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Eastern Oregon’s Blue Mountains have a legendary peak. At barely a hoof higher than 6,000 feet, Mount Emily is a landmark in the Grande Ronde Valley. Mount Emily is also known as one of the state’s best areas for producing trophy Rocky Mountain bull elk in a nearly-impossible-to-draw unit. Local hunter LeAnna Robins, put in for 20 years hoping to hunt Emily once in her lifetime. Her dad started applying for her when she was 12, and she finally drew this year.
“As soon as I found out I drew the tag, my boyfriend Kyle Bowen and I went out every single weekend scouting,” says Robins, 33. “We put in tons of miles and then Kyle, my dad, and I took the entire month off to hunt and camp up there.”
Robins’ dad, Kevin Robins, joined her in between deer hunts. Her brother, Josh Robins, and Kyle’s dad, Rick Bowen, joined the hunt when their own schedules allowed. Robins started hunting with a bow in 2016. She’s harvested a buck, a bear, and two bulls smaller than the seven by eight bull she arrowed this year.
Robins is a dental hygienist, and the office where she works understood what an incredible opportunity this hunt was for her. With the help of a friend to cover her shifts, Robins arranged to take the month off work and begin hunting on Aug. 30. All her pre-season prep had backfired, and her premier spot had a herd of domestic sheep grazing across it on opening day.
“They were there for two weeks,” Robins says. “They demolished that spot. Nothing else was coming in there.”
Every time they tried to relocate, it seemed like something went wrong. There were other hunters. It was hot. The elk were quiet. It was windy. The meadow grass was crunchy.
“It didn’t really feel like what you expect in a trophy hunting unit,” Robins says. “We had a streak of bad luck for the first three weeks.”
Robins and Kyle, who hunted with her every day, stuck to public land for weeks, planning to save permission they’d secured on private land for the last week of her hunt. Toward the end of September, they were driving toward the property when they spotted a new herd on public land. There were several appealing bulls in the herd, including one impressive herd bull. These elk seemed “untouched by other hunters” and had a daily pattern. After three close encounters with her No. 1 herd bull, another hunter came in and unintentionally pushed the elk out of the area.
“We were just kind of panicked and stressed, because we didn’t know where they would go,” Robins says. Finally on the fourth day, Kyle’s dad, Rick, was able to relocate the elk in another spot, about a half-mile away. “We were trying to get closer to them, and as we were approaching, we jumped another herd that ran directly downhill toward the herd we’d been watching.”
Robins was worried this new herd would spook the elk they’d been hunting. Instead, the elk started fighting.
“All of a sudden that herd bull lets off this big, burly, mad bugle and then we hear horns coming together,” Robins says. “They’re fighting. We run while they’re fighting. We get down the hill and can see them fighting. Their horns are locked, and I can’t get a shot.”
When the two fighters separated, Kyle used a combination of bugling and glunking to keep the herd bull interested. It worked so well, the elk didn’t notice Robins scrambling for an opening between dense deadfall, or steadying herself for a shot 8 yards away.
“Where he stopped, there was one tiny little perfect window between the branches,” she says. “He was broadside. I put my 10-yard pin on him and shot. I could tell instantly it was a good shot, but no one could believe I sent an arrow through the little opening I had.”
It was Sept. 26 — day 28 of 30 of their hunt. Robins had covered more than 130 miles on foot. She’d lost 10 pounds; her dad had lost 20. While just Kyle had been with her for that final hunt, everyone joined the two to help her recover the bull. They tracked the bull for 230 yards and found it was downhill, only 15 yards from a dirt road. And it had an extra inch to its own heavy rack.
“There is a little broken antler tip in his head between his eyes,” she says. “It had to have happened during that fight we saw because there was fresh blood around it.”
Like Robins, the bull had a hard season, too. It had a swollen hoof, a crack in the skull from the embedded antler tip, and a hole in its skull just below that where another antler had pierced bone. The hide was missing patches of hair and the flesh bruised.
“We ended up calling him ‘King of the Mountain,’ because he seemed to run that mountain,” Robins says. “You could tell he had been beat up and worn down.”
Robins and her crew have since butchered the bull themselves. Every ounce of good fortune replaces the rough streak that dominated a hunt that most likely only comes around every few decades.
“It’s a once in a lifetime hunt, maybe twice if you’re real lucky,” Robins says. “I feel like I could maybe draw again, but at that point you just hope you’re still in good enough shape to go out and do it.”
Robins and her dad rough-scored the bull at 340 inches, but that isn’t what she’s been focusing on. The hunt itself has left her on “cloud nine.”
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“It’s a lot of pressure holding that big tag and then having everybody there. Everyone had sacrificed so much time and effort to be there with me,” says Robins, noting her dad had given up his own elk tag to hunt with her. “I felt relief, and gosh, just — all your hard work and everything finally paying off and your prayers answered — I can’t even describe the feeling.”
The post After 20 Years of Applying, 28 Days of Hunting, and 130 Miles of Hiking, I Arrowed My Bull at 8 Yards appeared first on Outdoor Life.
