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Bull of a Lifetime

A great family adventure

Congratulations on calling him on, and a huge thumbs up to your dad for the archery success
 
Congrats! There’s nothing better than family hunts. That bull is so unique, a truly one of a kind story and trophy.
 
cohunter14 said:
I haven't done one of these writeups in quite a few years, but this one deserves the time and effort.

Some background before the story: my father got me into hunting as a kid, and him and I have spent 29 of the last 30 seasons together in the elk woods, with the only season missed being a year where he had back surgery and couldn't make it. We were rifle hunters for most of that time, but my dad decided to get into archery hunting a number of years ago and I followed suit. Most of the years since then, we have both archery and rifle hunted elk, with most of our dedication still going to rifle season, and we bounced around different low-end OTC units that were closer to home archery hunting. We had a few attempts at filling a tag with a bow while doing this, but it hadn't happened.

The last few years, we have dedicated more time to archery, and last year was the first year in my hunting career that I didn't have a rifle elk tag. Instead, I focused on archery and used the rifle season to take my son on his first elk hunt. Last year, we got into bugles nearly every day in another OTC unit in Colorado, we just weren't able to make it happen. The goal was to hunt the same area this year and see if we could finally punch a tag.

We arrived in our area mid-day on Friday, and we were joined by my wife's cousin, who was on his first archery elk hunt. We decided to try to get out and check a few areas and some trail cameras we had set up. We ended up being greeted with afternoon rain that wasn't predicted, which made the woods super quiet, and we weren't able to hear any bugles during the evening. We were surprised at the lack of elk on some of our cameras, but it helped to focus our attention to other spots for Saturday morning.

Saturday morning arrived and we were on a ridge calling right at first light. We ended up hearing a bull bugling well off in the distance in an area we know well. We immediately made plans and started working our way towards the bull. The bull kept sounding off on his own, but as we got a mile and a half in, we realized we were too far behind, and he was working his way up a steep hillside to bed. We had two trail cameras in that area as well, so we decided to grab those SD cards and back out to go have lunch, with plans to go around the mountain and traverse our way through a saddle and into the bedding area, instead of trying to follow him up the mountain. However, more afternoon storms hit starting right around noon that brought rain and lightning and continued on through the rest of the day, ruining our plans.

We made plans that evening for the next morning to enter the area from that same saddle and get down to the bench where we heard the bull that morning, in hopes of getting on his level and cutting him off on his way to bed, instead of trying to chase him from a mile and a half away.
Click to expand...
That’s awesome
 
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