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Rocky Mountain Elk

By Live 2 Hunt | Sep 4, 2008

On my way home from the sheep hunt in Idaho, I got a phone call from one of my best buddies, Dustin Flundra.  After shooting the breeze and catching up on all his rodeo stories, and me telling him roughly how many inches of rain had fallen on my head, and the amount of  blisters that had set up shop on my feet in the last month, he told me the reason he was calling.  The next morning he was taking a friend of his elk hunting on his land in southern Alberta.  The hunter was a fella by the name of Tim Piotrowski.  Tim had drawn a tag for elk in the region that Dustin and his family make a living raising red angus cattle on, on the Shoderee Ranch.  Dustin figured it would be a good hunt to get on camera, and as luck would have it, I was passing right by in a matter of hours.  As the sun gave it’s first hint of light the next morning, I found myself walking through tall wet blades of grass up to my waist on the Shoderee!  Trying to locate a specific herd that Dustin and wildlife photographer Rod Sinclair had been scouting over the past few weeks, we could hear faint bugles in the distance!  We marched in the direction the sounds came from;  at the pace we were going the bugles wouldn’t be faint for long!  We laid hidden in the grass from a beautiful 7×7 bull with his herd of about sixty cows.  With other satellite bulls all around us, Tim waited for the big bull to give him a good broadside shot!  Within a few minutes, Tim got his opportunity and made it count!  As the cows vacated, they took about 400 yards of four strand barbed wire fence with them!  Tim’s bull was gorgeous and the footage was awesome!  I would have loved to stick around and help Dustin fix fence for the next two days, but I had jumbo mulie bucks calling my name back in Saskatchewan! Sorry Duster!