Sneek Freak TV: Dean's 360" AZ Bull

I was fortunate to spend a day hunting with my good friends Dean and Carl during the 2010 archery elk season. Dean had waited over twelve years to draw this tag! After hunting hard for 9 days, he had many close encounters with bulls, but it never seemed to all come together at the right time with the right bull. Dean is an accomplished hunter and wanted to shoot a true trophy bull. The morning of the tenth day we went into a spot I hadn't been to yet during the season. The spot usually held some good bulls, but I hadn't seen anything special during my scouting there. We got out of the truck about 45 minutes before shooting light. As we worked our way toward the meadow we could hear the bulls going absolutely nuts! We finally reached the edge of the meadow and it was just light enough to make out a bull crossing the far end of the meadow going into the cover of the trees on the ridge in front of us. All of the elk had cleared the meadow, but were still calling non stop on the ridge. We waited a long five minutes for it to get light enough to see before we let out a call. As soon as I finished the cow call a bull screamed at the bottom of the ridge and started running right at us. Dean quickly got an arrow nocked as I handed my video camera to Carl. As soon as I looked through the binos I could tell it was a quality bull and told Dean he was a shooter. At this point the bull was only 95 yards and still running towards us. I continued to relay the yardage to Dean who was now at full draw. The Bull got to 52 yards and stopped to bugle again. Fortunately he turned slightly broadside and Dean let an arrow fly. Watching through my binos, I saw the arrow zip right through the lungs. The bull whirled around and only made it about 40 yards as all three of us watched him hit the ground! We couldn't believe it! After 9 days of hunting so hard, Dean finally had luck on his side and everything came together!

Unfortunately it was too dark for the camera to work properly and we were only able to get the recovery on film. However, as we were celebrating Dean's taking of such a great bull we heard another bull approaching the meadow. With all three of us huddled around Dean's bull in the middle of the meadow, the bull broke the tree line and came to within 44 yards of us! Check out the footage of this bull.