that is a very nice elk, what gun and bullet did you use and at what yardage was it shot at.

CP, congrats on your bull! Good job buddy.

His body looks a bit small

Nice bull thanks for sharing.

CP... congrat's! No picture (just box) on my puter with Navigator and Explorer... what's up?

I was hunting alone on some heavily hunted USFS ground because my son had to return to work for a few days. In an effort to beat the horse hunters to the top of a ridge, I started at the trailhead with my headlamp three hrs. before shooting light. However, my initial plan was foiled when some hunters rode up on me while it was still 0 dark thirty. As the �Calvary� continued to charge up the trail, my only hope was that it was so damn early that all these buckaroos had ridden through any elk that may have been bedded down below. So, I went up the trial until I found where a herd had crossed the trail going towards the bottom the previous night, and began to follow the tracks back down the mountain. After I got about two hundred yards off the trail, I kegged-up in some thick brush out of the wind. In a hour or so when the lights came on, I was disappointed to find that the cover looked a hell of a lot more like the fir jungles of North Idaho than the country in southwest Montana that I had come to hunt. Nevertheless, it was the country that I was dealt by the circumstances and still-hunting was the only way that I felt it could be hunted. Thirty minutes into my hunt, I felt his presence and caught a glimpse of his tines moving through the brush. He was sneaking along (just like a Whitetail), looking towards the horse trail. I had a good shooting lane and he gave me the front half of his body before he realized that there was danger beyond the horse trail. My shot of 50 yards or so turned him upside down.

I was using my .300 Win. mag. with a 24� PAC-NOR barrel on a stainless Classic action set in a McMillan featherweight stock.. The rifle is scoped with a 3x9 A-line Swarovski and held in place with Burris Signature rings. The round was a 180 gr. Federal Premium with a NP bullet. Oh yes, my GPS told me that I was 275 yards off of the horse trail, 1.3 miles from my rig at the trail head and 361 miles from home in North Idaho.

Using gravity, a bunch of nylon rope and his cape for my butchering table, I burned the rest of day breaking him up and boning him out. I cut some good-sized green Doug-fir limbs with my Wyoming saw and laid them over some large rocks on a north slope. I packed snow in between the latticework that I had built with the limbs and then place the meat and unboned quarters on it. I then covered the meat and quarters with my space blanket and in turn with some more green Doug-fir limbs. I found a scraggy 5� juniper, cut it down, and place it upright in the middle of my cache. I dressed the juniper up with my spare hat (on late season hunts, I carry both hiking and standing gear with me) and a light jacket to keep the dogs off of him. I then got back to the trailhead and called my son in Bozeman. I reminded him of the college tuition bills that I had paid and that I needed some lungs and legs on a mountain near Gardiner in the morning.

The next morning I went up the mountain with my Dana mountaineering pack (narrow and long) and my son pushed a large commercial wheelbarrow up the horse trail. We packed the meat, quarters, cape and head to the horse trail (my son did the packing, I did the supervising). We put one quarter in my Dana pack, squeezed a meat sack into in my son�s Badlands hunting pack, which we put on our backs. We then bundled all of the rest of this elk up in my space blanket in the wheelbarrow. We lashed the whole Marry Ann down with rope and spongy cords. It looked like we were pushing a one-wheeled covered wagon down the trail. It was chore for my son to keep the wheelbarrow right side up, but the trail was on an old haul road and he is one strong thirty-one year old. By 1 PM we had everything in the rig and were eating hamburgers at the Old Saloon in Emigrant.

Brad, I had every intention to stop by your store, but I was told that you were closed for the winter. ImageStation is apparently having some technical difficulties, and I�ll try to post another picture later. However, I did not take a picture that does this guy justice. He is good enough for me that I am going to have him mounted. He is down at Berger�s should you want to take a look at him. CP.