# Elk Camp 2022



## srconnell22 (Aug 27, 2007)

I am thinking that if I get started on this thread earlier this year, I'll do a better job of keeping up with it, rather than getting so far behind and trying to remember details. We'll see how this goes, but I'm really hoping to do a better job of keeping up this year. Feel free to hold my feet to the fire.

My summer was pretty typical for elk preparation, with the normal tasks of securing permission on private properties, scouting, and planting food plots in key locations. While I didn't get everything planted that I wanted to, due to the busy-ness of work and life with a wife and kids, I was able to get some of my core properties planted in time to produce good food sources for the early elk hunt. My scouting produced animals in some new areas, along with noting that key properties that were usually loaded with elk had almost none.

Among the properties I picked up this year is a 500+ acre farm that has had a terrible elk depredation problem this summer. They plant the property specifically for deer hunting, but those groceries have been primarily feeding the elk more so than the deer all summer. It took three or four visits to the property owners, multiple phone conversations and a four hour ride around the property, along with helping them set up a deer blind on an elevated platform, but I was able to secure permission with the landowners. I only had a couple of days left before season, so I wanted to get started on scouting it as soon as possible. By the tracks crossing roads, there was at least one bull with a small herd of cows using the property, so I wanted to get a look at them to see what he was. The morning before opening morning, I was able to sneak back in there and get a look at the bull, tending his cows at daylight. He was a mature herd bull, carrying a dark, heavy-horned six point rack. While I had looked over a lot of bulls in my preseason scouting, this is one that I knew would be great for my bull hunter, Johnny, if we were fortunate enough to catch up with him.

Opening morning came and we started at another property that previously held a potential candidate for Johnny to look at. I was hoping he would still be there, but we weren't able to turn him up. We did get a look at a 5x5 and a nice 6x6, which Johnny was pretty excited about, but I told him I thought we could do better. These were the first Michigan elk he had ever seen, and later told me that he "couldn't imagine passing those two bulls up, because they looked huge!." They were younger bulls, and although nice, especially the 6x6 being record book worthy, they were not what I had in mind for Johnny's once in a lifetime tag. They did help him get the jitters out, and he reassured me that when I told him to squeeze the trigger, he'd get the job done. Until then, his bull tag was in my hands for deciding what to shoot and what to let walk. I'm generally more picky than most of my bull hunters, so I appreciated his confidence in my judgment.

From there, we moved over to the new property. When we got there, there were no elk in the field. I told my group to get ready, we were going for a walk to see if we could find them. As we were moving through the property, I heard the bull bugle from down in a hole, North of the field. They weren't far off, so we picked up the pace to try to get ahead of them, with a little uphill running for extra morning cardio, that I'm pretty certain none of my hunters agreed to pre-season. This was, of course, immediately after I assured them that August hunting was usually pretty laid back, nothing like September, where we're often running to cut off bugling bulls. Insert foot in mouth here.

As we crested the hill and rounded the corner, we were stopped in our tracks by a spike and 5x5 standing in a small food plot below. We stopped to watch them for a bit, but it wasn't long before our herd bull bugled again. He was still in the same hole, but definitely closing the distance on the food plot ahead. The young bulls snapped their heads up and stared intently into the brush below them. I set Johnny up on the sticks and told him to get ready, the herd was coming out into the food plot. Shortly after that, the two little bulls scattered as the big bull rounded the corner. He busted out from behind a bushy pine tree ripping a shrill warning to the teenagers, with his cows in tow. Upon seeing him at less than 100 yards, I told Johnny this was the one we wanted, so he gripped the sticks and bared down on his rifle. The bull kept moving, making sure that the path ahead was clear of any potential contenders for his cows, which prevented Johnny from getting a good, clean, broadside or quartering shot. As the bull slipped out of sight, into a small valley below us, Johnny and I crept forward while the bull simultaneously stepped up out of the valley onto a small knob to bugle again. Johnny settled in and placed one good, clean shot, tight behind the front shoulder, which brought the majestic animal to rest.

