James's 2002 Elk
Click any picture for full size image.
Here's my first Elk ever. After 8 long years of hunting for a legal spike I finally bagged one. His 4 quarters weighed in at 230 lbs. at the butchers'.
Here you can see how much fun I had getting him the 150' back up to the road to my truck!
When I first saw the herd of 20 I just stood there looking at the 4 big 5 & 6 point Bulls in the herd. Then I started looking through all the cows, not really thinking of seeing a spike. Then, suddenly, one of the "cows" had antlers!! I looked just as he turned his head, spike by spike! As most of you probably know, Washington general Elk season is spike-bull only so there he was. I had to wait about 20 seconds as he mulled around in the middle of all the cows and big bulls before he took that fatal extra step in front of all the other animals. He ran over the ridge after the shot, across the road and bedded off the downhill side of the road. When I caught up with him I spooked him out of his bed and put him down with a neck shot as he ran downhill away from me. Then the horror started...
He just kept rolling downhill, headed for the bottom! I didn't think he'd ever stop when he finally did. WHEW! Another 2 feet and he'd rolled to the bottom of the ravine! It was probably a 50 degree slope he was on.
It was quite humorous when we finally met up with Nissa's brother Mark, his wife Darcey, and our friend Don Carr as they were driving in to help us with this animal. They were quite pleased to realize that the hard work was already done! As you can tell by this picture I was successful getting him out whole. A hearty thanks to the 2 nice gentlemen from Ellensburg who helped me get him up to the road and into my truck. We used several pieces of rope I had in my truck, tied to my hitch, then looped around the ball-hitch on their truck, then down to the Elk. We pulled him right up to the road and loaded him up whole.
Here's Nissa' brother Mark and I posing with our elk. We were the only 2 lucky ones this year out of our family of 11 hunters. Quite an adventure I hope to repeat a dozen or more times in the future during the rest of my life. Oh, and was shooting my 7mm Rem. Mag. handloads with 175g Nosler Partitions. I shot him at around 100 yards.
Contact Power for more information. 