Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Great Broadmouth Canyon Elk Massacre 2016

Struck a nerve, eh?

Pretty good description of elk hunting, where I hunt.

No nerve struck, smokepole.

The bull elk that winded me at 29 yards was not a booner or anything. My (oldest) son found a shed prior to labor day week, while scouting with friend Mark.

He looked very similar (like they all don't look similar). Would have been very happy with him, if things had worked out. Nice enough bull for me.

No broad brush Mike. If you go back and read what I wrote, it applies to one person only--the OP.

I can think of no other reason he would write that post, clearly his intent was to crap on the thread by Jorge and others, and the account of their hunt.

Agree. What ever floats your boat is ok with me, but "this is not the same as it is anywhere" if it's inside a high fense.

Maybe there's an explanation for OP's timing and intent. If taken at his word, perhaps he saw the collective praise being heaped on a high-fenced hunt as a genuine threat to the sport -fodder for the antis- and felt it was time to say something in order to squelch it.

This still would not explain why he himself would book a high-fenced hunt, be disappointed because it's a high-fenced hunt, and afterwards proclaim the dangers that high-fenced hunting presents to the sport. Maybe to him high-fenced hunting is OK as long as it's done discreetly, like autoerotic asphyxiation.

201k: Thanks for posting your account of Broadmouth Canyon. I am sure your experience was exactly as you related seen from your perspective. Anytime you post a negative report on any hunting forum others who have had an experience different from yours will indeed "shoot the messenger". There is a lot of "if it did not happen to me it did not happen" that occurs on any message board whether it is about outfitters, equipment manufactures, or anything else.

No doubt if you take him at his word he believes high-fence hunting is bad for the sport. I'm not advocating for it, and I wouldn't enjoy it myself. But the older I get the more I realize that my personal ethic doesn't fit everyone, and that's OK.

Having said that, if the conditions there were really as he described, it's a sham and it's not hunting. Seems like the jury is out on that though.




Do you know 201K personally? If so, your statement above makes sense. If not, how can you be so sure that his account was accurate, given that you don't know him and there are others who were actually there and didn't see the things he saw?

I'm not sure how anyone who hasn't hunted there is in a position to know.

Smokepole: I don't think 201k was "crapping" on others who had a different experience at Broadmouth. I think he was just offering a different perspective. As a do it yourselfer on public land you can certainly appreciate the difference. The best analogy I can make is listening to bird hunters who describe their "hunt" in South Dakota at a pheasant ranch shooting pen raised birds that were released the morning just before the "hunters" stepped off the school bus that brought them to the field. If they have never chased wild pheasants through a cattail swamp they just do not know the difference.

Yes there is a difference.

If a person doesn't "know", a good time can still be had apparently, probably buoyed by the size of the antlers collected no doubt.

I might share my thoughts on this. It's probably somewhere between the two,but if the participants are happy, then that is all that matters.

There is a high fence business about 6 miles from me. Quite a few years ago, the cost was $1000/point ( $12K for a 6x bull)

I bought hay there for quite a few years and knew the foreman quite well.

Each year, in December or January, he culled several bulls out that didn't look like they would amount to much.These were shot,dressed out and hauled to Denver to slaughter house that sold them to restaurants.

One year,I was out of work due to a back that went south on me and couldn't hunt. The foreman knew about it and called me to see if I wanted one of the bulls.These were all spikes and he knew I much preferred elk over beef. I think I paid about$800 for it

So one cold morning,I drove over. He drove his truck with a bed mounted winch on it. We we walked into the enclosure,walked about two hundred yards around a small hill and killed one of the bulls at about 60 yards with my 7 mag that the foreman pointed out.

We went back and got the truck, then drove to the elk. The foreman( Mike)gutted it for me and then we winched it on to the truck. He used the tractor to lift the elk off his truck and on to mine.

Once home,I used my tractor to hang it, then processed it to the freezer.

Not much different than killing a beef,except I usually kill the beef where I can lift it with the tractor.

Not really hunting I would say.Just filling the freezer. I certainly would not of had it mounted and hung in my den as a trophy even if it was 400 class bull

That part, the whole thing about upgrades based on antlers presumably to be mounted, and the volume of hunters in the OP's description is astonishing to me.
There are so many reasons for mounting a trophy and many times they have less to do with the size. Many times they are special hunts to be remembered for one reason or another (or you can flip that around and, for instance, see one killed by a truck and mounted just for its size.)

Sometimes outfitters or ranches will post up here and give the rest of the story in response to posts like this. Would also be good if the OP made himself available.
I would welcome hearing more from either.

That could've been converted into such a satisfying hunt, with only a few creative word substitutions.

