Blessed

Arizona Elk Hunting Story

Like a lot of you, I have been building points for the last 20+ years in different states. Of course, I have been using Huntin' Fool to do this work for me from day one. Over this time, my view of hunting has changed. Sure, I love to harvest a big animal if at all possible. With that said, I now find more joy in those I am hunting with and just being in the great outdoors as opposed to that all-consuming desire for "the big one."

Through my business dealings, I ran into a good man by the name of Kevin Call in Flagstaff, Arizona. After a while, our conversations flowed into hunting. To my surprise, he told me he also owned an outfitting business called High Point Outfitters. I mentioned I had built up a number of Arizona points, but I needed the right guy to hunt with. He told me from what he knew of me, he had that guy. After calling Huntin' Fool and getting their approval on High Point, I applied and drew the archery hunt. My guide's name was Anthony, and as soon as he found out I drew, as in months before the hunt, he called me. He was like a kid in a candy store, overflowing with excitement. It was addictive. I increased my shooting, ordered a few more items, and commenced to get ready. Then, unexpectedly, my lifelong hunting partner, my dad, passed. That shook things up for the summer. But in His way, the Lord blessed me to remember all the great adventures we had in our time together, which helped ease the blow.

Towards the end of July, I was able to refocus again. Before I knew it, I was standing in camp in Northern Arizona with Anthony and his good buddy, Ben, who volunteered to help out. Soon, I realized that not only did I have one great guy, but two for the price of one. They had been scouting for some time before I arrived and had a couple of good bulls spotted.

Opening morning dawned hot and dry for the time of year, and we dove into hunting. With more people rolling into the area, combined with the hot weather, the first two days turned out fairly quiet. We saw bulls that were getting pushed, and nothing really got close to coming together. On top of that, the elk were quiet.

Day three was Sunday, and I don't hunt on Sundays. As we were sitting in camp trying to find a church to attend, a rig pulled up and three tired souls got out – two buddies and one guy’s wife who was tagging along. They said they had shot a bull on top of a nearby mountain the evening before. They had gotten part of it out but were wondering if we could help them with the rest as it was still a five-mile roundtrip with plenty of vertical. After summing up what the Savior would have done, we decided to go help. Considering all three of us could pack, I think we were an answer to their prayers.

They gave us a waypoint along the way where they had seen a nice bull the day before, so on Monday, we headed back up the mountain. The only problem with this day was that the wind was gusting to 40 mph. We hunted hard, covered the mountain, and chased two bulls most of the day but to no avail. The wind had everything jumpy.

Tuesday arose with the same wind, so we decided to stay low and go back to plan A. Within the first 30 minutes, we glassed up a nice bull bedded on a finger ridge in the timber. He was with 10 cows. In 45 minutes, we closed the gap to 100 yards and set up a bugle plan to try and bring him by me. Anthony is a good caller, and that bull just casually looked over and expressed no desire to leave his cows. I could only get to 80 yards and was pinned down from there. The bull was looking right in my direction, lazily chewing his cud, so I lay there for two hours, waiting for him to make a mistake. He finally got up, turned away from me, and bedded right back down.

Now in the past, I haven't prayed for success in hunting, but I thought, you are supposed to pray in all things, so I went ahead and asked the Lord if he wouldn't mind moving those cows so I could close the gap a little more. I backed out a few yards, crawled over to Anthony, and he whispered, "Did you just see all the cows get up and move to the next draw over?" I smiled and realized I had just started a new habit. I was able to keep the one cow and the bull that were still there behind a couple trees and put an arrow in him bedded at 61 yards. Candidly, I hit him a few inches right of where I wanted to, which I was afraid was going to bring more gut than vitals. After an hour and a half sit, we started tracking him and confirmed more light gut blood than we wanted. It was noon, and we made the hard decision to let him sit until the morning.

At 7:00 a.m. the next morning, we spread out, fired up our onX, and started gridding the mountain. By 6:00 p.m., we had 27 miles between the three of us and nothing to show for it. I had been resorting to my new habit throughout the day, and all I could hear was, "Go down." I mentioned this to Anthony and Ben, and Anthony said, "Maybe that means go down to water. Sometimes gut shot animals seek out water." About that time, a car pulled by on an old forest road. Anthony ran over to it and asked the nice older couple if they knew where any water may be that was not obvious. They replied that they had lived up in these woods for 40 years and we might want to try a spot down lower that had some hidden water. We jumped in our rig and drove over. I jogged out into this clearing and reached the top of the berm just as the sun was about to set. Lying next to the water two and a half miles from where I had shot him was my bull. Blessed. After some celebrations on our part, we got down to processing the big bull. Amazingly, 30 hours after he was stuck, the meat was still good.

I made two new lifelong friends on this hunt. They were great guys who were knowledgeable, positive, and very hardworking. Good people amidst the great outdoors. What more could you want? Well, maybe a little help from the guy upstairs.