The biggest bull I've ever taken scored 368 points. The place I was hunting was kind of thick. So finding and trying to pattern a particular bull was somewhat difficult due to the terrain. However, my son, Paul, and I went into this area the weekend before elk season opened. We had planned to deer hunt, but we woke up one morning to the sound of an elk bugling. So, instead of deer hunting that day, we decided we’d try to sneak up on this elk and see what he looked like. We walked from camp to the top of a ridge and spotted a big bull there raking his antlers against a tree. The bull was a 6x7 - a really-nice bull. He also had a few cows with him. When he came off the ridge, he went down into a meadow close to where we camped when we came up here for elk season.
On the first morning of elk season, I went to where we had spotted the bull, and we more or less played cat and mouse until about 2:00 pm. Then a big storm blew in, the skies opened up with rain and hail, and I headed back to camp. Later in the evening when the rain had stopped, I went to another spot and started calling. I had a bull answer me, and he began coming to me. I could see that he was a very-nice bull. But by the time he reached me, I didn’t have enough light to shoot.
The next morning I went back to where I had seen the bull and noticed a trail that went up the ridge. As I walked up the trail, suddenly, I heard a bull bugle in front of me. It sounded like the bull was about a couple hundred yards from me. Immediately, I took a stand about 15-yards off the trail and decided not to call. Instead I waited to see what would happen. In a few minutes, I saw some cow elk coming down the trail and behind them was the big bull I’d seen earlier. But instead of walking the trail that the cows had come down, he was walking on the other side of the trail from me. When he was at 27 yards, I took the shot and hit him right at center mass. The bull took off running. Immediately after the shot, I started trailing him. He only went about 80 yards before he piled-up. Luckily, the bull fell close to a logging road. So, I was able to get him out of the woods without too much trouble.
