McClatchy News Service 

NEAR GRYGLA, Minn. -- Curt Howe had banked on two elk hunts this fall, stashing money away every paycheck for the past three years to finance a guided trip to Alberta in mid-September and buying a license to join a cousin in Oregon on a November hunting excursion.

But he hadn't planned on a third hunt just an hour's drive from home.

That all changed in mid-August, when Howe, of Thief River Falls, Minn., got a call from his stepson, Travis Mathson, while on a fishing trip to Lake of the Woods.

The conversation, as Howe recalls, went something like this:

"You're not going to believe what came in the mail today," Mathson said.

"I said, 'Don't tell me we got an elk tag for Minnesota,'" Howe replied.

The answer, of course, was yes they had. The two had jointly applied for a single elk license -- Howe had applied for years without success -- and beat the odds to draw one of the 15 tags the Department of Natural Resources awarded this year near Grygla.

Their cow tag was for the second season, which began Sept. 26 and continued through Oct. 4. The DNR offered five tags in each of three seasons near Grygla, and all but two of the 15 once-in-a-lifetime licenses were for antlerless elk only.

Howe and Mathson, 25, were scouting at dusk a couple of days before season when they spotted a small herd of elk grazing in a soybean field.

They didn't watch long, to avoid spooking the animals.

The afternoon of opening day, Howe and Mathson were set up in the brush at the edge of the soybean field where they'd spotted elk a couple of nights earlier.

An observer who tagged along waited farther back in the brush, hoping for the sound of a rifle shot.

According to Howe, their plan was to try and take the first big cow elk that wandered into shooting range. If that didn't happen, he said, it wouldn't be because they hadn't done their homework.

The rest was up to luck -- and being in the right place at the right time.

They would see one elk this opening-day afternoon, an impressive bull that wandered out of the woods near the end of shooting hours. It stood less than 30 yards away, nibbling soybeans, occasionally raising its head in caution.

That went on for more than a minute before the bull decided something wasn't right and bolted for the safety of the woods.

With only a cow tag, all Howe and Mathson could do was watch.

Mathson said later he could have taken the bull with a bow.

"Too bad we didn't have a bull license," he said.

Mathson hunted two more days before returning to his job at Arctic Cat in Thief River Falls, and Howe stayed through midweek. He saw more bulls, but the cow elk he thought would be so easy to shoot proved to be elusive.

The pair finished the season without shooting an elk, but they were in good company: Only two of the five second-season elk tags near Grygla would be filled.

But, "the experience of meeting new people around the whole Grygla area was just a lot of fun in itself," Howe said. "I met a lot of new friends."

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