WORLD RECORD!
Number One all time Bull with a BOW!
The phone rang and my hunting buddy, Rex, is all excited . His latest plan for our next hunt would be to apply for an Arizona elk tag. My response to his plan was, "is there elk in Arizona?" His reply was "some of the biggest bulls in the world are taken in Arizona." My decision of course (after talking it over with my supportive and understanding wife) was " let's go hunt Arizona elk."
Rex contacted Pete Davis of Southwest Outdoors in Arizona to be our outfitter. Pete and Rex stayed in contact with each other for several years as Pete managed the application process for us. In the fall of 2003, while enroute to Manitoba, Canada for a whitetail hunt, I received a phone call from my wife, Tamra, with the devastating news that my good friend and hunting partner (Rex) had suddenly passed away. One of his goals before he died was to kill a six point bull, unfortunately he was never able to accomplish this. I miss him greatly.
In the middle of July of 2004, while at a farm machinery show in Lansing, Michigan, my cell phone rang. I answered a call from Arizona congratulating me on drawing an archery elk tag for the 2004 season. This hunt is in memory of my good friend, Rex.
The day was September 27th, 2004 and the alarm was set for 3:30 am, but it never went off as I had turned it off beforehand, watching the minutes go by most of the night. My Southwest Outdoors guide, Scott South and I decided to leave at 4:00am. The morning was clear, the moon and stars were out, with temperatures a little warmer than we would have liked, but Scott and I were in for an incredible day of elk hunting. The night before Scott had been trying to locate some bulls by bugling but things were pretty quite.
With our gear loaded in the truck and while on our way to our hunting location, a rag horn crosses the road in front of us, hopefully this is a good sign. Upon arriving it is still only 4:45 am as Scott bugles, no response. A few minutes later he tries again and we a response about a half mile away. A few moments later we get a second response, a different bull, so now we have two bulls bugling. After bugling some more below us we hear yet a third bull bugle, or we think it is a bugle, as it sounds terrible. As it is getting closer to daylight, we get our gear ready to approach the bugling bulls. We can hear the bull with the odd sounding bugle below us thrashing his horns on a tree. Scott bugles and the bull answers us back but continues to thrash the tree. As daylight nears we decide to work closer towards this heated up bull. As we circle to get the wind in our favor, another bull begins to bugle behind us, he came out of nowhere screaming at the bull we are moving towards. Initially, we would like to get in between these two bulls and cow call but we just do not have enough time as the second bull advances quickly. Approaching our bull, he continues to shred the same tree, so Scott and I set up and cow call. The bull screams back to our calls but seems intent on battle with the helpless pine tree. Rounding a bush, Scott stops and says to me " there he is, he is about sixty yards away still tearing up the tree." Scott grabs his optics to get a good look at the bull. He slowly lowers his optics and with a ghost like look on his face says " don't look at the horns, make your move, stay behind these trees and stalk in on him." The wind is a perfect cross wind and these two bulls are preoccupied with each other.
In front of me there is very little cover and I need to move in forty yards. Near the bull are some bigger pines and since this bull is broadside to me I lined up a large pine that I keep between myself and the bulls eye and start to move in. In a short time I am thirty yards from this bull, my heart pounding yet still concentrating on his every move. All of a sudden he stops thrashing the tree and moves twenty yards to my left as the other bull has now proceeded close enough for them to see one another. As they size each other up, bull number 2 takes one good look and my bull and immediately stops screaming and vacates the area with haste. My bull then decides to his favorite tree, which puts me right back on track for my stalk. Ten more yard and I will be in position for a twenty yard broadside shot. Moving towards my last bit of cover I make the last ten yards undetected. The only obstacles between the bull and myself are two ten inch thick pine trees directly in front of me. They have concealed me well as I draw my seventy two pound recurve bow and take the instinctive shot. Upon impact the giant bull whirls directly towards me and passes me at six yards as I simultaneously take out an arrow from my quiver and begin to nock it for a second shot. The bull, seeing my movement, turns left and runs away from me ( I asses that it is a fatal hit) about eighty yards where he heads into the pines at a slow walk. After the bull moves out of sight I sit down, take several deep breaths and pray for a quick recovery. My guide Scott, after watching everything take place, walks up to me and exclaims " What a bull!." As we stand there talking Scott wonders what the challenging bull looks like as he could only see his legs from his viewpoint. Knowing that my bull proceeded west we began moving south towards bull number two who is still bugling. Moving towards bull number two, we jumped another elk in the brush hearing it break through dead brush and run a short distance. Wondering now if our bull has circled and this is possibly him, Scott decides to give him some time, although I was itching to track him. Driving back to town, Scott asks me If I know that this bull is a huge non typical? I said, "no, you told me not to look at the horns." Scott exclaimed " well he is non typical and he is a TOAD!" Scott then looks right at me and said with confidence "we are going to tape that bull."
After breakfast we drove back to our spot and proceed to track the bull. While I stay on the tracks, Scott makes a big half circle looking for further clues. After a ten minute tracking job I hear Scott shout " he's down! He's over here!." I could hardly believe my ears as I run the two hundred yards to Scotts side. Scott, standing back, allows me to be the first to approach the bull and I greatly respect him as a guide for this, because you know he is very excited too. When I reach the bull, I can hardly believe my eyes as I take in the magnitude of this bull. Here lays the largest elk I have ever seen in my life! Scott knew that this was the elk we had inadvertently jumped before heading to breakfast, but he only traveled forty yards from that point.
After all the high fives, hooping and hollering, taking pictures, we began the process of loading the elk into the truck. A couple of my hunting buddies back home used to chide me on my selection of arrows that I hunt with. I have one particular arrow that I call my favorite, it has fletches missing, but always flies true for me. It now can lay claim to making the fatal shot. We had to take the hind quarters off in order to get this bull to fit in the back of the truck, which meant, as Scott grunted and pulled on the horns up front, I was the forklift that heaved the remainder up.
The enormity of this bull began to sink in when Scott called his boss, Pete, on the cell phone and said " I think he will score over four hundred!" On the way back to town, trucks were turning around and following us. Once we had arrived in town, it was not long before people crowded around to see this magnificent animal. A couple of fellas had asked for permission to measure him, jumping up into the back of the truck and one pulled out a tape and pad and later handed me the paper with the measurements. Within twenty minutes of leaving town, we heard that this information was traveling red hot all over the internet. Back at Southwest Outdoors headquarters where I was now lodging for a few days, it was a constant procession of hunters coming through to admire and see this great bull. I guess good news does travel fast!
Before I left on this hunt, my friends Rex's widow told me to go shoot a big one for Rex. This bull gross scored 464 3/8 SCI, the new world record. Aged at 10 to 12 years old, he has passed on genes so that many more hunter can enjoy elk hunting in the beautiful state of Arizona. I feel very blessed to have had this opportunity to be a part of such an extraordinary experience.
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