Elk Lessons from Pop

[WapitiTalk1]

My dad guided in the "Bob" in Montana when I was a pup. Wayne was a true blackhorn. My brothers and our hunting friends came up with the horn rankings growing up in the big sky state.. pinkhorn (never even sniffed an elk), greenhorn (almost shot a cow), purple horn (spike)... you see where I'm going here. He's shot more elk than many have seen. He taught me a lot about elk hunting, offering his years of wisdom freely ......."most" of the time .. Other times, he took great pleasure in teaching me something the hard way. Buckriser's post in the share your lessons thread about elk urine got me thinking about this. What lesson did your dad teach you that may be of interest to our loyal Elknut forum members? You know what I mean.... "you have to put the elk nugget on the tip of your tongue to see just how fresh and warm it is". Just teasing, Wayne didn't do that but very, very close.. How bout you guys? RJ

[Buckriser]

Phantom, I have so many stories similar to the urine lesson, I could go on. Let's just say that every year while hunting, were always waiting to hear what the old man has done now. On a serious note, he's the one that has taught me everything, and has given me the passion of hunting. I'd say one thing that he has taught me was to glass, glass, glass. He's always telling me I don't glass enough. Of course this is mostly while we're hunting muleys. We're still trying to figure out the Elk hunting game.

[easeup]

good post mr. phantom;
I wished I could contribute a lineage of elk hunting, but that is not how it happpened for me. My dad was just a common man here in TX and he did not hunt because he just had not the $$ for such a hobby. The elk crazies for me grew from the seeds of a small 6 yr old boy sitting in the barber shop and seeing a copy of Outdoor Life ( you know the typical september issue). My eyes were a sparkle and I grabbed that issue every time I went.
Dad saw how I was always trying to get someone to take me hunting as I grew and took up the sport to be with me. To this day we still go hunting.
For what I am most grateful to that man is how he showed me to be a godley person. That combined with hunting has created a giant love of the outdoors. Elk hunting was all gathered from mr. murphy's school in about a 30 yr degree program!!!!

man, I wished Paul and all of this web information was around long ago.

[T/H]

unfortunately neither my dad nor anyone in my family are/were hunters. my lessons have all come by "way of the elk". in other words the hard way. and if not for the orange army i encountered my last year of hunting mulies with a rifle in 07 when bullets were bouncing off the rocks above me, i may never even have discovered bow hunting and more importantly elk hunting. i always thought about hunting when i was a kid and was very curious about it and even thought about bowhunting. Ohio is a huge bowhunting state too. thats where i grew up. so anyway i will keep on learning to hunt them "the elk way" with help from guys on these forums and my good friend in CO and more importantly by getting out there and doing it. Great topic Rory

[Lefty]

My dad was "farmed" out as a kid at age 12 and had been a guide as a kid in his teens and his twenties,..
He grew up often killing other peoples bag limits and filling their tags for money and tips.

He was adamant we were not to ever break a game law,.. no excuses.

He also taught us shot placement over and over and over . Only good shots were to be taken, never a chance shot , never . I often went 20-30 head shot squirrels in a row before a single shot miss.
One of my last deer hunts with him; As I walked towards camp there was a tree full of squirrels(This was northern Minnesota,.. I didn’t even know squirrels were that far north) First shot was a miss,.. I hadn’t allowed for the distance between the crosshairs and the bore, 6 consecutive shots dropped 6 squirrels from one tree
As I walked into camp some Southern gentleman saw the squirrels and traded me even up for cleaned grouse., They were impressed with the .308 caliber holes neatly in the head had done

So only good accurate shots

[WapitiTalk1]

On the lighter side of "elk lessons from pop", my dad, for quite a few years, would use my two brothers and I in somewhat of a sick way to get our family quantity of elk for the coming year. We relied on this meat (elk, deer) to get us through the following year. My mom was a master ninja at converting our frozen elk meat into dishes that would please anybody. I distinctly remember dad priming us three for the following morning's hunt, sitting around the campfire, telling us where he'd shot a 350 class 6X bull not too many years ago on this particular steep face above Noxon, MT (this same phenomenon occured for a couple of years until my older brother finally caught on to what was happening). We obviously were tuned in to what the old man said... I'd seen the racks he had in our shop for many, many years and trusted him completely when it came to elk hunting. When I say steep, I mean steep.. the kind of steep that if the wind blows just right.. you can pee and hit the power line road where you started 1/2 a mile below OK... he'd dropped us three wanna be elk slayers off (12, 15, and 18 years old..I'm 15 at the time) down at the bottom of the powerline road and instructs us to climb straight up 1/2 mile and "sweep the sidehill" until we hit the main road, oh, about 2 miles north. Pop would drive his old chevy way, way up to an old pack trail that he'd bust in on which led him to a jagged ridge above where he dropped us off. Weird.. every year for around 3 years, we'd hear the crack of his 300 winmag on the ridgetop.. Yep, another elk down. It seems that after much study when we got a bit older, that old pop was using us young hunters as drivers to send the elk up to where he knew he could get a shot (shots) on the top of that steep hillside. I called him on this many year later after I'd knocked down a few elk and he just laughed and said, "well, we needed the meat" and asked me, "did I learn anything" I lost my dad several years ago but will always be gratefull to him...for raising 5 pups and teaching us all the value, and importance, of the wild and where we all came from. I told him my favorite "anti-hunter" saying when I visited him in MT right before he went under....."if you don't kill your own meat, you're just a scavenger".. he really liked that. RJ

[idahoghost]

Dad had me trap shooting with him at age seven. I was instructed to tell everyone I was 10, just small for my age. When I turned ten I was given a Bear Grizzly bow. At 12 he bought me a Browning (Belgium) Sarfrai Grade .270 for my first deer. I still hunt with it. Dad died almost ten years ago.

I hunt with him every year, in every canyon, with every step...

[Swede]

Dad taught me how to shoot. He is the one most responsible for my developing a love for hunting and being out in the field and forest. He taught me hunting ethics, and demonstrated the importance of getting out and being persistant. Dad was never a "trophy hunter". His idea of a great buck was a fat three point, and a fat 5X5 bull would have been perfect. Whereas I would like to have a 350 class bull someday, probably at least in part due to dad's influence, it has never had the priority with me that it has with many others.