"We walked into the guide-only designated wilderness area, skirted the near-vertical mountainside for 2000 yards, and killed the bull at 600 yards with ol'Betsy....after my guide vehemently declared "das da one you want".

You missed my point again. 330 yards is an absolute number and that is all I was saying.

Please indicate where I, Pugs or Hatari (sic) shot the messenger...

I don't know about that. At 7000', my lungs seem to think the oxygen supply equalled the Moon.

Went to the gym, got a workout in and thought about how the OP and Jorge could have come up with such different takes and it struck me that both could be more or less accurate. On 5k acres an operation like that could host hunters who just want a mature bull and are willing to get out and walk one up. Maybe it grew up there, maybe not. And then for the sports who want to "upgrade" and pay big bucks to shoot a 400 bull, maybe they put on a different kind of "hunt" and help the process along which is what the OP saw.

You can argue the merits of the former, if you're pursuing an animal that grew up wild on the property. You can't argue that the latter is hunting or should be celebrated.

Shades of Irish Elk!

Yet the difference is that on public land, there's nobody driving a bull towards you and no fence to keep him close. It's just not the same thing. Hiking with a guaranteed outcome vs DIY hunting. I have no doubt you put in some effort, but the outcome was never in question.

I've only been on here for a couple of months, so hopefully no one will judge me based on my post count. I have to get up for work in 4 hours, but this has got my goat.
This whole thread turns my stomach. When we start arguing the morality of whether someone with enough money should be guaranteed a bull, we should be posting in the "Elk Ranching" forum, not the "Elk Hunting" forum.
I've lived and hunted North Idaho for 30+ years. There are wolves here, but anyone who tells you they've "killed all the elk" is either misinformed or has an agenda. Idaho's elk harvests have been trending up for a number of years.

http://www.mtexpress.com/news/envir...f5e12f4-5901-11e6-b95a-7f214634620c.html

2015 was the best harvest since 1996? Huh.

What you are not going to get in Idaho is the ability to tell F&G or your guide what class of bull you want to shoot. I did, however, have an elk farm down the road from me which sold "hunts" from their 20 acre pen. They went out with a bang, too. The owner paid off his debt and shut down by allowing a blind "hunter" to shoot his herd bull, which he called by name over to the fence. He even held his rifle barrel to make sure he got a good kill shot. (Idaho counts domestic elk as livestock, you do not need a tag to shoot one.)The owner told me this story himself without shame. I see no difference between this and the outfit described by the OP.
(BTW - If you paid this outfitter tag fees or service fees for F&G, you might want to check to see if you even needed a tag for this hunt.)
Based on the OPs story, there is no way that kind of bull harvest is sustainable on 5000 acres without bringing in domesticated stock from somewhere. Fence or no fence, shooting domesticated elk is not hunting. That is simply indefensible. I've seen farm raised pheasant hunts in California so bad the guides had to throw the birds in the air to get them up.

As for a "New World Record Typical" - Is there any legitimate hunting organization in the world that accepts pen killed or domesticated elk kills in their record book?

Next - you cannot compare the North American hunting ethos with anywhere else on the planet to justify pen hunting. In the UK and Europe, the game was owned by the landowner, (aka royalty), they could mete out whatever fees or rules they desired. They could also punish as they saw fit anyone who killed game without permission. From it's discovery, our continent has allowed free men to take what they needed from the public lands with reasonable restrictions, usually self imposed. We do not, and should not, have a European or African system where you pay for what you take. Some of you might not be effected should the US Government decide to charge trophy fees. I personally would never be able go after a nice bull again.

Finally - When you cut through the "he said, then he said" and "Liar!, Liar!" on this thread, what you are left with is a judgement of the OP because he did not "do his homework". Or rather those who "did their homework" judging him for calling out the so called outfitter for running a game farm and calling it hunting. My heart hurts for the reported "little girl" who shot a trophy bull this way. She may never know what real hunting is. I am not naive. I have seen and been around some real slobs in my day. Idaho is chock full of those who zip up and down the roads in trucks and ATVs with total disregard for game laws or private property. I've always known they go home at the end of the day and tell the little woman what great hunters they are. Proof we all tell our wives the best part of the hunting tale and leave out the rest. When I grew up in California we drove Mulies and it was an accepted practice. But when we start quibbling over the size of the pen to define the morality of a hunt, it doesn't sound much different to an outsider as a discussion of what trimester it's ok to abort a baby.
Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote extensively about the hunter who judged himself and his ethos more than anyone around him. Particularly when he was alone in the field. We need to carefully examine the things we do and chose to defend.
This is why I prefer to hunt alone, I never disappoint anyone but myself.(and trust me, I have.) I sure as heck wouldn't hunt with most of the posters on this thread, even if they paid the bill.
I don't care how many posts they have.