This bull had several satellite bulls following him and his harem. I knew that as daylight approached, the bulls usually moved out of the meadows and went up a mountain on either side of the meadows that both funneled down into a wilderness area.īefore daylight, I set up on the ridge on the trail I thought the bull and his cows would take that led down into the wilderness area. I got very little sleep the first night, because bulls were bugling in both meadows all night long. The bulls were bugling at that time of year, and I had set up camp between two meadows. I actually shot the bull about 100 yards from a logging road, and he went down less than 50 yards from it. This was one of the easiest bulls I'd ever taken out of this unit. The next morning, I went to the spot on a trail where I had seen him with his cows before the season. Then a rain and hail storm moved in and shut down my hunting for the day. The first day I hunted him in September, we played cat-and-mouse for a while. I was 8,500-9,000 feet high in the mountains. I saw the bull that I took before the season opened, and felt I had him patterned. Although this unit was very thick and homed numbers of canyons, it wasn’t a great place for traditional hunting where you sit, glass elk and then call the elk in to where you set up. When I first started hunting this region, I drew tags four out of five years. Even for an archery hunter, this is a tough unit to draw, especially during the rut. I've been hunting this area since 1990, and I've taken a number of bulls from that unit. I took him in 1999 on the eastern side of Arizona in Unit 27, right on the Arizona/New Mexico border and directly across from the Gila National Forest. The biggest bull elk I’ve ever taken scored 368 points. He has been a Mossy Oak Pro for the last 10 years. He's on the PSE Pro Staff and currently shoots the PSE Evolve 35 bow. Occasionally he hunts mule deer, but he's taken more Coues whitetails than he has mule deer. Hanson has been hunting elk and mule deer since the early 1980s and has taken nine bulls and 15 cows with his rifle. He purchases a rifle tag for cow elk and hunts with a bunch of his buddies. Mossy Oak Pro Mark Hanson lives in Mesa, Arizona, and starts bowhunting not far from his home as soon as the season opens in Colorado. While many easterners are riding the waves and getting suntans at the beach, western archers are climbing mountains or hunting from tree stands. Mark Hanson’s Biggest Arizona Bull Elk was 368 PointsĮditor’s Note: Many western states have archery hunts for elk, mule deer and whitetails that begin from mid-August through September.
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