I motioned for my cow hunter to move up as the cows were still standing there, wondering what was going on. We were able to get him on a cow and on the sticks, but he wasn't comfortable with the shot, so he didn't take it. As the cows moved off, I elected to let them lay up and rest, without being pressured, as I wanted to try to keep them on the property to get a good look at them that evening.

We spent the rest of the morning taking care of Johnny's bull, and celebrating the success with his best friend from Tennessee, Ray, whom was along this morning to enjoy the moment with him. While we didn't spend much time together, we did pack a lot of action into only a couple of hours of hunting. Johnny & Ray saw five bulls, a handful of cows and were able to fill Jonny's tag on what would be one of the largest bodied bulls I've ever had the pleasure of pursuing. His tremendous 6x6 bull dressed out at 730 pounds.

Note: That knot tight behind the front shoulder is Johnny's bullet. I absolutely love it when the hunter makes a great shot and the bullet stops in the hide on the other side. That means the animal absorbed all of the shock from the bullet, versus a quick pass through.


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## sparky18181 (Apr 17, 2012)

Great story and great bull. Always look forward to your recaps. Hope someday it ll be about my hunt.


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## SMITTY1233 (Dec 8, 2003)

Stud! The end


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## RHRoss (Dec 5, 2020)

Awesome


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## dntnddb (Jan 15, 2009)

Awesome as usual Scott!


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## mofo (Oct 9, 2009)

Wow what a bull great job!!


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## MSUICEMAN (Jan 9, 2002)

awesome, thanks for sharing! maybe one day I will get this opportunity. great write up.


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## Sprytle (Jan 8, 2005)

Great Bull Guys!! Big Congrats To All!!


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## snortwheeze (Jul 31, 2012)

😲 Someday ! Great story and bull !


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## Firefighter (Feb 14, 2007)

Along with WMU05's write ups, these are the highlight of this forum. 

Awesome.


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## Nostromo (Feb 14, 2012)

That's a fine Bull. Congratulations to Johnny!


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## IT.Fisherman (Aug 10, 2012)

Always look forward to these posts, thanks Scott!


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## deepwoods (Nov 18, 2002)

Great write up and congrats to all!


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## MallardMaster (Nov 17, 2003)

Stud bull!! Seeing photos/stories like this is why I keep holding out for 'Next Year' on getting pulled. One of these days it will be my turn!


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## DennisDW (Aug 10, 2016)

Awesome job as usual. Congrats to guide and hunter!


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## downfloat (May 3, 2007)

Thanks for sharing, pre-season effort paid off! Looking forward to more updates to this thread! 

Sent from my moto g power using Michigan Sportsman mobile app


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## cast and tug (Apr 25, 2010)

Great story, was the most exciting hunt besides my kids first deer that I've ever been apart of. Hope someday I'm fortunate enough to draw a tag. 

Sent from my SM-G996U using Michigan Sportsman mobile app


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## srconnell22 (Aug 27, 2007)

Knowing the cows moved North into the hardwood ridges, still on the property, I came up with yet another of my "fool-proof" plans. Anyone that has followed along in past years knows that my "fool-proof" plans almost never work, and make me out to be the fool time and time again. This one would be no exception.

So, on opening day of the August hunt, I asked all of my cow hunters to set up in deer blinds on the property, surrounding the elk, for a marathon all-day sit. I had four different deer blinds with cow hunters in them, and even seeing the elk standing on the ridge on our way in to set hunters, I was 100% confident they would pop out somewhere over the course of the evening to provide an easy shot for someone, if not multiple hunters. In doing so, I made the most easily avoidable mistake I could have. I didn't keep a cow hunter with me. This is the first rule of guiding, and one I've learned many, many times over the years. Always, always keep a hunter with you. As soon as I don't have a hunter with me, guess who is going to see the elk.

As it approached evening, I decided to sneak in from my vantage point to check the food plot we shot the bull in that morning. Sure enough, as I approached the food plot, there stood the cows, destroying the meager remnants of a small corn field. They had slipped in between all of the deer blinds and with not having a hunter with me, there was nothing I could do about it, except watch. I tried bumping them back into the woods, toward all of my hunters, but they only circled around me and popped out into another corn field. With that, my record of fool-proof plans working out became 2/341 as shooting time came to a close with no shots fired.

