I figured some of you on here would like to hear about a little east coast elk hunt that I did in Kentucky earlier in December.
For those unaware, KY re-introduced elk about 10-15 years ago. Since then, the program has been successful with the population growing to over 10,000 estimated elk in KY, with some moving over to areas of TN, NC, VA and WVA. They've even used some of the elk to help with other states re-introductions.
To be able to hunt KY elk, they have a lottery every year that an out-of-state hunter can enter. It's $10 per entry, up to four entries (Bull Archery, Cow Archery, Bull Rifle, Cow Rifle). For $20 or $40, it's a pretty good deal relative to other states except there are no preference points or other system.. just a pure lottery. I'm not an archery guy, so I just drop $20 every spring and hope I get lucky. Last year, I got a nice email surprise in the form of a cow elk draw for the first firearm season. The license and tag itself worked out to be about $550 total.
After the draw, there's an opportunity to put in for a land voucher program, where there is limited access to large tracts of property. I hit the timing right and got into a voucher property that was reclaimed mine property. This was nice as it wasn't all forests, but had open land to glass and spot/stalk.
Fast forward to a couple weeks back and my hunting partner (Matt) and myself were headed to Kentucky. We picked up the gate key from the land management company on the day we arrived. With daylight remaining we took a ride out to the property which was close to town. Once at the property we found a good road system throughout so it was fairly easy to navigate. There were a couple large basins with some elevation with ponds at the bottom, each about 1000-1200 yards square. A large ridge ran through the middle of the property with some flat spots at the top and a few fingers overlooking some lower plains. We picked a few sites we wanted to setup at for glassing, and headed back for dinner and prepping for the next day.
Before daylight the next morning, we were out of the truck and hiking up hill to our first stop. We glassed the first large basin, hoping to catch something heading up from the water hole and to the ridgeline for some feeding and resting. After a couple hours, we only spotted a couple white tail does working the ridge. From there we trekked to an overwatch spot on the next basin. Not seeing anything moving after a while, we moved to a large plain on top of the ridge between the basins, as we had seen some tracks/scat the day before. While glassing, Matt saw some large animals moving across the ridge about 1200 yards or so away. They had disappeared by the time I got the spotting scope out, but we decided it was worth hiking over to try to find where the were headed as we could stay concealed across the ridge, but maintain the high ground in the event we could find their trail.
Glassing a basin
Rub marks from a bull elk
When we got to the approximate area of the sighting, I stopped to glass back as at this vantage point we could see some of both very large basins and if anything was moving to cross over the main ridge. Matt moved to the end of the ridge/hill to try to pick up some tracks from where he thought he saw something. After about 5-10 minutes, I hear a whistle and see Matt crouched down waving for me to come to him. I grab the rifle and leave my pack to move to him. He whispered that he was glassing on one side of the hill, and that when he turned there were a few elk standing on the other side feeding... which was only about 80-90 yards from where I had sat down with the spotting scope.
Fortunately they hadn't heard, smelled or otherwise detected us, as once we moved around the hill there were four animals only 45-50 yards away. One big bodied elk had its head down, with two other cows down in the woods and a calf laying down not far from the big body elk. We stalked in another 10-15 yards to try to get a positive ID on the big body elk.. not wanting to shoot a big spike. After what felt like a minute of us standing and watching these elk, the big bodied elk pulled its head up and looked in our direction. At that instant through the scope, I was able to verify it was a cow and instinctively went for the heart and pulled the trigger. I saw the bullet impact nicely at 4x, then cycled the action in case I needed to follow up. We both saw her start to collapse on her first step, but she ended up going about 60 yards down hill to her final resting spot.
Now it was celebration time and realizing that the real work was about to begin!
How we found her
We waited a few minutes, and collected our gear where we had dropped it around the hill. From here, we decided to start into the woods to find my elk. Fortunately they're large animals and all of the leaves were off of the trees. After just a couple minutes we found where she had collapsed between some small trees. We took a few pictures and then started talking a game plan. Her location was too far into the woods to get a truck into (ATVs/RZRs/etc were prohibited on this piece of property). Also, we had some doubts on being able to drag her out as it would be uphill and she was a good sized cow. We were able to get her flipped around and out of the small trees, but that was quite the task for the two of us.
