Travis Bruegeman writes, "I shot this 5x6 bull elk in unit 20 located in Idaho this year...Sept. 18th, 2010. The season is an early rifle season in September and the elk were not moving. It took four days of hard hunting to get into the elk and my luck finally broke loose. I walked almost 5 miles in with my brother, nephew, and hunting buddy. We split up just after 5 miles into the wilderness and I located this bull at 9 am. I bugled and worked the bull for 1/2 hour and he started walking away. I started walking torwards where the bull had been heard the first time and he started bugling more as I got closer to him. After another 45 minutes working the bull, I heard a large crash above me and a mule deer buck just about ran me over. My brother spooked the buck out about 75 yards above me and ran directly to me and stopped just yards away. After the deer ran off, my brother and nephew came down the hill and we made a new game plan on how we were going to get the bull elk pulled in. We split back up and just a few minutes later the bull elk started bugling again. After we worked together on the cow calls, the bull elk finally came out in the open giving me a 75 yard broadside shot. I shot the bull three times before he hit the ground. We ended up packing the elk out on our back almost 7 miles one way. We made three trips packing as much meat out as possible.

During the week we ran into a hunter in the same area on horses and he had been hunting that area for 20 years. During that 20 years, he had never seen a man on foot before that far back into the wilderness hunting. He has only seen hunters on horses due to the ruggedness of the area."