A great success story courtesy of NEW Account Manager Brandon Blaney. Brandon sent us this tale of his friend Brad, who had two firsts on a recent hunting trip to Montana. Congrats to Brandon and Brad. Here’s the story:
My buddy Brad pulled and Elk tag in a unit that is very difficult to pull a tag for non-residents (only 3 bull tags given out per year). So, I decided right away I was going along for the trip no matter what. After a weekend of not being able to do much elk hunting because of the rain and snow which makes the roads impassable, we decided to move the camper four hours to the western end of the unit. Now it’s Wednesday and were starting to feel the pressure a little bit. Brad and I headed out on the Ranger before light. Right at shooting light we saw a large herd of mule deer about 100 yards away from us with a 3×3 buck in it. After some debate he decided to take a shot at it. He put a nice shot right through the heart and we had the deer back to the Ranger 30 minutes later.
After dropping it off at the camper to cut up later, we decided to head further south to a spot where he had seen a nice bull the day before but had given him the slip. But, after a whole day of walking and glassing all we had seen was a bunch of nice mule deer bucks that we didn’t have a tag for anymore. So, Brad says he wants to check one more spot where he saw them the day before and if we left right then we could make it to the Ranger in time to glass before shooting light ends. As we were pulling up to this river basin, Brad saw something, so we stopped but it was just a mule deer doe. Then he looked to his right and goes ELK! I pulled up my binoculars and saw a small herd of elk with a big bull standing broadside glowing in the sunlight. At that point he was 563 yards away with the wind blowing right at him. We grabbed the shooting stick and ran about 700 yards to the right and the headed in the direction that the herd went. As we came to a small ridge, we crawled up it on our bellies knowing that they should be just on the other side of it, and sure enough there he was standing broadside at 353 yards under a tree. We got setup to shoot, and Brad had bull fever so bad that he can’t steady the crosshairs on him, so I am talking to him telling to breathe and that he doesn’t know that we are there, he’s not going anywhere, take your time, relax.
He takes the shot, and the bull starts to trot towards us and turns broadside. Takes another shot and the bull does the same thing, and another shot! Soon the bull is 250 yards away broadside. Brad settles in and takes another shot… this time the bull arches his back and 5 seconds later drops! Brad was able to put one right into the heart. Then the real work began. It took us 8 hours to get him back to camp! This was Brad’s first time ever shooting a deer or an elk and he got them both in the same day!
Outside TG 
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