The Big Boys Kevin White South Cle Elum, Washington

It all started when Dad’s and my names were drawn for a special Big Bull permit in our county. We had put in on a partnership hunt, with the idea that we would have a better chance at getting drawn. I found out that our names were drawn over the Internet and gave the good news to my Dad.

We then planned our trip. We would stay in our cabin in the woods, hopefully for a week, and enjoy the great hunting and camping. We scouted out the area that we knew really well, hoping to see some big bulls.

I spotted what looked like a cow elk on a distant hill but wasn't sure if it was an elk or a deer. We moved in closer and realized that there was a whole herd of elk. We could see that there were some bulls in the bunch, but only one that we thought was a shooter. We got a good night’s rest and headed out early the next morning.

We reached the hill where we thought they'd be hiding, coming up on the backside of it, hoping to catch them in a clearing. My Dad spotted what we thought was the herd, but soon found out that this was only a slight part of it. We decided to walk around the hill to see if there were any others around. When we came up to the break of the hill, it looked like a wild stampede of horses. There were elk running everywhere!

A nice 6/6 came out and started bugling. I knelt down and with one shot dropped him in his tracks. Then I saw the monster. He was two-three hundred yards out. Right then my dad happened to look back at my bull--cruising down the hill dragging his back end. I started firing and hit him one more time and then he was out of sight. The big bull was up on an old logging road, but my dad couldn't pick him out from the rest of the herd because there were so many elk running everywhere.

I pointed out where it was. My Dad started shooting when he was only about 400 yards out but the elk didn't appear to be wounded. He went about 800 yards or so and my dad was still shooting. We both figured that he was long gone and that we would never see him again because we didn't think he had been hit. We went down to look for mine and found him dead. We gutted him out and hung the meat in a tree.

We went to look for any blood that would tell us whether or not my Dad had hit the big bull. We found specks here and there but figured he had just grazed him. We followed his tracks up into the woods, but there were tracks going everywhere, so it was almost impossible to track him. My Dad and I went to the last spot where we had seen blood. I went left and he went right, both of us following tracks. Within a minute or so my Dad called me over and I saw that he had found a bit of turned up fresh dirt and a little speck of blood. We took another step and there he was, a huge 6 by 6. What a monster!

We had walked by him 4 or 5 times before seeing him. Since there was no possible way of packing out the elk, we went back home and got our horses ready to pack him out the next morning. It was a struggle getting the horses loaded with the elk. One of our packhorses fell off the trail while packing the elk out! We got a European mount on the elk that I shot and a shoulder mount on the elk that my dad shot. Even though we didn't get to spend our week in the woods, we really enjoyed getting those two elk on the same day.

Kevin White