4 minute read
Todd Nelson Feature
A MEMORABLE HUNT
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When I went on my first elk hunt 25 years ago I was warned that I may get hooked, and I did. On my twentieth elk hunt I finally harvested my first bull after getting five cows.
This was the tenth time that I hunted the same over-the counter unit in Colorado, although it wasn’t our original destination. I was hunting with my long time hunting partner Mike Holland and his son Bo, and we decided to try a new hunting unit forty miles to the south. After 2 1/2 days of frustrating hunting we decided to pack up camp and go to our old unit that we knew quite well.
The first evening there I heard the first of many bugles from this bull in an area that we call Nick’s tank, named after MSAA member Nick Pieske, whom I had hunted with several times there. The area is very difficult to hunt because of thick undergrowth with tangled deadfalls everywhere. A ten yard or more shot was impossible most of the time, so my preferred hunting method was to sit where two or more trails crossed where I could get more than a ten yard shot and try to call the elk to me.
On the morning of September 10th, our last day to hunt, I was once again by Nick’s tank hunting the same area and bull that I had spent most of the last five days hunting. This morning the herd had moved to the other side of the ridge and they were very vocal, lots of cows chirping and the bull was bugling frequently, but I could not call them out of the thick cover that they were in. The bull was staying in the same area about two hundred yards to the south of me. After two hours of taunting with his bugles, I decided that I had to go after him in the thick cover. Every ten minutes or so he would bugle and I was getting closer and closer. Finally, I saw a 25 foot tall tree waving about 30 yards from me. I snuck around a big bushy tree until I saw the bull raking his big antlers on the tree broadside to me, but there was no way to get a shot. So I circled around the backside of him so that I could
sneak in closer. I got up and straddled two deadfalls which elevated me about three feet and gave me a better opportunity for a shot. I watched him rake the tree and bugle for several seconds before he turned broadside and gave me a thirty-yard shot through a small opening in the brush. The shot hit its mark and he actually angled towards me and stopped ten yards away – hidden behind the big bushy tree that I had just used to conceal my approach to him. He stayed there a couple of minutes, coughing and gurgling, an indication that my arrow had found his lungs. He then moved around the tree and laid down in sight of me but behind branches, preventing another shot. Eventually he got back up and came around the tree and turned to look at me five yards away, at which time I shot him in the lungs again. As he stumbled away from me I took one more shot which ricocheted off of his laid back antler beam and ended up in his huge vitals also. I watched him expire twenty-five yards away making for a very easy tracking job. With the temperature heading into the eighties I hurried back to camp which was a twenty minute ATV ride, hoping to find Mike and Bo there. Mike and I loaded up the backpacks, left a note for Bo and made our way back to start the daunting process of getting the meat and cape of the 900 pound bull off the mountain before it spoiled. Bo eventually found us and two trips apiece with heavy loads in our packs we had meat, antlers and cape back to the ATV’s three hours after I shot him. As soon as we got back to camp we loaded everything in the pickup and I headed down the mountain to the meat locker in Paonia, CO where the meat was cooled and processed for the trip home the next day. This extremely exciting and fun elk hunt happened three weeks after I was honored to be inducted into the Minnesota Archery Hall of Fame. It is safe to say that 2021 was a very memorable year for me! We’re looking for more feature stories! If you have an idea, email arrow.msaa@mnarchery.org!
