I took my first bull elk a bit later in life than most other guys. I was 38 at the time. Although I grew up in a hunting family and both my father and older brothers were successful elk hunters I didn't take up elk hunting until I moved to Colorado. And even then it took a couple years before I was able to bring home the antlers and meat myself.
I went with a neighbor who had been hunting all his life so knew how to field dress the animal if we were successful. Its always good to have a partner when you go into the wilderness anyway just in case you run into any trouble.
Colorado's third rifle season is in the beginning of November so it was a bit cold in the mornings and evenings at 9000 plus feet. There was snow on the ground in most places around our camp which made for some hard trekking but had the advantage of showing animal tracks.
After 3 days of seeing a lot of sign but no animals we decided to give the area around our camp a break for the day and drive to a lower elevation. That morning we walked a mixed growth area of pine and aspen. It was a beautiful sunny day but all I saw was a couple mule deer does who ran off a ways and then turned back to look at me and see what I was.
In the afternoon I hiked over a ridge and went down to the bottom thinking it was so steep it would probably be a place not many other guys would choose to hunt. As I slipped down, sometimes on my butt, I couldn't imagine the ordeal it would be it I had to pack out a bull from there.
Once down I sat on a fallen log by a tiny stream and just listened to the small sounds around me. After about a half hour I thought I heard a footstep off in the distance. I went on high alert and positioned myself toward where I thought the sound came from and got my 30-06 ready in case. I was in tall mature aspens and they were all around me so my visibility was only about 20 yards. Soon I caught flashes of brown through the trees and knew I had elk coming. I picked a small gap about 4 feet across between a couple of bigger aspens and positioned my gun in case I'd see a legal bull.
Then the elk came. First came the lead cow, then a bull with foot long spikes, then another cow. Although the spike wasn't legal in the game management unit I was hunting it was great just to finally see a bull. I just stayed kneeling down behind the big fallen tree and watched as the elk did a half circle around me and never even knew I was there.
I waited there another couple hours and nothing else came by. When I got back to the truck my hunting partner was there waiting and was excited to find out I'd seen game. He told me when we got back to camp he wanted to show my some tracks he had seen in the snow on a trail early that morning.
It was almost dusk when got back to camp and set out to see the tracks. I told him I'd circle around through a series of meadows and come back up the trail in case there were any elk I could push his way. Well, I'd only walked a few hundred yards out into the meadows when I thought I saw some more brown down a long hill. I brought my scope up and determined there was a huge bull 300 or 400 yards away! I could see at least 5 points on each side so I sat down and put my elbow on my knee. Then I sighted the rifle just behind his front leg and touched off my shot. I saw him hunch up and drop to the ground right away so I knew I had a clean shot. I sat and waited about 15 minutes to let the adrenaline rush settle down and by this time my partner had found me and together we paced off the distance to the downed bull. It was 350 yards and when we got there it turned out he was a beautiful 6 x 6 with perfectly symetrical antlers.
All the hard work had paid off bigtime. My neighbor and I would have healthy organic meat in our freezers for months to come.
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Tom Sparks invites you to reprint this article as long as you leave his name and Hunting Supply website link attached.
My First Bull Elk
