Guided Elk Hunt - One of my favorite guided elk hunts happened this year. As an elk guide I get to experience a lot of different hunting scenarios with hunters and attempts on going after elk. This particular hunt was awesome because everything happened just right and even a missed shot couldn’t mess it up. We left the cabin about 3:30pm on the rhino heading to Sues Park. Once we crossed east beaver we parked and got ready to hike the rest of the way. While getting our packs on we notice that we had both forgot our shooting sticks. We started hiking to Sues Park. It had been extremely windy that day so we walked slow and tried to play the wind to our advantage. On a guided elk hunt it sure doesn’t help when you don't have a shooting stick so during the hike we were able to find a nice serviceberry that we could make a nice shooting stick out of. We were getting close to Sues Park and the wind seemed to start swirling a bit, we held off until we could move in with better wind. We finally got a small window and moved around the corner and to my surprise there was a nice legal bull standing dead in the middle of Sues Park. I threw down my makeshift shooting stick and my hunter eased the trigger and missed. Our shooting stick was not cut to length for a standing shot. I cut it for when we where sitting in our blind so I felt a little guilty when he missed the elk. The bull took off out of site for a split second and turned came back and stood perfectly broadside, I figured we can’t mess this up again so we ran to the nearest aspen for a solid rest, and my hunter made a great shot and dropped the bull. We kept calm and made sure the elk wasn’t getting back up. Once we felt good about it we approached the bull and it was all high fives from there on out. We gutted and loaded the bull and were back at the cabin at 5:15. I thought to myself that had to be a record for leaving the cabin on a guided elk hunt and returning with a dead elk in under 2 hours.