Obsessive-Compulsive Training Pays Off

by Horace, 6/3/2008

After training for long rifle shots, up to 800 yards, on a railroad bed in Vredenburgh, Alabama for twelve years and running daily six to ten miles in Florida for thirty years, with races almost every weekend, the compulsive-excessive training routine has paid off! Seven hundred fifty races (5K,10K and 10 milers) and twenty-three marathons (including six years of running the Pikes Peak Marathon) have been run while getting ready for the “big one” in Colorado where my son, Charlie, is located.

Seven years ago, after tearing ligaments around my right ankle while elk hunting, I was able, while being pushed by Charlie and walking on one foot from midnight to six in the morning, near the Stoner area of Colorado, to harvest a nice 950 lb. 6×7 bull elk….as pictured below on top of the mountain.
This year I was chosen again for the first rifle season, either sex, and began the five day season by camping out three nights on Flat Top near Telluride. The night before the first day, the 10×11 that we had spotted on top of the summit disappeared and showed up in the spotter scope four and a half miles away on Sheep’s mountain….gathering two herds of cows to himself. Charlie and I broke camp immediately, and headed 28 miles up the highway to prepare for the first day. We each tried to sleep in the backseat of our respective trucks, awakening at 3 a.m., to begin our six mile trek up Sheep’s mountain. When reaching the foot of Sheep’s Mountain, I was told, that in four minutes I would shoot a 10×11 bull elk. In four minutes I pulled the trigger on a 10×11 while he was running at full speed. We found the bone fragments, up to four inches long, but no bull. My son looked two days for that bull. No luck!

During the middle of the five-day first rifle hunt, I went to the wrong shelf with my GPS, Garmin 60CSx. Eighty feet off! My son, when he found out later that I had settled on the wrong shelf, became very angry and I figured that was the end of my hunting assistance.
My nickname is “Big” for Big Daddy and my e-mail is “trophyhunt” so I had to live up to my labels. Both came true on the last day!

On the last day, one day after my 70th birthday, my son dropped me out in the dark on top of the mountain on Hillside Drive. It was snowing and when I got out of the truck there was two feet of snow. The road dropped off abruptly, straight down. I could tell he probably was glad to get rid of me on the last day. I had never hunted in the snow! What a blizzard that day! This would terminate on Bear Creek. Upon reaching the creek I had only twelve miles to go… hill after hill and drainage after drainage working my way to the Bear Creek Trailhead.

Around 3:30 pm a terrible snow blizzard swept in with winds reaching probably 50 or 60 miles an hour. Trees began exploding and falling on the opposite side of Bear creek. I was told there were no elk on Bear Creek but I didn’t care….just wanted to get out of there. My son said I should hunt until dark.

When reaching the two mile mark from my truck I came into a field down by the creek….about 600 yards long. I saw what looked like a bale of hay or a coyote on the far end by the water. When I raised my Sako rifle, a Model 75 W-300 SS barrel/all weather stock, with a Leupold LPS(3.5×14) scope, I saw two Montana or Arizona-type racks on a huge bull elk. The twelve years of training and thirty years of running began paying off….I knew, immediately what to do. I ran for a nearby tree laying on its side while pulling the scope up to the “long distance” mode. When I began to run to the tree on the ground the elk started running also, and at 476 yards I fired the first shot, hitting him in the shoulder. The second shot went through the middle of his heart and he stopped. He stood there for about 30 to 40 seconds and then dropped.

Charlie had asked me several times why I had brought such a heavy cannon to Colorado again to hunt elk. Now he knows! The mountains are steep in this area. Elk are not found with a 53 inch rack in this steep area of the San Juan Mountains. If I had not had the heavy rifle (with a light 2 lb. trigger pull); if I had not trained for the long distance by running daily for so many years and if I had not trained for 12 years on the railroad bed in Alabama while harvesting deer, I would not have been able to act as swiftly and instinctively to bring down this dinosaur-like monster- sized elk. My son, meanwhile, was organizing a search and rescue group to look for me. I was a bit late to dinner that night!