“Shoot,” I whispered. “No don’t shoot!” I hissed. Then again, “Shoot,” and again “No don’t shoot!” I caught a glimpse of his massive body weaving in and out of the stunted scraggy pines straight across from us on the steep, lush slide we shared with him and his large harem of cow elk. He was a true trophy class east Kootenay herd bull elk. My first guided hunter, Patty, and I were hunkered down, hiding behind a large grown-over deadfall that was an awesome natural blind right in the midst of the feeding cow elk. The huge bull let rip an ear-shattering bugle; I swear the trees around us rattled when he followed with his bellowing, guttural chuckles and grunts. He would not stop. His ivory, forked, massive six-by-six rack of antlers were all that was visible of him as he strode past, offering not a single clean shot — even at 80 metres distance — in the thick mountain foliage.

At long last the dream bull came out above us on an open rocky outcrop. He bugled again, unleashing his rage at the now quiet interloper that dared to flirt with his mingling herd of 15 cow elk. I had not bugled since I first challenged the bull with my old brass coil bugle, followed by some chuckling with one of the new medium bull diaphragm calls I was trying out. This time Patty had a wide open, uphill shot at about 130 metres. The bull was bugling his challenge when I whispered, “Shoot,” a final time to my hunter as I scrutinized the hapless bull’s every movement with my binoculars. The bull took the full force of the .300 Winchester Magnum bullet right through his massive chest and started to whirl around as if in slow motion, spinning around up on that mountain outcrop of rock. “Shoot him again,” I urged Patty as she fumbled to reload the borrowed rifle of her southpaw husband, Ken. The mortally wounded bull had just completed his deathly slow 180-degree turn and was about to step back into the thick wall of foliage that rimmed the insanely steep slide, when the magnum roared once more. This bullet shot true; the hit of hot lead and copper slapping ribs came back to me as the bull dropped and came flipping two or three cartwheels down the lush slide, finally coming to rest in a thick stand of stunted spruce just a little uphill and across from our hiding spot. The cows chirped their alarm calls and scattered into the thick forest, leaving us to contemplate the events and savour our mid-afternoon success and the monster 346 4/8th B+C 6 by 6 bull elk lying across the slide from us.

We had been unsuccessful with our early morning bugling, challenges and futile attempts to pull the bull down off the mountain with that many cow in tow — it was not going to happen. Patty and I had to pull out all the stops and get right into his bedroom, among his cows, then challenge him with a medium bull bugle and a chuckle or two. Patty was already nursing a bad knee that we would not get many miles out of. She was a serious hunter and endured the pain of her knee, making the steep four-hour climb that brought us into the herd of cow elk and the aforementioned deadfall we hurriedly utilized for the natural blind described at the beginning of this tale. We had one chance. Fortunately I made the right call in judging the bull from afar and getting right into his face to intimidate him into making a mistake, thereby getting the shot for my first guided hunter, Patty.

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