My Birthday ELK!

So this year on my birthday I was so lucky as to draw a big bull elk tag. Opening day was Sept. 17th. MY birthday. 25. Yuck. I feel like I'm getting old.

One of the hikes sitting and listening, it was really pretty up there

Sooo.... This was such a crazy experience. So to start off the week, Jer and his dad went scouting for me on Tuesday (I was sick) and did not see any elk, they saw deer and moose though. LOL. Then on Thursday Dan talked to a really nice guy who told us where a bunch of elk were. So we headed there for our scouting adventure at 5 am. We saw elk cows and one big bull elk across a ravine. We heard other elk and decided this was a good bet on finding an elk. I guess seeing elk is not all that easy or normal. As we got up at 5 am on my birthday, cold, rainy and foggy. We got to the spot where we had spotted the elk and only heard elk, we hiked up and down the mountain, across the ravine and it just felt like we were going in circles. The elk to me were like "the other's" from lost...I knew they were there but we couldn't see any. So after not seeing any elk we went back to camp for a little nap. We ate lunch and got back out there, we hiked around an area we were told about and saw elk poo and tracks, and we did see a deer on our hike.

Very Pretty

awww

Then we decided to go back to the spot where we had actually heard elk. We decided to sit and watch the spot where we had seen the bull elk. We sat there FOREVER. 3 hours or so.

He thinks he is signing my age 25....however he is signing the number 8. 

Where we sat

 We had about given up, it was starting to get darker as the sun had about 15 minutes left of light. We were to the truck and Dan gave one last bugle. And there it was an elk that wasn't too far away. We kept bugling, and heading towards the sound. I saw the elk for a split second through the tree's. Then we had to bugle and look for it some more. I could see the body of the elk the best, I could not tell how many antler's he had, he sounded big, his body was big and he had been scrapping his antlers on the tree so I decided to shoot it. After the first shot it came running towards us that is probably one of the scariest moments of my life! After a second shot it was down. When we got up to the elk it was HUGE! Boy am I lucky!

 I can't believe we got it like we did. We ran into a lot of problems trying to drag it to the road. We had to get it behind a four-wheeler and even that was hard! Dan and Jeremy did the gross part. SO glad I didn't have to do that. (By the way, there was a cow mooing really loud the entire time, it was kindof creepy, he was really close to us and after the elk died he went right up to the elk...)

Then we had to figure out a way to get it up into the truck, then it was sticking out pretty far. Man it was so crazy all that we had to do even after and we still have work. But it was a great new experience for me and I'm really happy and know that we were blessed to find this elk and to be able to figure everything out that we needed to. It had 7 point's! Yay for being 25! What a birthday gift, I got it opening day and everything. I'm also very grateful to Dan and Teri and Cierra. They helped SO much. Dan was great and he bugled for me and helped me to get this elk, I couldn't have done it without him. And I think Cierra is the coolest sister ever! She is such a great sport and so tough! Wish I could be more like her!

All of us and the elk

Me, Jer, the elk and his sweet truck!