30 September 2023
KITTSON COUNTY, Minn. — They’d spotted the big bull elk the previous weekend, but when Ryker Copp went afield with his dad, Jerred, for his first day of elk hunting Saturday, Sept. 23, the elk was nowhere to be seen.
A seventh-grader from Warren, Minn., Ryker found out in July that he had drawn a once-in-a-lifetime Minnesota elk tag for the Caribou Township area of Kittson County in northwestern Minnesota, which has a reputation for producing trophy bulls.
Ryker, 13, was one of two hunters to draw an either-sex elk tag for Zone 30 Season H, which continues through Sunday, Oct. 1.
Jerred Copp admits they “were a little bummed” when the big bull didn’t show the first day his son could hunt.
“We’d spotted this elk the Sunday before, and then I kind of kept an eye on him during the week when I could sneak up there, and he was around,” said Jerred, who owns a seed company in Warren. “And then all of a sudden Saturday morning, there was no elk there. I was really trying to figure out where they went, and I guess they moved north a couple of miles, and we caught up with them on Sunday evening.”
Ryker — a “lucky little guy” when it comes to hunting, his dad says — kept his streak intact that Sunday evening when he shot the big bull elk at 359 yards with a .300 Weatherby Magnum. The bull, which is estimated to weigh at least 950 pounds field-dressed, has an 8×10 rack that roughly measures 390 inches, Jerred said. The rack will have to dry for 60 days before it can be officially measured and scored.
All the practice shooting Ryker had done leading up to the hunt paid off.
“When I saw it, I was probably shaking a little bit,” Ryker said Monday afternoon in a phone interview. “The hunt was fun, though. We had some elk bugling, too, and when he came out, he was bugling quite a bit, too.”
Another try
They’d only seen one small elk their first day afield, but Sunday afternoon, after yet another Minnesota Vikings loss, they set up a ground blind at the edge of a soybean field where elk had been feeding, Jerred said.
“We didn’t want to get too close because the wind wasn’t very good,” he said. “It was an east wind, so we wanted to stay as far back as we could without them scenting us.”
They had watched a couple of cow elk come out and then go back into the woods, followed by “three or four more” cows and a small bull, when the excitement level kicked up a notch.
“All of a sudden, we heard some bugling, and I told him, ‘There he is, Ryker,’” Jerred said.
It was about 6:30 p.m. when the bull appeared 423 yards away. After what probably seemed like the longest 20 minutes in history, the bull came within 359 yards.
That was about as good as it was going to get, Jerred recalled.
“My biggest job was to get him calmed down to make the shot,” he said. “We watched (the bull) for probably 15-20 minutes. I had to keep cool so Ryker would be cool. I just kept telling him, ‘You can do this, you can do this. Take some deep breaths, calm down, it will be fine.’
“And then when I asked him, ‘Are you good?’ he’s like, ‘Yep,’ and I said, ‘Flip your safety up and take the shot.’ It was a very exciting moment for a dad.”
And son.
“Once it was down on the ground, him and I were jumping up and down and high-fiving, and I think that ground blind was probably 10 feet in the air,” Jerred said with a laugh.
As any big game hunter knows, the work begins after the animal is down. The landowner came with a tractor to help them load the bull into the back of the pickup, Jerred said.
“I have some friends who have a cabin up there, so they knew a lot of local people and brought us around to meet the locals so we could get permission,” Jerred said. “Very nice landowners up there … and everybody was very open to it, so we’re really appreciative of that.”
They didn’t get back to Warren until after midnight, Jerred said, and a friend stopped by to help them skin the bull and prepare the cape for mounting. Monday, they registered the bull at the Department of Natural Resources’ area wildlife office in Karlstad, Minn., where staff also took tooth and tissue samples to age the bull and test it for chronic wasting disease.
By late Monday afternoon, they were just about done cutting up the meat, Jerred said.
History of success
Success is nothing new for Ryker when it comes to hunting, his dad says. He has shot “wall-mounter” whitetails in two of the three years he’s hunted deer.
“His very first year at 10, he shot a 12-point buck that scored 168 (inches),” Jerred said. “And then last year, he had one that scored 142, so he’s been a real lucky hunter.”
Nick Genereux of Outdoor Addictions Taxidermy in Crookston will mount Ryker’s latest trophy.
Jerred, who has hunted elk in Colorado and New Mexico, says he’s shot a couple of “decent bulls,” but nothing that compares with the bull his son shot on a September Sunday evening in Kittson County.
“I told him he could probably hunt the rest of his life in the Western states, and he’s going to have to get really lucky to beat (that bull),” Jerred said.
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