Frankie and his 583 yard shot Coastal Bull 2009

I would like to say that I was down at Waldport for the 2nd Season Rifle Elk Season this year to watch Frankie, my son shoot his bull at long range, but I was not.

 My son Frankie, Jim N. and his hunting buddies down at the coast hunt for different reasons, one being filling the freezers, two for the pleasure of the hunt with friends.   It is not always about hunting for the big racks and at the coast, the hunting for large racks is not even close to the eastern and central part of the state.   So when these guys are out hunting, they are hunting hard for game to harvest and put in the freeze.   The coast can definitly be more difficult with the terrain and plant growth than the other parts of the state.

Jim N. with his Retrival System for the Coast Elk

This has been a tradition of Frankie and Holly of hunting down at Jim & Cindy’s place down near Waldport off of the bay for about three years.   It is a great place for the two of them to go as they have a house to say in while down there during the course of the year and during the elk season.

I do believe that Frankie has grown accustom to hunting with the older locals around the area, they have taken a shine to him and know that he will get in there and work when an elk is down or he needs to do some game driving.

Linda and I gave Frankie and Holly the opening weekend to hunt together as we had Addison for the weekend and brought her down Sunday evening.

The weekend would have proven a winner for Frankie if trespassers had not driven into the private farm they were on.   Frankie was letting the cow elk pass in front of him at 40 yards expecting the rest of the herd with two (2) bulls in it to pass along also during his ambush of the elk coming out of the pasture into the timber.  This was not going to happen as the non-invited hunters drove their pickup into the long driveway and into the remaining herd.   The rest is history and they were left empty handed on what should have been a successful opening morning hunt.

John, Frankie and Jim during retrival and getting a rest.

Talked with Frankie on Tuesday and he was pretty depressed about hunting down at the coast and I told him maybe next year we can use the preference points and draw a great eastside tag for Oregon.  Sounds Great Dad!

I get a call on Wednesday early on and Frankie tells me he has a bull down in the same place that Jim had gotten his elk in 2007.   Wow!  Do you need some help in getting him out, from my past memory of getting Jim’s elk out of the marsh?    NO Dad, we will be all done by the time you get here.

Not a bad way to gut and skin your elk.

Later within about 1 ½ they had the bull out of the marsh area.   I did not remember that Jim had gotten a retrieval season down with a capstan style unit with 2500 feet of heavy rope.   Frankie took the line out the bull which was about 600 yards out direct line of sight.   Once he got the rope around the head, he made comment that he could not keep up with the speed of the removal.

View from the shooting spot to the elk.

From Frankie’s account of the kill, he had been in Jim’s front area of his property watching the timber across the way and watching to see if any game was going to move out and across the marsh.   One of his buddies was on the edge of the timber area moving or pushing the ghosts of the forest.   Frankie said that a really big Blacktail buck came out within 300 yards.   Within minutes he spots a lone elk at about 500 yards, takes a close look and could see that it was a bull (spike) and knew what to do.   The bull was moving right long and he takes the shot, hitting the elk unknown to him in the lower rear leg.  Having remembered from training never stop shooting until the elk goes down he makes another shot and this one is right on target in the boiler room.  The elk goes down within 15 yards and into the deep part of the marsh.   The 1980 vintage 340 Weatherby with 225 grain Barnes X bullets did the job.  The range for the shot was range finder at 583 yards.   Great shot!

During the rest of the week, Frankie was the brush or timber as beater (driver) and the group was able to get a couple more bulls and one cow elk.   So they went 5 for 7 during the Coast Elk Hunt.

I was informed that he had GPS some hotspots and added the waypoints to my Garmin GPS.  Maybe this next year I will check it out for archery on elk and hold onto our preference points.  Hmm!

1/3 of the way back to the barn