The Real Story Behind the Casey Brooks Bull, the Pending World Record Elk

When Beau Brooks, a popular hunting personality, posted a New Year’s Day photo of his dad holding up the rack of an absolutely gigantic bull elk, outdoor social media went wild. 

In the post, Beau noted the bull’s green scores, 480 4/8 net and 490 4/8 gross, which would be enough for Brooks’ bull to dethrone the Spider Bull as the all-time Boone & Crockett non-typical world record. But aside from tagging Washington State as the location, and celebrating his dad, Casey Brooks, as the “King of Elk Hunting” with 86 bulls to his credit, Beau’s post was thin on details.

It was not long before commenters started criticizing the ethics around Brooks’ hunt. Aaron Whitefoot, a local elk hunter and enrolled Yakama tribal member, seemed to be leading the controversy on social media.

“Have to call this guy the driveway hunter,” wrote Whitefoot on Facebook on Jan. 4. That post was shared 375 times and garnered 1,300 comments.

Whitefoot, who declined to be interviewed on the record in January, posted more than a dozen photos of the bull that other locals had reportedly shared with him. The pictures showed what appeared to be the elk in various backyards, near white-picket fences, and underneath Christmas lights. More criticism poured in. 

“Sounds like anyone with the legal tag could have shot this animal … Money buys it … It’s just killing, not hunting.”

One social media user even digitally manipulated an image of Brooks and his bull so they appeared in front of suburban houses.

For months Brooks remained quiet and did no public media interviews. Meanwhile a local landowner claimed that Brooks had poached the bull. An investigation was opened and promptly closed by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. No violations were found. 

Then last week Brooks had his bull scored by several official P&Y scorers who measured the antlers at 482 4/8 inches net with a gross score of 491 6/8. If that net measurement holds up during two separate panel scoring sessions (one each for B&C and P&Y), Brooks’ bull will become the official Rocky Mountain non-typical world record elk.

And today, finally, Brooks is ready to tell his side of the story. Bowhunting influencer Cam Hanes dropped a podcast in which he interviews Brooks on his hunting background and the controversy over the world record bull. Brooks also sat down with Outdoor Life to tell the story of how the hunt actually played out. 

The Story of the Pending World Record Elk

By the time Casey Brooks drew a marquee raffle tag in Washington last summer, he knew exactly which bull he hoped to put it on. 

The 59-year-old Washington resident is an investor, a hay farmer in Oregon and Washington, and a diehard big-game hunter with a loyal network of hunting buddies, landowners, and contacts across the West. So it was no surprise when two separate groups of friends not only knew about a massive, reclusive bull living on public land for the past several years, but that they all told Brooks about it.

“The first time I saw [a photo of] that bull, I knew exactly what he was,” says Brooks, who can’t remember if it was a cell phone or trail camera photo. All he could focus on was the animal itself. “And big bulls like that — if they survive the winter and the wolves don’t kill ’em, and the lions don’t kill ’em — those are the kind of leads that we live for. When we get a picture like that, then we gotta look around and try and find this thing. You’ve got to check sources, and check credibility and, and make sure that this thing actually lives. And it wasn’t easy because there were darn few pictures of this bull.”

Brooks’ buddies hunted hard for the bull’s sheds during the winter of 2023, and in early 2024. After nearly 60 days of searching they found both sides on public ground far from any town. By estimating the spread (usually around 40 inches), they guessed the bull scored about 440 last winter. (Brooks declined to name his buddies in this story to honor their wishes for privacy and to avoid further hot-spotting of their hunting grounds. OL corroborated many of the details Brooks provided with additional sources.)

With this giant bull in mind, Brooks entered — and won — a raffle that would allow him to hunt from Sept. 1 through Dec. 31. Brooks also declined to specify which raffle he entered, though he confirmed he was not hunting with the Governor’s tag and entries were $7 apiece. He purchased more than one entry.

Although his tag allowed him to use any weapon, there was never any question what method he’d use. Brooks has been a Hoyt pro-staffer for decades, he has killed all of his 86 bulls with a bow — 12 of which scored above 400 inches. Of those 86 bulls, Brooks guesses about 20 might have been taken with outfitters. Although he prefers hunting with friends, Brooks says sometimes outfitters are required to hunt certain areas, including reservations. He also became the 20th person to ever complete the North American 29 with a bow. 

Now Brooks and his buddies just had to find the bull — and keep tabs on him. They hung cameras and did their best to establish a pattern.

