Adventure – that word means so many different things to so many people. No matter who you are or where you’re from, we all daydream, plan, and save for the next one. We’re always looking into the evening sunset, ready to chase that next adventure! Just minutes after New Mexico had released their draw results, I was on the phone with friends, hoping and praying that one of them had drawn a license. I had killed two great bulls in New Mexico over the past few years, and I longed to go back and do it again. As my phone lit up with “Trina Smith,” I knew she had applied for elk, oryx, and bighorn sheep. As I answered the phone, I got a, “Hey, guess what! We are going elk hunting!” No way! I knew she had drawn a great elk tag, one that I had hunted in the past. Then she said, “You know much about oryx?” She had also drawn an OIL oryx tag on the White Sands.
A couple more phone calls to my buddies and we had our New Mexico or Bust hunting crew all lined up. Although we had only known for 30 minutes about drawing these licenses and truly had “zero” plans yet, I promise you, the adventure had already begun. Logistics, game wardens, biologists, there was plenty to put into place. The oryx hunt was only three days, Friday-Sunday, but her amazing elk tag started on Saturday. That was day two of the oryx hunt, and the elk hunt only lasted five days. We needed to be efficient!
The opening morning of oryx season, we waited at the gate to be released by WSMB employees. As the sun rose, we were off! Trina, Scott, and I hunted all day. We saw a good number of oryx, just not the one she wanted. As we drove off the base that night, I was disappointed that we would miss the elk opener the next morning.
After a sleepless night, we were at it again, knowing the roads and area a little better. I knew day two would be the day! Scott spotted a lone bull 1,200 yards out, and the chase was on. We picked a spot to cut in on him and could not have planned it any better. Trina made a great shot at 225 yards, and her 38" OIL bull oryx was in the bag. We checked out at the gate, and they told us that her bull would be one of the best killed all season.
After turning up five or six younger bulls and chasing some distant bugles that didn’t pan out, we decided to drive across the unit and check out a completely new area. I had the opportunity to hunt this unit before, and the elk just weren’t in the same areas as when I hunted. After parking and taking off down a trail, we spotted a cow 1,000 yards down below us. Checking the wind and deciding to go see if she had a friend with her, we heard a bugle down below her. Then another and another. We ended up on one of the biggest herds of elk I’ve ever seen in New Mexico. With elk pouring in and out of the broken timber, bulges and cow calls were coming from all directions and we needed to get something down before we blew this whole thing up. Trina took aim at a nice 6-point bull. Boom! Clean miss as I watched the bull trot off. With bulls still bugling below us and running out of daylight, we ran through the timber hoping to get one last chance. God just wanted Trina to have a bigger bull. As we popped out of the timber, a great New Mexico bruiser was pushing some cows up a draw. With a well-placed bullet, she had just doubled up on two New Mexico trophies in three days.
Scott went up and brought the truck around to a closer road while Trina and I caped and quartered the bull. It was quite possibly my favorite evening ever spent working and packing a bull. The big herd of elk gathered back up below us, and under the star-filled evening sky, we got the pleasure of listening to over a dozen bulls bugle and carry on. As we threw the last pack of meat in the truck, I smiled and thought, “How lucky are we? Two great trophies with two great friends. What an adventure!”
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