Elk With a Little Help

Mentors help a young man score big.

- Jim Matthews

Imagine shooting a 300-class bull elk on public land in Arizona in just one day of hunting on your first-ever elk hunt. That is exactly what 15-year-old Warren Hardin of Riverside, California, did during the 2016 season. Beginner’s luck? A fluke lightning strike? Don’t believe it for a second.

Public land bull elk are never easy, and it’s a rare event for a first-time hunter to stumble into one. This wasn’t one of those lightning strikes. The young hunter’s bull was the result of a team effort that involved seasons of hard work by a whole crew of family and friends and then a coordinated effort come hunting season. It took a community, a hunting community, for Warren Hardin to bag his first bull elk.

Warren’s father, Tim Hardin, was drawn for a Unit 15A-15B-18A “any elk” tag for the middle of November. Warren is a starting defensive end on the Riverside Poly High School varsity football squad, as a sophomore, and his father told him that if his team made the playoffs, he would keep the tag and go to Arizona to hunt. If his team didn’t make the playoffs, the tag would be transferred to the youngster, and he would get to hunt. Arizona has a unique program where a hunter can transfer his tag to a child or grandchild with a valid junior hunting license. (The program also allows the donation of a tag to an organization for use by a child with a life-threatening medical condition or a military veteran with a service-related disability.) When Riverside Poly didn’t make the playoffs, it required a round-trip to the Kingman office of the Arizona Game and Fish Department for the elder Hardin to transfer the tag over to his son.