It was the end of July 2003 and the weather was hot as I swept the binoculars across the slopes hoping to see the familiar white look of a shed elk antler. I intensely scanned the slopes hoping to find an antler off of a non-typical bull that I had seen a few years before. As I looked through the binoculars I couldn't believe what I was seeing. There, lying right in the wide open, was a big bull elk in full velvet. The bull looked big through the ten-power binos so I immediately put up my spotting scope. Once I got my spotting scope set and all zoomed in I was once again blown away by the size of this bull. The bull had points all over the place. My immediate guess was an easy 380-inches. I took some video through the scope and knew that I had to get closer to get some better footage. The bull was two canyons over and with only about an hour and a half of light left I knew I had to cross the canyon quickly.
I huffed and puffed my way across the canyon and finally got to the top about twenty minutes later. It took a while to find the bull as he'd bedded down again behind some trees. He got up in time for me to get some decent footage of him at about 600 yards away. As I looked at his antlers I couldn't believe that a set of antlers could grow that big. I called my father on the phone and told him I was looking at one of the biggest bulls I'd ever seen in my life. He asked how big it was and I told him that I thought the bull had nine points on the right and eleven on the left and, after looking at him for a while, I guessed that he would go over 400-inches. He was all excited for me and couldn't wait to see the footage on the big screen. I showed the film to one of my best friends who is great at scoring antlers on the hoof. He guessed the bull had a 385-inch, 6x6 frame with over 40-inches of cheaters!! That's when I really got serious about guessing his score. I watched the video over and over and finally came up with a score similar to that of my buddy’s, a gross score of right around 425-inches. Now I was sure this was the biggest bull I'd ever seen and, being a seasoned antler hunter, I knew his sheds were on the ground somewhere.
 The bull ended up getting harvested by an archer during that September's season and ended up scoring 456 3/8 gross and netted 444 4/8! I was crushed to say the least, but just knowing I was blessed enough to see a bull that big and get footage of him was special enough. It's easy to think of a bull you've seen as "my bull," but as my Dad has always said, "He ain't yours till your tag is on his horns!" Well, I knew that since I could no longer have him I'd have a better chance at owning the shed antlers some day. That day came in late October of 2004 after I'd finished guiding a successful hunt for mule deer on the Kaibab. I took my good friend, Chris Gravatt, who'd found a monster 224-inch non-typical elk antler earlier that year in the same hunt unit, with me to look for the elusive sheds off of this bull. We hiked for hours and didn't come up with much -other than a whopper 81-inch mule deer shed I found that morning. That afternoon we had been split up for quite a while when I hit a ridge I knew I had only skipped over a time or two. I wasn't seeing much sign other than some old yucca plants that were torn up from bulls about two years before, during the springtime. I knew that the bulls were there in the spring so I started working the face of the ridge back and forth towards the top. After awhile I came up with two spike elk antlers and an old, four-point mule deer antler. As I came to the end of the ridge I spotted an elk antler through the brush and trees. I could only see the fifth point and a cheater off the back and I thought to myself, "At least I've found one elk horn today and at least it's got a cheater on it." I called Chris on the radio to tell him that I finally found one, but didn't know how big it was yet as I always take a picture of the antler as I saw it before I go pick it up. After I took a quick picture of it I got out my video camera, turned it on and rounded the bushes. When I finally got a better view of the antler I immediately knew that this was one of the antlers I had looked for for so long. This right antler has a total of nine points on it with a huge front end. I was tripping hard and was very excited to say the least. I called Chris to come over and check it out but he was too far away to wait to pick this bad boy up. After all the hoops and hollers of finding the one, I knew I had to find the other and I wasn't leaving without it! I picked up the antler and started to walk around the end of the ridge but my antler finding instincts were telling me this wasn't the way to go. I turned left and walked up the top of the ridge. I had only gone about sixty yards when I spotted the top end of the seven-point match about thirty yards off in the brush. After taking video and lots of pictures I headed back to the quad to show Chris. Man, was I pumped! Finally I had found the set of sheds that I had hoped to find for so long. I knew it was only a matter of time before I came across them and this was my day.
When I got home I put the tape to the sheds and, giving them an estimated inside spread of 44-inches, I came up with a gross score of 393. This score makes these antlers the best set of non-typical elk antlers I've ever found. This set of antlers was grown during the terrible drought of 2002 and it definitely shows on the antlers. The front three points are huge and the mass is fantastic, but from the G4's on up they took a beating from the lack of moisture and feed. When the bull was killed in September of 2003 he had grown more than 60-inches of antler that year and added an estimated 8-inches of inside spread to his rack!  |
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