Arizona Elk Hunt

[jabber]

I have been putting my son in for elk (points mostly) in Arizona since 2008 and even had him get the hunters ed point with me when I did it, so this year when I applied him for a late season elk hunt with 13 points I was pretty confident he would get drawn. Ended up with tag #10. We left on Wednesday before Thanksgiving with plans to make the drive to Eagar in one day, spend the night there then go out and setup camp and do a little scouting on Thursday, prior to the Friday opener.

My co-pilot has it under control


When we made it to Roswell we started hitting snowy conditions.





We finally made it to Eagar around midnight, about 3 hours later than planned.

 

[Fishmaster196]

Watching this post

 

[jabber]

Thanksgiving Day, we eat a hearty convenience store breakfast and head out to setup camp. My plan is to stay at the same place I stayed 4 years ago on my hunt. When we got to the site I saw we had some work to do.


Seems like I only had one shovel that worked for this operation. Imagine that.



Tent set up, heater going.



We did get out Thursday evening and did a little scouting. Nothing spotted.

Thursday night a storm blew in. The wind was ripping all night with what I am guessing was hail pounding on the tent. Neither one of us got much sleep. I was concerned if the tent was going to stay. It did. Friday morning the conditions were the same. We decided to forego getting out and going hunting first thing due to the weather. There were a few trucks that drove by, so we ended up getting out a little late and just drove for a while.



Here are a couple of more camp pics that I took after we got back to the camp.


Friday afternoon the weather was still bad so we just stayed at camp and listened to college football games and watched it snow.

 

[jabber]

Friday night is calmed down, so Saturday morning our season unofficially opened up. We went down about a mile from camp to a big meadow. We hadn't been there 10 minutes when I spotted a lone bull coming out of the trees across the meadow. After taking a look through the binoculars and realizing he was pretty nice, I ranged him at 650 yards +/-. Too far. We watched where he was going and put together a quick plan that as soon as he got out of site we would take off and try to head him off. I was in the lead, for about 100 yards until the altitude, foot of snow and a bunch of years made me stop, Jake passed me by and kept going.

I finally got to the last point where I saw Jake at and I could also see the bulls tracks in the fresh snow. Jake had got in behind the bull and was following him. I stayed at that point for about 30 minutes and he never showed up, so I decided I had better start following him. After about a mile, I finally see Jacob coming back. He had followed him for what we later determined was over 2 miles, but never did catch up to him. He was beat and also sad that he missed the opportunity at this bull.

Saturday afternoon, Jake said he didn't care what we did as long as it didn't involve a lot of walking in foot deep snow. I told him I wanted to go over to look at the other side of the unit closer to the Indian Reservation and we could make that work. As I was driving over to it, I come around a corner in the road and see this.



The snow plow had ran off the road and got stuck. The ford pickup was trying to pull it out. After watching that for a few minutes, I went up and got the UTV's out of the way so I could go help. I hooked up to the pickup and after breaking my 7/16" chain twice and switching to a strap we were able to get it out.

We spent the evening on this side of the unit and just didn't see many tracks at all and no elk.

 

[Hilljackoutlaw]

Watching

 

[jabber]

Sunday morning we decide to go back to the meadow behind camp. We get down to our glassing spot and weren't there but a few minutes when Jacob says he sees elk in the trees. I throw up the binoculars and see two bulls, and apparently our movement alerted them as they both stopped and were looking at us. Range finder says 385 yards, I make the adjustment to the scope for Jake and he lined up using a fence post as a rest. I told him that I thought the second one was a little better than the first.

He touched off a shot and nothing. I tell him to reload and take his time. I have the binos trained on the second bull that is about 20 yards or so behind the first. Shot #2 rings out, I see movement out of the side of the binos, the first elk is on the ground. Woohoo, not the one I was watching, but it was the one he had a better field of view of. After watching it for a few minutes we could tell it was a spine shot. So rather than take another shot at that distance we headed over and put one more shot in it to finish the job.



We broke it down using the gutless method and were back at camp by 10. We were then able to use the ATV to get it out and back to camp by 12. We then had camp broke down and were on the road by 4. Pulling the trailer on the snow/ice covered roads for the first 12 miles until I got to the paved road resulted in me only going in the ditch once. Was able to get out, but am pretty sure I took a few miles off of the life of my truck doing it.

This was Jake's first elk. Some of the old timers here will remember that he was drawn for a youth hunt in Utah in 2008 but was unable to go due to his mom passing. Then we went on a cow elk hunt on the old RMEF Double H ranch and had ML issues there using a borrowed gun. Then a couple of unsuccessful cow hunts on the Vermejo Ranch had left him wondering if he were ever going to be successful on elk. I would say his first one was pretty good. It wasn't as big as the one he chased Saturday morning but he is thrilled to have taken this one. Needless to say, I am pretty proud of him too.

 

[Sask hunter]

Congrats!!

 

[noharleyyet]

Solid milestone jabber, indelibly in the books.

 

[npaden]

Congrats! Solid bull there! Sounds like an awesome time spent with your son.

 

[prhunter]

Congrats on your harvest. I enjoyed the write up and the pics. TFS!

 

[Oak]

That's a good bull and a great meadow. Congrats!

 

[Jape]

Very nice first bull/elk! That’s a great accomplishment. Congrats!

 

[hank4elk]

Well Done!

 

[sluggo6850]

Congrats on your first bull!! Persistance pays off!! Cool pics also!

 

[cmbbulldog]

Nice job, congrats!

 

[bklotthor]

Awesome trip, and some cool country to hunt. Congrats.

 

[Werty]

Nice bull

 

[recon6036]

Excellent! Congratulations

 

[Big Fin]

Great stuff. Congrats. Thanks for sharing here.

 

[Buschy]

What a beautiful bull. Huge congratulations to both your son and yourself. Awesome!!