"My Spike/6-Point Bull"
Written by Jeff Cooley

I was headed to my elk stand with my dad to hunt the whole day in fresh snow that fell the previous night. On our way to our spot, we crossed some fresh elk tracks that were headed to our other stand, which in turn changed my dad's mind to sit the day with me.
He decided instead, we should cover twice as much ground by sitting in different areas. So, I continued my way down to my stand which looks into a big nasty canyon. It was turning light, so I kept looking over to the other side of the ridge to spot elk. I had just walked out of the timber and spotted an elk bedded down in a little hole in the timber. I threw my binoculars up and realized it was a big bull, but something was odd about him.

In Washington you can only shoot branched antler bulls if you get drawn, which I didn't. I got my gun off my shoulder and into a set of shooting sticks because as you all know if there is one elk there are more with him. I looked through the scope and noticed that his right side was much smaller than his left. The bull was looking right at me and I watched him for fifteen minutes trying to make my mind up, "Is that a spike antler on the right side or not?"
Suddenly, the bull looked over his back at another elk in the timber and then looked straight ahead of him and only that spike antler moved with his head. It was then that I made my mind up that he was a spike-six point. I put the crosshairs behind his front shoulder and squeezed the trigger. To my surprise the bull jumped to his feet and ran out of sight. The bull appeared down ridge about fifty yards in another hole in the timber, so I sent another bullet his way and the bull disappeared in the scope.

I waited patiently for the bull to appear again with my heart racing and heard the bull hit the ground at about two hundred and fifty yards away. I waited for my dad to come down to me since I knew he heard me shoot. When he got over to me I told him what I had seen and done. By this time I was replaying the image of the bull in my head and starting to second guess what I had seen. I made my way over to the bull and was over-joyed to find the bull dead against a log and was truly a spike-six point with an ear tag and a radio collar from the game department.

We spent the rest of the day skinning and quartering the bull into eight large pieces for the following days to pack out. What a magnificent year.