I have always felt a debt to the man, Ed, who took the chance on allowing me to marry his daughter. Five kids later, and a few hunts together, he hasn’t “accidentally” shot me. Yet. At this point, I am quite probably in the clear. I love getting to give my favorite father-in-law the opportunity to hunt new animal species. He lives in Indiana and doesn’t have the variety of game Montana offers. We have been putting him in for a combo elk and deer license for the last few years. He not only drew the combo deer/elk licenses but also a special unit bull permit in Central Montana!
The first morning out, the Jeep thermometer sat at -20 degrees. It was nose-hair-freezing-cold, but the wind wasn’t unbearable. This was a new experience for Ed and two of his boys who came to be pack mules for their dad. As we hiked the mountains came into view. We scanned the daily elk migration route from the rancher’s fields to the bedding area. These and most elk, are generally under cover before the sun is in sight. We chose a cutoff ravine that happened to have a handful of elk moved into a clearing. There were two bulls in the group, including a respectable 5x6. Utilizing his backpack rifle rest, we ranged and dialed the scope for 450 yards. Trigger control is everything and the bull dropped from a single shot from Ed’s .280 Ackley. I was pumped! Watching for a few seconds to make sure he was down, I ranged the opening above the small herd, dialed my scope, and tracked a large cow as she came into view from the trees. My 33 Nosler's 250gr Barnes bullet took her through the lungs and she was lying still in seconds.
The fun part of being an outdoor writer is getting to hunt with the guns manufacturers let us use as it helps with their promotion. Ed was shooting a cute little Kimber Hunter Pro in .280 Ackley (the best the ’06 case has to offer in trajectory and terminal performance, yes this is my opinion). I have been anxious to get my hands on one of these rifles and this little sweetheart didn’t disappoint. We fed it Nosler factory 160 gr. Partitions and Vortex loaned us a 4-22x50 Razor HD LHT scope to mount in Tally rings (my favorite rings – lightweight and solid). I am amazed at the weight of the rifle and scope. The recoil was mild and the gun was accurate. Poor Ed, he only got to shoot the rifle twice for his two-game animals. The scope was amazingly clear and only weighed just over 21 oz. We used it as a spotting scope some of the time. Yes, it was that good!
It took us half the day to bone out the two elk. Ed and I danced our knives through the meat getting it into sturdy pack frames. My two brothers-in-law packed the meat to the jeep twice. My father always said it was good to have friends with strong backs and weak minds. My brothers-in-law didn’t care for this joke. No sense of humor. We had both elk out to the vehicle just after noon.
We hunted for a few more days in the crazy cold but couldn’t turn up a decent 4x4 muley. Ed has shot some awful nice whiteys but had never shot a mule deer. We ended up heading home to the Western side of the state to continue his hunt.
We took off to visit a mountain an hour from home in search of the elusive muley buck that now hangs in Ed’s living room. It was first light and we were hunting our way down a logging road. Up above us, we spotted a small bunch of muley does and a nice 4x4 buck tending them. We ranged him at 400 yards while Ed got the Kimber rifle settled over an old stump. He waited for the buck to stand broadside and took the shot. At the boom, we watched the buck go down after a few jumps. I made the mistake of not taking a picture from the shot location to reference when we got up to where the buck was. We hiked back and forth, up and down, and finally found where he was piled up. A great trophy for a great man. (Yes, I am still trying to earn brownie points!) After some pictures, we gutted the deer, cut him in half just behind the cape, and slid him in two backpacks to hike back to the jeep.
Now it was my turn. The next day found us on top of one of my favorite mountains. The terrain here is steeper than a giraffe’s neck and slipperier than snot. The old logging roads are the hunter’s access and hiking trails. There were 3-4 inches of fresh snow and we found where a big-footed buck came down off the mountain and walked along the road before bailing off to somewhere below us. We hunted way up the mountain along the deep ravine and then headed back down. After passing the fresh buck tracks, we rounded the mountain and came up across from where the buck had gone off and below us. A side glance showed a muley lying in the snow.
After glassing him for a bit, I decided it was close to the end of the season and I was ready to be done. He was a good-looking deer with a fork on the left side and a four-pointer on the right. I dialed the scope in to 450 yards, laid prone with the rifle on its bipod, and squeezed the trigger. I have no idea what I did wrong. The bullet went just over his back and he jumped down the hill a few bounds to look back. I had missed. No matter how good you are or how great your gun is, once in a while, every hunter will miss and even moderate range increases the chance this will happen.
I was shooting a Nosler rifle with their new model 21 action in the 33 Nosler cartridge. The Big Bang Theory! It is a solid, but not overly heavy rifle that handles the recoil quite nicely. I hand-loaded the 250gr Barnes LRX bullets and could easily hit targets out past 700 yards with it. The Zeiss LRP S3 4.5-25x50 is a heavier but serious scope. This is probably the nicest scope I have ever used! Missing the buck wasn’t the gun or the scope’s fault. Less than a week before, I had hit my cow elk within an inch of where I wanted at a farther distance. Great gear is only as good as the goofball behind the trigger! That’s me, grade-A goofball.
I worked the bolt as he walked away from me back up through the timber. Settling the crosshairs in the middle of his back, I let another bullet go. He jumped a few more bounds and disappeared. We went back around and dropped down the hill to where his bed was. I had just missed him on that 1st shot. We followed his tracks up the hill and found that I judged the size of his rack wrong because I had judged his body wrong. He was by far the largest-bodied buck I have seen in that neck of the woods, and his rack has one of the largest frames I have put on my wall. Unfortunately, he had broken his left foreleg and it had healed but was a big mess of fused bone. I wonder if that is why he was missing his forks on the left side. Whatever the case, I was stoked! My father-in-law, brother-in-law, and son got to be there for the whole thing. They helped me pack the meat out and we went home feeling victorious. Sorry wolves, this one is mine!
– By Dan Larsson