Samantha’s Elk

Chesson — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:17:36 +0000

Just got back from a special hunt! I went out to New Mexico to film a Hunt of a Lifetime hunt for a young girl named Samantha. She has been battling cancer since she was 10 years old! It started in her femur, which they had to remove and insert a titanium rod. After treatments she was cancer free for a while and unfortunately the cancer came back in her lungs. For the next three years she has been taking treatments and battling lung cancer. Several months back Samantha was giving a clean bill of health and pronounced cancer free by her doctors.
Samantha was given a Governor’s tag to hunt elk in New Mexico. Hunt of a lifetime officials set her up a hunt with Trophy Ridge Outfitters in Western New Mexico. Our guide was Audrey McQueen, owner of Trophy Ridge Outfitters, Champion Elk Caller and Professional Angler.
Our first morning out we weren’t a mile from camp when we saw our first elk. We got out and got set up. The elk was roaming a large pasture with his nose to the ground. We were pretty sure he was tracking a cow. He didn’t pay us any attention and we were able to get a good look at him. He was a 300 class elk, but Audrey wanted to hold off because she wanted to get Samantha something nicer!! I told Audrey I couldn’t believe we were passing on this elk and she asked me to trust her on this!
We had several more encounters with elk that morning and all were very nice elk, but Audrey still wanted to hold off.
That afternoon we went and build a ground blind overlooking a water hole! We sat a few hours and watched cows come in to water and then at 4:00 a couple of bulls came in to water. They were thrashing around in the water and having a good ole time and even went and founds some cows and chased them around the water hole for about an hour! At approximately 6:00 we saw the bull Audrey was hoping for come off the mountain. He had about 20 cows with him and he was busy running off smaller bulls that were trying to steal his cows. He mingled around at 400-500 yards for a while and then he started running the cows towards our position. Samantha’s dad said she could shoot up to two hundred yards so once he got within the 200 yard range Audrey had Samantha up on the shooting sticks in the ready position. Once all the cows cleared the bull, Audrey told Samantha to “Take Him!” Without hesitation Samantha pulled the trigger on her 300 mag and dropped the giant bull in his tracks!!! We were all very excited! We got up and went to take a look at Samantha’s bull. The closer we got, the bigger it got! It turns out that her bulls green scores 375. In my 10 years filming hunts, this is the first gross Boone & Crockett that I have filmed!
Thank you Audrey and Roger for the GREAT hunt and Congrats to Samantha on an elk of a LIFETIME!!!

A Very Happy Crew

Samantha With Her Bull

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Samantha’s Elk