Back in May of 2024, my brother sent me a text that read, “Ummmmmm????” with a screenshot of the tag he drew and then I responded with “No way dude. You already took a dream bull. Good thing I know where all the elk are. That’s a governor's tag unit.” My brother just beat the odds for the second time and drew a very coveted nonresident elk tag in a state where not many nonresidents ever draw elk tags. His draw odds were less than 0.09%. You read that right; he didn’t even have a tenth of a percent chance of getting this elk tag. Even with some luck, preparation began immediately. 

Luckily, I had previous knowledge of this unit, as I have hunted elk there myself after drawing my own dream tag. We knew we were going to have to continue to beat the odds if we wanted to find a dream bull. The work for a hunt like this begins the day you draw the tag.

Most know I love to shoot rifles. There’s something about taking a hunting rifle, stripping it down, putting it back together, and turning it into the ultimate hunting setup. Plus, I love to reload, and I enjoy the process of building a load. 

For this hunt, I set my brother up with a Browning X-Bolt 2 in .300 PRC. And I knew exactly what bullet I wanted him to use. Most know that I love 30 cals, and for me, the Barnes 208 LRX bullet has worked time and time again all across the world on hunts in my 30 cal setups. What I love about the 208 LRX as a handloader, is the ease of building a load and, obviously, what they do on big game. I had a tight window to build this rifle and get a load recipe for it.

The initial load workup consisted of fire forming the brass and putting at least 100 rounds down this new rifle. During this stage, I was also doing a slight pressure test to understand what this rifle would like. Finally, I did some long-range ladder tests. The first one I did at 750 yards and did two shot groups. I was going up in 0.5 grain increments. After finding powder weights that worked well, I moved into a second ladder test, but this time, I went in 0.3 grain increments. Finally, I did a seating depth test at the best charge weight. I completed all of this in roughly a week.

The last part of my testing was perfecting the zero at 100 yards and doing some long-range validation. 

The Hunt

The time finally arrived, and we were a few days out from opening day. My brother and our dad flew out, and I picked them up at the airport. We headed to a rifle range so my brother could practice and verify it shoots 100 yards perfectly for him. I’m big on 100 yard practice and having a perfect zero, and also validating at distance to ensure everything is dialed. He had been practicing with his rifle back in Minnesota during the offseason, so with all the practice and validation, my brother was ready.

While this was a coveted tag, sometimes things just don’t happen the way you draw it up, and I say that with a bit of hesitation since it was an incredible experience passing up so many bulls. It’s a good problem to have and a fortunate one to get lucky enough to draw a tag of this caliber. I know from personal experience that all coveted tags don’t instantly mean giant animals or an easy hunt; trust me when I saw that. I’ve had a few of those tags in my life, and all hunts are unique in their challenges. During my brother’s hunt, we had to really work to find mature bulls, but we enjoy that grind and are used to it from hunting general season mule deer together for so many years.

Each day on the hunt, we’d glass up 15-25 plus bulls, and pass up everything we saw. The next day, we’d completely change locations or move several miles away, glass from different angles, and find even more bulls.

Day 11

We now had only three days remaining of this hunt. The night before I found a really good bull, but in typical fashion, my brother wasn’t yet convinced we should go after that bull. Morning arrived and we decided to leave that bull from the night before and hunt an area 15 miles away for the morning. 

In typical fashion, we glassed up a bunch of bulls in the morning, but nothing worth going after. We packed up, and made the long move back to the area we hunted the night before. It was now late morning and all the bulls were bedded for the day. 

It was risky hunting this bull, since we didn’t get to see where he bedded and had to hike in blind. But together with my brother and dad, we made the climb up the mountain and waited until evening. The night before there were eight bulls feeding below us, and the big bull was by himself on the edge of some trees. We had maybe an hour of daylight left and so far we had only turned up two bulls. A young bull and another young 320” bull which my brother elected to pass. 

Light started to fade and our target bull was a no show. My brother turned to me and I think we both knew what needed to happen. We used this tactic before hunting mule deer. We grabbed the essentials and ran up the ridge and did our best to speed glass into every pocket below this rocky ridge in hopes of turning up the bull in the trees.

Finally I spotted a young bull and a mule deer buck. I also heard antlers hitting trees but couldn’t see what was causing it. Eventually the buck or bull caught our wind 100 yards below us, and they took off. Instantly I saw the target bull in the trees running with the young bull and another raghorn. 

I told my brother to get ready. The bulls stopped in the snow, I grabbed the range, and my brother dialed his riflescope in. After a second of confirming which was the big bull, his shot broke perfectly and the bull was hit hard. Typical of an old late season bull, he took the round and stood there. I told my brother to hit him again and the bull went to the ground and slid down the mountain in the snow. 

11 days! Not only was this 11 days of hunting a premium elk unit, but it was 11 days spent hunting with family. We spent the night cutting up the bull, and got back to camp at 1am. The next day was spent making the trip back in for the rest of the meat, the rack and the hide. 

An adventure with family I’ll never forget!