Braxton Taylor
If you pay any attention to the latest and greatest in Western big game hunting, odds are you’ve already seen photos of Casey Brooks’ potential world record-nabbing bull elk. The brutish, palmated 9-by-8 is circulating headlines, social media feeds, and hunt forums after Brooks’ son, Beau, shared photos and videos of the head and horns on Thursday, January 2. According to a photo of the official Pope & Young scoresheet, Brooks harvested the bull on New Year’s Eve.
“For as long as I can remember, my dad has been chasing giant bulls, coming incredibly close to this moment multiple times,” Beau Brooks wrote in an Instagram caption. “He…has taken an astounding 12 bulls over 400 inches and 86 bull elk in total with a bow. But this bull—this absolute monarch—stands above them all.”
Brooks already holds the third- and fourth-ranking nontypical P&Y records, with bulls scoring 436 1/8 and 430 6/8, respectively. The location tag on the Instagram post indicates that the hunt took place in Washington.
When a certified Boone & Crockett scorer took a measuring tape to the towering rack, the bull grossed 490 4/8 and netted 480 4/8 for a green-score.
“Dad and his friends had been tracking this bull for years, finding sheds and keeping tabs on him,” Beau writes. “Finally, in December, the bull reappeared, and Dad began his final push.
He underestimated just how massive the bull was, thinking its sheer body size made the antlers appear smaller than they actually were.”
Now, the antlers must undergo the requisite 60-day drying period before getting legal consideration for the B&C and P&Y record books. The current P&Y record holder has a net score of 449 4/8, which hunter Shawn O’Shea arrowed in Minburn, Alberta in 2020. The B&C record is currently held by the famous “Spider bull,” harvested in Piute County, Utah by auction tag aficionado Denny Austad in 2008. The Spider bull measures a shocking 478 5/8.
Brooks held a raffle tag for any weapon from September 1 through December 31, terms that align with Washington’s 2024 Governor’s Eastside and Westside elk tags. The Westside tag sold for $37,500 in March 2024, according to Online Hunting Auctions, the website where the tag was listed. The Eastside tag generated $213,000 in auction proceeds.
Even with the coveted tag in hand, a car accident almost derailed the end of the season for Brooks.
“What makes this achievement even more incredible is the adversity Dad faced along the way,” Beau writes. “In December, he survived a near-fatal car accident, colliding head-on with a snowplow. By some miracle, he walked away with a fractured wrist and a torn rotator cuff—injuries that would have sidelined most hunters. But not Casey Brooks. With adrenaline coursing through him and a determination that defied the odds, he made the perfect shot, sealing his place in elk hunting history.”
MeatEater reached out to the hunter with an interview request but did not receive a response by time of publication. Brooks has stayed publicly silent about the circumstances of the hunt—and, as is often the case with record-breaking harvests, questions and rumors now swirl.
From Facebook posts with hundreds of comments to one hunting forum that’s over 26 pages long, hunters and internet trolls post other photos of what looks like the same bull feeding in peoples’ yards, chasing cows across a golf course, reckoning guesses about the circumstances of the hunt, and throwing accusations at Brooks for killing “the neighborhood pet.”
One commenter points toward a herd of elk that used to run through Suncadia, a high-cost, high-amenity mountain resort and exclusive vacation home community with three golf courses in Cle Elum, Washington. The resort doesn’t mention anything about offering hunting access, but a series of photos of elk on one of the golf courses in 2018 features a bull that looks as if someone threw Brooks’ pending world record in a dryer on high heat.
But for every negative comment and naysayer trying to talk down Brooks’ achievement, at least three more positive ones give credit where they see it due—in the hands of the man who, if the post-drying-period measurements hold up, will have tagged three of the four largest nontypical archery bulls in American history.
“When the moment of truth came, on the very last day of the hunt, Dad’s instincts and perseverance paid off,” Beau writes. “And he did it his way—no guides, just a passionate crew of family and friends by his side, sharing the journey and the joy. Thank you all our friends and family who helped!”
Feature image via Western Muleys’ Facebook.
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