The following post was written by Ryley McCuiston, age 10, of Arkansas. This is his personal account of taking an elk on public land.
It all started Saturday morning, Oct. 4, 2014. I woke up and left for football practice. As usual, we stretched, ran our offensive plays and then ended practice with tackling drills.
After practice, my mom drove me to the small town of Mountain View, Ark., to meet my dad. From there my dad drove me to our hunting camp in the Ozark Mountains. Our hunt didn’t start until Monday, but we thought we would use the weekend to scout.
That night dad and I glassed a drop-tine bull at a location called Long Field. We decided to get a closer look, so we walked to a hilltop where we found 20 or so cows. We didn’t see any bulls, but could hear a bunch.
All of a sudden, a group of young bulls came out of their midday bedding area at the top of the mountain and started fighting. Wow! A big 6-by-6 came to about 80 yards, followed by the drop-tine bull. We could see that he had five points on one antler and six on the other. We snuck out trying to leave as little scent as possible and headed back to camp. That night we ate elk roast – it was delicious!
On Sunday morning we went to scout a few other spots. Allyn, another guy in our hunting camp, went to check out a spot called Dry Creek, just to see if there were any bulls in that area. Meanwhile, my father and I, along with a few other people from camp, went to scout the South Fields. We had three little bulls walk in at about 40 yards and saw a decent sized 6-by-6.
That afternoon dad and I didn’t do any scouting. Instead, everyone in camp worked together to come up with a game plan for our first day of hunting, which started the following morning. I was so excited for the hunt that I could barely sleep that night.
Once we woke up, Dad and I left camp to go listen for bugles. We heard some coming from the fields we had scouted over the weekend. After we got to the fields we realized the elk were up on the hill. Dad and I decided to walk to a spot further up the hill and tried to call one of the bulls up, but that plan didn’t work.
After considering our options, we changed our plans and found a road with a bunch of fresh sign. We followed the road a little ways and then had a bull bugle right in front of us! We setup and tried calling him, but never got a response.
We moved again and found a spot with elk trails coming in from all directions. The bull kept bugling but we never saw him through the thick cover. We moved in closer until we finally saw an 8-by-6 drop-tine bull at 50 yards, which was different than the one we had seen earlier in the week. Before I could take a shot, he disappeared into the woods.
He bugled again in the distance, so we tried to call him back in but he just didn’t come. Then, we moved closer and still didn’t see him. We decided to circle around the woods and give it one more shot.
After we circled, he came down off a small ridge and walked within five yards of one of our hunting partners! The bull spooked and all I could see through the brush was his head and antlers. We moved the tripod over a bit, and then at 70 yards he stopped, broadside, looking back at me. POW! He ran 50 yards, and went down.
My dad, Jason (another guy from camp), and I walked out to get the packs so we could pack the bull out. I walked up and down the mountain three times but it was worth all the effort when we ate the inner loins that night!
