By STEPHANIE BUNKER
Moapa Valley Progress
Logandale resident Lindsey Dalley has been collecting bonus points to draw a bull elk tag for 18 years. Dalley drew just the tag he was hoping for, a tag in Area 7 which is near Wells using a black powder gun.
“It was a rut hunt which makes it more dramatic,” Dalley said. “They are easier to locate, you can hear the bulls bugle and see them contending over cows.”
The group went to the Jarbridge Mountain Range to find elk in the wilderness area where no motorized vehicles are allowed. Dalley said that the size of the bull wasn’t what mattered most to him.
“It was about having the hunting experience with family and friends,” he said.
Fellow hunter and Logandale resident Emily Pack had the same tag so they pulled their efforts together.
On the opening morning of the hunt they woke up to 2 inches of snow on the ground with visibility of about 100 yards. That continued until about 10:00am.
But that didn’t stop the hunters from hiking into the wilderness area. Both Dalley and Pack hiked several miles spotting bulls all over the range. But none were within a good shooting distance. That opening day they hiked back to camp in the dark using flashlights to find their way.
At the end of the second day of the hunt they finally saw some action. Dalley sat on a knoll and used a cow call to get a bull to come closer, about 180 yards away. The bull walked right in between Pack and Dalley.
“They held off and let me take the first shot because I had called it in,” said Dalley.
Dalley hit it with the first shot. But, the elk continued to stand still, so Pack shot a few seconds later to keep it from taking off. She hit it high on its back. The elk continued to stand still and Dalley was able to reload and shoot once more missing the bull this time.
The elk began to move into some trees and wandered off. Dalley’s son, Aaron; and son-in-law, Stewart Bunker; tracked the bull, only finding a rare drop of blood. It was about to get dark so the party had to go back to camp. The next morning, after 3 hours of “searching for a needle in a haystack” Aaron stumbled onto the elk that had bled out in the middle of some dark timber.
“It was so thick we couldn’t even get the horses next to it so we carried him about quarter-mile to the horses,” explained Dalley.
From there the horses packed the elk over 3 miles back to camp.
“Because the horses were loaded with the meat we couldn’t ride them out,” Dalley said. “We learned to hold onto the horses’ tails and walk as the horse was pulling us up the mountain.”
The 6-point bull Dalley shot scored about 330 inches.
“We were on to bigger animals but they gave us the slip and I had ended up calling this one in,” said Dalley. “It’s still a nice bull, I am getting it mounted and it will be a reminder of the week it took to get him.”
“A different aspect of this hunt was that we had to have our wits about us,” Dalley explained. “Camp was about a half a day’s walk away at least, we couldn’t just walk back to a vehicle and drive out. We were approaching them in their world, and that was the challenge.”
