The one that got away
Contributors to this thread:Elk
From: jdee
10-Oct-16
Last day of the archery season this past Sept. At 2 pm we were working a bull to the north of us when this guy showed up from the south. He came in quiet. We were set up way wrong for this bull coming in the way he did. My buddy was able to get a few pics but he had me pinned down. If he makes it through the rest of elk season I will be looking for him again next year !!
From: jdee
10-Oct-16
From: Tody
10-Oct-16
Awesome bull!
From: elkmtngear
10-Oct-16
Wow those fronts are insane!
He'll be even bigger next Season.
Best of Luck, Jeff
From: HUNT MAN
10-Oct-16
Great fronts! He will be bigger next year!!! Great photos
From: midwest
10-Oct-16
fronts and thirds....wowzer!
From: SBH
10-Oct-16
WOW! What a beauty. Tremendous fronts no doubt. He looks fairly young, he may be a real stud if he makes it through. Good Luck!!
From: dodie
10-Oct-16
you forgot to include gps coordinates... LOL
From: LUNG$HOT
10-Oct-16
Look at that basket rack! Wow!
From: jdee
10-Oct-16
We had a real hot, dry spring and first half of summer then in July we got plenty of moisture and everything was green. That might be the reason his fronts are so big ?? I spent a few nights dreaming about that encounter !!! Sure would like one more chance.
From: ohiohunter
11-Oct-16
Stud and a great picture
From: ohiohunter
11-Oct-16
Based on his body would you say he is a younger bull?
From: Gerald Martin
11-Oct-16
Definitely a young bull. Hope he makes it another year!
From: Medicinemann
11-Oct-16
He could really be something special in a year or two....
From: ElkNut1
12-Oct-16
Great photos of a beautiful bull, good luck to you!
ElkNut1
From: Horseshoe
12-Oct-16
Medicinemann, he looks pretty special in those photos, no? I am a flat lander from New England and don't know much about elk, but that bull looks HUGE. What would you Bowsiters guess that he would score right now?
From: Franzen
12-Oct-16
Decent width and enormous front end; he just peters out at the top. I think it is just a hard specimen to score at a glance. He has a front end of a near-400 bull and tops of a 240 bull. Average it out and I think he falls somewhere around there.
From: Mike-TN
12-Oct-16
I don't think that is a young bull. Outstanding fronts but really weak on top. Likely from dry weather late in the growing season. I killed a NM bull that was similar .... Great fronts and thirds but weak on top. I think there were a lot of bulls like that this year. Still a great bull
Mike TN
From: APauls
12-Oct-16
jdee - the weather and his rack seem almost opposite to me. Am i off on that? I thought the fronts grow earlier in the season, and you'd think with good moisture and minerals in the latter part of the growing season would contribute to large tops? Or just attribute to genetics :)
From: StickFlicker
12-Oct-16
Dry early summer and wet late summer will not cause a bull to develop like that. By mid-summer, the front is entirely finished growing before it even starts growing the back half of the rack. It looks more like he was in a very fertile/wet area early, and a dry/average area later in the growing season. I agree, he looks like a young bull that just has crazy fronts for a bull of his age. So, he must have been living in a grocery store in early summer!
From: Mark Watkins
12-Oct-16
He would look great on my office wall!
Good luck getting him next year!!!
Mark
From: willliamtell
13-Oct-16
Is there a manjack among us who wouldn't give plenty to have a crack at that beauty just as he is, weak whales and all?
From: Mr.C
13-Oct-16
thats a dandy! hope you get a shot at him next time.....the large shoulder hump and massive front quarters tells me hes been packing them antlers for awhile along with the long neck hair tells me hes at least 6 if not 7 and with a few battle scares.He`s a very healthy bull in the sun with a clean coat! and at this time of year is down about 25% of his weight which will make him appear young JMO..you`ll get him next year MikeC
From: Huntcell
13-Oct-16
Hope he makes it past boom stick season!
He needs another year to redeem the poor showing on the top half, if he get it OMG!!!!!!!!!!
From: jdee
13-Oct-16
What started out as a great elk season ended up getting pretty crazy. We were into elk every day the first few days of the season and passed on several bulls looking for a nice solid 6 point or better then one of my horses got loose and ran off. If you don't own horses and aren't a horse person you wouldn't understand but I stopped hunting and spent the next 6 days riding and looking for that quarter horse. I had given the horse to my granddaughter who lives in another part of the country and she stays with me all summer.....last thing she said to me before she went home just before elk season started was, Papa you would never sell him would you ? so when he went MIA my priorities changed real fast and I wanted that horse back worse then any elk in the world ! After looking for him until the last day of the season I decided to hunt the last day. When I heard that elk bugle behind me and turned my head to look and saw him coming in head on with that big rack tilted back and him screaming to say the least I was Jacked Up !!! To have a bull like that 30 yards from you in the wide open on the last day of the hunt knowing it was going to take a miracle to kill him the way we were set up was crazy....I knew he wouldn't stick around very long he was looking right at my friend then looking at our horses . If we had known he was in the area and we were set up for him I would bet money he would have had a tag wrapped around his antler that day but it didn't happen, that was one exciting few minutes for sure.
At the end of the day as we were riding back down to camp I got a text from my wife saying some guy just called and said he thinks he has our QH walking around his cabin. I went from feeling lower than a snake in a wheel rut to OMG are you kidding me.... When I got to camp and went to the guys place low and behold there stood my big pretty QH looking great as if he never left. So it was a great day for sure. I sure would have loved to have gotten that bull but just the encounter and getting the horse back made for a great day . That was the best phone call I ever made when I called my granddaughter that day and told her the horse was back !!