Even though the bull had a relatively small summer and fall range, this remained a tall order. The elk lived in thick, brushy timber on top of a mountain that proved challenging to hunt. Most elk hunters in the area use treestands (and Brooks saw plenty of other hunters, most of whom had spike or cow tags).

“He would make loops in there and might only come through once a week or once every couple weeks. It was not a fun place to try and walk around … and sneak up on an animal,” Brooks says. “It’s steep and rugged, and it’s in one of those places that road hunting [would be] virtually impossible. So that’s why this bull just wasn’t getting seen. If he was off that road at all, you couldn’t see into that dark timber. He was in a spot where, I don’t know, he was just kinda left alone.”

On a typical hunt, Brooks would climb into his tree well before dawn and descend after dark. He doesn’t know of any hunter on the mountain who ever saw the bull in person.

“I never heard of anybody ever sitting there and having him come in. Of all the people I talked to who know of this bull, he was very seldom seen. I only saw him one time, and that was the time that I harvested him. I had him on camera all over the place, but I never saw the bull [on the mountain].”

Brooks hunted that public ground in September, October, and November when he could. On Dec. 7, 2024, the bull showed in a night time trail camera photo. Exactly one minute later, a mountain lion appeared in the same spot.

“I was worried to death that the bull got — or was going to get — eaten by the lion. But he didn’t, he ended up showing up on a different camera the next day in a different location. [The lion had] ran him off the mountain and then we figured out where he was. He had moved to public ground in another spot.”

Before Brooks could get there, however, another trail cam photo came through of a man riding a side-by-side down a road that was supposed to be closed to vehicles. That picture was followed by more images of people walking around the area. 

“I think it just completely bumped him out of the area. So then we had to go looking for him and we scoured the national forest for him. I don’t know how long, but we were looking a lot trying to find him. And we never found him.”

Then Brooks’ bad luck took a dangerous turn. Five days after the mountain lion appeared on camera, Brooks was driving home to work; he lives in La Center, Washington. The roads were snowy and icy, so he opted to avoid a steep canyon and take what he thought would be a safer route.

“I came around a corner and saw a snowplow coming. I tried to ease closer to the inside since they’re so wide, and I lost control of the truck.”

Brooks’ F-150 slid across the center line and smashed driver’s-side into the oncoming plow. 

“I remember wham and all the airbags went off. [There’s] kind of like smoke in the car and everything stands still. Then you realize you’re able to move.”

As soon as Brooks made sure the plow driver was unhurt (“I was the one that drifted into her lane and I was just hoping she was okay”) he took stock of his own injuries. A visit to the emergency room confirmed he had a fractured left wrist. Something felt torn in his left shoulder.

When he shot his bow a few days later, the pain was “excruciating.” But he needed to know if he could still draw his compound, and he also wanted to check his bow, which had flown off the backseat in the accident. Brooks loosed two arrows at 20 yards: They hit the same spot, but a few inches left. If he found the bull again, he’d have to keep his shots at 20 yards.

Down to the Wire

The low-density elk numbers, normally a source of frustration for public-land hunters, helped Brooks and his buddies finally track down the bull. They had combed multiple tracts of public land, and finally they located a set of huge elk tracks. The bull, they guessed, had crossed onto private property.

It was all they had to go on, so Brooks started cold-calling for permission. By the time he finally heard back from a landowner it was Dec. 29, and he was driving to try to find a different bull and save his hunt. He had left a voicemail (which OL obtained and reviewed) asking for permission. The landowner called back and left their own voicemail, granting him permission to hunt.

“It was speculation” that the bull had been in the area, says Brooks, “but it paid off when we got the camera in there and got his picture, then we knew.”

With his busted shoulder and wrist, Brooks knew he couldn’t slip in and try to sneak up on the bull. He also refused to pick up a rifle. So he and his buddies walked into the property, set up a blind (Brooks uses an ice-fishing shanty to help contain his scent), and put out five gallons of apples and five gallons of alfalfa. (Hunters can set up to 10 gallons of bait in Washington.)

The property he’d gotten permission to hunt abutted a small woodlot (roughly 40 acres) full of thick timber and brush. There were houses in the area — mostly rural lots ranging from four to 10 acres and beyond. Snow covered the ground, temps hovered around freezing, and Brooks sat from dark to dark on Dec. 30 without a whiff of the bull. By now, the bowhunter was discouraged and second-guessing his decision to end the season there, holed up in a blind.

