I Traveled to Alaska for My First-Ever Elk Hunt and Tagged a Pending Record Bull on Opening Day

Call it beginner’s luck, or just being in the right place with the right people. Either way, Chase Parker of Minnesota had one of the most exciting opening days an elk hunter could ask for in October, when he traveled to Alaska to chase Roosevelt elk. Hunting Afognak Island with a friend and his uncle, Parker killed a huge 6×6 bull on opening day that is now the state’s pending No. 1 elk in the Boone & Crockett book.

The three had to work plenty hard for the bull, slogging 18 hours through unforgiving terrain and less-than-ideal weather, and avoiding the big brown bears that the Kodiak region is famous for. But by the time their bush pilot landed to take them back to civilization, they knew they’d accomplished something special.

“We had all our gear on the beach, and went and grabbed the skull from where we had it hiding the shade. And the first thing [our pilot] did was he whipped off his sunglasses and said, ‘Holy shit,’” Parker laughs. “And then when we got back to Kodiak, Lucas had his truck there, and we had this big rack sticking out the back … and everyone’s walking up asking, ‘Do you know how big this thing is?’ And we’re like, ‘No, we’re just some whitetail hunters from Minnesota.’”

The Flight In

Parker, who lives south of Duluth, had never hunted elk or even hunted much outside his home state when his friend Isaiah Johnson reached out in February. Johnson had been in contact with his uncle, Lucas McLeod, who has an off-grid cabin on Kodiak Island. McLeod was recruiting friends and family to go on an elk hunt on nearby Afognak Island, where he’d hunted elk (unsuccessfully) after drawing a cow tag there in 2024. Parker was his 10th recruit, and the only one who drew an antlered tag through the state’s big-game lottery.

With the other seven bowed out, the group of three hunters started planning their October trip. McLeod coordinated the flights with his neighbor, Willie Fulton, who runs an air taxi service out of Kodiak, while Parker and Johnson started e-scouting and binging YouTube. Parker also spent a good chunk of his summer getting in shape for the backcountry. He’d throw on his pack, toss in a 50-pound sandbag, and start walking the trails on his family’s hunting property in Minnesota.

“After doing all that though, and then getting to Afognak, I don’t even know if I could have been prepared for it,” he says.

Their original plan was to land on Afognak Island a few days before the Oct. 8 opener, but weather delays kept them grounded in Kodiak until midday on Oct. 7. It might’ve been for the best. Because while flying over a mountain on their way to the lake where they camped, the group spotted a group of five elk from the floatplane. One was clearly a big bull. After landing and pitching camp, the three hunters hiked up the same mountain to plan their route for the next morning.

“We were up at 6 a.m. and we hiked for about two hours in the dark,” says McLeod. “There was a lot of wandering around in the woods in the dark, but we made some good headway, and we got to the same spot we’d made it to the night before. It was right after sunrise, and we weren’t too far from where we wanted to be.”

A Bear and a Bugle

The hunters spent the early morning glassing and sending out a few cow calls. But rain and shifting winds forced them to re-think their position, so they started hiking up and over the mountain to get the wind back in their face. They started to see elk tracks and other sign as they climbed, and McLeod took the lead as they crested another rise on the mountainside. Looking down and over the edge, he saw “a very round” Kodiak bear.

“This thing, its belly was touching the ground,” says McLeod, who was carrying a 10mm sidearm, as were his hunting partners. “And the big boar just kind of meandered toward me, it hadn’t seen me yet. So I just stopped in my tracks.”

McLeod got the attention of the other two, who joined him to watch the bear until it finally noticed them and took off. Johnson climbed toward a better vantage point, and then scurried back down twice as fast.

“He said, ‘It’s circled around us! It’s on top!’” McLeod says. “And there it was, perched up on the cliff right above us and watching our every move … Eventually it wandered off and we went our separate ways. But it was an anxious moment there for a bit.”

Their minds back on elk, the three hunters made it to their next glassing spot and started calling again. The wind was still blowing, but during one moment of stillness Parker thought he heard a response bugle from below. He called again and heard another faint response, but it was hard to see much in the thick timber below. So they slowly descended about 200 yards into the spruce forest. Parker bugled again and heard another response, and he figured it had to be the same bull they’d spotted from the airplane the previous day.

After that it got quiet. Parker started to worry that maybe they’d spooked the bull. Johnson was also getting impatient, and he had a blacktail tag in his pocket. He told the other two he was going back toward camp to look for deer, and then he headed that direction while Parker and McLeod kept working deeper into the spruce forest.

Splitting Up 

“So we split up, and there was a little game trail we were walking on,” Parker recalls. “It was probably two, maybe three minutes after splitting up from Isaiah when we ran into the bull.”

Standing broadside just 50 yards away, the elk was right in the middle of the game trail. They could clearly see its body, and they could just make out the tips of its antlers up in the spruce limbs. Judging by the height of the antlers, they knew it was big. Parker unstrapped his rifle chambered in 7mm PRC and cranked down his scope. Then he squeezed off a shot before the bull knew they were there.

Parker heard the hit and they watched the elk trot into some thick brush, where it laid down. After 20 minutes of waiting and shaking, he and McLeod walked over and saw the bull stand up from 10 yards. He chambered another round as it got up to walk, and his next round put the bull down in a mossy open area. After walking up and admiring the animal, they started to get to work. But because of the terrain and the way it was lying, they realized pretty quickly they’d need help.

“We were hungry, and probably dehydrated, and we’re trying to move this thing but we knew we couldn’t do it just the two of us. So I told Lucas I was gonna run back to camp and find Isaiah,” Parker says. “I looked down at my onX track, and we’d hiked about 7 miles that day. But we ended up being only a half-mile away from camp.”

After leaving McLeod and crossing a few brushy ravines, Parker made it back to camp. Johnson had never heard the shot. He was surprised when his buddy filled him in, and a little bummed that he wasn’t there to see it. But he helped Parker get some supplies, and they headed right back to where McLeod was still working on skinning the elk.

Hours later, after carrying back the meat they could and hoisting the rest into the trees with paracord, they finally headed back to camp. It was after midnight by the time they laid their heads down.

A Little R&R

The next morning they made a final trip uphill and packed the rest of the meat down, along with the giant head. Then they spent a restful day near the tents while waiting for the weather to clear. The following afternoon their plane arrived to shuttle them out, and they stopped briefly in Kodiak before heading out to McLeod’s cabin. Once there, they were able to fully unwind with cocktails, a swim in the ocean, and a few long sits in a sauna.

“It was sort of nice to have that pressure off, and we just enjoyed Kodiak at a little more relaxed pace,” McLeod says.

Back in Minnesota, Parker was able to get his elk officially scored by B&C measurer Carey Ferell at 313⅝ inches. According to Ferrell, the bull should easily replace the current Alaska record, which scored 291⅝ and was taken in 2016. Parker says he should get the final word from B&C in a few weeks.