While I’m an accomplished big game hunter, having taken 48 big game animals in my life, at 35 years old, I had yet to successfully harvest my first elk. Growing up in the far northwest corner of Washington State, elk hunting was not something I could readily do with an OTC tag within four hours of my house. As such, I spent a majority of my time chasing deer and bears locally, and although I’d been on a few out-of-state elk hunts, I’d never successfully closed the deal.
When I found out I’d drawn one of the most coveted Western Washington elk tags, I knew it was my year to finally close the deal on a bull elk. With that said, it also just so happened that this was the second coveted tag I’d drawn for this season after successfully drawing an Alaska mountain goat tag as well. After being away from my young family for 10 days in Alaska, I wanted to be sure to maximize my time in the woods with my kids on my close-to-home elk tag.
Luckily, I had a good friend who had drawn the tag just two years earlier and had a lot of intel on where some very nice bulls were living. My buddy and I had at least a dozen trail cams out, which helped us nail down the right areas to hunt. In particular, we had a creek bottom that seemed to be a regular travel corridor for three very nice bulls that I would consider to be a shooter. Based off trail cam photos, it seemed that every 48-72 hours, one of those bulls would be moving through the area seeing if he could pick up a cow still in heat.
Over the first couple weeks of season, I spent seven different days in that creek drainage, always with one of my kids in tow. My 7-year-old son is a great hiker and covered the five-mile circuit with me two different times. My 5-year-old daughter needed a bit more help and towed a ride in my child carrier backpack five different days. I even made it out one day with my 3-year-old son in tow, although he talks a lot and doesn’t make a great hunter at this age! Unfortunately, we had a terrible time being in the right place at the right time. Four different times over those first seven days, trail cams photos showed we were within 30 minutes of one of my target bulls, but we just couldn’t seem to connect. One day, we caught a bull bugling, but it was so foggy that we couldn’t see him and he ended up winding us without us ever laying eyes on him.
Finally, on day eight of the hunt, I cut a fresh bed with wet piss in it. My daughter was along for the hunt and was very excited at the possibility of finally seeing an elk. We started slowly cow calling through the open timber when my daughter whispered, “Elk! Elk! Big bull!” Out of nowhere, a huge 6-point stepped out and barked at me and then ran into the thick salmonberry cover. I wasn’t able to pull off a shot before he got into deep cover, but we followed his track for a couple of miles, jumping him one more time again without a shot. Despite not connecting, my daughter was absolutely jacked to have spotted a bull elk.
Another week later, we finally had some cold weather move in with some heavy rain and snow hitting the unit. I decided to hit the creek bottom again, this time by myself. At about 10:00 in the morning, I was slowly working down a game trail through some open, foggy timber when I saw a rack of an elk bobbing through the trees walking straight towards me about 80 yards away. It only took one glance to know this was one of the shooter bulls I was targeting this season. He was coming quickly down the same game trail I was walking on, so I quickly got set up with my rifle leaning against a tree and waited for him to clear a fallen log. He stepped out at 15 yards with absolutely no clue I was there, and I dropped him with a single shot. I soon looked up, and a second of the shooter bulls (luckily a bit smaller than mine) was standing right behind him trying to figure out what had happened to his buddy. I was able to get multiple photos and videos of him with my cell phone. He was standing watch before he slowly disappeared into the foggy timber.
I was able to find a location to get a call out to my brother and buddy who had shot his elk less than two miles away two years earlier, and they were both able to make it out to help me with the pack out. This being the first elk I’d been close to, I was absolutely amazed at the body size on these Cascade Roosevelt elk. I call him a Rosie, but he was technically slightly east of the Roosevelt/Rocky Mountain boundary per B&C. After butchering the bull, I ended up with 324 pounds of boned out and processed meat, which was just insane!
My bull ended up being a 6x6 that officially scored 299 4/8". A Boone and Crockett bull if he’d moved just a few miles west. It also happened that this was the very same bull that my daughter had spotted a couple weeks earlier. She was very excited to finally put hands on his rack when I made it home!
One of the best parts of the hunt was making it back to the truck to find my dad and Uncle Dave waiting for us by my rig. My dad and Uncle Dave have hunted with me since I was 8 years old and grew up hunting this unit before it became a draw only. My dad’s goal his entire life was to shoot a 300" bull. Unfortunately, my dad now needs a wheelchair and clearly doesn’t have the mobility to hunt like he used to, having never achieved his 300" bull goal. Seeing the pride and joy in his face when he saw me walk out of the woods with a 300" bull on my back was priceless. Just two weeks later, Uncle Dave was able to go with my dad on an ADA accessible hunt in Wyoming where my dad harvested his first 300" bull.
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