I raced home from football practice to finish packing and get ready for the six-hour drive ahead the following morning. However, there was a surprise when I got home. My dad had gotten a trail cam picture of a giant. That had got me ecstatic for opening morning, but I didn’t let my hopes get too high because years in the past, we had gotten pictures of bulls and they never came back or were seen during season.
We woke up the next morning and were off. We made it the 350 miles without any issues to the horse camp. We set up camp and went to clear trails and set up our ground blind. When we checked the trail cameras, his herd was there last night, but he wasn’t anywhere to be seen. That would be one of the longest nights I’d ever experience.
Excitement was high on opening day as we took off for the spot to beat everyone else there. We sat in the truck for the next two and a half hours until half an hour before shooting light. We would slip into the trees and wait at a trail intersection until shooting light and then we would go a little further in and wait. We knew the elk would cross if they were coming out of the field. They never came, so we walked the trails for a while but never did see anything. We went back to the truck and drove for a couple hours. We then went back to camp to rest for the evening hunt. We slipped into the ground blind and waited until dark but not see or hear a single elk. It was fun but disappointing for my first ever day of archery elk.
On day two, my hopes were high, but I had developed big puss-filled blisters. We couldn’t think of anything that would do that, so after the morning hunt, we ran into town to go to a MultiCare. We did the same thing as the first day. We got to our spot and waited until half an hour before shooting light. We slipped into the trails and waited at the crossing. After that, we walked into a section of open timber with ferns where the elk tended to hang out in the mornings. After walking through that and not seeing any elk or any fresh sign, we went back to get ready to go to the doctor. When we got there, it turned out I had a reaction to some poison oak.
That night, my uncle was hunting the field and we decided to hunt outside of camp. We knew there were some elk around camp because we could hear some cow calls at night. We got on the horse trails and started cow calling and bugling here and there. However, we never got anything to call back. After we got back to camp, about 15 minutes later, my uncle pulled in saying he had shot a cow. Day two was disappointing, but we knew bulls could show up at any time.
Instead of waking up at 3:30, we woke up at 5:00. When we got to the spot, there was no one there. When daylight came, we were on the trail and going to the field where we had hunted during the evenings and saw our first elk of the trip, but it was just a cow and calf. We slipped back into the trees, walked back to the truck, and went to another spot.
We started to walk some logging roads that led us to a meadow overlooking a river with a bunch of blackberries. After a little bit of walking, we jumped a black bear. We almost got a shot at it, but it noticed us and took off. We went back to the truck to go back to camp to prepare for the evening hunt. When I got back, it was time for me to take a nap.
Two hours later, we were getting ready to leave for the evening hunt. We got in the blind, and 45 minutes later, a kid started playing over 300 yards away and was super loud. I was thinking the evening hunt was done, but they eventually went inside. Then we started hearing cow calling. My dad and I thought there were people hunting the fence line. A cow and a calf came into view from the right side of the blind, and my dad said the big bull was with her. I stuck my head over a little bit, and when I saw him, my heart started beating super fast. I grabbed my bow and started to draw. The cow and calf took off, but the bull didn’t. I let it go and got scared because as soon it went in, the arrow broke. We thought I had heart punched him, though. He ran but stopped at the fence, carrying his shoulder. We knew he was hurting, so we slipped out of the blind. We got 40 yards from the blind, and the bull jumped up. At the same, I realized that I forgot my quiver in the blind. I walked up to the part of the arrow that broke off and compared it to another arrow. I was missing about a foot of arrow. That made me feel much better about the shot.
We walked back to the truck, and when we got there, I called my uncle who had shot a cow the night before in the same blind. Then I called my mom to tell her. By then, it had been about an hour, so we drove back to begin the search. We walked to the fence, and there was good blood. As we kept going, he really started bleeding.
However, he had crossed the blood trail of the cow, so we were trying to find where he was going. Eventually, we found our trail, but when we got into the timber, it was just drops and we were struggling to find blood. My other uncle, Scott, found blood again, and then we heard something kicking up in front of us at 100 yards. We moved quietly, and there he lay. This was the biggest bull that any of us had seen in that area, and both my dad and Scott grew up hunting up there.
We took a lot of pictures but had bad lighting. All of it was from headlamps. It was surreal being 14 years old and killing a bull that I may never top. We had him quartered out in about an hour. The pack wasn’t that bad with the meat. The head was a whole different story because we put it on a pack instead of carrying it. With all the low-hanging branches, it would have been easier to carry. However, we got everything done with no issues. At 14 years old, I killed a bull with a gross score of 333.4" and 328.4" P&Y.
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