My 25 min drive home from work is over 1500 ft elevation climb and in the winter, absolutely sucks azz. Often enough during the winter its hard for me to find a mountain road open to get home. Pretty sure you have not explored much of this area
I've never been to PA so I won't comment on the "flatness" of its elk country, but this 1500 vertical foot statement is a bit surprising to me.....that's just a Monday morning mule deer hunt. I had friends who dropped about that much elevation on the 5 mile drive to high school each morning.
OK, maybe it was more like 7-8 miles but most of the descent was on a fairly short part of the drive, then on the flat valley bottom into town. They didn't even live in the good elk country. Had to go higher yet.
Incredible size of the bull in the OP, regardless of the circumstances.
