ELLINGTON, Mo. (KMOX) - This weekend, Joe Benthall, became the first person to legally shoot an elk in Missouri in modern history. He bagged a 2.5-year-old 5x5 bull elk Saturday afternoon on National Park Service property near Log Yard by Ellington.
Over 19,100 people applied for a permit in Missouri’s first modern day elk hunt. The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) awarded five permits, four general permits for the public and one permit for a qualifying area landowner.
The five lucky hunters get a chance to harvest a bull elk in either an archery portion, which was Oct. 17-25, or a firearm portion Dec. 12-20. Eric Edwards is a program coordinator with MDC and said no elk were harvested in the archery portion of the hunt.
“A couple of the hunters had some close encounters with the elk, but they were unable to connect on any," he says.
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But hunters have another shot at a bull elk, which started on Saturday with the beginning of the firearm portion.
The MDC says elk are a native species in Missouri but the herd was hunted to extinction in state during unregulated hunts in the late 1800s.
A bull elk weighs between 700 and 1100 pounds. These massive deer are native to Missouri, but were wiped out by poor land and hunt management.
Since 2011, the conservation department, nonprofits and landowners have worked to restore the species to areas in the Missouri Ozark region. Today the elk range in Carter, Reynolds, and Shannon Counties.
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