Silver Medal Shiras Moose Taken Out of Our Bailey Creek Camp

Jack Blachly of Plano, Texas harvested a 48 1/2" wide Shiras Bull Moose with a SCI score of 322 6/8" while hunting with us this October.  Jack saw over 40 different moose including 11 "respectable bulls while hunting.  Jack drew his license with 10 Wyoming Nonresident Moose Preference Points.  His parting comments were,"What a great hunt and there are more bulls out there at least this big."

If you are interested in hunting a true Trophy Shiras Moose give us a call.

Here's a story written by one of our great elk hunters - enjoy!  It is a true and actual accounting of the author's hunt (with the exception of his reference to the quality of my singing each morning).

Find Elk, Shoot Same

Dateline:  Wednesday, September 28, 2005, Crescent B Outfitters, Bailey Creek Elk Camp, Bridger Teton National Wilderness, Wyoming. 

As a wake-up call, E.K. Bostick the owner of Crescent B Outfitters came in our wall tent at 4:30 AM loudly singing a very poor rendition of  "Please Release Me."  What a shock to the system that was.  Later in the week he switched to "When I Die Just Let Me Go to Texas," which was a slight improvement but still the singing was pretty awful.   He lit the Coleman lantern, made a fire in the wood stove, and announced that breakfast would be ready in thirty minutes.  Everyone, which included my brother Fred Marrs, the other hunters, the guides, Rick Worley the wrangler, and E.K. congregated in the mess tent for a breakfast of eggs cooked to order, bacon, biscuits, hash browns, juice, and boiled coffee.  When I complimented Brad Cicci, the cook, he said he hoped it would stick to the ribs, which it really did.  Brad has been cooking for wilderness adventure and hunting camps for thirty years and really knows his business.  I told him he ought to be running a swanky restaurant in Jackson but he allowed that he preferred camp cooking instead.  While we were in the cook tent we packed a sack lunch from the goodies Brad had laid out.  Rick the Wrangler had saddled all of our horses from EK's remuda before the rest of us had even gotten up and they were waiting at the hitching post. 

We put our personal gear in the saddlebags, tied our rain gear on the back of the saddles, slipped our rifles in the scabbards and were ready to mount up and head out with our guides.  My guide was Terry Dolan.  The night before while we were eating supper and all the other hunters and guides were jawing about their plans for the morrow, I had asked him if he had a plan for the next morning.  He simply answered, "Find elk, shoot same."  I thought, "Well, my guide is a man of few words." 

Terry and I mounted up and rode away into the pre-dawn darkness with Terry in the lead.   The first obstacle was a small stream about twenty feet wide and six inches deep.  It was right behind the mess tent on the edge of the camp.  It did not present a problem but as soon as I rode up the opposite bank I was in complete darkness.  We were immediately in a thick forest of tall lodge pole pines and I could not see Terry, his horse, or my hand in front of my face.  I looked for the North Star but the forest obscured the sky.  The only thing I could see was the sparks from the shoes on Terry's horse striking the rocks.  I have to admit that this was very unnerving and I told Terry that I could not see him.  He answered that he was not going to leave me and for me not to worry.   At that moment I realized that I was completely dependent on Terry and my horse.  For someone who is used to being in control, this was very disconcerting.  I also began to value the services of a knowledgeable guide, which Terry proved to be.  However, I was wondering how on earth Terry could see where he was going.  Later I learned that we were on a very old trail that Terry and his horse knew well.  Terry could not see either, but his horse could. 

We rode along this invisible trail for about an hour and finally stopped right before it was light enough to hunt.  We had a little planning session during which Terry asked me about what kind of rifle I was shooting, how far I was comfortable shooting, and what size elk would make me happy.  He also explained that it was his job to find the elk and it was my job to get my rifle, get comfortable for a good shot, and shoot same, ASAP.   He advised me to help him watch for elk, but to also watch him.  If I saw him doing the funky chicken, which was his term for extremely animated arm waving, I was to get ready to do my part. 

When it was light enough we glassed the south end of Bailey Meadow but saw nothing.  Bailey Meadow is a high grassy opening about 100 to 400 yards wide and about a mile long.  Bailey Creek snakes along its length from north to south.  We re-mounted and rode across the south end and started north along the east edge.  It was a cold morning and there were skiffs of low clouds in some parts of the meadow and steam was rising from the still pools of water.  The foot tall grass was heavy with hoarfrost. 

Riding along the east side kept us in the shadows of the tall pines while the rising sun lit the west side.  We rode along about fifteen minutes and all of a sudden, and to my great joy, Terry started doing the funky chicken.  It was only 7:30 the first morning of my seven-day hunt.  I slid off my trusty paint mountain pony with a fluid Comanche-like motion, darted under her neck, and slipped my trusty Ruger 30-06 from the well worn leather scabbard.  In a flash I was beside Terry.  We both dropped our reins and squatted down behind a small clump of brush.  There was no time to tie up the horses.  Terry informed me that there were two elk about 300 yards ahead over in the light on the west edge of the meadow and that one appeared to be a nice bull.  They were just moseying along and had not seen us.  However, we were very exposed behind the little clump of brush so we did the ol' Army low crawl about thirty yards through the frosty grass into the thicker trees.  There I knelt down on one knee and rested my rifle on a small pine tree limb.  

