Ken Young is just a dad from Billings taking his kid out for a nice, quiet deer hunt less than an hour from home. Nothing fancy. Nothing dramatic. Certainly nothing that would require packing out two bull elk. But fate had other plans. Big, antlered, 700-pound plans.
So there they are: Ken and his 20-year-old son Kenny, strolling into Block Management land twenty minutes after sunrise, expecting a mellow day chasing mule deer. Instead, just over a mile away, two bull elk top a hill in front of them. Ken sees them. Kenny sees them.
Understandably, they drop everything, grab their gear, and start hoofing it after the bulls. Ken figures the elk might bed down in a nearby coulee…because every once in a while, the hunting gods do help hunters out.
Ken rounds the corner, and boom—the first bull jumps up and scrambles up the draw. Ken doesn’t hesitate. One clean shot later, Bull #1 is down. Dad: 1. Elk: 0.
They look around. No sign of Bull #2.
So they start quartering Ken’s elk, then begin the long haul back to the truck. The only issue is that Ken didn’t bring a pack—because, of course, this was “just a quick deer hunt close to home.” So Kenny takes the heavy load, Ken takes the guns and the smaller bits, and they head out different routes.
On Ken’s way back, he spots a mule deer buck that seems entirely unimpressed by the chaos. On the next trip out, Kenny grabs the rifle…in case he sees that buck again. That turned out to be the best decision of the day.
When they return to grab the rest of Ken’s elk, Kenny freezes.
Within 50 yards of where Ken’s bull dropped…Bull #2 is napping. YES, NAPPING. The second elk had gotten tired from the chaos, apparently.
Kenny stalks in…close enough to almost use a knife…and takes two solid shots. Bull #2 was then officially down, tagged, and part of the family plan! lol
They gut it, open the hide so it won’t spoil, and pack the rest of Ken’s elk out on Thursday. Friday morning they’re back for Kenny’s. Halfway through cutting it up, the snow rolls changing everything, and turning thier “fall hunt” into sometime similar to an “Arctic expedition.”
By the end of the ordeal, the freezer is full, Kenny’s six-year drought is broken, and he is also sitting at a proud three bulls and four total elk to his name at just twenty years old. Not bad at all for a kid who at 9:30 the next morning is still asleep like he didn’t just help haul half of Montana out of a coulee!
Ken lets him sleep. Kenny will learn when he wakes up that the real secret of big-game hunting is that the shooting is the fun part—the butchering is the education!
And with two bulls on the ground, class is very much in session.
Excellent work, you two!
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