There’s a first for everything and for Sarah MacMillan, one of those firsts came on the afternoon of Sept. 24.
With one clean shot to the heart, MacMillan earned her ivories with a 9.5-point elk in the Teton Zone on a cold fall morning 6 miles in from public access.
It was her neighbor that threw down the final challenge when he said she would never shoot an elk.
“I hate when someone looks at me and says I can’t,” said MacMillan on Monday.
And so she did.
Hunting never bothered this life-long animal lover and rescuer in the sense that harvesting meat for the purpose of providing for her family has always felt normal and natural.
Considering she cried and cried and prayed in grateful supplication for her daughters’ 4H lambs a few years ago, Sunday’s kill might have gone down a little differently.
“This was a gorgeous wild animal and as organic as it gets,” said MacMillan. “I’m not into trophy hunting and I really wanted the meat in the freezer. I apologized for shooting him, but said, ‘You’re going to taste really good.’ It was really truly a food thing for me. I was not emotionally attached to this animal.”
“It was a cool experience to have with my husband. He was a fabulous guide,” said MacMillan of her husband, who has been hunting in the valley since moving here in the late 1990s. “I wouldn’t have gone up alone for sure and I got to spend the whole day with Matt. We don’t get to have that kind of alone time as much with three kids. And for two days in row we were up and down this mountain. We found tracks, and we could smell (the elk) and it was close. It crossed our tracks and we realized it was circling us. And it crossed our tracks again and that’s when I named it the ‘Ghost Bull.’”
Matt was bugling while MacMillan was crouched in an aspen grove waiting for the bull elk to circle back through. She said she could hear the bull elk breathing, but for a time couldn’t see him from where she was sitting in the trees.
Then suddenly the elk was in the clearing, rear facing to her position. She didn’t have a good shot. Matt was behind her and started bugling again. The elk turned his head. On their way up the mountain they had found two moose sheds and Matt started rubbing the sheds against a tree.
And then the elk turned around.
“I took to my knee and had this shot, I had him in my sight.” she said. “I felt really, really lucky.”
The first and only shot was clean through the elk’s heart. She used a 7mm Winchester short mag, but Matt said it didn’t matter what she was using at a 40-foot range.
They field dressed the elk and took him to Craig Hillman’s for processing.
MacMillan admits that she was a little disappointed that she didn’t get to cut the heart out the elk (she heard that elk heart is pretty good to eat), but was more grateful that the animal died with one shot. Matt suspects the elk was between three and three and half years old.
“My mom asked if I would do it again,” said MacMillan. “I said yes, I would. That’s as good as it gets.”
