Craner Family Elk Hunt Part II

For those of you who missed it, this is a continuation of a previous story where Cary’s son, Logan got his first elk. Now on to Cary’s bull hunt.

Monday I hunted all day in the same two canyons without seeing any elk. Tuesday I decided to hunt the next canyon. I got up extra early to be there in plenty of time before the elk started to bed down. After hiking about a mile I decided to break out the cow call. I was above a grove of quakies and not ten seconds after calling two satellite bulls started fighting. They obviously thought I was a cow elk and were fighting to see who would claim the spoils.

While they were busy fighting I walked up around the quakie patch to get a look at the bulls and spooked them around the small hillside. I stood there for a few seconds and here they both came right towards me. I quickly scoped out the two bulls to see which was bigger. One was a small 6×6 and the other a small 5×5. I decided to take the 6×6 but he was below me at about 80 yards and soon would be heading up the hill straight towards me. I leaned out around a small quakie, aimed right in the back of the neck and CRACK he dropped in his tracks. A quiet shout of joy rang out “YES!” and a silent prayer of thanks. What luck we have had. Both Logan and I had bagged our elk.

The smaller bull ran up the hill 20 or 30 yards and stopped to see what had happened. I checked him out again to reaffirm my decision on choosing the other, yep he’s a 5×5 I had chosen the right one. After cleaning and skinning him I hiked back to the truck and drove to camp. Everyone was excited and I convinced the boys camping next to us to come and drag it out with their 4-wheelers. That saved a lot of quartering and packing but it was fun.

by Cary Craner