The next morning we moved into an area where I had planted a 15 acre food plot, complete with buckwheat, oats, soybeans, and rye. A proverbial salad bar of tender new growth for the elk in the area. A bull I found last year had moved into the area with nearly 20 cows. This was a big six point that I had previously named Junior, as he held some of the same characteristics of my aging #1 most wanted.

Here are a few screenshots of Junior, from a video I took last fall, when I called him in to about 15 yards while scouting (in my work clothes and loafers, no less). Notice the super tall tops and small crab claw 7th at the tip of his left side beam.


























I was out of bull hunters when I found him, but he certainly called my field home for much of last fall with this group of cows. It ended up being the first place he would bring the herd back to this year. With the bulls, especially, year to year information is tremendous when it comes to keeping track of them. They are quite habitual by nature, as it relates to their locations at certain times of the year. Much of the information I'll use to hunt bulls next fall, will be derived over the next month and a half.

We pulled up to a spot where I can check the field by listening for the bull to bugle, without disrupting the field or the nearby state land clear-cut. After giving it some time without hearing him, I wanted to check the clear-cut first to rule that out. We snuck our way into the clear-cut at daylight, but a little ways in, I just had a gut feeling that we needed to check the field, which was followed up with what I thought may have been a bugle from that direction. We turned and ran out of the clear-cut as fast as we could (which, at 40 years old, isn't nearly as fast as it used to be) and moved over to approach the field. At this point, I'm sure my Pure Michigan hunter and cow hunters thought I was absolutely bonkers, but they hadn't gotten to experience the running portion of our hunt from the previous day, so I certainly didn't want them to feel left out.

I dropped one of my cow hunters off on the tracks the herd came in on, thinking if we shoot or bump them, they should leave on their back tracks and he would get a shot. I took my cow hunter, Dave, and my Pure Michigan Hunt Winner, Jeff, and started in toward the field. We checked the wind a couple of times, which luckily, was in our favor. As we snuck in, we could see the cows, and eventually the bull, herding the cows in the field. I settled in with Jeff and we waited for a cow to step out from behind the bull to present a clear shot. 










Eventually she cleared, and I gave Jeff the go ahead to squeeze the trigger at 206 yards.










Shortly thereafter, I heard a loud "CLICK" from Jeff's muzzleloader... the primer didn't fire. Luckily, the bull was pre-occupied with his cows while Jeff's father tossed him a new primer with an exceptional relay from about 10 yards back. Jeff loaded the new primer in and settled back in on the bull. This time, the shot went off without a hitch and the bull absorbed the bullet, slightly quartering toward us. Jeff reloaded the muzzleloader while the cows cleared away and shot again as Junior started to move off to lay down in some tall ferns. As soon as I saw the bull lay down, I had Dave, my cow hunter, move up into the shooting position while Jeff and his dad reloaded the muzzleloader again. Dave settled in and picked out a giant cow way out in front of the rest of the herd, by herself, and put a phenomenal shot on her.

Just like that, we had a Pure Michigan bull and a cow down early on the second morning of the hunt. We spent the rest of the morning getting both animals field dressed, through the DNR check in process, loaded into the truck and off to the processor. Jeff's bull dressed out at 711 pounds while Dave's cow dressed out at 406 pounds. Both giants in their respective categories.

After the 60 day drying period is up, Jeff is going to have Junior measured by Commemorative Bucks of Michigan, as he should challenge the current state record for a muzzleloader harvested Elk. He is the only bull that I can recall that I've ever had, where the DNR seal would not fit around his beam in any location. He has sneaky incredible mass. A true gem of the North woods that I was fortunate enough to be able to follow for nearly a year.













































While we would continue to hunt hard, that would be all the animals that my hunters would harvest during the first four days. It seemed like every decision I made after that was the wrong one. I'd go left, the elk would show up to the right. I'd choose to go somewhere, and they would come out where I had just left. I'd choose to stay where I was, and they would be everywhere I wasn't. I still have three cow tags for the next four day segment, so I have my hands full. With the rut ramping up, I'm looking forward to chasing bugling bulls to pick out a few of their cows. These September cow tags are the toughest hunt Michigan has to offer in Elk country, so scouting efforts are in full swing until we start again next Friday morning.


