My personal history with this bull started three years ago when I heard rumors of a big bull living in a somewhat obscure place. Don Roach, a good friend of mine, had an archery tag in that same area the following year and we planned to focus our efforts on the rumored bull for his hunt. We met up with a buddy of ours who had solid info on the bull and was willing to work together with us to find it. We hunted hard that year and found some great bulls, but the bull we were looking for never showed.
Fast forward to last year and both Don and another person I knew had tags for the area where this bull was supposed to be. We put more effort into the bull that year before the hunt and managed to get him on a trail camera as well as actually put eyes on him. Despite our?best efforts to keep tabs on the bull,?he managed to vanish once again. We?had a good idea where the bull was?going when he would disappear, but?there was not much we could do because it was in an area that was all private property. On top of that, the landowner had not let anyone hunt his place in the 30 years he had owned it. Again, the bull managed to elude a handful of hunters and live another year.
This year, the opportunities continued because two of my friends, Don and Thomas Austin, had archery tags that would give them a chance at the bull. I also had a junior hunter and a couple rifle hunters that I would be guiding in that unit. During scouting, we turned the bull up on camera in early September, and it was then that we realized he had blown up and was something very special. We studied the trail camera video repeatedly and tried to put a number on the bull, but everything we came up with seemed outrageous and far-fetched. Regardless, we knew the bull was larger than life and we had to keep things quiet while focusing all our efforts on it. Thomas hunted the bull during the first archery season but did not have any luck. During the second archery season, Don and I picked up where Thomas left off. At this point, Don had seen the bull in person once and we had him on camera a few times. It was pretty obvious the bull was not spending the majority of his time in the area we were focusing on. After hunting the bull for a week with little to show for it, we decided to shift gears and put our efforts into just locating him, even if it meant he was somewhere we could not hunt him.
That evening, we climbed up a couple of hills and glassed for the bull on the private lands where we thought he would be. Don turned him up cruising solo about two and a half miles away deep into the private property. Don decided it was that bull or nothing, so we watched the bull do his thing on the private lands for the remainder of the hunt, hoping he would slip up and come back onto the public land but to no avail.
At this point, we had 10 days until we could hunt the bull again with my junior hunter, but even that was not looking good because the bull was still hanging out on the private property. We decided to call an audible and contact one of the statewide tag holders and see if he was interested. He agreed to come hunt the bull, but he was not sure when he could show up. The next step was gaining access to the private property where the bull was, even though all of us thought it was a long shot. I met with the landowner and things went better than expected. We talked for a while that night, and the landowner shared his history of the bull with me, which went back six years or so. We came to an agreement and had the access we needed to hunt the bull where he had been hanging out. However, we only had until the end of September to kill the bull because starting October 1st the landowner would be hunting his place with a friend.
Every day, I would climb one of the same two hills and keep track of the bull while we waited for the tag holder to show up. I also had help from some buddies, Spencer Berns, Jay Platt and his son, Colton, and Seth Doser, who helped cover the area throughout the next few days, which was much appreciated!
The tag holder kept pushing back his arrival date, and on the 29th, we got word that he would not be coming anymore. I was completely deflated and thought that our chance at the bull was over. I met with the landowner to let him know the client would not be showing up after all. We chatted for a while, which led to the landowner allowing us to buy a private land tag to hunt the bull starting October 1st with another client. Just like that, we were back in the game!
I made some phone calls and lined up a friend of mine, Shayne Ohotto, to come down and hunt the bull starting October 1st. Seth and I found and watched the bull the night before and the next morning until we met up with Shayne later the following day. When Shayne got there, we had him shoot his gun to make sure everything was good and then climbed the hill to look for the bull that afternoon. It did not take long before Seth turned him up with his six cows that he had been parading around with the last four days or so. Shayne got to watch the bull for an hour or so that evening, and I think it was safe to say that he was excited! Based on where we left the bull when it got dark that night, we had a good idea of where he would be the next morning.
After a long, sleepless night, it was finally time. Shayne, Hagan, and I headed into the property, while Seth and our buddy, Hunter, glassed for the bull across the way. They turned the bull up in the gray light as he was fighting with another smaller bull around a harem of 25 or so cows. We made a game plan based on where the bull was and climbed up on a mesa that we thought would put us above and slightly in front of the bull and his cows. As we approached the edge of the mesa, we could hear the bull bugling less than 300 yards away and then Hagan spotted a cow. We got Shayne on the sticks as the elk started to filter up the draw below us. The bull stepped out from behind a tree and stopped to let a bugle out, and Shayne dropped him in his tracks. Just like that, 45 minutes into the morning and it was over. As we walked up to the bull, we all looked at him, then at each other, and then at the bull, and then back at each other. It was a mixture of being speechless and almost laughing in disbelief. I quickly realized the bull was every bit of our outlandish guesses and potentially more. Many photos were taken and laughs and excitement were shared as we took care of the bull that morning. It was a day I will not soon forget!
A friend, who is a master measurer at the SCI headquarters, scored the bull the next day and came up with a gross score of 454 5/8". The bull had broken off the G3 on his right side, which was around 12". Had he not broken that, it would have put him right around 465". Later, the bull’s official SCI score was 451 1/8".
am beyond grateful to everyone who played a part over the course of chasing this bull, and I feel blessed to have been a part of it. I’m lucky to work with and have some of the best friends a guy could ask for. Don, Thomas, Seth, Spencer, Jay, Colton, Hunter, Hagan, and Shayne – thank you!
New Mexico Elk Hunting
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