I have been saving money here and there for many years. A little from the bonus I received at Christmas, a little from the income tax returns, and birthday gifts. I had been reading magazines, going to Sporting shows and talking to outfitters, settled on some specific areas of Montana that produce trophies year after year and was finally waiting for the phone call to say you have a tag.
The area that you will be hunting is part of the Bob Marshall Wilderness area only available by horseback and packhorse. A six hour horse ride brings us to a base camp where we meet the camp cook and our guides for the next 10 days. There is just enough daylight to take a quick 200 yard sight-in shot before getting unpacked and dinner. That night we listen to how we will be hunting each day, get a better understanding of directions, hand signals and stalking. We will be taking it pretty easy for the first couple of days while we get accustomed to the altitude of 8,000 to 12,000 feet. I am sure glad I spent a lot of time at the gun range getting my ammunition ballistics calculated so I know what my dial-ups and windage adjustments are for various distances and wind conditions. I have all of these on a chart that is taped on my rifle stock and I have a 1000 yard range finder, with a spare battery, within easy reach in my jacket. When I see an elk I can quickly read the distance adjust my scope and be confident of placing an accurate shot. Finally after about two days I can walk around camp and take some short walks without gasping for more breath and no longer have headaches.
Our first real hunt finds us up at 4:30AM for a breakfast of flapjacks, eggs and bacon and pack your sandwiches for lunch. We mounted our horses by 5:15 AM and rode up the mountain and were up to the snowline before light. The plan was to start walking down the side of the mountain by scouting and glassing the openings or meadows to catch the elk in the open before moving back into the woods to bed down for the day. One of the outfitters would take the horses back to our camp so we had a ride the next day.
Because we were hunting during the rut there really isn’t anytime that they are bed down you can hear bulls screaming their challenges back and forth and we started moving trying to locate and take the call sender. The guide has a long tube hanging around his neck and he blows in the call imitating a challenge to the bull hoping it will respond to the call. We kept doing this for three consecutive days with only a couple of small spike bulls showing themselves.
On the fourth morning we went down the mountain from our camp and followed a creek to the left for about a half hour then we started up an up we went on an adjacent mountain. We reached a huge open meadow just as the first rays of light started peeking over the horizon. I put my yellow Scopeaid lens on my range finder and took a few readings on some objects that stood out; then I put it on my rifle scope.
After the third or fourth blow the guide sent wafting across the dimly lit field a huge deep throaty reply came back from the edge of the clearing. I brought my rifle to my shoulder looking through the yellow ScopeAid®® I immediately saw the 6×6 herd bull calling back with his majestic antlers back by his sides his nose and mouth pointed towards the sky as he finished his challenge reply. Seeing him standing there with the yellow ScopeAid® ® lens on my rifle was like turning on a spotlight on the bull. He was standing 700 yards away broadside a quick look at my ballistics chart tells me how many clicks from 200yds to 700yds I must make for the correct distance. I can clearly see the crosshairs on the bull’s chest and slowly squeeze the trigger the bright flash and kick from the 7MM rifle and the sound deafening percussion of the firearm startles the mountain silence. The majestic bull falls where he once stood and years of planning, practicing, saving, and dreaming have come to a successful end and I couldn’t be more happy!!!!
How confident were you taking a 700 yard shot at a standing broadside bull elk in low light conditions? The thought didn’t even enter my mind! The reason why, is I practiced shooting round after round with my 7MM rifle at 200 yard shots with my ScopeAid® yellow lens on my riflescope. My goal was to shoot as many same distance shots in the same hole as possible per target at the longest distance I had available. I can’t get over how clear, crisp, and black my crosshairs are with my custom made ScopeAid® lens. The digital pixels machined into the lens with the blue blocking enhanced filter system give me the clearest possible sight picture available to someone who is dealing with Presbyopia. This is part of the aging process where the muscles in our eyes loose the flexibility to be able to focus on both near and far objects readily. The most common solution to the problem is bifocal lenses. The problem that the multifocal eyeglass wearer has is that looking through the upper lens is for long distance vision while the correct vision is through the lower portion of the lens. Which is almost an impossibility to use while sighting through your scope. ScopeAid® takes your corrected bifocal prescription and makes calculations to compensate for your eye-relief so you can look through your regular eyeglasses upper lens and see with your proper corrected vision. There is no other product on the market today that can match the capability of ScopeAid®. For more details please visit ScopeAid®.com and order yours today.
About Jay Eller
Jay is an avid hunter and competitive long range 600 to 1,000 yard F-Class and Benchrest shooting enthusiast. Hunting includes local, mid-west and western big game, as well as African plains game. He is a Life member of the North American Hunting Club, also a certified gunsmith with FFL, an Endowment member of the NRA, classified mid range and long range F-Class shooter and long term SASS member. He has been very active in developing an optical solution to the problems related to Presbyopia. To solve the problems, for safely aiming and shooting firearms, while wearing multi-focal eyeglasses has been a challenge since my eyesight changed with aging. Knowing that everyone, who hunts and shoots firearms, will be as frustrated as I was, offered a potential opportunity. In addition to correcting the vision problem, we have added the contrast capability of birds of prey’s ability to see earlier in the morning and later in the day. This is a large game animal’s prime time for natural movement from feeding to bedding down. No one else has been able to offer the two vision solutions that SCOPEAID has developed. “I feel very proud to have been able to bring a solution too all the hunters and shooters who still want to continue their hobby while dealing with “the aging process”.
