Dammed if he didn't nail a great 6X6 right near camp that morning.
Everything became real quiet during the next few days as the weather warmed and the snow started to melt. After a couple days with no elk spotted by anyone, I was starting to think that busting our butts and fighting our way through the snow every day made about as much sense as going to Walmart to look at girls. Well, I guess at Walmart you can occasionally find a beauty, and so did I on the top of that mountain. Elvis the mule tried to kill me twice on day three, but we reached an understanding. I told him that if he gave me any more trouble that I was going to tag him as my elk, and eat him over the course of the next year. Elvis rolled his eyes at me, and I believe that he knew I was serious.
On day four, my guide Lando and I had done some walking through the big timber in the morning, trying to find where the big boys or even the cows were hiding. We were back at the horses having lunch. Lando was on the radio talking to one of the other guides, with his lunch on his lap when he picked up his binos to look over the mountain slopes a few miles away. Lando looked at me and mumbled (he was still chewing his sandwich) and said, "Do you want to kill a huge bull" DUH! He had spotted a big bull hunkered down below a cliff, 3 1/2 miles away. Game on.
We rode the horses about 3 miles to the base of the ridge, and then spent the next hour and a half slip-sliding our way on the stairway to heaven. It was great fun when we reached an open area that was in clear view of the resting bull and we literally slithered our way through the deep snow. I think that we were actually hidden by the trench that we made as we clawed our way uphill. Finally, we were on the top of the same ridge that the bull was on. We could no longer see him, but we had cover as we snuck our way through the trees to close the final 500 yards. Some sentry cows spotted us and we were almost busted, but they eventually moved on without spooking. We knew we were close, but still couldn't see the bull because of the 30' cliff directly below us. Sneaking and peaking was the procedure for the next ten minutes, when out of nowhere there he was just below us.
The 6X6 bull was up from his bed and was starting to feed, and didn't have a clue that his days of chasing girls were about to end. The .338 spoke and it was hard to miss at 59 yards. It was like the whole world dropped on that bull. DRT The pack out was another adventure. The other guide with some of my hunting partners showed up to help, and I wish I had a video of those two young guides bob-sledding the headless bull down that mountain. If we had been on a DIY hunt, we would never have been able to get into this area, never have spotted the bull, no hope of getting to it on time, and would have had to spend the winter in order to eat the whole thing in situ. The bull was an old heavy horned 6X6 with a club brow tine. I like character on my elk.
We ended of two for six, while the lower camp tagged out by day four. I'll be back, count on it.
