How is success measured in hunting? Most would argue that meat in the freezer is their primary goal, while many focus on antler scores and picture a European mount above a roaring fireplace. Some equate miles a foot and the number of close encounters with a winning season. Rifle hunters have more harvests than archers, but what are the odds of getting two animals in one day? My husband and I found out firsthand last November.

Heavier than my 5-pound H&R 30-30 resting on my forearm was the burden of filling our freezer and the season quickly coming to a close. Last fall, I was discouraged; I took my first-ever shot at a bull elk during archery season and missed. The year before, I squandered my deer tag and didn’t harvest an animal for the first time in years. And then my husband and I took a rare weekend off from hunting in early November to attend a marriage retreat together. With only two weeks left, we both felt the pressure and anxiety for one of us to finally fill a tag and get meat for our family. 

After an early church Thanksgiving meal, I hastily changed into my camo and headed out the door for an afternoon solo hunt. The plan was for my husband, Christopher, and our two young boys, Onyx and Oryn, to hunt in the bottom of the gated road I was hiking on. 

My husband figured he’d reach a familiar opening where he’d shot his biggest whitetail buck and sit with our 6-year-old and 3-year-old for a low-expectations rattling session. 

Two miles up the mountain road, I scanned a bench below me, spooking a young buck. It scurried into a dense Christmas tree forest, but I slowed as I rounded another corner, where the landscape opened far ahead of me. Standing beside fresh elk tracks, I surveyed the hillside and suddenly heard a bark. Confused and disheartened, I thought a non-hunter had ruined my hunt out walking their dog. 

I promptly sat on the edge of the road overlooking a ravine. With my binoculars, I caught a glimpse of movement, smaller, not deer. A pair of coyotes at the edge of a smoldering slash pile were eating on a carcass. I smiled with relief and enjoyed watching them for about half an hour. 

Still sitting on the side of the logging road, I turned my attention back to finding a buck, and just then a tall 2x2 whitetail started making his way up the ravine toward me. I watched him in my scope several times, as he weaved between baby spruces and Douglas firs. I contemplated several times, almost pulling back the hammer on my crack-open single-shot rifle. But the young buck decided for me as he fed away at an angle, making the shot farther than I felt comfortable. 

Once the forky was gone, I felt nervous. Had I just missed my only shot this season, like last year? But suddenly, and shockingly, up the same ravine and exact route, they just kept sending out the little guys, working their way up to the bigger ones. A nice size 3x3 appeared out of nowhere; I got excited and started to tell myself, “This one, he’s the one!” Gently, I pulled back the hammer on my rifle, preparing to shoot. But as quickly as he emerged, he was suddenly gone again, down in the mixture of 6-foot pines. 

I waited about 15 minutes, checked the time, and started making a plan to get up and head back toward Christopher and the boys. As I was about to carefully uncock my 30-30, once again up the same slipstream of trees, a nice little 3x4 basket buck came trotting up. He wasn’t huge, but I had to regain my composure from the surprise number of bucks just popping out of the woodwork. Slowly, the buck followed the same footsteps as the others, but when he dipped back into a group of trees, instead of veering up the hillside, he turned directly toward me. 

He was walking fast on a game trail right at me. I had my sights on him, but I had to keep adjusting because he was closing in from below. Then, as he paused by a bush, at just 30 yards, I squeezed the trigger. He spun and ran back into the little pines and died about 50 yards away. 

I was elated; surely not my biggest whitetail, but he would be meat in the freezer for the year ahead. Once I reached my buck and pulled him out from under a cluster of pines, I called Christopher with the news. He had just gotten to the gated road with the boys, and we debated which route he should take to come help me. If he drove farther, he could come help from below my location, and it would probably be faster, but if he went in on the same road I did, it would be easier for the boys. We agreed that if he walked fast with our 6-year-old and 3-year-old, he’d make it to me within the hour. 

As they started hiking up the road, I started dragging my deer up the hillside. I had only made it about 75 yards with my hefty load when I got another phone call from Christopher. With Oryn on his shoulders, he said he was coming up on a clearing and could see a group of elk above him; he was pretty sure one was a bull. Somehow, with the boys, he had to quietly sneak in and make a play. Excited but nervous, I hung up and started praying. 

Christopher worked his way closer to the elk with his two little hunting companions. Once he reached the edge of a logged hillside and felt he was in range, he told the boys he was going to get into position to make a shot. Our 3-year-old replied stubbornly, “I don’t go.”

With the boys about 50 feet behind him, covering their ears, Christopher pulled the trigger. 

I heard the echo of his 30.06 ring out several ridges off, from about a mile away.

The shot startled and upset our youngest, who started crying, while big brother tried shushing him; Christopher reloaded and made a follow-up shot. Both hit vitals, but in elk hunting, if they are still on their feet, you reload. Elk have massive body mass, thick bone structure, and high physiological resilience; they are remarkably tough creatures that often require a follow-up shot or shots. Also, with daylight slipping and his cows moving up in steep terrain, adrenaline pushed the bull to the crest of a ridge just out of sight. 

After hearing the shots, Christopher called and explained that he had to go after the bull and make sure it went down, but the boys would be staying down on the logging road; as he traversed the hillside, he could see them the entire time. While Christopher climbed up, I made my way back to Onyx and Oryn, about a mile to my east. When I arrived, they were sitting on a log in their blaze-orange sucking Tootsie Pops; they were very happy to see me. 

Christopher made it up to the bull and once it was dispatched, rejoined us, and we started formulating a pack-out plan. It was getting dark and starting to rain; we knew our 3-year-old needed to head out of the woods and to a sitter. First, we hiked him back out to the truck and had him picked up. But our brave 6-year-old, Onyx, insisted on staying and helping. 

After rallying the troops and calling for backup, we formed two teams, Team Buck and Team Elk. Brandon, a school teacher, came with Onyx and me to retrieve my buck, while our neighbor, Jeff, and another family friend, Devin, went with Christopher. 

Altogether, I hiked 8 miles that night, in and out, up and back down to the truck multiple times for the buck and the elk. The gated logging road made it easy to pack the elk quarters out in wheelbarrows. Amazingly, we had all the meat out of the forest and back home by 10 p.m., which was good considering my husband had to teach the next day, and our first grader had school, too. 

In all our years of hunting together, my husband and I had never harvested two animals on one hunt. It was a double blessing, a team effort, and a one-of-a-kind memory with our boys. 

Processing an elk and a deer at the same time meant long evenings in the kitchen, cutting, grinding and packaging meat. Having our family in the woods every fall hunting together is a dream come true, and every step of the process, from glassing to packing out quarters to my boys using the meat grinder, it all makes the field-to-table lifestyle a sacred tradition to pass down.