jbseamus83
Well-known member
Well, a year ago, I wrote a post about my son's process and journey with getting his first big game animal when he shot his general deer during the youth early season. When we were looking at our hunting plans for this year, my son was all in on elk. He told me to get him a point for deer, but that he only wanted elk tags. We had cow tags in WY and hunted them in September. He wasn't able to shoot one, but I did. Then, I went out and shot a decent deer during the muzzleloader season. Having not pulled the youth draw tag for elk, we were relegated to the general season for his elk tag. I reviewed with him the success rates, pressure, etc. for this tag, but like I said earlier, he was all in. We had a ton of discussions about what he would shoot and what he would pass. He had his sights set high and wanted a good branch antlered bull with at least 4 points per side. He did not want to shoot a spike. I told him if it were me on this tag, I would be pulling the trigger on anything branched, but I was not going to pressure him on his hunt.
We decided to head out Thursday before opener to find areas to camp and scout. The basin we wanted to be in was beyond overrun on Thursday, and I couldn't even imagine what it was going to be like on Saturday morning, so we started looking for other areas. In the process, we were on a pretty rough forest road and driving directly into the sun. I couldn't see much of anything and there was a tree that had been cut, but was still hanging into the road a bit and I hit it. It completely busted my headlight on the truck. That evening we went back into town so that. I could order a new one. It wouldn't be in until Saturday evening.
Friday, we began scouting some new areas. We were going into some areas and throwing some cow calls to see if we could hear any elk respond in the area. Not looking specifically for bulls, just trying to locate general areas where there would be elk. Around 3:00 in the afternoon, we came up on a meadow and got out and threw a few calls out and decided to change shoes and make a walk around the meadow to look for any sign. About 5 minutes after calling, my son looks up from tying his boots and said “Elk! Big Elk!” I look up and sure enough a good bull had walked out of the timber into the meadow looking around for the cows that were calling. The pic isn’t great, but you can see what we were looking at.
We decided to head out Thursday before opener to find areas to camp and scout. The basin we wanted to be in was beyond overrun on Thursday, and I couldn't even imagine what it was going to be like on Saturday morning, so we started looking for other areas. In the process, we were on a pretty rough forest road and driving directly into the sun. I couldn't see much of anything and there was a tree that had been cut, but was still hanging into the road a bit and I hit it. It completely busted my headlight on the truck. That evening we went back into town so that. I could order a new one. It wouldn't be in until Saturday evening.
Friday, we began scouting some new areas. We were going into some areas and throwing some cow calls to see if we could hear any elk respond in the area. Not looking specifically for bulls, just trying to locate general areas where there would be elk. Around 3:00 in the afternoon, we came up on a meadow and got out and threw a few calls out and decided to change shoes and make a walk around the meadow to look for any sign. About 5 minutes after calling, my son looks up from tying his boots and said “Elk! Big Elk!” I look up and sure enough a good bull had walked out of the timber into the meadow looking around for the cows that were calling. The pic isn’t great, but you can see what we were looking at.