Success!
At this point, Matt went down the mile and a half to get the truck, while I waited behind and called in to telecheck the elk, take care of paperwork, etc. Eventually Matt got back with the truck and we were able to get about 100-120 yards away from the elk. Just for fun, we tried to move her just a little bit and it wasn't happening. Now it was time to pull out some knives and do some cutting.
For the next several hours, we cut, poked and prodded our way through quartering up the elk. It is certainly a two person job to make it go somewhat smoothly. Having a person to hold a leg out of the way or help keep the body from shifting around is very helpful. We found that my bullet had shredded the heart, and punched a nice hole on it's way out of the rib cage. In all, we ended up with four quarters, some nice tenderloins and a good bit of other meat. From bullet impact to the last meat bag being hauled up hill, it was a four hour period. When you read about elk shape, it's not necessarily for chasing them, but dragging one out of the woods!
Exit hole under the skin
Dragging out the last quarter and tenderloins
All quartered up
While we were lucky on the first real day of hunting, it was a great trip and I learned a lot. I came prepared with a custom Accurate Ordnance .300 Win Mag, Nightforce riflescope, rangefinder, Kestrel and all of the goodies in anticipating of a several hundred yard shot or maybe more depending on what we found. When it was all said and done, my shot was 35 yards. The Hornady 212gr ELD-X was a one-hitter quitter, dumping over 3000 ft-lbs of energy into the elk. Both of us were layered up, mainly in First Lite gear. If you haven't checked out their stuff, the Fusion camo is outstanding and the clothes are very comfortable and warm.
.300 Win Mag Elk Killers
Photo of the rifle
If you get a chance to go to Kentucky and chase elk, don't pass up the opportunity. They live in the mountains of SE Kentucky, so you're certainly going to chase them. If you draw a bull tag, it might be worth thinking about a guide. If you've got a week for the full season, there's public land you can chase the elk on or get into one of the voucher properties if possible. I'd be happy to answer any questions or provide what worked/didn't if anyone else gets lucky and draws a KY tag.
One last thought, fresh elk tenderloin is one of the finest steaks you'll eat!
Matt with one of the tenderloins
For those unaware, KY re-introduced elk about 10-15 years ago. Since then, the program has been successful with the population growing to over 10,000 estimated elk in KY, with some moving over to areas of TN, NC, VA and WVA. They've even used some of the elk to help with other states re-introductions.
To be able to hunt KY elk, they have a lottery every year that an out-of-state hunter can enter. It's $10 per entry, up to four entries (Bull Archery, Cow Archery, Bull Rifle, Cow Rifle). For $20 or $40, it's a pretty good deal relative to other states except there are no preference points or other system.. just a pure lottery. I'm not an archery guy, so I just drop $20 every spring and hope I get lucky. Last year, I got a nice email surprise in the form of a cow elk draw for the first firearm season. The license and tag itself worked out to be about $550 total.
After the draw, there's an opportunity to put in for a land voucher program, where there is limited access to large tracts of property. I hit the timing right and got into a voucher property that was reclaimed mine property. This was nice as it wasn't all forests, but had open land to glass and spot/stalk.
Fast forward to a couple weeks back and my hunting partner (Matt) and myself were headed to Kentucky. We picked up the gate key from the land management company on the day we arrived. With daylight remaining we took a ride out to the property which was close to town. Once at the property we found a good road system throughout so it was fairly easy to navigate. There were a couple large basins with some elevation with ponds at the bottom, each about 1000-1200 yards square. A large ridge ran through the middle of the property with some flat spots at the top and a few fingers overlooking some lower plains. We picked a few sites we wanted to setup at for glassing, and headed back for dinner and prepping for the next day.
Before daylight the next morning, we were out of the truck and hiking up hill to our first stop. We glassed the first large basin, hoping to catch something heading up from the water hole and to the ridgeline for some feeding and resting. After a couple hours, we only spotted a couple white tail does working the ridge. From there we trekked to an overwatch spot on the next basin. Not seeing anything moving after a while, we moved to a large plain on top of the ridge between the basins, as we had seen some tracks/scat the day before. While glassing, Matt saw some large animals moving across the ridge about 1200 yards or so away. They had disappeared by the time I got the spotting scope out, but we decided it was worth hiking over to try to find where the were headed as we could stay concealed across the ridge, but maintain the high ground in the event we could find their trail.
