My sisters first elk

[scottfrick]

My dad passed away at 46 years old back in 2014. Absolutely devastating and hurt the family more than we could ever know. I come from a big hunting family and every year the night before opening day is like the night before Christmas. After my dad passed every year til now I would bug my siblings over and over again to buy their special hunt apps and put in. I felt like a broken record “ this could be your year” over and over again with a whole lot of not selecteds. Well this year was different! Day of the drawing I get a message from my sister saying holy $hit! Yes! Yes! Yes! Turns out not only did she draw 1 quality permit she drew two quality hunt permits for deer and elk! Absolutely crazy! Then the fiasco happened with dfw and her quality elk permit changed to her number 1 choice hunt! Even better!! All through out the summer I scouted and put out trail cameras. I knew where I wanted to take her and I saw bulls I knew she would be absolutely stoked to tag. Opening night came and I did one more scouting recon and that changed all of my plans for the following morning. I was in a rut fest with multiple bulls and they were all fired up and I’m a excellent spot. Opening morning comes and my sister arrives and off to the spot we go.  First spot we get to bulls are bugling but they are already in the thick nasty stuff that they had come out of the night before. Not wanting to chase them out we start walking back to the truck and in the clear cut on our left I see tan! Jesica there’s a bull right there! He ended up being a small five and he can right to us less than 100 yards away! She told me afterwards she thought he was going to come run over us.  This whole time another bull is bugling further up the valley so off we go. We head on our way and I happened to look to my right and see a bull running into the trees right behind where we were just standing watching the small 5 point  he was making his way in quietly without any of us knowing. Oh well. Off chasing bugles. We get to another spot and I let out a locate bugle and bam off he sounds and he’s right up around the corner from us and it sounds like he’s still in the clearcut. We make our way and there he is standing right on the tree line and I asked Jesica is that the one you want? She looks and asks me would you shoot it? I tell her this is your decision but you got to make it quick because he’s not going to stick around. She looks again and I hear yes I want him. 226 yard shot and some other excitement and her bull is down 2 hours in on opening morning. This hunt defined the word quality! The time I got to spend with my sister, the chats we had leading up to the hunt, the memories we made that morning that will last us a life time. And her trophy that she got. Now that’s quality! From the very beginning she had told me she wanted to shoot her first elk with our dads hunting rifle that i have. The rifle he had named killer and the rifle he had hunted with before his passing. Also back in 2022 my sister lost a baby boy at 36 weeks pregnant. she had slipped and fallen and when getting to the hospital they told her there wasn’t a heart beat, and they had to leave him in to keep her alive from the bleeding. In one of the pics you will see a little wooded heart shaped box. My sister had baby Willy’s ashes in her pocket when she got her elk.  Now here in a few weeks her quality deer hunt will start. So excited to make more memories with my sister. Sorry for the long read, just quality stuff I wanted to share! Happy hunting everyone!!

[scottfrick]

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[highside74]

Lucky gal to draw a great tag and she shot a great bull. Way to go.

[Taco280AI]

Congrats to your family in some great times and memories, especially after so much.

[freshgrease]

Your sister is absolutely cheesing in every picture, it's fricken awesome. Nice bull and great story

[MADMAX]

Very Cool
Nice bull

[HntnFsh]

Beyond awesome! Congrats to you and your sister on an epic journey an harvest. Incredible smiles!

[NorseNW]

That is a lot of emotions and memories captured in that hunt.  Thank you for sharing it with us. Congratulations to you and sister - awesome hunt.

[10mmg]

Really excited for you guys. Great story and bull.

[Irish_hunter93]

Very cool! A great write up! I wouldn't want to imagine going through any of that, way to keep your heads up through the bad, you two are great!

[mr.ktm95]

Very cool!!