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firefighter recalls. “Close enough I could hear the ‘snot’ blowing out of his nose.”

About that time, Johnson’s buddies closed the gap to within 200 yards, cow calling as they approached.

“The second (my buddies) hit their call,” Johnson says, “he decided to come out from behind that bush.”

The bull walked into Johnson’s rightside shooting lane, and the archer stopped him midstride with a sharp cow call.

“I double lunged him on his right side,” Johnson recalls. “I could see the arrow, but wasn’t exactly sure where I’d hit him. I thought at first it was too far back.”

As it turned out, the shot was nothing short of perfect. After lunch and an anxious 60 minutes, Johnson and his partners took up the blood trail. “I was getting nervous,” Johnson says, “because he wasn’t giving us much of a trail. It was very patchy. We kept on it, though, getting a little bit at a time.”

But eventually, the meager sign ran out.

“We’re at the last blood and doing 360s just trying to find the trail again,” Johnson says, “and all of a sudden my buddy yells my name. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw him. He was bigger than any elk I’d ever seen up close.”

The bull, Johnson guessed, had only made it 80 yards from shot to fall.

Oh, and if you’re wondering about the hellish task of getting the huge animal out of the field and into the truck?

“We quartered him,” Johnson says, “and drove the truck to the dirt road I’d originally be standing on. It was about a tenth of a mile pull. Downhill.”

CURIOUS, I ASKED Johnson a final question as we wrapped up our interview. Had this experience – this once-in-a-lifetime bull –changed him in any way? And if so, how?

“As a hunter,” he began, “I learned a lot of things about elk and elk behavior that I didn’t think about before. One of those were all the cows and spikes (responding) to our cow calls just out of curiosity. I assumed the bulls would come check us out, but I didn’t realize the cows and spikes would be that curious about other animals.”

But it’s what he said in closing that hit home, making me realize just what kind of individual Johnson truly is.

“From a family standpoint,” he says, “well … this hunt is almost a two-week season, and I put a lot of time into it, which took a lot of time away from my wife and kids. That was tough. It was hard on my wife ’cause she was taking care of the kids and putting all her effort into that, while I was putting a bunch of time and effort into the elk. So, it gave me a great deal of appreciation for what she does and what she was willing to do so I could make that (hunt) happen.”

Johnson also commented on the efforts of his outdoor colleagues.

“I have a lot of appreciation,” he says, “for the guys who helped me with this. They sacrificed their season so that I could be successful. They called for me. They put me out front.”

This, he went on, was a collective effort, and a hard-won handsome trophy, not to be held by one, but shared by several. NS

Monthly Winner

A single stand in Central Oregon served up two sweet bucks for Travis Clowers (left) and son Tacoma (this image) early on in the Beaver State’s bow season. (COAST