While everyone was cheering in the new year, no one would blame Kelly Reeves for watching the Times Square ball drop with a little bit of melancholy. His 2023 is going to be hard to beat.
Just before Valentine’s Day, he and Emily found out they would be parents for the first time. On Memorial Day weekend he started a project to finish the basement in their Festus home. With the help of his handy father-in-law that project was a few tweaks from finished by the end of the year.
Also in May he applied for a Missouri elk hunting tag, as he had each of the three previous years that the opportunity had been available. With more than 8,500 applicants for five hunting licenses, he was not surprised when he didn’t hear anything from the state Department of Conservation after the drawing was held in July.
When he went online to purchase his archery deer hunting tags on September 14, the afternoon before opening day, he noticed that it showed a drop-down button for an elk hunting license.
“It didn’t make sense that it was available if I hadn’t been drawn. I had never seen that option before. It had to be wrong. They would have contacted me,” Reeves said. He navigated to the department website to check the drawing results, and there alongside his previous years’ rejection notices was the bold “SELECTED” next to 2023. He called the conservation office in Columbia, and they told him a letter had been mailed to him.
Disregarding that miscue, Reeves knew he had work to do with three weeks remaining before the opening of the archery portion of the elk hunting season. He began making contacts near the Peck Ranch Conservation Area where Missouri began restoring elk in 2011. The reintroduction area covers about 200,000 acres and includes parts of Carter, Reynolds and Shannon counties.
Lightly populated and densely wooded with deep ravines and tall Ozark foothills, the land is the best place in the state to bring back a species that had been extirpated by unregulated hunting in the 1800s. It is also a place with very little cell phone service. So after a long day of research and scouting on September 25, Reeves was on his way back home when his truck reached a high spot on the highway.
“My phone started blowing up. I had nine missed calls from Emily and texts from her and her sister. She was at 38 weeks, and her blood pressure was spiking,” Reeves said. He made the two-hour drive in much less time than normal.
They arrived at Mercy Hospital St. Louis before midnight and within minutes they were in a labor and delivery room. About 33 hours later, he was there when the doctor asked him if he wanted to assist in the birth of Lucy Lu.
“That was by far the best part of my year,” he said.
Hunters drawn for an elk tag are allowed to participate in a nine-day archery hunt in October and a nine-day firearms hunt in December. Reeves managed to make two more scouting trips before the archery season. He said he heard bull elk bugling more than 100 times on opening day, and called in a six-by-six that may have been close enough for a shot, but the season was early. A better opportunity was sure to come, but the weather turned unseasonably warm for the rest of the season.
“The elk disappeared,” he said. “I joked to my hunting buddies they all found a cool cave underground and were hiding. I ended up putting 500 miles on my truck driving the dirt and gravel roads searching for new elk and about 10 miles on my boots, looking high and low. No luck.”
He returned for the firearms portion of the season and on opening morning he spotted a herd of elk in a field on the public land he planned to hunt. It was still dark when they set up, but they may have been noticed by a couple of the cows. The bull and his harem worked their way onto the woods. Climbing in the hill to follow them or looking for an ambush spot, risked driving the herd away. The best strategy was to hope they would return to the field in the evening
“It was 7:30 a.m., and we were already done for the day. We made a plan to be back in the blind by 2 p.m.,” Reeves said.
The weather was in the 50s when they set up the blind, but a cold front was due overnight. The wind was gusting to the point that it pulled up the anchor pegs on their tent-like structure, so Reeves and his companion had to replace the ground stakes. As he returned to his stool, Reeves noticed a cow entering the field, then another, then he spotted the bull they had nick-named Medusa for its non-typical antlers that went in all directions like the mythical serpent hair.
The big elk was more than 300 yards away, so Reeves crawled out of the blind to take the shot from a prone position with his gun propped on a hunting backpack for stability. With practice at distances of 100, 200, 300 and 400 yards at the Arnold Rifle and Pistol Club, Reeves was confident in his shot placement. As he squeezed the trigger, he watched the bull fall through his scope.
“I didn’t do anything to deserve this tag. I was just really lucky this year.”
Originally published by Leader Publications of Jefferson County on January 4, 2024.
Don't Call Me Outdoor John 