tacticaltj
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- Jul 26, 2002
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After a couple of months of 'cyber' scouting and calling Utah DOW my son and I set out on our journey to northern Utah to hunt the Youth Elk hunt. We arrived in Vernal on Friday morning and swung by the local DOW office for some last minute advice. As I have come to expect the Utah DOW were great (Calif DFG sure could take a lesson). A couple of the staff went over our maps and made very good suggestions based on thier first hand experience and knowledge of the area. We loaded up on last minute supplies and headed for the mountains. We set up camp at about the 8500' level and started scouting. Unfortunately, it started to rain a little. Then it started to rain alot. By night fall everything was wet except our enthusiasm. Then the temp dropped and the rain turned to snow and the temp fell to about the single digits. Opening day we scouted in a light snowfall and found a single set of Elk tracks. The tracks musta been less then a couple of hours old based on the amount of snow coverage. We cut alot of deer trails which were very active and saw at least 100 deer, but, no elk. Probably because of the weather change nothing was bugling either. That all changed about 2am Sunday morning when we were awakened by a very persistent bugling Bull about 1/2 mile away. Needless to say that fired us up and we didn't really sleep the rest of the night. Sunday was a great hunting day with mild wind and temps in the low 40s. The morning hunt was fantastic, with the single exception of no Elk seen or heard. We again saw at least 75 Deer and a Moose! After a midmorning breakfast break we decided to hunt up hill to the ridgeline area above our camp. As soon as we reached 8800' we started to see sign everywhere. Old scat, new scat, old tracks, new tracks and a couple of beds used the previous night. As we crested a saddle at 9000' there not 20 yards in front of us were 2 cows with 2 calves. They didn't see us so we just knelt down and watched them. Grandpa always said live animals are the best decoys and he sure was right. After about 5 minutes we heard a bugle about 1/4 mile away. 1 minute later we heard something walking our way towards the cows. At about 60 yards out my son spots the 5x5 Bull walking our way along a trail. At the same time one of the cows begins to walk our way towards the Bull. We quite literally found ourselves in between pending romance, as it were. One of the cows walked towards us and stopped 20 feet away to our right. The Bull stopped at 60 yards to our left standing sideways and checks out the cows. My son slowly raised his 7mm-08 and placed a shot right into the shoulder of the Bull. However, the Bull wasn't impressed and just stood there looking our way. My son placed a second shot and hit the Bull just behind the shoulder. Again, the Bull just stood there looking our way. Just as my son was going to shoot again the Big guy fell backwards and gave up the ghost. Later examination revealed both shots fully penetrated the Bull and exited the far side. My son was shooting 150 grain Barnes Triple X bullets(loaded by Stars and Stripes). The first shot struck both lungs AND the heart and exited. The second shot struck both lungs and exited. I can only guess the first shot locked the big guys legs-cause he was certainly mortally shot both times!.
This certainly was a hunt of a lifetime. Thank you Utah!!!
This certainly was a hunt of a lifetime. Thank you Utah!!!
