Time Well Spent April 23, 2024

It’s the sort of invitation that fills even an experienced hunter with feverish anticipation. I had been invited to take part in the annual Hornady elk hunt, hosted by Jason Hornady and guided by Wild Country Outfitters.

Utah is a long way from my home in Scotland, but I was keen to embark on the 4,600-mile journey – particularly for such a special event that has been running for decades and is always scheduled during the peak of the rut.

September is a wonderful time of year to be in the western States, and Utah is particularly beautiful. The aspens are changing from summer green through the spectrum to yellow and then to a crimson red before dropping their leaves for winter. This colour change is almost unearthly, transforming the landscape over little more than 10 days. There’s something startling about seeing time pass so quickly. The banks of aspen are overwhelming in their beauty and the sage covers the rolling hills as far as you can see. Somewhere, among it all, are the elk.

TEEMING WITH LIFE

The land we were to hunt on is leased by Hornady, and is part of a programme in Utah that aims to promote wildlife conservation and enhance hunting access on private rangelands. Areas known as Cooperative Wildlife Management Units (CWMUs) are managed for game and other wildlife, informed by research and science. The benefits for a vast array of flora and fauna are huge.

The hills and forests on the CWMU heave with wildlife – huge elk herds, mule deer, Shiras moose and a host of smaller species. This healthy, balanced ecosystem is a true indicator that the management plan is working and that targeted hunting, as a means of funding conservation, is doing what it should.

A key indicator of success in this area is the sheer number of old elk on this enormous property. The management plan focuses on allowing the bulls to reach a natural rare old age before being considered a ‘shooter’.

This ensures the smartest, strongest and toughest animals – the old boys that hold ground and hold cows – pass on their genes to the next generation. The result is a herd structure with a perfectly balanced age class, meaning there are a lot of enormous elk racks to get excited about.

THE ASPENS BECKON

The experience of hunting elk is a rich one, with the soundscape being as spectacular as the visually mind- blowing landscape. I often found myself closing my eyes to listen. During the rut the elk bulls ‘bugle’, creating an eerie sound that starts high and descends into a guttural combination of a whistle and a roar. It’s deeply primitive and, in all honesty, quite terrifying. Nothing like a red stag’s roar, the call is more similar to the high shrill of another cervus cousin, the sika stag. The bugle has two aims: to lure cows into a harem and to demonstrate dominance over any would-be master bulls.

I was paired for the week with a couple of great industry friends: George Gardner of GA Precision and Neil Davies, marketing director of Hornady. George knows his long- range and precision shooting well, which has helped immensely in developing several Hornady cartridges including the 6mm Creedmoor. He is also co-founder of the popular – and now global – Precision Rifle Series. I have happily hunted internationally with Neil many times, so it was a lot of fun to get out with him on his home soil.

Neil was hosting George and me, as we would be shooting Hornady’s newly developed 7mm PRC, billed as the most efficient 7mm cartridge ever produced. We were being guided by Scott Miller (known simply as Miller), a seasoned guide able to call elk in their odd language and mercifully thick-skinned enough to put up with our childish ribbing during this week-long adventure. I knew that having Neil and George in tow would add another dimension of fun to the hunt. Although from different sides of the pond, we share a sense of humour and already feature in several of each other’s campfire yarns.

Back in Scotland I am well-acquainted with red deer, which share some characteristics with American elk, albeit on a much smaller scale. A mature elk bull is about four times the weight of a mature red stag, weighing around 700-850lb, but their colouration and antler structure do bear many similarities. For much of the year the old bulls become ghosts in the forest, creeping around and rarely seen, but during the rut their caution fades and they emerge with one thing on their minds.

GETTING STARTED

Our first morning started before sunrise. With multiple guests on the hunt, we had drawn the furthest hunting area from camp, deep in the forested hills. We piled into a truck, also four times the size of anything you’d see in Scotland, and the chat about animal choice started. We would be ultra-selective. We had a whole week and there was no rush to get this monster job done.

George generously insisted that I hunt first, given it was my first elk, but it was made abundantly clear to me that I wouldn’t be shooting that morning. Miller didn’t want me to surrender to my greed and take a ‘first-morning bull’. We had time, so we could be steady and I needed to observe a hoard of bulls until I understood what we were looking for. Then we could go for something special.

We set off from the truck as the sun lifted to reveal some of the most amazing terrain I’d ever seen. The elk were bugling loudly, and Neil reminded me of the Jurassic Park scene when the party first encounter a herd of brachiosaurs. I liked the analogy, but it didn’t touch the sides. Utah was simply pumping with elk, beauty and adrenaline – mine and theirs. What a place to be alive.

Two hours into the day, my nerves and emotions settling a little, we could get on with the business of observing the bulls and piecing together a plan. It is very difficult to identify the size of a bull just from the bugle, despite what you may be told. However, we’d seen and heard a huge amount of activity, with some serious clashing of antlers in a stand of aspen that appeared to be the epicentre of this valley’s bugling. Miller explained that the aggressor is likely to be something bigger. This had to be an old boy.

Closing in on the edge, we started to peer through the limbs of aspen, trying to get a glimpse of just how big this bull was. Was he broken on one side, was he just a strong younger bull, or was he just what we wanted to see on my first morning’s lesson in elk observation? Finally we got eyes on him. He was magnificent. Luck, pure and simple, was on our side. Just by standing, the pressure from him was enough to gently move an estimated 50 animals or more. Four hours of cat and mouse followed until we got a full spotting scope view of the bull in the open.

THE BEST LAID PLANS

This is when the morning’s plan unravelled. After deep consultation with Neil and George, Miller decided that the prohibition on a first-morning bull may need to be lifted. This was no ordinary bull and was like nothing the outfitters had seen for some weeks; it could be the best I would see. I needed little persuasion, knowing I would have the rest of the week to accompany George. And that was it. We were no longer simply observing; we were hunting.

My focus changed and it was time to go. We’d seen the herd with the bull going into a clump of evergreen timber. It was around 09:30 when this happened, a good few hours in. We managed to find a solid position for me to get prone and set up on a bank with a draw between us and the timber, with a clearing to the left. Miller told me they often go into trees to bed down at this time of day, but there was still a lot of activity, which was unusual.

The bulls carried on rutting hard. We heard huge amounts of kinetic elk activity, a war zone of groaning, bugling and crashing antlers. Younger bulls would enter to chance their luck with big bull’s harem of cows, and we’d see them being chased out, tails between their legs. He’d poke his head out of the timber into a clearing, the one I hoped I might shoot him in, to reinforce his dominance for a couple of seconds. Victorious over the lesser bulls, he would then disappear again out of sight. Being among these creatures while they rut is hard to describe. You feel an impostor in their space, as if you shouldn’t be there.

The clearing was a couple of acres in size and about 150yd from front to back. I got to know it well through my scope and binos. We hoped he would eventually show himself and walk across the open space, drunk on testosterone, but the chances of this working out hung in the balance. After two hours, we decided that making a move could get a better result. There may be a window into the thick timber for a shot from another angle.

As I rose from lying prone with a two-hour cramp, a cow spied us and started stomping her front right hoof in our direction. With so many beasts deep in the timber we knew something was about to happen, good or bad. If goes, they all go. The cow gently started moving, picking up other cows in her wake. Soon they were trotting and then galloping through the thick stuff into the clearing. I ran back to the depression I’d made in the grass and dropped.

THE SHOT<