Reader-Submitted Story
The Clone
by Bobby Healey of Athabasca County
Going back to the fall of 2022, it was the first time I had seen him and that was when I really started getting into elk hunting heavily. Honestly, I was trying to one-up my dad who had bagged a beautiful 7x7 bull a few years prior.
I have been sitting on our beautiful piece of private hunting land since he shot that elk, waiting and watching for something as big or bigger to come along. Smaller elk have crossed my path but nothing that had my complete interest.
Mid-August rolls around and anyone who knows me knows that I had been patiently trying to study the animals’ movements and activity through my cameras, as well as sitting in blinds watching them, trying to figure out how different winds effect their movement. The weather was typically warmer than it has been in previous years and the animal movement was slow. I was seeing very little movement and a large percentage of the animals that were moving in the daytime were whitetail deer and a few cow elk on cameras at night but again, nothing that really piqued my interest.
Over the next few weeks, the weather continued to stay warm and my dreams of that trophy elk were starting to look grim. Until one night and there he was! He showed up on one of my cameras in the evening feeding in a field with some cow elk. At the time he looked like a pretty typical 6x7 bull with big body mass, he was a beautiful animal. I gathered my pictures and went home to show my dad. As I was looking at my pictures, I had a feeling this bull elk was genetically related to my dad’s elk, as it had so many similarities that I just couldn’t ignore them. I named him “The Clone”.
I chased the thought of this animal for another week—I hadn’t seen him on any cameras, and I hadn’t seen any sign that he was still around. I was giving up hope that I would ever see him again but I continued to stay on track and stick with it.
Once again I found myself sitting in a tree just watching and waiting... and then it finally happened—there he was! Three-hundred yards from where I was sitting and he was everything I thought he was and more. I knew that when bow season opened, I wouldn’t have long to tag this animal.
September 2023 rolls around and bow season opens in Alberta. Although I knew my chances of seeing any animals in the warm weather were slim, I decided to go sit in my tree stand anyway. I threw my clothing in my Ozonics Scent Killing bag to ensure I didn’t have any other scents on me, grabbed my Hoyt Carbon Element bow, and away I went.
Night after night I did the same thing over and over—I just sat and waited. I blamed the weather for being too warm and the animals didn’t seem to really like being out in the open—it seemed they were staying in the bushes where it was cooler. Once again, my dreams of getting this elk were slowly fading away.
September 9, 2023. It was a warm 20-degree Celsius day. I wanted to give up because I wasn’t seeing anything due to the warmth. I was feeling discouraged and down on my luck, but my dad convinced me to go and sit anyway. I grabbed my gear and went to the tree stand where I had been sitting for weeks.
I was there for about an hour and had made a few calls but never got a response. Then all of a sudden I heard a rustling in the trees behind me and out pops a small cow elk, and then another and then a few more. I sat there relaxed watching them feed, kind of wondering where that bull was but also I was just watching them.
Elk are such an interesting and beautiful animal, they are very smart and just being able to watch them without being detected was an awesome deal.
I decided to let out a couple of bugles and to my surprise, I got a response. So I did it again, and again I got a response. I could hear him calling but I didn’t know what bull I was calling in. But as he got closer and closer, he sounded big, and with the amount of noise that he was making, I had this gut feeling that it could only be “The Clone”.
I got into position so that if I needed to, I could get a shot.
And then there he was! He came into the field putting on a show, raking his antlers on trees and overall making a lot of noise. At this point, he was still 100 yards from me but he kept moving closer and closer until he was a mere 51 yards from where I was sitting. I knew this was my shot.
I drew back on my bow and when he was perfectly broadside, I took a deep breath and released my arrow. The arrow hit dead center in the lungs. He ran about 350 yards and ducked into the trees.
I got down from where I was sitting because daylight was starting to diminish and I knew I needed a little light to track him. It didn’t take long, as there was a clear trail of blood that led me straight to him. He wasn’t far off the tree line when I found him.
I was completely speechless. The bull elk that I had been tracking and thinking about for such a long time was finally on the ground in front of me. I was so happy with how perfectly the hunt unfolded. All the time and energy I put into this one animal had finally paid off.
For the previous Reader Story, click here.