Terry now informed me that the larger bull was a six by six and definitely a shooter and that the other was a spike.  I got the bigger bull in my scope but told Terry that I was not confident of a 300 yard shot from such a poor position.  I had hit the 300 yard gong at the Jackson, Wyoming rifle range the day before but that was off a bench.  Terry said he would try to call him in closer.  When he gave a couple of toots with his cow call the spike hit the trail and disappeared into the timber.  He obviously knew he had no chance of getting a date with the sexy cow across the meadow because of the bigger bull, and he did not have any desire to get whipped over the matter or stay around and watch.  However, the bigger bull started to move closer because he was looking for love.  As it would soon develop, he was looking for love in all the wrong places. 

I was watching through my scope and getting very excited.  I was just praying that I would not hyperventilate and pass out from extreme buck ague.  Terry was also excited as he kept calling in the bull.  Even so he encouraged me to stay calm, take deep breaths, and keep him in my scope.  Twice as the bull moved in he disappeared in low depressions but reappeared.  At about 200 yards Terry was really getting edgy because I had not taken my shot.  At that moment, with a shot that would make Jack O'Connor, George Franklin, Jim Bridger, and Uncle Luke proud, I squeezed the trigger and touched off a round.  Terry was watching through his binoculars and the first words out of his mouth were, "Man, he fell like a sack of  s**t!"  Immediately he apologized for his "French."   I said that that was OK because it was obvious and nice to know that he was excited for me and "with me.  He said the bull fell so hard that he saw his feet fly up in the air.  I felt good about the shot that I had tried to put on the point of his shoulder since he was coming toward us at a forty-five degree angle. 

After watching for a minute or two Terry told me to keep watch where the elk fell.  He was going after the horses that had taken off when I shot.  He came back in about five minutes and he was really using French to describe our horses that he could not catch.  In spite of that minor problem, we shook hands, high-fived each other just like on the hunting channels, and started walking to the elk.  When we got to him he was not yet dead so I dispatched him with a shot to the heart.  I had been a little bit off to the right and my first shot had gone through the base of his neck.  I was lucky he had gone down so hard.  With the second shot he gave up the ghost and breathed his last as his eyes set.  Steam was still coming from his nose and mouth.  Buck fever really came upon me at that point as I saw that magnificent animal on the ground.  At sixty years of age I had killed my first bull elk.  Getting buck fever is part of the hunting experience and I guess if I ever quit getting that excited I should stop hunting. 

Terry told me to stay with the elk while he again tried to catch our errant steeds and he warned me to watch for grizzly bears because they were all about.  In fact we would all see bears before the week was out.  Two days later when I rode near my kill site with my brother and his guide a large silver tip boar grizzly was taking care of the gut pile.  In about ten minutes he came back and announced that the horses were gone and hopefully they had gone back to camp.  During the next few minutes Terry gutted the elk while I watched for grizzlies.  What a huge job that was compared to the scrawny little southern New Mexico mule deer that I am used to.   We propped the body cavity open with sticks and spread pine bows over it to keep the ravens and magpies from bothering it.  With that we started hoofing it back to camp which was about three miles away. 

The trip back to camp was uneventful and fun in that we visited and had a nice walk in the woods.  I learned that Terry had grown up in Missouri and attended the University of Missouri.  At some point he had made a decision to live the outdoor western life of a cowboy and guide.  I'll have to admit that I felt a little twinge of envy in my heart and mind when I thought about that.  At one point Terry pointed out that two bulls had been killed a few hundred yards away the week before and grizzly bears were probably on the gut pile.  As we went by that area we talked loudly to keep from surprising one of those monsters.   About a quarter of a mile from camp we met Rick the Wrangler riding a horse and leading our two runaways.   We mounted up and rode the rest of the way back to camp.  E.K. said that he was not overly concerned about the horses coming back because my rifle was not in the scabbard.  He had concluded that the missing rifle was good news.  While we were telling our story to E.K. and Brad over a cup of coffee Rick put packsaddles on a couple of extra horses.  Soon we mounted up and rode back to the kill site. 

We got to the elk about 12:30.  It had been five hours since I had shot him.   After taking pictures we ate our sack lunch and then started butchering the brute.  I helped Terry all I could while watching for bears.  Terry did a fine job of caping the bull since I intended to mount the head.  The butchering job took three hours and then we loaded all the meat, the cape, and the antlers on the packhorses and headed for camp.  We got back to camp at 5:30, ten hours after the kill. 

After E.K. took some pictures for his records we put everything in his pickup and headed for the meat processing plant in Jackson, Wyoming.   We got back to camp at 8:30 and headed to the mess tent to relive the story of the kill over another delicious supper.

What a deal.  I had just spent one of the most pleasant and exciting days of my life.  My first guided elk hunt was a textbook success consisting of a comfortable camp with good company, good food, stout mountain horses, and a very professional guide in the person of Terry Dolan. To boot we were in a setting that included some of the prettiest country God ever put on His earth.   We were northeast of the Grand Tetons and a few miles south of Yellowstone National Park.  Reading western history is a hobby of mine and I thought about literally walking in the tracks of the mountain men who first ventured into that country.  No doubt some of them had trapped beaver in Bailey Creek in the 1800s.  Lord willing, I will kill other bull elk before I get too old to hunt.  But, whether I do or whether I don't, I'll never forget my day in Bailey Meadow.  We found elk, shot same.

Max Marrs, Krum, Texas