The Northwest Chapter Safari Club International

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should scout with your binos, but also thinking this was almost
certainly a big bull, I put my rifle scope on the animal and con‐
firmed it was in fact a nice bull – straight across the park on a hill‐
side, feeding. I had seen the white tips of his antlers moving as he
moved his head. So for about three or four minutes I just
watched. He was incredible. Straight out of an outdoor magazine
– a mature bull, feeding in plain view 250 yards away from me, and
he had no idea I was there. After watching him, I started to get
nervous thinking – what if he spooked and I never took a shot? So
I made up my mind to shoot – and then the rifle went
off. The .308, shooting a 180 grain Winchester fail‐safe, was at the
limit of its effective range on game of this size – but I knew that it
was all about shot placement. After the shot, I looked up to see
what had happened. No elk, lots of quiet. Had I missed? Did I hit
the elk? Anyway, it was time to wait. So I waited about 15 min‐
utes (I know, they say 30 minutes – but I was anxious) – and then
headed over to see what I could find.
I got there and saw nothing. My first reaction was – damn, I
missed the elk of a lifetime. Wow, and I considered myself a good
shot. I looked around and didn’t see anything. As I started to
widen my search, I saw him. There he was, dead, about 30 yards
from where he was standing. When I shot him, he had been facing
me at a slight angle, and I had hit him squarely between the shoul‐
ders – and as I cleaned the elk, I found the bullet lodged in his rear
hip. It had traveled the entire length of his body – taking out his
lungs, heart, and other organs. I was ecstatic…public land, hunting
by myself, and a mature 6x5 on the ground. It took horses, horse
trailers, and two friends to get the elk out of that spot – but at
about midnight we were finally home and ready to begin the rest
of our hunt.
The last seven days of our hunt weren’t nearly as productive as
the first two. We didn’t see any more bulls – and it wasn’t for a
lack of trying. We hiked deep into the Pintler Wilderness and
through many of the other areas that we thought would hold
elk. In every case, nothing. We ended up with two elk for three
hunters – and those were taken in the first two days of our nine
day hunt.
The second part of my 2011 Montana experience took place in
Northwest Montana, near the town of Seeley Lake in the Swan
Valley. My wife’s family has been a part of the Swan Valley for
more than eighty years – with her great grandfather working for
the US Forest Service in what is now the Bob Marshall Wilderness,
and family members for more than eighty years hunting in the
valley and surrounding hills. Three years ago, I had drawn a Mon‐
tana deer tag and, along with a friend, drove to Seeley Lake deter‐
mined to get a buck. After spending nearly a week in the moun‐
tains, we came home empty‐handed – having only taken a doe. It
was frustrating, for I knew that big bucks definitely lived in the
area. The challenge was just finding them. So this year, instead of
trying to do it by myself again, I decided to hire a local outfitter to
guide me for the five days I’d be there. I thought that it would
probably be the best way to learn how to hunt the valley.
I timed the hunt to correspond with the deer rut, which meant
hunting in mid‐November. The drive over to Seeley Lake from
www.scinw.com
Seattle saw the weather get worse and worse – and by the time I
got there, I saw a foot of snow on the ground and temperatures
hovering around ten degrees. This was going to be a cold hunt –
the Montana mountains in what turned out to be one of the earli‐
est winters in more than a decade. The good news, though, was
that the snow pushed the deer down from the hills and concen‐
trated them in the valley bottom and winter range areas – making
finding them much easier.
Together with the guide, we hunted hard for all five days. We
used both spot‐stalk and calling to find the deer – and every day
saw mature bucks. The first real shooting opportunity I had on the
second day as we were walking through a regenerated clear‐cut. I
saw two big‐bodied bucks walking away from us in the woods at
about 200 yards. We froze – and began to call the deer using a
grunt. We set up behind a stump, and a few moments later a big‐
bodied 5x4 came out of the tree line and stood there, broadside,
head turned at us. With my crosshairs on the deer, I asked the
guide…”take him?” “Your call…but I would recommend against
it. You can’t shoot the big ones if you shoot the small ones.” So I
was staring at a nice buck, at 60 yards, in my crosshairs –and the
guide wanted me to not shoot. Wow, this was going to be a great
trip…so I waited.
Every day of the hunt showed similar results. Lots of deer – and
every day one look at a big deer. On the third day we moved to a
new area – a hillside that was pretty brushy, in an area that had
been previously thinned, adjacent to a thick older growth for‐
est. The guide indicated that he had seen a bigger buck in here in
previous years, and wanted to take a look. As we walked in the
first day, we saw a group of does, downhill at about 150 yards in
the brush. As we watched the does moving, I got my first glimpse
of the biggest deer I’d ever seen. I saw him chasing a doe and then
stood still for about a minute, as I got myself into position to
shoot. Unfortunately, when I got my scope back on the buck, all I
saw was his rump…separated from the tips of his antlers by a large
tree. Not being willing to take the unethical shot, through the
brush, at his body – I let him go. The rest of that day I retreated to
a ground blind on the hillside, watched, and waited. I saw a num‐
ber of does as well as some smaller bucks, but never the big guy.
We hunted the same area the next day, and again I saw (and
heard grunt) the big buck. But this time he showed himself right at
sunset – and the only shot was again unethical, so I passed.
The last day of the hunt came and I had a good feeling. As we
walked back into the same area, we noticed some new deer prints
in the snow. Maybe there was another big buck in the area? We
walked In and took up a position on the same hillside, overlooking
the brushy clearing where we’d seen activity before. Again, more
does and bucks – including a 4x4 that was awfully tempting on my
last day. But I passed, and waited. It was stormy and cold – and
the deer were moving unlike anything we’d seen before. We de‐
cided to grunt and rattle to see if we could get the big buck’s at‐
tention – and sure enough, after about 15 minutes the guide