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Sunday, October 30, 2011

My first elk














I know its not a huge one like you see on tv but its meat in the freezer. I told myself I would take the first legal bull I could since we were on a bull only hunt. I saw a bigger one with 5 cows earlier in the morning but they were too far away and no way to get to them. So I found this huge flat rock on the side of one mountain over looking the valley below and a nice place for elk to cross on the other ridge. I saw another 6 cows that came up behind me there then at 10 o'clock everything was quiet and I was getting sleepy by noon and so I would lay down and just listen and peek my head up every once in awhile but nothing was happening. Then I would get uncomfortable and sit up and eat some jerky for a bit then laydown again and around 2:30 I was sitting up and out through the brush popped out 3 cows and this spike. I knew he was legal size but wanted to make sure nothing bigger was behind him so I waited a few seconds and nothing else was coming plus I only had an open area for a short while since they wer trotting across. So i tried to find him in the scope but couldn't so I looked back up to find him then down in the scope again and the only thing I could think to do is a deer bleet to try and stop him but it didn't work so I fired a shot and he didnt run any faster so I jacked out a shell and popped in another and shot again and he started to stumble but was still up and I didn't want to let my first elk get away wounded likethat so I was shooting again as he started to fall and when he did it was so steep that he rolled down the hill about 30 feet. He don't look that big in the picture but after dragging him down the rest of the hill to skin it out made me realizehow big and heavy they are even going downhill. To give you an idea of how big it was the legs that we quartered out were probably close to 100 pounds a piece.