H
Hotjim
Guest
So after 2 separate threads (Holy wasatch bull and post em up beavis) about my bull I thought I would start an official thread with a few additional pictures. We found this bull on Friday and had multiple failed attempts to get on him close enough for a shot. This area has incredibly thick vegetation so it makes getting a close enough shot in the open very tough. So Tuesday morning we headed out with a new game plan. We (myself and alp75) hiked into the area and waited for it to get light. We had a few others glassing for us from away off. As it got light we quickly found the bull and his cows about 600 yards above us and we started to move in. We slowly worked our way up the slope constantly checking the wind and luckily it was in our favor. The elk were in a bit of a gully down towards the bottom and feeding up the gully. To the left of them was a shallow ridge and initially we were going to get up behind the ridge and come over above them for the shot. However once we got closer the wind was coming both down the slope and across the slope in the direction of the elk so getting up on that ridge would have been suicide. So we worked our way up in below them. Finally we got into position about 160 yards below them and had about a 18" opening in the brush where we could see them. We didn't want to move closer as we knew he had about 7-8 cows with him and we could only see a few and didn't want to get busted. The bull was down below the opening in the brush so we waited for him to feed up into the opening for a shot. While waiting Adam (alp75) kept getting txts from our spotters down below saying "can you see a rock on your right side of the gully with red bush under it?" (they didn't know we were in position and waiting for a shot) Adam finally responded "Got him at 160. waiting for a shot. Well the bull finally worked into the opening and knowing that my cva acura was dead on at 175 I used a trigger stick to steady (as the only option for a shot was standing up) and held dead on. The shot rang out and we heard a definite thud of the hit and as the smoke cleared the bull just stood there, didn't even take a step and after a second or two he hunched up and reeled up and over backwards. He was done! After a quick celebration and a few solid high fives we went to check the bull out. Now once our spotters got up to us they first said as watching though the spotting scope they saw the cows take off and bunch up and thought that we had spooked them, then they saw the bull hunch up and start to reel and then they heard the shot. Then they asked us what the txt we sent them meant. We were a little confused and they said what does hot jim at 160 mean? So in Adams rush to send them a txt updating them on what was going on "Got him at 160" read Hot jim at 160 and after a few good laughs the name stuck. Hot Jim! Now as for the shot, it hit as placed right behind the shoulder and didn't ruin either front quarters! I was shooting a Barnes 245 grain spitfire over 120 grains of bh209 and we recovered the bullet up against the hide on the opposite side and the bullet performed perfectly!
