Saw This Guy Yesterday at about 50'

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Flatbush Harry

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Just another fun day here in CO...in Estes Park, just a bit away from Rocky Mountain National Park. Will fourth rifle season get here already!

Cheers,

Harry

PS-Easterners would call this a 14-point bull...we call them 7-bys.

FH
 
Actually, here in the east (PA) I would call that a 7 by 7. Sooo.....;)
Anyway ,nice bull.
 
Looks more like a 6 x 6, but it could be the camera angle. I thought Rocky Mountain National was a protected area (no hunting). If you can hunt there let us know, $579 is not bad for a bull elk lics.

Jim
 
You are correct, hunting in any National Park is prohibited and happily so. If this guy wanders into a game management unit outside of Estes Park he's gonna be freezer fare for someone.

We had a total elk herd of more than 300,000 in 2002 and the DOW is working hard to manage the herd given that there are few natural predators here since Wolf and Bear were basically eliminated from the state in the early 1900s. CO has one of the best elk populations in North America.

Please come to hunt here...your non-resident license will help us fund and manager our wildlife.

Cheers,

FH
 
The elk festival was fun as always...gets you pumped for the season.

I'm going to the range this afternoon to practice field positions.

FH
 
Wow, $579 for an elk license--you can buy 100#s of steak for that. Think I will stay in NC and shoot 3/4 white tails for free. My son in Anchorage said the critters walk the streets almost at will. When in Montana he enjoyed moose quite a bit.
 
They are already (back-reintroduced) in NC. I was watching them and listening to them bugle last week. You can't hunt them, as they're in GSMNP (Catalooche Valley specifically) and there's no season, but they're there.

Tennessee has a bit bigger population (~400) and issued four or five tags this year. It's not inconceivable that NC will have limited hunts in the future.
 
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Jim243,

I think you're right...I was looking at thumbnails and may have picked the wrong pic. Here's the photo of Mr. Big. He's a real trophy...and his winning a harem of 28 (and three gold-butt yearlings) is no surprise. He was a heckuva bugler!

Cheers,

Harry
 
I love Estes Park. I had a cousin that lived up there for years. One of the most beautiful places I have ever been.
 
They are already (back-reintroduced) in NC. I was watching them and listening to them bugle last week. You can't hunt them, as they're in GSMNP (Catalooche Valley specifically) and there's no season, but they're there.

Tennessee has a bit bigger population (~400) and issued four or five tags this year. It's not inconceivable that NC will have limited hunts in the future.
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Wait wait wait, stop the thread!

They've reintroduced Elk here? Do you have a link or any info about it? Even if it meant no hunting, I'd love to just go and at least observe.
 
I gave up hunting around 15 yrs ago for a few personal reasons. At times when I see a bull like this I have to start rethinking my reasons. I am not way way out in the stick of Alabama but close enough, few yrs ago wife was complaining about rabbits eating her flowers. Told her no not rabbit, one morning about day break I called the wife to look out the back door. Less than 25 feet was a herd of around 15 deer and a couple nice racks to boot. Again things like that make me start to reconsider my reasoning to quit hunting. Wish I was there if nothing else just to dig out the camera.
 
RMNP is spectacular, even without an elk sighting. Thanks for sharing the pics.
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It certainly is, last time there, we spent an hour just watching the buffalo.

Jim
 
Isn't that about as challenging as shooting a cow or a horse??
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I take it you've never killed an elk.

Try hiking and scouting day after day on ridges as steep as a barn roof at 11,000 above sea level, with temperatures running down to 10 to 15 degrees farenheit in the early mornings, drizzling snow and sleet and then killing a 600-lb critter, skinning and quartering it, and packing all that meat, bone, hide and antlers up a steep scree slope out of a 500-foot deep canyon.

Successful elk hunting is some of the hardest physical work the average man will ever do.
 
They are a PIA in Yellowstone. The bulls and their cows are too used to people and that can be dangerous. Elk meat is about as good as meat gets but I'd just as soon get mine where the animals are commercially grown and slaughtered, cut up, frozen and arrive by FEDEX. Less expensive that going on the hunt today.
 
Hunting them at 9500 feet is the easy part.

Real work starts when you shoot one.
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Amen!

Particularly if your elk isn't DRT, but has to be tracked a half mile or so and packed out from wherever he wound up.

I have tracked unwounded elk in the Rockies, and they have a nasty habit, if they know they're being tracked, of heading cross-slope. When you find yourself walking across an icy slope, one foot six inches higher than the other, and a few hundred feet to slide if you lose your footing, that's elk hunting!

Then making a kill and packing the carcass back that same route -- and it takes several trips -- is one of the worst workouts you can get.
 
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