One Man, One Set of Tracks, One Legend

The scene is set back in October 1958, a dairy farm hand named Fred Mercer crawls out of his tent at 4:45 a.m., sees two inches of fresh snow, and, like any sane person would, decides that today’s to-do list is “follow one set of elk tracks for a dozen-odd miles up a Montana mountain and see what happens.” And, what happens is elk-hunting history.

The 39-year-old, armed with a .270 Winchester Model 70, a 4X Weaver scope, half a thermos of coffee, and a truly unreasonable amount of patience, tracked a wise old bull and his harem through timber, around passes, and up to 10,000 feet. The whole time, that crafty bull kept trying to swing his herd downwind of him because it knew! Mercer finally crested a ridge and found the biggest bull he’d ever seen feeding fifty yards away, described it as “the most magnificent wild thing” he’d ever laid eyes on, and made two shots count before the giant “crumpled like a dishrag.” Then, because 1958 hunters were definitely built different, he field dressed it, drank his coffee, ate his last candy bar, and walked seven miles back to camp in the dark like it was just a random Tuesday.

The bull, a massive 7×7 estimated at 1,200 pounds, scored 419 4/8 B&C points, got dubbed the “Elk of the Century” by Sports Illustrated in 1960, and snagged the Boone and Crockett Club’s Sagamore Hill Award — the Club’s highest honor — at the 9th Big Game Competition. It was the biggest elk ever killed in Montana at the time, second only to the 1890 world record, and today it still sits pretty as the 11th largest typical elk of all time and #2 for Montana. These days the legend lives on display at the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation’s visitor center in Missoula, presumably inspiring everyone who walks past it to buy better boots. Huge thanks to the Boone and Crockett Club for resurfacing this gem in their “Adventures from the Archives” series, with 70,000+ big game entries in their records! Here’s to hoping they keep digging these stories out of the vault, because tales like Mercer’s are exactly why we keep trudging uphill in the snow with unrealistic expectations!!