The Oklahoma panhandle has an growing number of big elk, according to Erick Nelson, hunter from Guymon. And he’d been watching a good bull for several years on his private hunting lease before the morning of Oct. 8, 2023.
“I got to the place I hunt a little later than I wanted to that morning,” Nelson tells Outdoor Life. “It was just breaking day, and I was settled into some tumbleweed cover. It was near a crossing deer and elk use to leave corn and alfalfa fields as they head back to big riverbottom thickets.”
Nelson was watching and waiting but didn’t see anything. He figured he was late, and that elk had already come through the area. He was getting up to leave when he grabbed his binoculars to scan the field one last time.
“That’s when I saw the bull at about 400 yards,” Nelson, 47, says. “He was coming right to me.”
Nelson sat back down in the tumbleweed cover and waited for the bull to get closer.
“I think some cow elk had already gone through the crossing to the river, and the bull was following well behind them because the rut was on,” Nelson said. “I never called to the bull, and he kept working his way straight to me. I had plenty of time to get ready with my bow.”
As the elk came near, Nelson used his rangefinder on the bull at 41 yards. Then he rose up on one knee to draw his bow.
“When I moved to kneel, he stopped and looked at me while standing broadside. It was too late for him to bolt away because I was already at full draw, and I shot.”
The bull ran only 30 yards before falling in the field. Nelson’s arrow had zipped through its heart and both lungs.
“I called my son Rylee and he got there soon with a big flatbed hay truck and a hydraulic lift to load up the bull,” Nelson continues. “We field dressed the bull there because it was huge, well over a thousand pounds. Then we took it to a friend’s shop where it was caped and dressed.”
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Nelson had the symmetrical 6×6 bull officially scored at 369 6/8 inches, with a net score of 343 6/8 inches. Its inside spread is 48 inches, and game officials estimated its age at around 10 years old.
Nelson never officially entered the elk with the state, though he knew it was a great bull. The bull is mounted and it’s hanging on a wall in Nelson’s home. And he might’ve never learned about its place in the Oklahoma record book if it wasn’t for his buddy.
“My friend Max Crocker is our local game warden and every time I saw him, he’d prod me to register the bull with the state for possible record status. I finally did, and it’s now the best Oklahoma typical rack bull taken by bowhunter.”
The bull’s No. 1 status was made official this month, according to a letter he received Jan. 7 from the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. But Nelson says he arrowed an even bigger bull last autumn — one that may top his current state record.
“I shot another big 6×6 last October that I think is a bigger bull than the one in 2023,” he explains. “I also got him on private land in the Panhandle, and [my game warden buddy] Max thinks it will score bigger, too, because it has a lot of antler mass.”
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He says he plans to have that elk officially scored soon.
“And we’ll know for sure how big it really is. It would be pretty cool to have Oklahoma’s number one and the number two typical bulls by bow.”
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