One Heck Of A Ride

49 More Antlered Game Antlers on author’s Rocky Mountain mule deer were in velvet and nearly thirty inches wide. tines and main beams, and lacked the “crowns” that Roosevelt elk antlers often have. We hunted deer entirely on foot, and were coming over a ridge the second day when another guide, a man named Bryan Sheehy, and I suddenly spotted a buck with wide, four-by-four typical antlers in the canyon below us. We were able to stalk to within 250 yards, and I shot it. Its antlers were close to thirty inches wide and scored 178 2/8 SCI points. Before leaving the island the next day, I measured the bucks that Pamela and StanAtwood, well-known international big game hunters from Los Gatos, California, had taken on their earlier hunt on the island. The antlers on Stan’s buck scored 238 SCI; Pam’s was 210 SCI. Both were beautiful non-typical bucks. With my hunt over, I left Santa Rosa Island and flew with the antlers, capes and frozen meat of my elk and mule deer to Santa Barbara Airport, and drove home. Thirteen years later, right on schedule, the January 2012 issue of The Hunting Report newsletter published an article that said hunting on the twelve-square-mile island had officially ended on December 31, 2011. The last one hundred or so deer and elk were shot from helicopters by a Connecticut company hired by the National Park Service to kill every non-native mammal still remaining. The article also reported, “Between 1995 and 2010, hunters consistently took bucks scoring between 180 and 230 SCI. The Roosevelt elk hunting was also outstanding, with bulls scoring over 300 SCI taken regularly.” Tule Elk In The Middle Of A Desert One of North America’s best examples of a successful American conservation effort is the return of California’s tule elk. They were pushed to the brink of extinction because of market hunting and the march of civilization caused by the 1849 gold rush, By 1860, the range of the last of this continent’s smallest subspecies of elk was reduced to a private refuge created by a single landowner. As this herd grew, the California Fish and Game Department began releasing surplus elk in their original range and other suitable places (notably the Owens Valley). By the 1930s the tule elk subspecies was no longer threatened. According to the SCI Record Book and other sources, the state managed the Owens Valley elk by selling a limited number of hunting permits from 1943 to 1964, when lobbying by anti-hunting groups halted the hunts. In 1974, the state legislature passed a bill that mandated that 490 elk be kept in the Owens Valley and no elk could be hunted until the state’s elk population reached 2,000. That number was reached by 1988, and hunting permits have been issued to California residents by drawings every year since. More recently, landowners with private herds also have been selling permits. Today, although their numbers will never match those of the pre-gold rush years because the habitat no longer exists, California’s tule elk have recovered. When Doug Yajko, a Colorado surgeon and