A hunt to remember

Published 4:00 am Thursday, November 9, 2006

Rick Brown had his hunt all planned out. He would walk into the bush near a skid road he had scouted out the day before.

On hunt day, Brown arrived at the road an hour before daylight – only to find another hunter already parked there.

Brown didn’t have a plan B, so he hunted elsewhere for about two hours then went back to camp for breakfast.

Sometimes hunters get lucky when things don’t go as planned.

Two hours after breakfast, Brown bagged the biggest bull he’d ever encountered, a six-pointer in the Desolation Unit, northeast of John Day, in the Blue Mountains of northeast Oregon.

”He’s a pretty magnificent animal,” said Brown, who moved to Bend this summer from Chemult.

Brown said he believes the elk might measure between 320 and 350 on the Boone and Crockett scale, which scores the size and symmetry of the antlers. For perspective, the world-record score for an elk is 442?222-178?, according to the Boone and Crockett Web site.

Brown bagged the bull on Oct. 25, the first day of the controlled Rocky Mountain bull elk season. After breakfast that day, he walked through rough terrain consisting of lodgepole pine and thicket, he recounted. He eventually crossed a creek and sat down on a stump in an open meadow. When Brown stood up and took a couple steps, the bull, who was standing some 30 yards away and out of Brown’s sight, bolted.

The elk ran up a steep embankment and stood broadside about 70 yards from Brown, who fired a shot through a mess of trees and brush. Brown said he did not need to take another shot.

”It really was the shot of a lifetime with that big of an animal,” Brown said. ”To bring him down with one shot was incredible.”

Brown said he was lucky to get that close to the elk. He said he believes the animal could not see him through the trees, could not hear him because of the noise of the nearby creek, and could not catch his scent because the animal was down a hill from Brown.

After quartering and field dressing the massive elk with the help of his wife, Brown had to make several trips back to his truck to pack out the meat.

He said he will have the bull’s head mounted European style, with the head boiled down to a white skull.

Brown said he thinks the bull may be a record in the Desolation Unit, and he plans to have the antlers measured by a Boone and Crockett official. He said he will likely lose some points because one of the tines is broken off the rack, but he added that he might make up some points due to the huge circumference of the antlers.

Brown said he had never hunted before in the Desolation Unit, and he had about a 50-50 chance of winning a tag for the unit.

He said he plans to apply for a tag there again next year.