The Elk Hunt

So, this was what I was so excited about yesterday.  My dad and I were given the opportunity to hunt some Elk on a property near here.  My dad has always wanted a nice Elk bull and I really wanted to get my hands on some good Elk meat, so I wanted to shoot a cow.  Well, this turned into quite the hunt.  Unfortunately, the bulls were having none of it.  We were able to locate a small group and I got a very nice cow out of that one.  My dad ended up spending the night on the ranch and will try again in the morning.  I really hope it is successful.  Here are some pics from today:

It was a truly beautiful animal.  Very healthy and very LARGE.  Handling this size animal is an entirely different experience.  In my past I've been involved in hunts with a lot of large game, but never really the processing all that much.  I've handled literally hundreds of Whitetail and Axis deer, so I have that size game down pat.  It's somewhat the same, but then not really.  From there, we went here:

Now it is quartered from here and hanging in a cooler getting some age on it.  We're still trying to plan out how we're going to tackle this one.  We take pride in processing all of our own game, so we're trying to figure out some facilities and get some time lined up to do it.  I really cannot wait to get some of these steaks into the kitchen.