MuleyMadness Hunting Forums

Here is a picture of my La Sal Mtns bull I killed him right at dark so the pictures are all taken at night. I will post more pics and the story later. I'm at work now..

Brian

AWESOME! CONGRATS on gettin' the job done!

Hey, did it beat your buddy's from last year? (I remember you joking about beating his bull)

Congrats on one fine looking animal. Hope your bull beat your buddies from last year.

Gongrats on a nice bull!!!

Awesome job! Look forward to the rest of the story.

Great job cant wait to hear the story and nice bull for sure

Here's the story.

I was scheduled to leave for my hunt on Sunday the 21st. On Saturday afternoon I got some very bad news from my wife saying she had just miscarried our 3rd child. So my departure was delayed for a couple days. Once I was certain she was ok. My wife is great and I feel really guilty for leaving her at such an emotionally hard time. So the night before the opener my dad and I were in elk like crazy, we got video of a couple bulls. One being a nice 5x6 that would score 320-330. We must have heard 20 different bulls bugling that night. Most of them were on a Cwmu.
Day 1 I decided to hunt this area opening morning, but the bulls all moved up higher on the Cwmu. We did call in to rag horn bulls, got some neat video for like 30 min. They would not leave us alone. We spent the whole day in that general area never seeing another bull that was on publice land. There were some really big bulls on the private ground so it was still fun to watch them until dark.
Day 2 we tried a new area and it was a bust, we hiked our butts off all day and never seen an elk. We heard some but they quit talking at 7:30am and were quiet until 10 minutes before dark. I did see a nice buck that my buddy went after but never caught up to him. And we also jumped some elk in some thick pines but never seen them.

The morning of the day 3 was very exciting. We were in elk like crazy until about 10:30am. I got within 60-70 yards from 2 bulls fighting and could never see them because it was so thick. The herd bull kicked the smaller bull's butt and then moved his harem to the next canyon. We did see a really nice bull 340-350 through the spotting scope in some really nasty country very steep. I decided that this area would be better in the morning so I chose to head to the area I hunted the first day. We stopped in at camp and ate some lunch. My buddy Cory had to leave us to coach little league football. 20 minutes after he left we had a bear run by our camp, it was a good sized black bear with a blond strip on his back. He headed out for the evening hunt, while hiking in we jumped a herd of elk with a little 5x5 bull that I passed on. We sat and waited for the bulls to come off of the Cwmu until almost dark only seeing the same 5 point again. We were frustrated because at least 5 bulls were really close to coming across the fence but we were almost out of light so we decided to head back to the rhinos. we hadn't went 200 yds when we heard a really deep big sounding bugle about 300 yards past the fence on public land. So me and my buddy Aaron charged after it. We would bugle the bull would respond, we would run at him for a ways and do the same thing again. Finally we were in shooting range and saw the bull. I took one look as he was bugleing looking straight at us and I took a few steps to rest against a quakie, he turned broadside and I set a 295gr powerbelt his way. I heard a loud thud. When the smoke cleared i could see he was hurting, his cows were running all around him . He went 10 yards and expired. When we got to him I was shocked and disapointed as he was alot smaller than I thought he was. But the more I think about it the better I feel because It might have been my only chance with the conditions the way they were. It took us till 1 am to get the head and backstraps out. McCoy made the hike in the dark 2 times and never complained once. The rest we got the next morning. The best part of the hunt was having my family and friends (Dad, Dad in Law, my 5 year old son McCoy, Cory, Chad and Aaron.) with me on the hunt.
Before the hunt I told my son that we would kill a BIg bull like the ones in Cabelas. Well the next morning I told him I was sorry that I didn't get a big one like in cabelas. His response was "Dad its ok, if you got a bigger one it would have been heavier, and taken longer to pack out and we wouldn't have got Any sleep".

And no It is not even close to being as big as Aarons bull he got last year, but it was ever bit as fun. I saw 3 bears total while down there, they are everywhere.

Scenery pics.

This place is amazing this time of year......

very ,very cool!! sounds like a fun hunt. thats great you were able to spend it with family! congrats and thanks for sharing ! he's still a heck of a nice bull!!!:thumb

Great job and a very nice bull!!