After a few years of lurking on this site I finally have something I feel like sharing. I will start with a quick introduction. I’ve been lucky enough to grow up hunting in Southwest Montana and it scares me a little bit to admit this is my 33rd season carrying a rifle through the hills. But this post isn’t about me. Its about family and passing on the flame. Opening day, my oldest boy shot his fourth elk but it was the first one entirely on his own. We put a camp in the day before opener and scouted that evening. After glassing up a few bulls we sat down and made plans for the next morning. The oldest announced that the youngest boy and I should go for the bulls we saw that evening and he would head up a ridge where we had seen elk during bow season. So, an hour before dawn, we left the tent, he went his way and we, ours. I have to admit it was a little difficult to watch his headlamp disappear into the dark knowing he was headed out , into the middle of few hundred thousand acres of wild country, on his own. An hour later, exactly at shooting light his younger brother and I heard a single shot from the area we thought he would be in and both hoped it was his. We continued our hunt and arrived at our prearranged meeting place and time, with the understanding that if his older brother didn’t show within the hour we would go looking for him. 45 minutes passed and I, being the impatient and slightly worried parent, made the call to go looking. 20 minutes later as we made our way down the ridge the older boy was on, I saw him walking across the bottom of a meadow with a quarter on his back. He put his pack down and walked up to meet us. The shot at opening light had been his. Ten minutes before shooting light he found a bull and snuck within 125 yards, leaned his rifle across his pack and took out his watch. Over the next few minutes, he watched the bull feed towards timber and watched the clock creep towards legal shooting light. Fortunately shooting light came steps before the bull disappeared into the trees. By the time we arrived he already had the bull quartered and all that was left was to carry meat to the vehicle. And now, unlike six years ago when he shot his first elk, he does more of the heavy lifting than I do. It is pretty clear that I no longer have a hunting apprentice, I have a full partner.
Sorry for the blurry picture, all we had with us was a cell phone.
Sorry for the blurry picture, all we had with us was a cell phone.
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