Sometimes Hunters Get a Good Story & a Good Shot

It was November 2013, and on that cool and snowy day Josie Evenson and her dad went out hunting. It was the last week of the season, and the pair traveled up an old logging road until they could drive no further. They parked the vehicle and started hiking up and over a ridge and down into a bowl-shaped land formation, surrounded by ridges.

They decided to sit and glass, which means they were going to scope out the surrounding area with binoculars.

Evenson has been hunting all of her life, along with her parents, brother, and sisters. When she was little, her parents would pack her on their backs when they went on hunting trips. It has always been a family affair for the avid outdoorsmen, and so this Thanksgiving-week hunting venture seemed nothing less than appropriate.

As Evenson settled into their vantage point, her dad was glassing the ridge across from them when Evenson saw a cow elk come up a nearby ridge, and disappear out of sight. Her father had an elk tag, and so she drew his attention that way. Not seeing anything, he continued to view the ridge across from them, but Evenson kept looking for the elk, and then, suddenly, spotted a buck in the same area.

She quickly got into a kneeling position and waited for a good shot as the animal came closer and closer. At 600 yards she took her first shot; the shot was too high. It went over the buck and Evenson recalls thinking that that was it. She'd surely lost her chance to down the buck, but much to her surprise, the shot had sent the deer running past her and then it stopped abruptly. She would get a second chance, and at about 400 yards she took her second shot, and this time she didn't miss.

The buck ran into a thicket about 70 yards away, where she found the 140-inch 4x4. It's the biggest deer she's shot to date.

"Hunting appeals to me because I get to spend time in the great outdoors with people I love and care about. We can share our experiences and our memories, even if the only thing we come home with is stories," Evenson commented.

However, on that brisk day in November, Evenson took home much more than just a good story.

"My grandparents instilled in my parents a passion for the outdoors, hunting, safety, and conservation, and my parents passed that down to my siblings and myself. We'll pass that down to the next generation, because every hunter knows that you can't have just one of those things without the others," she concluded.