I Shot the Public Land Bull Elk of a Lifetime…On a Day I Wasn’t Planning to Hunt

Finally, almost miraculously, the bull came to a stop on the edge of a sharp downslope. I half expected him to bugle as he stared down at the other bull, despite it being well past the peak of the rut. I centered the crosshairs in the crease behind his shoulder, concentrating everything on just holding fixed on that point as I clicked off the safety. Then just as I started to squeeze the trigger, I had a brief thought — “I’m so glad I went elk hunting today.”

I’ve wanted a big bull elk for almost my entire life. Ever since I saw my first elk mount hanging in a local restaurant when I was a little kid, the idea of getting one of my own had bordered on obsession. When I moved to Montana in my late 20s, I saw the possibility of that dream becoming a reality and set my sights on getting a big bull, which immediately proved to be much harder than I thought.

Elk were a lot tougher to hunt than the whitetails I was used to. The animals have different habits and live at higher elevations and in more rugged terrain, and it took me some time to adjust and to learn how to find them. In addition, while Montana’s public lands are wild and beautiful, they’re also popular. The first year I went elk hunting, I found six or eight trucks parked at every trailhead I’d scouted during the preseason, and most of the elk herds I’d seen in the area had quickly been driven to parts unknown by other hunters.

Still, I stayed determined and kept working at it, going further and higher and doing my best to find those out-of-the-way areas where the animals were less pressured. Soon enough, I started getting into elk.

Over the years, I managed to get a few raghorn bulls and a couple cows in my sights, but still never managed to bring home the big bull I’d been dreaming about. Though I admittedly had gotten a couple of opportunities at a big one, as soon as I saw the animal’s antlers, my almost paralyzing bull fever would make my bullets go low or my arrows fly high.

It just seemed like I was just destined to go the rest of my elk hunting career filling my tag with something less than I wanted or even not filling it at all.

Through it all, I never lost hope. Despite my frustrations, I kept on hunting with big bull ambitions. I practiced shooting at longer distances, scouted more and walked further, and even started letting opportunities on smaller bulls and cows go by so I could hang onto my tag until the twilight of the season. I just knew that if I kept going up into the mountains and putting the miles on, one of these days it was bound to work out.

At the start of the 2025 season, I planned to go after a big bull elk harder than I ever had before. I made sure I was ahead at work and didn’t take any new guide trips so I could completely clear the first week of rifle season for elk hunting. I sighted in my rifle at long range, hit the gym to make sure I was in elk shape, and felt completely prepared and ready to take on opening day.

During the first three days of the season, I hunted my ass off. I woke up well before daylight and climbed into terrain where it seemed like a mountain goat might have trouble. I stayed up there, glassing from ridgetops and hiking and hunting my way through timberlines and canyons until the last few seconds of shooting light had faded to black. Then I’d come home and scrape together some semblance of a meal before crawling into bed so I could wake up early to do it again.

By the fourth day of the season, I was already exhausted and had seen very few elk. Still, I was determined and managed to climb my way into another mountain range. That evening, I spotted a herd of elk across the drainage that had a couple of good bulls in it. Throwing on my pack, I ran down the side of the mountain and across the brush-choked basin below and then scrambled up the next ridge. I got to the top and quickly found the herd feeding along the edge of the timber, but by the time I got within shooting range of the bulls, I had run out of light.

Disheartened and frustrated, I worked my way back down to the truck in the dark and drove home. As I pulled my boots off my blistered feet, I pulled out my phone and glanced at the next morning’s weather and saw that the wind was going to be outlandish. By daylight, the forecast called for steady 35 to 45 mph winds blowing down from the north, with gusts of up to 65 mph. “No elk is going to be out in that,” I thought.

So, feeling the ache in my muscles and with every part of my body and brain exhausted, I decided to take the day off. Resigned and comforted by the fact that I would still have three days to hunt if I didn’t go tomorrow, I lay down in bed and closed my eyes, happy with the thought of sleeping in.

My eyes opened at 4:15 am the next morning. Now, I’m not entirely sure if this was because my body was just used to waking up early at that point, or if my black lab puppy, Sackett, had too much water before bed and had whined just a little louder from his crate. Whatever the reason was, I was awake, and after letting the dog out, I decided that perhaps I wasn’t all that sore and maybe the wind didn’t seem all that bad.

“You can’t get a bull from the couch,” I told myself. So I grabbed my gear and threw it in the truck. Still determined, I went out to face the elk woods once again.

The wind was as bad as predicted, and after going a few miles down a logging road in 4WD, I decided to hunt a spot I hadn’t been to in a couple of years. It meant a short but nearly vertical walk up a steep avalanche chute in the dark to get to a flat bowl of trees, grass, and rimrock below the ridgeline, which was both sheltered from the wind and only a short distance from where I’d seen elk the previous night. I figured that it was the closest sanctuary the herd would have from the gale and that if I got up there early enough, I just might get lucky.

A few minutes before shooting light, I knew I had made the right decision as I watched a group of cows squirt over the top of the ridge and drop down into the bowl. I was sitting on a point of rocks that overlooked the entire area and was just getting my breath back from the hard climb, when I spotted a bull. It was a big, tall 6-point that was following the path of the cows, and I immediately started crawling across the rocks towards it in hopes that my moment had come.

The bull stopped on a small knoll at 350 yards, and I slid my rifle forward, feeling the familiar shakes of excitement and trepidation that came whenever I had a big bull elk in my sights. I got lined up on him and was getting ready for the shot when the bull suddenly glanced behind him and then took off down the hill at a sprint.

I cursed, and for a moment, it felt like my bad luck was never going to end, until I saw an absolute dinosaur of a bull come tearing out of the trees as it chased the other elk. Quickly, I switched targets, and as the crosshairs settled on the bigger bull’s chest and I started to squeeze the trigger, I just remembered to breathe.

It just didn’t seem real when I walked up to the big old 7×8 bull and saw the three drop tines jutting down from his antlers. I had never even seen a bull elk like this, let alone had the opportunity to take a shot at one. The non-typical rack on the bull was so much more than I had ever dreamed of, and the only thing I could think of was just how damned beautiful he was. Then, as I held his antlers in my hands, I went back over everything.

I thought of how all those long days and hard climbs, the late nights, missed shots, and close calls had led me here to this moment. I thought of the exhaustion and the aching legs, the twisted ankles, the shooting pains in my back, and how all of it had been worth it.

As I started to quarter out the bull and thought about how the hell I was going to get such a rich bounty down to my truck, I looked at the mountains rising all around me and was struck by one final thought. Though it may be in another spot, in another mountain range, and maybe even in another state, whenever elk season comes back around—I’ll be right back here again.