Pennsylvania Game News - February 2022 - 11

That launched a cat-and-mouse game.
On Tuesday the bull, together with
some other elk, wandered across a river
onto state game lands. Kramer came ohso-close
to bagging him then.
" I actually had him at 18 yards, but
he was behind some trees and never presented
a shot, " Kramer said. " He stood
there for a couple minutes. And we had a
cow, I think it was at 6 yards, that stood
next to us for eight minutes and was just
watching us while we were standing still. "
The bull retreated to the off-limits
private land again, but only temporarily.
Wednesday brought no signs of the bull
until Kramer and his guides came across a
random person out walking. He reported
seeing a large bull and even showed a
photo of it on his phone.
" We were like, hey, that's the bull, "
Kramer said.
They went looking and found it,
together with some cows. But this time the
animals were around a bunch of camps,
once again in a spot where they couldn't
be hunted.
The bull ultimately wandered off,
though in which direction was the question.
Unable to enter the camp area,
neither Kramer nor his guides could see
exactly where it headed.
Suspecting it might return to the game
lands, they headed that direction. Sure
enough, they saw one elk, then a few
more. Ultimately, the bull stepped out,
too. He stopped just 70 or 80 yards away.
But his vitals were behind a tree.
Kramer was starting to feel a little
uneasy.
" I remember thinking to myself, you
know, a smart old bull like this doesn't
give you this opportunity too many times, "
he said.
Finally, the bull moved into an opening.
Kramer fired and the bull took off,
FEBRUARY 2022
rumbling directly toward him before veering
downhill. He didn't go far, crumpling
up within 70 yards.
An official Safari Club International
scorer, Kramer put a tape to the bull's
antlers that night, once, then a couple
more times to confirm what seemed
almost unbelievable. Kramer realized his
elk might green score in the 460 range.
" That's when it really smacked me in
the head, " he said. " That's where those
numbers start running through your head
and you go, 'oh wow.'
" I knew he was going to be pretty big. I
didn't know he was as big as he ended up
being. I thought there was a good chance
he could be 440s, maybe 450s, but the
magnitude of something that large just
doesn't enter your brain. "
All antlers up for record book consideration
must dry for 60 days before they
can be officially scored. A bit of shrinkage
is common. Still, Kramer's bull is exceptionally
large.
The fifth-place nontypical elk in Boone
& Crockett records came from Saskatchewan
and scored 461.
The all-time nontypical is a Utah bull
- known as the Spider Bull - that scored
478 5/8.
It takes a special animal to merit being
talked about alongside the likes of those.
" Any time you get that high in the 400s,
that's crazy, " said Justin Spring, director of
big game records for Boone and Crockett.
Such bulls are perhaps more common
now than in previous years, though.
Spring said nine of the top 10 nontypical
bulls in the record book are of recent vintage,
taken within the last 25 years or so.
That's in part a credit to elk restoration,
he added.
Pennsylvania reintroduced elk in 1913,
but with habitat improvement, saw its
herds grow in more recent decades, to the
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Pennsylvania Game News - February 2022

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