let the hunt begin


stevebeilgard

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well, we're all sighted in and ready for the morning. everyone was too tired after a long day of travel to stay up and post anything, but i'll be sure to get it done in the morning.

alarm is set for 4am.. breakfast at 4:30, then off to the field. we sighted in this afternoon and mark shot 5 you could cover with a tea cup. there is a big elk in serious trouble tomarrow. buckee and ben will be doing some posts. i'll shoot them a message about 6am.

well, i don't text but marks father rick does. anyway, well get some pics and stuff out 1st thing in the morning. it should be a real fun day. :yes:

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That is great, very nice bull. Way to go Mark, congratulations.

Guessing Steve probably did not even get a chance to see a little one and tell Mark the words we heard over and over "he's not big enough". lol. No doubt that one was big enough.:yes::yes::yes: Very nice. Once again, Thank you Steve for all you do, just plain awesome what you do.

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we could see good about 7:15, and picked up right away on some cows. we then headed down the valley to go to the good elk area when mark said he saw more cows. i stopped and looked and saw a real nice bull. they continued down towards a two track road and all we had to do was drive 1/4 mile to cut them off.

mark can only walk 100 yards or so, which is a limitation we had to deal with. i just drove past the herd of about 15 cows. i stopped the truck and got mark our for a prone shot. i loaded the rifle, put down the bi-pod, and told him to shoot the bull. then i grabbed my binocs to watch the shot. what a surprise. it was a small bull and i kicked him and said "don't shoot". luckily, he didn't as i was on time. i loaded mark up (he needs some help due to a recent surgery) and drove about 1/4 mile more, and we saw the big bull. once again i unload mark, load the rifle, and put down the bi pod. this time mark gets off a shot at about 180 yards. the bull is standing sideways, looking at us. good thing we're beautiful, because it's the last thing that elk saw. mark made a killing shot, leaving the dead bull standing. i told him to shoot again (i never conserve bullets with a standing animal) and he anchored it. it stood still for about 5 seconds, as mark loaded round 3. he didn't have to time to fire it and the bull went down.

i was actually able to drive up to the bull and load it whole with a 25' downhill drag. in the truck was mark, his father rick, cliff covington from catch a dream foundation, my head guide kaeden, and me. after about 100 photos, we gutted and loaded the elk. it was now almost 9am... waaaay too early to go home. so we drove around looking for more elk and deer, just to see. about noon we ate the lunches we had then headed over to thank the rancher. i have free access to a piece of elk ladened ground 18 miles wide by 22 miles long, roughly. 44,000 acres in total. we found 4 other hunters, all trespassers. dang. dan always keeps the ranch open first for guys like mark. he found one trespasser and ran him off, and i gave him the phone number of the other 3. he was going to call them.

it's now 6 pm. the elk is caped, ivory removed, and at the taxidermist. the meat is in the locker cooler and we have 3 days to see things like the devils tower (our 1st national monument), mt. rushmore, and the big horn battlefield. we'll see what they want to do first.

well, it was a short hunt but a good one. so far everyone is pretty tickled. there are bigger elk out there but it was just what this boy wanted.

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