By STEPHANIE BUNKER
Moapa Valley Progress
Moapa Valley High School graduate Lindsey Erickson recently took a break from college for a couple weeks to pursue a Rocky Mountain elk. The hunt took place in area 23, and Erickson hunted long and hard through some frosty days. She had a slew of family who accompanied her, including her mom, dad, and brothers as well as the Williams family.
“There were lots of people and a lot of excited boys!” she said.
Lindsey felt the pressure to shoot an elk, but nothing they saw worked out. The first weekend, they saw one that was pretty big but she wasn’t able to get a shot.
“There was nothing very exciting that weekend,” she said.
The hunting party went back out the next week and hunted for three days. “One time, my uncle found an elk through his spotting scope and he called me over to look at it,” Lindsey explained. “Well, my uncle is 6’3” and I’m only 5’2”. I couldn’t reach his scope!”
Her willing cousin Cody Williams lay on the ground while Lindsey stood on his back and looked through the scope. But she wasn’t able to get into position to get a shot at it.
Finally, on Saturday, November 18, the last day of the hunt, the crew was tired and took a bit of a break. They lit a little fire to warm up and they weren’t being very quiet. Lindsey’s Aunt Amanda was doing some glassing with the binoculars when she said she spotted an elk. According to Lindsey’s mom, Stacey, no one believed her but she insisted. They all started to look for it, but Amanda wouldn’t put her binoculars down to help them; she was worried she might lose sight of it.
Eventually, everyone else found it, too. Lindsey decided to go ahead and shoot this elk since it was the last day of the hunt and she had a couple of school exams coming up.
“I decided to just go for it at 596 yards,” she said. “I’m not the best shot, but I figured I might as well try. I pulled the trigger, it dropped, and I was done!”
Lindsey said this was where all those big boys came in handy. Each of them carried a piece of the elk and packed it about a mile to the truck. They were finished by 8:30 that night. The elk was a solid 5-point.
“The hunt was hard, but after it was over, it was really fun,” Lindsey said. “It was more fun to have the tag than to be the person that didn’t have the tag.”
She was also relieved that this hunt didn’t go like the last deer tag she had. “The last time I had a tag, I was thirteen-years-old, and I was really nervous,” she said. “My dad had me crying. All I could think was as long as my dad doesn’t make me cry it will be good.”
