Hunter: Joey Stary
Species: Rocky Mountain Elk
Location: New Mexico
Method: Youth muzzleloader, guided by Wesley
I’ve been deer hunting with my dad at our family farm ever since I was seven years old. I never got any experience hunting out West, but I would watch my dad go every year to bow hunt elk. When I turned twelve, my dad asked me if I wanted to go hunting out West, and I was all in! I had just passed my hunter safety course, and I was ready.
That spring, my dad took me to my first Safari Club International (SCI) Convention in Nashville. It was there that we talked to an outfitter about putting me in for a youth muzzleloader tag. I was shocked a couple of months later when my dad told me we were going to New Mexico. I was super excited because I was going to hunt with my dad, and he told me that our guide was going to bring his twelve-year-old son along for the hunt as well. I practiced all summer with my dad, shooting down at the farm and getting ready for the big hunt.
When we arrived in New Mexico, I met our guide Wesley and his son, Colten. We settled into bed that night, and I was so nervous about my hunt the next morning that it couldn’t come soon enough!
I will never forget that first morning and hearing my first elk bugle. We ran over to the other ridge to try and get into position; I was shocked to see a big bull! My dad asked me if I wanted to shoot him. I told him I wasn’t sure and asked him what he thought. He said we should wait since it was our first day and one of the bull’s antlers was all busted up. Honestly, I wasn’t ready for the hunt to end.
Over the next few days, we made a couple of stalks on some nice bulls but could never connect. We even got within a hundred yards of a 330-inch bull, but the wind swirled right as I was getting set up to take the shot, and I watched as the big bull ran across the flats.
The next afternoon, we were sitting on top of a spot we called “the perch,” glassing for elk. By the time the elk finally started to move, it was too late for us to put on a stalk. The good news was that we knew what meadow the elk were in, and we planned on coming back in the morning because there was a good bull in there.
The next morning, we got out there, and elk were bugling immediately. We started to run to get into position. My heart was racing as we got into position and Wesley started calling. I could hear him bugling, and I remember hearing my dad and Wesley say, “Here he comes.”
My dad quickly got me set up on my tripod, and I got ready for the shot as the bull came in from 300 yards away. My dad was videoing the hunt with his iPhone, and I could remember Wesley reading off the ranges. “150 yards, 120 yards, 100 yards. Let him come,” he said. At eighty yards, the bull started to turn broadside, and my dad whispered, “Put it on his shoulder and squeeze the trigger!”
As I watched the bull run, I got nervous because I thought I had blown it, but my dad said I had hit him. The problem was that I hadn’t hit him where I’d been hoping to. In all the excitement, when I was aiming at the bull, my gun had become pinched in my tripod; when I pulled the trigger, it slingshot the barrel back, and I hit the bull high. My dad quickly reloaded the muzzleloader, and I took another shot before he ran off into the pines.
My dad said, “When in doubt, back out.” We decided at that point to go back to camp and wait him out for a few hours. We knew he was hit hard and wasn’t going to go that far. That was the longest couple of hours—I was so nervous I wasn’t going to find my first bull.
A couple of hours later, we went back and circled in downwind of where we’d last seen him to see if we could get eyes on him. As soon as we started into the pines, my guide said, “There he is!” He was standing there. He hadn’t gone fifty yards from where I’d last seen him. I quickly got set up and made my final shot on the bull. It was done; I got my first bull!
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