Elk

Badwater, Wyoming 2007


Johns Bull

Ron's Cow Elk

In October of 2007, a group of four of us hunted the Badwater area of Wyoming.  And this time we had Bull Elk tags.  Drawing these either sex tags is extremely difficult, with the odds at less than 5%.  However Wyoming had just started a preference point system for all their big game tags, and we each had purchased a point the previous season.  In fact we purchased the points as soon as they became available, and this drawing was the first time the points could be applied.  Getting off of our butts and purchasing the points was rewarded with these very rare tags.   We were very excited at our good fortune.

This area is known for it's outstanding success rate on Bulls.  The prime Elk portion of area 120 is almost completely private land, but the landowners have welcomed hunters for many years and we've hunted deer there many times.

We saw many good Bulls taken in our area, but for one reason or another we did not do as well as we had hoped.  This was probably partially due to our inexperience in hunting here for the species.  And of course luck always plays a major part.   But we just didn't seem to be in the right places at the right time for the big Bulls..

Our efforts were rewarded with 1 Bull and 1 Cow elk for the week.  John shot the 5 point Bull on opening day.  Ron took the Cow a few days into the hunt.  John and Bob worked very hard to retrieve the Bull from far afield.  Ron on the other hand shot his Cow within a short walk from a ranch road, so this was an easy retrieve.

This was our first time to pull travel trailers to Wyoming.  All our previous camps have been tents, so our accomodations seemed luxurious.  We had rain for most of the two days traveling from home to camp, and you can see how it covered every inch of our trucks and trailers.  We were fortunate that the weather cleared by the opening day of the season, and remained very nice, until the day we broke camp to leave.   Yep, we covered the vehicles with even more mud as we drove out of camp.   Still, we considered ourselves fortunate to have perfect weather during the hunt.

Overall View of Camp

Closeup of Camp