My first late bull hunt.

After years of putting in for my family's area late elk hunt I finally drew. It only took 10 or 12 years. It was a fun time. Some of the best hunting I have seen since I was little and there weren't hunters everywhere. We were in the back country. There were elk everywhere. We went to bed at night listening to elk bugle. My dad screwed up and shot a small six on the first day. While my cousin shot a huge 7x7 up the canyon I wanted to go up. I passed up 4 or 5 bulls a day. Finally one day on a all day hunt we were moving in on some bulls bugling. We moved in to about fifty yards from a bull and 8 or 10 cows. The little herd moved right toward us. I had a cow and a calf 5 yards from me and the bull was about 40 yards away in thick timber. I couldn't see him but my dad said he was about a 300 bull. We were sitting there listening to him rake a tree and expecting the cow and calf a few feet away to finally figure out what we were laying on the ground in front of them. That's when we heard it. A huge growl from down in the canyon on the other side of the herd in front of us. I looked back at my dad mouthed to him, "that's the bull I want." A few minutes later the cow and calf in front of me smelled us and the whole herd took off. My dad asked me again if I wanted to shoot the 300 bull and I said no. I wanted the growler. So, we let the 300 bull go and dropped down in the canyon above the big bull. The problem was this was no dumb bull. There is a reason some of them get so big. He always stayed in the timber and his cows were alway out in front of him. We could never get a look at him and every time we tried to move in on him we always run into his cows and they would all spook. We chased him all that day and never even seen him. We started back to camp with about 1 hr of light left. When we heard a bull bugling above camp which was pretty common. He sounded decent. So I decided to leave my dad in the dust and run the 1.5 mile above camp to check out this bull. I made with just a few minutes of light left. The bull was in a sagebrush park about 150 yards above me. Looking at him through my scope with just enough light I saw his last point was good and long. I only had 2 more days left to hunt so I decided to take him. Even though at the time I couldn't see good enough to realize the last point that was so long ended up to be the bull's 5th point. It was a 5x6. Anyway, I got a rest on my knee took aim and fired. He dropped immediately and I ran up the hill and finished him off with another shot. He still scored close to 300 even though he was only a 5x6. By far it was one of my favorite hunts. I don't think I have gotten into so many elk before and passed up so many bulls. Unfortunately this unit we hunt has gone down hill since then. They have increased the tags from 100 to 250 so finding large bulls is a lot harder.