Shane Kuch's Elk

Seasoned hunter Ted Kuch takes his son, elk hunting for the very first time. The first day out, my son went with my buddy and they got within 100 yards of a great big bull elk which was screaming bugling, and that was really exciting. And then the next day, my son and I went out together. We went up to the drainage bottom and we kept running into the critters. We ran into a little mule buck, first light. But he couldn't quite get there. And then we ran into a great big bull feeding and we backed off and I set up and tried to call him in and the bull never came. And as the sun came up, we heard bullsbugling on the ridge as either side of the bottom of our drainage. And they're all moving up the drainage to go to bed at the head of the drainage below the mountain peak. By this time we're trailing and we're calling on everyone back, but they're not going to come. So we hiked up the ridge on one side, joined my buddy for lunch and took a little nap. And then my son and I bailed back off to the drainage and went up the other side to a spring head that I knew about from hunting there previously. And I thought, You know, all these all up the drainage, let's do the spring head and see what happens. We found a good spot to set up and we sat and sat and man, we kept hearing elk footsteps and elk cow calls and bull bugles all around us. But we never saw an elk because, of course, four or five six o'clock at night. And finally, I'm like, We need to step out because they're just not coming into this one spot here, even though it's a draw, it's a spring. So my son takes two steps out from the cover and freezes, and he goes, Dad, don't move and I look up in a Catholic stands out. My son had never killed him now, and he's hung with a bow. Like I say, any animal with a bow is a trophy. And so he takes a shot at this calf and misses high. So is that at the end of the story? Absolutely not. Tune in tomorrow.