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An impressive prize and a big relief: 14-year-old's monster elk could be Nebraska state record
- By Marjie Ducey / World-Herald staff writer
- Oct 2, 2016
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Hannah Helmer was shaking as she attempted to zero in on the monster elk about 200 yards away. “I tried not to think of how big he was,” she said, “and just getting those crosshairs right where I was supposed to.” The elk crossed repeatedly through a gap in the trees as he chased after a cow on the Sioux County ranch. Family friend Lee Johanson bugled once more, and the elk stopped broadside, looked across the canyon and bugled back. It was the perfect moment. “Mid bugle, I shot him,” Hannah said. Then the 14-year-old eighth-grader burst into tears. “All the emotions just weighed me down,” she said. “There was so much emotion and all the adrenaline.” Helmer had just killed what could be a state-record elk.
Hannah’s dad, Joel, is an official Boone and Crockett scorer, and he green-scored the massive rack at 428-1/8 net. The state record is 409-7/8 for a nontypical elk, killed by Dana Foster of Ogallala in 2008 in Garden County. The typical record is 390-3/8. The Helmers took the head to taxidermist Scott Black at High Five Taxidermy in Ceresco, where it will dry out for 60 days before it will be officially scored for the state record. There will be some shrinkage before they send the signed score sheet with witnesses to the Game and Parks. Black said he’s seen a lot of big elk in his nine years as a taxidermist, but none to match this one. Joel Helmer estimated it weighed 900 to 1,000 pounds. “This thing easily puts them to shame and then some,” Black said. “The symmetry on this thing is just spectacular.”
The head was so huge that it didn’t fit in the back of the family’s Suburban. Instead, they strapped it to the top, drawing lots of stares and questions as they rolled down Highway 2. “I was so nervous it was going to fall,” Hannah said. “It got a lot of strange looks.” Hannah is no stranger to hunting. She’s been tagging along with her dad, a professor at Concordia University in Seward, and her big brothers since she was 5. She shot her first whitetail last fall after completing a hunter education course, and Helmer applied for an elk permit for her and brothers Harrison and Will. Hannah found out in July that her name had been picked, much to the chagrin of her siblings. “They were pretty jealous,” she said. Kit Hams, the big game program manager for the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, said there were 6,043 applications for 111 bull and 210 cow permits.
About 3,000 elk wander the Panhandle. Once, hundreds of thousands roamed Nebraska and the rest of the country, just like buffalo. Then Europeans and their guns arrived, leaving none left in the state by the late 1880s. Thanks to the effort of the Game and Parks, the cooperation of private landowners and money raised through permit sales, the species is back on its native soil. The cost of each tag is $160 plus an $8.50 application fee, which raises funds for such things as habitat management, fencing and crop damage. “The odds on drawing a bull permit in the Hat Creek Unit in 2015 were 32 to 1,” Hams said.
Hannah and her dad made contact with the landowner in the unit and took a scouting trip over Labor Day weekend. She killed the elk on Saturday, opening day of the season, after she couldn’t get a good shot on a smaller bull. “I was super nervous and shaking really bad,” Hannah said. They saw the bigger animal a half-hour later. They scooted from the opposite ridge down to a trail to get a closer shot, which Helmer said measured 214 yards.
Hannah had done a lot of practicing with her 7mm-08 Remington rifle, and she hit the elk right where she was supposed to — in the vitals behind the front shoulder. She shot him twice more to make sure he was dead. “He just walked a little way and laid down,” she said. “I was happy he died a quick death.”
The bull was so big that the Helmers had to use a winch on a four-wheeler to pull it up the ridge and into the back of a truck. Wildlife biologist Dean Studnicka at the check-in station near Crawford took a DNA sample and pulled a few teeth. He estimated the elk was 6 to 7 years old. The family got about 400 pounds of meat, which Hannah thinks is pretty tasty. The good cuts were saved for grilling and the rest will be processed into hamburger and jerky. “They’ve grown up on venison,” Helmer said. “Elk meat is really wonderful.”
Hannah isn’t sure where they’ll hang the trophy, which will take about a year to complete and cost around $1,000. First, they have to figure out if it will fit through the front door. The main beams on the rack were more than 50 inches in length. Helmer knows because he triple-checked every measurement. He said it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity he never dreamed he would be a part of. Hannah won’t be eligible now to draw another tag.
“To experience that with her as a dad who hunts was pretty incredible,” he said. Hannah wants to be a writer someday. She plans on submitting a story about her adventure to the local newspaper. “It’s just so amazing,” she said. “I was in total misbelief.”
Attachment 181992
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