With daylight quickly approaching on opening morning of elk season in Northern Idaho, the four of us made our way around the steep open hillside. With my dad leading the way, and I bringing up the rear, we finally made it to our vantage point over looking the deep basin. We no sooner took our packs off and settled in to glass the opposite ridge when a bull broke the morning silence. This snapped us all to attention, and it was quickly decided that dad would stay and call, while Damon, Matt and I would spread out and make our way down the hill.

As I approached the tree line I could hear cows and calves calling and moving through the thick alter brush still well below. I found an opening where there were a couple of shooting lanes, and stood in front of a small alpine. As the sound of broken brush, and nervous cows seemed to be moving away from me I was worried that the heard may have caught our wind. As I reached for my cow call, dad let out a short bugle followed by a few weak chuckles. This grabbed my attention and I instantly slowed my breathing, turned my ear toward where I last hear the elk moving, and strained to hear anything that sounded like elk. Time seem to stand still for a few seconds, then a high pitched screamed echoed through the Idaho mountain range announcing the freight train that was coming non-stop straight through the middle of the brushed in basin, into my lap.

I lowered my profile, took a deep breath, and waited. At first, all I saw was the tops of his massive antlers angling up the hill. I drew my bow just as the bull ran into sight, but he never slowed down, and as quickly as he appeared he was gone. As I let the bow down, a million thoughts raced through my adrenaline filled head. I kept my eyes fixed on the area that I last saw the bull, as dad continued to cow call straight above me. Suddenly there he was, thirty yards up the hill from me, and walking. I drew my bow put my thirty yard pin on his vitals and prayed he would stop in the only shooting lane…

As most hunters will attest to, elk have this amazing ability to stop one step short of a shooting lane. You don’t have to move, make any noise, the wind doesn’t have to change, they just stop… Well, this was NOT one of those situations. In fact, this bull walked into the only shooting lane above me and then stopped, quartered away from me, stepped up with his near leg and looked in the opposite direction as to say “there you go.”

I slowed my breathing, picked a spot and let it fly. The arrow found it’s mark, and the monarch took off running. My first feelings were those of excitement, and joy, quickly followed by real concern about how far this giant was going to run down the canyon before expiring. But God must have been smiling on us that day because this bull only ran three hundred yards before bedding down in his final resting place. The best part was that the bull covered those three hundred yards straight up the hill, in the direction of the vehicles.

As I approached the expired bull I was truly humbled. I was so thankful to have my dad, who is my hunting hero, there with me, along with my two good friends Damon, and Matt. It’s always best when you can share an experience like this with good friends, but mostly I was just glad to have the help packing that sucker out! This was truly a great hunt, one for the books and a great reminder that sometimes things just work out.