Glassing a basin
Rub marks from a bull elk
When we got to the approximate area of the sighting, I stopped to glass back as at this vantage point we could see some of both very large basins and if anything was moving to cross over the main ridge. Matt moved to the end of the ridge/hill to try to pick up some tracks from where he thought he saw something. After about 5-10 minutes, I hear a whistle and see Matt crouched down waving for me to come to him. I grab the rifle and leave my pack to move to him. He whispered that he was glassing on one side of the hill, and that when he turned there were a few elk standing on the other side feeding... which was only about 80-90 yards from where I had sat down with the spotting scope.
Fortunately they hadn't heard, smelled or otherwise detected us, as once we moved around the hill there were four animals only 45-50 yards away. One big bodied elk had its head down, with two other cows down in the woods and a calf laying down not far from the big body elk. We stalked in another 10-15 yards to try to get a positive ID on the big body elk.. not wanting to shoot a big spike. After what felt like a minute of us standing and watching these elk, the big bodied elk pulled its head up and looked in our direction. At that instant through the scope, I was able to verify it was a cow and instinctively went for the heart and pulled the trigger. I saw the bullet impact nicely at 4x, then cycled the action in case I needed to follow up. We both saw her start to collapse on her first step, but she ended up going about 60 yards down hill to her final resting spot.
Now it was celebration time and realizing that the real work was about to begin!
How we found her
We waited a few minutes, and collected our gear where we had dropped it around the hill. From here, we decided to start into the woods to find my elk. Fortunately they're large animals and all of the leaves were off of the trees. After just a couple minutes we found where she had collapsed between some small trees. We took a few pictures and then started talking a game plan. Her location was too far into the woods to get a truck into (ATVs/RZRs/etc were prohibited on this piece of property). Also, we had some doubts on being able to drag her out as it would be uphill and she was a good sized cow. We were able to get her flipped around and out of the small trees, but that was quite the task for the two of us.
Success!
At this point, Matt went down the mile and a half to get the truck, while I waited behind and called in to telecheck the elk, take care of paperwork, etc. Eventually Matt got back with the truck and we were able to get about 100-120 yards away from the elk. Just for fun, we tried to move her just a little bit and it wasn't happening. Now it was time to pull out some knives and do some cutting.
For the next several hours, we cut, poked and prodded our way through quartering up the elk. It is certainly a two person job to make it go somewhat smoothly. Having a person to hold a leg out of the way or help keep the body from shifting around is very helpful. We found that my bullet had shredded the heart, and punched a nice hole on it's way out of the rib cage. In all, we ended up with four quarters, some nice tenderloins and a good bit of other meat. From bullet impact to the last meat bag being hauled up hill, it was a four hour period. When you read about elk shape, it's not necessarily for chasing them, but dragging one out of the woods!
Exit hole under the skin
Dragging out the last quarter and tenderloins
All quartered up
While we were lucky on the first real day of hunting, it was a great trip and I learned a lot. I came prepared with a custom Accurate Ordnance .300 Win Mag, Nightforce riflescope, rangefinder, Kestrel and all of the goodies in anticipating of a several hundred yard shot or maybe more depending on what we found. When it was all said and done, my shot was 35 yards. The Hornady 212gr ELD-X was a one-hitter quitter, dumping over 3000 ft-lbs of energy into the elk. Both of us were layered up, mainly in First Lite gear. If you haven't checked out their stuff, the Fusion camo is outstanding and the clothes are very comfortable and warm.
.300 Win Mag Elk Killers
Photo of the rifle
If you get a chance to go to Kentucky and chase elk, don't pass up the opportunity. They live in the mountains of SE Kentucky, so you're certainly going to chase them. If you draw a bull tag, it might be worth thinking about a guide. If you've got a week for the full season, there's public land you can chase the elk on or get into one of the voucher properties if possible. I'd be happy to answer any questions or provide what worked/didn't if anyone else gets lucky and draws a KY tag.
One last thought, fresh elk tenderloin is one of the finest steaks you'll eat!
Matt with one of the tenderloins
