Lydia's Bull 5×5

Latest news: Lydia Jeub (13) went hunting in the mountains of Colorado and got a 5×5 bull on Monday morning. It is quite exciting. Here’s a wonderful picture of Lydia and her bull! (her story follows)

On opening day my dad and I got up at 4:30 AM and hiked a mile to our friends’ spike camp. Then we hiked up to our hunting spot and waited till sunrise. We saw a herd go by about 200 yards away so we ran after them, but we had no luck. 10 minets later we heard on our radio that one of our friends shot a cow up by where we were sitting moments before. When we got back to our old spot we decided to move a little bit to another spot where we hunted the rest of the day. At about 2:00 PM we saw a small herd of five elk: two calves and three small bulls. The biggest of the bulls was a 4+3 (a legal bull) but I was too afraid to shoot my gun. My dad said that he was pretty tempted to shoot my Elk for me, for he had it in his sites waiting for me to shoot. For the first day, this bull got away.

It was the second day of hunting and our hunting party of 10 only had two cows. All of us were tired and it rained so we all slept in. We didn’t get to our new spot till about 10 AM. It was cooler that day and my dad said he should take a walk and warm up. While he was gone I thought I saw two or three cows about 150 yards away and they were in-between the thick aspens. I called my dad on my radio and he came back to see if those elk that I saw were still there. But by the time he got there they were long gone. So we decided to walk a bit then sit down. Dad said that this is how real hunters hunt. So we did that for an hour till we found a good spot. I sat on a log about 50 yards from another log that dad was sitting for about twenty minutes; we sat there until dad said to come up by him. I was fazing one way and my dad fazing the other: he was falling a sleep and I was being lazy with my gun. So, my gun was on the ground and I was getting tired of hunting. About ten minutes later Dad wakes up and says, “Lydia, look behind you!” I turned to look and 10 feet in front of us is a 6+5 bull. I was trying to count the points while my dad was saying, “It’s legal, it’s legal! Shoot it, shoot it!” (A legal bull needs at least 4 points on one side of the antlers.) But, by the time my gun was off the ground and in my hand, the bull was long gone. We went after it and followed its footprints but we didn’t see him again. Where we were sitting to see if that bull would come back, we saw three spike bulls and some mule deer but nothing else worth shooting for the rest of the day.

The third day of hunting came and we got up at 4 AM to hike to spike camp. Dad said to me, “Lydia, you can’t go home to your brothers and sisters with stories of how you COULD have shot bulls. You’ll have to shoot one before we leave!” We were at our spot at 6 AM. By 7:00 we started hearing some bull bugling and it sounded like it was right over the ridge. So we climbed the ridge and went across the valley and saw nothing. But we could still hear the bugling. So we climbed the next ridge and went into that valley and there were leaves falling everywhere so it was getting harder to listen for trotting elk. So we climbed the next ridge. By then we had at least walked a mile and we were getting close to private land, but we still heard the bugling. We sat down to rest when we saw two cows across a valley running towards the bugling. Dad said, “Let’s try to cut them off!” So we walked towards the bugeling some more hoping to cut off the cows we had just seen.

Five minutes later a herd of about 30 elk walked right behind us about 10 yards away. My dad raised his gun and shot at a big cow she fell to the ground and the herd split in two, one went off the way we came and the other went in the direction of the bugling. About 35 yards away there were three or four cows and three legal bulls and two spikes. I had my gun ready and was asking dad, “Which one’s legal, which one’s legal?” And dad said, “They’re all legal!”

I rose my gun and shot at the biggest one. The bull walked about 10 more feet before dropping to the ground. I had an eye on my elk to see if it was still alive while dad went over to see his cow. Dad looked for about two minutes to discover she must have gotten up and ran away. So we walked up to my bull and sure enough it was a big 5+5. In the year 2001 my dad shot a 5+5 and this one that now was about twice that size. My dad called on his radio to our friends the Socolofskys to come and help look for the missing cow and help quarter my elk. When they found us, Mr. Socolofsky stayed and taught me how to clean out the elk while dad and Zach Socolofsky (12 years old) went to look for a blood trail. We had all four quarters off in about two-and-a-half hours. By then my dad and Zachary had met up with six other people from our group. While they looked for blood, my dad and Zachary came back to haul out the elk meet. The three guys carried out quarters. I carried some gear and my antlers. We walked 1.7 miles to base camp.

The other half of our group looked for four hours for my dad’s lost cow but there was no luck. So the rest of our group went back to where I shot my elk and got the rest of the gear and the last quarter and took them back to base camp. By the time everyone was at base camp we decided to call it a year and go home the next day. We had gotten three out of ten possible elk and it was just about the same amount as last year.

So that’s my story about the first time I went hunting.