The bull elk that Lacey Lupien shot on her first elk hunt was so big, she and her husband, Lance, are remodeling their home in Lancaster, Minn., to make room for the mount.
The 7-by-8 rack with a gross score of 380 and a net score of a little more than 367 is now the second-largest Minnesota elk scored for the Boone and Crockett conservation club, which came up with widely recognized standards for scoring big game.
Lupien had her eye on the bull for weeks as she, her husband and their two children tracked the movements of a herd near their home in Kittson County.
At 2:14 p.m. Aug. 6, the second day of the season, she was in a neighbor's old box stand when the animal stepped out of the woods and into a bean field, 250 yards away. She shot once with a .300 Winchester Magnum rifle, not sure she hit it. But a slight blood trail led to the downed elk, 120 yards from where it was shot.
"We heard it crash into the woods,'' said Lupien, a nurse who won the elk tag in this year's license lottery. "It was so exciting.''
