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2006 New Mexico Elk Hunt By: Larry Stephenson It was the last day of our five-day elk hunt in southwest New Mexico for my buddy Matt and myself. Matt had taken his first bull ever, a 6X6 on the second day when our guide called the bull in from about 1200 yards away with a cow call. On the morning of the last day we rode the horses to the top of the ridge above camp so we could glass across the canyon for elk. We continued to glass when our guide moved around the corner to view |
| farther up the canyon. He was gone for about an hour when we saw him heading back our way, giving us the sign that he saw something. Upon meeting up with him he said that there was a big bull up and across the canyon. I shed my pack and any excess weight and off we went. Now you have to realize that I am a 53-year-old desk jockey, and our guide is a 27-year-old lean, mean, fighting machine (U.S. Army Reserves); do you get where I’m going with this one. If my memory is correct, it took about 3 hours of walking, crawling, and climbing to get to where we needed to be to see the bull. When we arrived we glassed for about 30 minutes and couldn’t find the bull… |
| bummer. After discussing if we should climb over the top of another mountain to look for the bull, I made the executive decision to stay put and glass. As we continued to glass I was seeing black bears all over the hillside, but no elk. Another half-hour went by and low and behold, a bull elk bedded in the brush…how could we have missed it! I ranged the bull at 360 yards and determined that we had no chance at closing the distance, so we sat down to wait the bull out. He finally got up after about an hour and a half wait with my rifle propped up on my shooting sticks. As I got ready to fire, I |
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| made calculations for the 30 mile per hour left to right wind, the bull moved right to left, I tend to pull to the right…….Just as you thought, I hit the bull too far back, but recalculated and dropped him with the next shot. High fives around, but then as we looked at the area we could count as many as four black bears surrounding the kill. I then decided to fire a few warning shots at the bears to scare them off, they still came back that night and ate my back-straps. This was the hardest but one of the most enjoyable stalks of my hunting life, and I would like to thank my guide for making this hunt what it was. |