Ultimately, he decided to “swing for the fence.” If we’re gonna get a bull, Brooks told himself, it’s gonna be this bull with my bow.

On Dec. 31 — the last day of the season — Brooks again sat all day. Finally, with less than an hour left, Brooks looked up from his phone and spotted an antler at 23 yards. A bull, obscured by the fabric of the blind itself, had walked in from his right.

“Immediately I recognized that he had split second [tines]. And it was a giant bull. I mean, there’s no other bull it could have been, [especially] because that other bull that was with him was a four-point. And I said, ‘Oh boy, we’re open for business here. Look at this.’”

Brooks drew and held at full draw for several long minutes, but the bull stopped behind brush that obscured its lungs. Finally Brooks had to let down — that was excruciating. For 15 long minutes, Brooks watched the bull. While he waited, he used his tried-and-true method to manage his adrenaline.

“If I start to feel those shakes coming on, I take a huge breath and then I hold it in and I press real hard against my lungs,” Brooks says, describing how he tightens his stomach. “And then when I [exhale] those shakes go away. Part of it’s being nervous. Part of it’s being excited, and part of it’s being cold. You know, you know, you’re cold anyway. You’ve been sitting there all day in the same spot. You don’t move a muscle the whole entire time because you don’t want to make any noise. And it just compounds things when you’ve got a nice animal that shows up. It excites you.”

When at last the bull turned into position — heavily quartering-to now — Brooks muscled his way through the pain of drawing a second time.

“I still wasn’t happy with the shot, and then he stretched his leg forward. He went to take a step and I held tight to the shoulder … I shot, and the arrow disappeared.” 

The bull ran into the woods and Brooks, using the diaphragm already in his mouth, cow-called at the bull to “slow him down.” This is a technique he regularly relies on after the shot to help mitigate tracking and, in this case, hopefully keep the bull from crossing a property line.

When the bull disappeared into the woods, Brooks called his friends. He was shaking now but he also knew it had been a good shot.

“I gave him a little bit of time and worked my way up there, and he was still on his feet. And I watched him walk over and bed down. Then I could see his head, his head was kind of moving around … and he was just getting sick. And so I backed out of there.”

Brooks joined his friends and phoned a game warden. They wanted to go back in the morning to recover the bull, and the warden gave them the green light. Although Brooks invited the warden to join them, the officer (possibly because it would be New Year’s Day) declined.

Even if the season hadn’t ended at dark that night, Brooks regularly calls law enforcement when he plans to recover an animal after dark or the following day to ensure everything is by the book. In all his years of hunting, Brooks says, he’s never had a game law violation. 

The next morning Brooks and a buddy glassed the woodlot before moving closer.

“As we walked over this little hill, we could look through there with binoculars and see part of his antlers. And his antlers were so big that I wasn’t sure that I was looking at a stump or his rack.” 

The bull was dead in his bed where Brooks had last seen him, fresh snow covering his antlers.

“I honestly didn’t think he was as big as he was when I shot him, because his body was pretty big. He was a big-body bull. And the closer I got to him [I realized] that mass had been hiding his length. …Antlers, when they get heavy like that, they can be longer than you think they are. Every step that I got closer, I just kept saying ‘I was wrong. I was wrong.’ He’s bigger than I thought he was. And even if I’d have known what he scored, I never would’ve said it because I would’ve looked like a fool saying that. I mean, I almost can’t even say it now.”

An Opened and Closed Investigation

Donnie Morrison has lived in the forested community nearby since the 1980s, “when you could ride a snowmobile all the way through [here] without hitting any fences.” He says there are now “tons of houses,” including the vacation home on the tract where Brooks killed the giant bull.

Morrison told OL that he was familiar with the bull Brooks shot, and that he’d been feeding it on his own property for several weeks. He also says he confronted Brooks on Dec. 29 when he spotted him setting up on the neighbor’s land.

“I said, ‘What the fuck are you guys doing? This is private land,’” Morrison says of their first encounter, which became slightly more amicable when Brooks told him he had permission and gave Morrison the correct names of the landowners.

According to Brooks, Morrison said he was feeding a big bull on his (Morrison’s) property. When pressed by Morrison Brooks told him he had a deer tag — which was true. (“I said, ‘You sure you’re not out here chasing that big bull around, trying to get him to drop his antlers early?’” Morrison says.)

Brooks says if had told locals he was elk hunting, he was worried someone might try to harass him or the elk off the property.

