Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting What is your dream trophy elk hunt?

I'm thinkin' maybe Chama, with my wife.I'd like to see her shoot a good bull, and I'm old enough that steak/lobster in the spacious dining room and mint-on-the-pillow are starting to look as good as the elk!...
Ingwe

For me any elk hunt would be a dream hunt. Prolly only get the chance once in this life!!!

For me the dream hunt would be a DIY hunt including taking a bull with no guide. I still consider taking an animal the prime directive of hunting. It doesn't have to be what anybody else considers a "trophy." There must also be plenty of fireside time with friends and family mixed in, along with fresh game meat roasted over the open fire. A few good drinks too. Don't really care what anybody else thinks. I know what I like.

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What would be not to like about that? Sounds great....
Ingwe

I spend half the year at my cabin about three miles by air from the White Mountain Apache Reservation's northern border in eastern Arizona, and I get to see many great bulls. We even get a few whoppers come through our yard from time to time. Drawing a permit to hunt on the national forest land in this area is darned tough, though.

The question is: "if money were no object where would you hunt?" and my answer is I'd buy a hunt on the reservation and spread a lot of cash around to increase my odds of hunting where the tribal wardens know the best bull is hanging out.

We have excellent bulls on public land very near where I am sitting right now, including bulls that have left the reservation, but we also have a lot of hunters to compete with.

Bill Quimby

Jicarilla Apache Res. or Vermejo Park Ranch

Oh, you know, ingwe. There's always a critic. Some guys say "no fire in camp." Others say "no alcohol." Yet others say "Go to bed at the end of the day so you can 'hunt hard' every day." That's why I added the "Don't really care" comment at the end. Diff'rent strokes, I guess.

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Big Rosies with the in-laws in Oregon.
Hope I can pull it off this year.

Toughest damn country I've ever hunted, period; jungle is a kind description.

Lots fewer elk now than 20 years ago, though.

To answer to OP's question, without a doubt, White Mountain is where I'd want to go.

MM

+1

I'd like a decent bull for the wall. I guess we all would really.

If money were no object, I'd like to go on a pack string hunt into wilderness like the Bob. Which I hope happens one day.

And while if we saw a good or great one, range is pretty much a non issue to me, the more important part is the hunt, being able to pack in and such, I really enjoy our short backpack hunts on public lands so far. And while I'd love to take an elk, I've only hauled cow permits so far, and seen only bulls....

Anyway what I wouldn't want is to spend a lot of money just to be on the "right" place and taken to a particular bull like the spider bull. Only asking for a representative specimen and if a huge bull showed, by luck, so be it.

Jeff

in the big bull capitol of the west of corse, Utah (i had to say it to piss off the AZ fans)

what units? tuff one, but the bull of 10 life times are alive now on the:
Pahvant
san juan
beaver
boulder
dutton
SW desert
bookcliffs (biggest 6 point ever killed)
monroe (world record)
manti
wasach
west desert deep creek's
fish lake
panguich lake
north cache
south cache
piolet mountins
double cone
deseret
johnson mountain

any of those for starters!

I had my first dream elk hunt last year. My brother and I went to Colorado for a guided hunt on a Ranching For Wildlife ranch. The area was wonderful, the guides were excellent, the food was great, and the other folks were delightful. We both got very nice bulls after some serious climbing and some exciting calling. I have wanted to hunt elk for a long time and enjoyed every minute of my first opportunity to do so. It was actually more exciting and challenging that I had thought it would be. I am generally a DIY type of person but have no regrets doing it the way I did for my first time out. I plan on having more dream elk hunts in the near future and have been tinkering with a nice 35 Whelen Mauser with that in mind.

AZ, and NM as well as UT yep the Pahvant unit too...been putting in there for years.

My dream hunt will be done by my cousin, not me. A new opportunity opened up this year to hunt elk within 10 miles of my home in south central Saskatchewan. Over the last ten years of so we have been watching the local herd grow from stragglers to over 250 head. This year for the first time a limited draw allowed 25 either sex tags. Five people in our town got tags, my cousin is one. There will be many big mature bulls taken this fall, from a previously unhunted population. Lucky him, (you don't get that kind of opportunity but once in a lifetime)!

I've been intrigued for a long time with the Profit Muskwa Wilderness in British Columbia. Ten days or so up their with a good guide(entertaining and knowledgeable-somebody who knows the area and loves their job)would be my pick.

I love truely wild places where you're not always on the top of the food chain.

Leftybolt

I was fortunate and managed to do it last fall with my dad, and we both tagged out after waiting 10 years to draw our tags in southern Alberta.

I'm fired up about my AZ mzldr hunt in unit 27. Whether I'm going on a primo hunt or the fall back plan, I still find myself dreaming and hoping that the next hunt will be the hunt of a lifetime (and it usually is). By almost anyone's standard I had a great year last year by tagging out on my first elk...but even when I'm not successful, I love the chase and the opportunity to chase game in the beautiful high country.

I have done the pack-in wilderness hunts in Arizona and New Mexico. I have had the best experiences in unit 27 and know it extremely well. I have two hunts there this year.

Last year I had a bull tag as did my 15-year-old son. We had a ball and saw 5 bulls over 400" (unit 10), 40 bulls over 350 and 20-30, 375-400" bulls.

My dream hunt, and considering money being no obstacle, would be a "governor's tag" in AZ where I could hunt the whole year to my heart's content.

My son has ANOTHER tag this year so we will go at it again (4 years in a row!)

I will do two pack in trips in 27 this year. It will be fun. I will just be the camera man!

There are some TREMENDOUS bulls in AZ this year, we had a very generous winter snow fall and a wet summer. What a year to have a tag- maybe the best ever.