Brooke Woodside with her son Steel and the 6X6 bull elk skull that she found May 15, opening day on the Blackfoot-Clearwater Wildlife Management Area. While Woodside harvested a six-point bull in high school, this one has a lot more mass.
SEELEY LAKE – Brooke Woodside has participated in the opener on the Blackfoot-Clearwater Wildlife Management Area, known locally as the Game Range, nearly every year since she was 13 years old. She knows the area well and has found a lot of sheds. However, this year's 6X6, 28-pound rack and skull were the biggest she has ever found.
Woodside has lived in the area her entire life. Hunting for sheds opening day of the Game Range is a family tradition.
"I started out doing it with my mom and dad and now my husband [and son] are included in that," Woodside said.
This year the family decided the area they wanted to hike when the Game Range opened at 12 p.m. May 15. Then they would meet up at the end of the day.
Woodside and her husband Darin got out together and quickly split up. She estimated she found the dead bull within the first 20 minutes of getting out of the vehicle. It was an obvious winterkill but there was no indication if it died from predation or something else.
"I knew it was big but I didn't really take the time to look at it and count the points or anything like that because I was still caught up in the adrenaline of everyone getting out and racing through the woods," Woodside said.
She picked it up and threw it over her shoulder and started hiking. After about a half hour she realized she wasn't going to be able to carry it the way she was carrying it because "it was heavy."
When Woodside set it down she took the time to count the points. It was a 6 X 6 that she estimated was easily a 300-class bull.
"The most impressive thing about him is how massive he is, how heavy the rack is," Woodside said. "Its points aren't super long but the mass is really impressive."
Once she found it, Woodside was on a mission to find a main road. She covered about six miles carrying the 28-pound rack.
"It felt like it was way heavier than that but it was just a really awkward thing to carry," Woodside said adding that she has bruises on the outside of her ankles were the points were hitting her on steep ground and while side hilling.
While her family thought it was "pretty cool" from the photos she sent, their tone changed.
"They were very excited," Woodside said. "I think my husband was even more excited than I was but I was too tired to be excited. I was so exhausted."
Woodside estimated that the bull was four to six years old. It still had both ivory teeth still intact. They are going to clean up the skull and hang it in their house.
"It is definitely wall worthy," Woodside said and laughed. "I'm not going to try and sell this one. This is a once in a lifetime kind of bull."
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