“I didn’t want that to happen,” Brooks says simply. “And it was none of his business. Every day it was something with that guy.”

Over the next few days Morrison kept a close eye on Brooks’s comings and goings.

“The last time I saw him it was almost dark on Dec. 31, and I asked him, ‘Well, how’s the hunting going?’ And he said, ‘Well, you’re feeding ‘em too damn good.’”

Morrison figured that would be their last encounter, knowing Brooks’ tag was only good through Dec. 31. So when Morrison saw Brooks’ truck parked in the same spot on the morning of Jan. 1, he grabbed a pair of trail cameras and placed one near the road. At 10:48 a.m., the camera photographed a side-by-side with a giant elk head in the back. Morrison drove over and saw Brooks and his friend with the huge bull loaded into a truck.

Morrison then called a game warden at WDFW, which launched a poaching investigation the following day. That investigation is now closed, and Outdoor Life obtained a report from WDFW.

The one sticking point in the investigation appears to be that the landowners misunderstood Brooks’ request and believed that he’d only been asking for permission to retrieve an animal that had run onto their property.

A recording of the voicemail that Brooks left the landowners was included in the investigation report:

“Yes, uh. My name is Casey Brooks. I got an elk tag over by [omitted]. I was hunting the other side of the highway and a lion chased the elk that I was hunting across the [road] over onto your piece there. And I’m looking to get permission to archery hunt. I’ve got two days before the end of the hunt, and if I was lucky enough to shoot this bull, I would take care of you somehow financially with a trespass fee. So if you could give me a call back … I’d appreciate it. Thank you so much, have a good day.”

According to the investigating warden, Brooks broke no laws in the way that he acquired permission or hunted the bull. 

“I advised based on the voicemail he was asking for permission to hunt the property,” the investigating warden wrote in the report. “Since [the landowner] told me they gave him permission, then it would mean he would be legal to hunt the property.”

Brooks says the landowner never asked for money and he never ended up paying a trespass fee. Instead, as a thank you for allowing him to hunt, Brooks says he invited the family and their kids to join his own family at their lakehouse this summer. 

“I said, ‘You guys were kind enough to let me come hunt on your property and open your place up to me. I’m gonna do the same for you … I might have met some friends out of this deal,” says Brooks. “These people are so kind.”

Brooks also says he couldn’t stand to leave bad blood with Morrison, who takes his role as a bowhunting ambassador seriously. Brooks says the two men spoke after the hunt ended, and he offered to give Morrison a pair of replica sheds. 

Morrison tells OL, “I said you can shove them right up your ass.” Brooks says Morrison accepted the offer in front of witnesses, and that he is a man of his word who present him with the sheds regardless of what Morrison publicly states.

Reflections on a Record

Every hunt comes with different challenges, says Brooks. This hunt proved to be a mental grind and physically painful in a new way. It’s also a reminder why a bowhunter like Brooks would shy away from social media and self promotion.

“To help other hunters in the future, what I’ve learned is the last second of the last day is the end of your hunt,” says Brooks. “Every single second counts, you gotta be there to the end. After you’ve been hunting for a full season, you’re exhausted. But it could be that last five seconds that changes your life. It … remind[s] me of the times that I’ve given up that maybe I shouldn’t have.”

Brooks describes himself as a “determined” elk hunter, but also a practical one. To kill a world record, you have to hunt that animal where he is — not where you want him to be.

“I’d love to have been able to tell you that we got on him in September, and in his rutting rage, he came through a beautiful open meadow, and I got my shot. Which, that’s happened lots of times with me. But this wasn’t the case on this one.”

Read Next:

For about 20 years Brooks has quietly been trying to shoot the world record elk. It was just as much of a surprise to him as it was to the rest of the hunting community to discover he could kill the world record bull in his home state. 

“Big bulls are my life. I love hunting big elk. If you would’ve bet me any amount of money, I would’ve said the record was gonna come outta Arizona,” says Brooks, who said he hunted hard on the San Carlos looking for that record bull. “One year I passed up multiple giants looking for the world record, and I ended up shooting a [smaller] bull at the end. But you know what? It’s all good. Because that’s part of what makes you who you are. It didn’t work out [then], and it makes you enjoy it all the more later.”

The post The Real Story Behind the Casey Brooks Bull, the Pending World Record Elk appeared first on Outdoor Life.

Source: https://www.outdoorlife.com/hunting/casey-brooks-bull-world-record-elk/