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## SMITTY1233 (Dec 8, 2003)

Great write up and another GIANT Bull! September cows are tough tough! Good luck keep updating this post!


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## Scottupnorth (Jan 6, 2022)

Very nice & great job!!


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## Spartan88 (Nov 14, 2008)

I managed to drop a cow Friday evening hunting Scott. What a thrill, thanks again for the quality elk hunting experience Mister Connell! I was waiting to hear your segment 2 commentary to chime in. 😁

Like many others here, yearly I'd look forward Scott's elk hunting reports. He was the guy I was calling if ever drawn. The hunting was everything I hoped and then some! Scott knows elk, he probably does elk yoga in the off season.


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## Spartan88 (Nov 14, 2008)

Spike bull feeding, we got within 100 yards of him.


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## srconnell22 (Aug 27, 2007)

I'll get to writing the recap of this last segment up hopefully this weekend. 

Our North crew ended up punching five elk tags this past hunt, along with 5 more from our South group. That makes ten total elk harvested over the four day hunt. If we couple that with the 14 from the first segment, that puts us at 24 total out of 59 harvested so far this hunt. 

We have three cow tags left to go (one up North and two down South) overall, so still lots of work to do starting next Friday.


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## srconnell22 (Aug 27, 2007)

Three cows down this morning means we are tagged out. I believe our south crew is still hunting extra tags they’ve picked up, but I have two boys with fall turkey tags and doe tags.


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## WMU05 (Oct 16, 2004)

Fantastic! Love it all. Another great September Scott!


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## srconnell22 (Aug 27, 2007)

Alright, looking at where I left off, I have a lot of catching up to do. These will be shorter than usual (hopefully), but I will at least get this year finished up.

During the mid-September hunt, I would take James Bunker's bull hunter along with my cow hunters, as I was tagged out on bulls early in the August portion. The first evening of the middle hunt had us going for a walk on a large piece of public land. During my scouting walks between the hunt periods, I was able to sneak up on a shooter bull that my brother had found last year, along with a cow that seemed to be a resident of the area as well. We headed out on the sixteenth in search of these two animals, as the last time I saw them, they were together.

We had to run the walk backwards to account for the wind direction, but we hit all of our timing points correctly and were soon looking at the cow and her calf feeding in a small food plot. I had my cow hunter (and MS Member), Jim, set up on the sticks, waiting for a clear shot. That unobstructed look never came to fruition as they eventually slipped off into the woods, toward a larger food plot, after 5 minutes or so of waiting for her to clear a small brush outcropping between her and us. There were opportunities for a semi-clear(ish) shot, but it was still early in the evening and I didn't want to risk wounding her, so we never gave Jim the go ahead to shoot.

After she left, I bugled to see if I could get the bull that had been in that area to respond, or if I could get her to come back out to this food plot to investigate who else was there, since I had just seen her with that shooter bull a few days prior. Shortly after I bugled, we got a response from directly behind us, in the food plot we had just snuck through. We spun around, and hustled back to see the bull we were looking for, standing in the food plot searching intently for the intruder he had just heard. I set up the sticks and got the bull hunter, Jeff, ready to shoot.

The bull was quartering to us, a little over 100 yards away. I confirmed who it was and told Jeff that this was the bull we were here for and to kill him when he was comfortable. Shortly after the shot rang out, and the bull dropped down, loaded himself back up, spun, and charged off into the brush. He was definitely hit, but I was not overly confident in that reaction from the animal. Hard hit elk have a very distinguishable reaction to being hit, and this wasn't it. We gave it a little bit, then moved up to investigate the shot site. We found blood, and followed his tracks and the blood trail into the woods a short ways before I marked the last blood, called off the search and elected to call in a dog to track the bull. The woods the bull ran into were an overgrown canopy with little to no understory below them. There was very little blood and what blood there was typically fell on bare dirt, so it was very difficult tracking and we were losing light in the woods. I called the DNR and told them what I had going on, as per procedure. I also informed them we were still hunting, and were waiting on a dog, so this would be an after dark recovery effort.

