First Reported by the Indiana Gazette. Redemption stories make for great television. They often lead to even better hunting tales.
But for Josh Fuqua, of Clymer, one shot simply meant culminating countless hours of lost sleep and dedication — and the need to clear a rather large space on his wall at home.
Fuqua, who will appear on the Outdoors Channel’s “Addicted to the Outdoors” with his wife, Desiree, in the summer, harvested a record-setting bull elk near Snow Shoe in Zone 13 after winning a bull tag in the Pennsylvania Game Commission lottery.
He and Desiree experienced a rare off trip during their annual elk-hunting excursion to Colorado in September, giving them easily their least successful outing to date, detecting nary an elk with the cameras rolling. But a last attempt — for the year and likely in his home state — proved to make up for one shortcoming.
“Yeah, this one definitely is a big redemption,” Fuqua said. “I knew I had a chance at a world-class bull here in Pennsylvania. We have some of the biggest bulls in the country here. We tried to do as much as we could in putting in the time, doing our homework and scouting with Desiree and I going up all the time. I tried to give myself the best opportunity because it’s a once-in-a-lifetime tag and tried to make the best of the opportunity. Unfortunately, we didn’t get anything in Colorado, but this definitely makes up for it.”
Fuqua, a devout hunter, shot a 9×8 bull on Nov. 2 that earned a 418 6/8-inch green score. The bull will rank sixth or seventh all time in the state, but it grades as the best ever for a hunter who did not use the aid of a guide or an outfitter.
He believes the bull totaled more than 900 pounds, but was unable weigh it at the checking station after being forced to butcher it in the field, while the elk biologist on site estimated it was 10ﾽ years old.
But Fuqua won’t need numbers to vouch for his improbable harvest. The Outdoors Channel, which sent another cameraman to again follow him on his hunt, has the film to prove it, and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, which takes top trophies to hunting shows on yearly tours across the country, has already contacted him about displaying his mount in 2018.
“This is the biggest one ever harvested by anyone on their own,” Fuqua said. “So for me, that’s pretty much what I’m the most proud of. That says a lot for me. That’s kind of what I’m in to, so I was really happy about that.”
He didn’t know it at the time, but Fuqua should also be proud of his patience.
After weeks of roundtrip traveling and preparation, including scouting and hanging multiple trail cameras, he spotted a bull on the first day of the hunt. Then he let it go, holding out hope for a better prize.
“I turned around to the camera guy, and I said, ‘I think I’m going to pass this bull up.’ And he pretty much thought I was completely out of my mind that I was passing something up like that,” Fuqua said with a laugh. “By Tuesday night, I was getting pretty nervous and felt like there was a ton of pressure on me, which I was putting a lot of pressure on myself. I was like, ‘Man, I don’t want to be that guy that doesn’t use that tag and doesn’t tag out in Pennsylvania.’”
Instead, it’s difficult to imagine a better outcome, the kind of dramatic finish reality and sports TV thrive on.
During the third day of the hunt, Fuqua spotted his target among roughly eight cows bugling in a valley. And though it wasn’t the large bull he expected and had scouted for several weeks, it might have been bigger, and he knew it was the one.
Fuqua, who typically hunts big game exclusively with a bow and hoped to continue that trend, traveled the long route in an attempt to circle around the elk and cut it off, leaving his bag, bow and everything but the bare essentials.
“I had my hunting license, my orange and my rifle, and we just took off on a dead sprint,” Fuqua said. “We tried to run as much as we could. We ran probably a quarter of a mile and then had stop and walk fast and run again. So in the midst of the chase, I had to leave my bow behind and just took my rifle. But I was still super-glad, no matter if I shot it with my rifle, to shoot a bull of that caliber.”
Fuqua fired a shot just as the bull became visible, and the hunt of a lifetime hit the ground before it could take another step.
“We walked up to him, we got about 25 yards away from the bull as we were getting up to him, and the camera guy goes, ‘Holy (crap), that’s a big bull!’ I still hadn’t really gotten a good look at him, and then when I got closer, I was just blown away,” Fuqua said. “I thought, ‘That thing is a monster.’”
Story by JOE BACCAMAZZI