"The Diamond Bull"
Written by Jay Jarden

What an awesome New Mexico archery elk hunt we had this year!! A lot of hard work and time in the field spent by me and Jason Jackson scouting this huge bull really paid off. We scouted and photographed this bull we named (The Diamond Bull) based on the diamond shape of his main frame as we glassed him up two weeks before my hunt started with high hopes of coming back and harvesting this awsome bull during the second archery hunt. HIGH HOPES INDEED!!!!

On the first morning of the hunt, we spotted this bull right where we thought he might be. The only problem was the 2.5 miles of 1000 feet deep canyons between us and him. Nevertheless, with a little bit of doubt, a lot of excitement, and a few prayers, we made the decision to cross the hardest part of the mountain to get a straight line of site shot at getting close to this monster bull. Two hours later, we were in position to start glassing and make an attempt at a call setup or a stalk situation.

We advanced slowly and spotted this bull bugling and screaming like nothing we had ever heard before on the next ridge about 1000 yards from us with one cow. So, we decided for me to advance and Jason would stay behind and call as we closed the gap on the bull. As Jason started cow calling, we realized that there were five or more bulls on the same ridge we were on, as Jason worked a little magic with his calls, he was able to call the cow off the big bull right towads us and the bulls on our ridge and the big bull followed her...right to us!!! I knew at the point when that cow joined the group of bulls that "The Diamond Bull" was not far behind.

Soon, I was in the middle of eight SCREAMING, FIGHTING BULLS!!!! One being The Diamond Bull!! As I watched in amazement, I knocked an arrow in my PSE X-Force bow and stalked in to the fight and was able to make a great 60 yard shot at this magnificent bull!!! As I watched him break from the group to go hopefully lay down I was able to get off one more shot on him and put him down!!! All the other bulls fought for another 15-20 minutes unaware/uninterupted by my presence. Amazing!!!

Anyway, if it wasn't for the help of hunting partner and friend Jason Jackson, PSE Archery, and the X-Force bow for allowing us to realize and achieve the goal of longer range shooting, and just getting out there and gettin'r done!!!!! I would not have been able to harvest this amazing bull. We rough scored this bull at 365 , but no official score as of yet."