I asked Jeff to stay at the shot site while Jim and I burned back around to the larger food plot the cow we had previously seen was heading toward, with daylight fading. When we arrived to the larger plot, there were no elk in it. I told Jim that we needed to just stay there and wait. Hopefully she would come through the rest of the way before dark. 

We were only there for a few minutes when a small raghorn bull stepped out into the field. Then another (I think there were two little bulls, I don't remember exactly, Jim may be able to confirm or deny. This was 3 months ago now and I'm getting older so my memory isn't what it used to be). Then I saw the calf pop out so we got Jim set up on the sticks as I knew the cow would be right behind the calf. Shortly after that, the cow stepped out and we got Jim in position and comfortable. When the cow cleared the other elk, and Jim and I confirmed we were indeed looking at the same animal, I turned him loose to take her. He held up his end of the deal and shortly after we were walking up on Jim's Michigan Cow Elk as legal shooting time waned.










It was an absolute pleasure having Jim in camp. Talk about a guy ready and willing to try or do anything and someone ready to push themselves to their body's limits, he did it all. He was everything I could have ever asked for in a hunter, even though he got lost the first morning of his hunt and still saw more elk than anyone in our camp while lost! If I'm missing anything, I'm sure @Spartan88 can fill in the blanks.

As for the bull, the dog locked onto the track and took it for quite a long ways before the DNR CO's, dog handler and our team decided to call off the search late that night. The consensus was a non-fatal hit (brisket/neck area), and the hunter was released to continue hunting.

I believe I've seen a picture of the bull since then, confirming he is alive and well, but I can't say that for sure, as the owner of the photo changed their story as to the location the photo was taken when I asked them. As unique as the configuration of the antlers are on this bull, I'm 99% certain it's him. There just aren't many out there that are built like him. Hopefully he is fine and I can show you a picture of him next fall.

Either way, it looks like I failed miserably on the "shorter than usual" portion of my essay. I'll try again soon.


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## RNHunter (Nov 4, 2018)

Your writings are always amazing! I sure hope their are more to come.


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## kotimaki (Feb 13, 2009)

srconnell22 said:


> Alright, looking at where I left off, I have a lot of catching up to do. These will be shorter than usual (hopefully), but I will at least get this year finished up.
> 
> During the mid-September hunt, I would take James Bunker's bull hunter along with my cow hunters, as I was tagged out on bulls early in the August portion. The first evening of the middle hunt had us going for a walk on a large piece of public land. During my scouting walks between the hunt periods, I was able to sneak up on a shooter bull that my brother had found last year, along with a cow that seemed to be a resident of the area as well. We headed out on the sixteenth in search of these two animals, as the last time I saw them, they were together.
> 
> ...


I’m looking forward to the December result stories. From what I understand there are a couple of pretty good ones forthcoming.


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## srconnell22 (Aug 27, 2007)

kotimaki said:


> I’m looking forward to the December result stories. From what I understand there are a couple of pretty good ones forthcoming.


It was a great December season.

I am so appreciative of all my hunters, but being able to stand next to a good friend when he sends a 12 ring down through a narrow lane in the timber, to a bull quartering at 250 yards, just hits different!

PS ~ Now that elk season is over, you it’s time for you to go back and shoot the coyote to mount next to your bull! I’ll go get the stick, I know right where he dropped it!


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## kotimaki (Feb 13, 2009)

srconnell22 said:


> It was a great December season.
> 
> I am so appreciative of all my hunters, but being able to stand next to a good friend when he sends a 12 ring down through a narrow lane in the timber, to a bull quartering at 250 yards, just hits different!
> 
> PS ~ Now that elk season is over, you it’s time for you to go back and shoot the coyote to mount next to your bull! I’ll go get the stick, I know right where he dropped it!


I’m just glad I had a witness…. Nobody would ever believe it otherwise…..and yes, that yote is destined for a bullet. Predator tournament coming up next week. He is on my hit list. We might have to go back and find the stick. I was more focused on elk than a damn yote playing fetch that afternoon and I’m not sure where he dropped it.


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