One of the larger ranches in northern Utah was sold to a successful restaurateur about seven years ago. Previously the ranch was operated by a local outfitter, and the new owner decided to give the animals a rest, allowing a small handful of friends and employees to hunt while permitting most of the elk and mule deer to grow older and bigger. The ranch owner has 35,000 private acres. About 28,000 acres are managed as a Cooperative Wildlife Management Unit, meaning he gets an extended hunting season in exchange for 10% of his tags (available to residents only in a public tag lottery) and for limiting the harvest.

In the past four years he has allowed one of his security officers to outfit on the ranch. Most bucks have scored in the 150s and 160s with a few bigger animals in the 180s and scoring as much as 200 B&C.

"We usually shoot one whopper every year," the outfitter said.

The elk hunting also has improved. Last year a hunter was lucky enough to harvest a trophy bull that scored 379 B&C.

"That's a little on the high end for us," the outfitter said. "Our average bull is probably 310 to 320. We don't like to shoot bulls under 280, however."

"We put our hunters up in RVs and camp trailers. We were orginally going to use large wall tents, but what we ended up using them for is for meals. We hire a full-time cook, who prepares three meals a day.

"We get nine elk tags. We don't want to sell all of them. We have booked two hunters already, and we would like to book five more. We get 18 deer tags, and we try to shoot several management bucks and shred most of the others. We have friends and family shoot some three-pointers (3x3s), and we usually end up killing about eight to 10 bucks a year. We only want to book two or three trophy deer hunters. Last year our best buck s scored 180 and 185 Boone and Crockett. Our biggest buck in 2006 scored 191.

"A hunter in October has a really legitimate shot at shooting a 170 class buck. We normally see several mature bucks a day.

"We're leaving camp in Jeeps and driving across the ranch to points, bugling and locating bulls and then moving in on them. We don't shoot a lot of bulls from the road, but there's not a lot of hiking. A lot of clients are 65 years old and do just fine. We're trying to call and ambush bulls. We're trying to call bulls in the thick aspens.

"As for hunter success, usually we're 100 percent. We had one deer hunter go home empty in the past four years, and he wounded a buck. We had an elk hunter last year fail to fill his tag, but he had opportunities. These are wild animals. This is not a game preserve. But there are enough animals that we can usually show you a lot of bucks and bulls."