Elk Hunting and Building Faith

    Hunting has always been a very favored activity of mine. From the time i was old enough to pack around a slingshot and kill tweeter birds I was addicted to hunting. Throughout the years I upgraded from a slingshot to a bb gun to a .22 and on and on. Well my prey also changed quite a bit till i was finally old enough to go on the spike elk hunt.

    Well it seems for my family and I the spike elk hunt has always been a important tradition to us. Every year we can buy the tags for the elk (no draw necessary) and go on the Booby Hole mountain behind our cabin. Which is great cause all us men can ride up on the mountain on horses packing all our gear and the little ones and moms are all back at the cabin.

     After enjoying good dutch oven cooking and premium advice from my dad, uncles and grandpa for a few years finally came the time for me to have my chance at shooting a huge world class big bull spike elk. Well I have become a seasoned deer killer and thought an elk would be no problem for my shooting skills. Yea i didn't kill a thing my first year. I didn't even see a elk! I was very discouraged, maybe next year. And next year finally comes around with much success!

    I woke up in my tent very early in the morning excited and eager to finally make my kill. My grandpa and I snuck out to a rock on the ridge that we could sit on and glass the opposite hillside. Well as the sun slowly came up we saw nothing. I mean absolutely nothing, not a deer bird or even crow was gonna show their face. Still discouraged my grandpa said we cant give up, we gotta show faith.

   We decided to go look over a ridge that looks down into Dainials canyon. Well after a short hike we peek our heads over the high up rim rocks looking far down into the creek bottom. Well what do you know there was six elk looking right back at us! Five cows and my precious spike. It took me three shots at five hundred yards and nearly a 45 degree slope to kill him, and i did! Oh boy i was so happy to get my first elk! Ill never forget the example that my grandpa showed to me by exercising faith and not quitting early.

   Well as we go about in this life we must show that we have faith in our Heavenly Father. As we are council in the scriptures , (particularly Alma 32:21) faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye ^bhope for things which are ^cnot seen, which are true. We could not see the elk in the canyon bottom, neither can we see our father in heaven. We mush show that we do believe in him even though we cant see him. How many of us have a strong testimony that Jesus Christ is our savior? It is by faith that we have this testimony. We believe in Christ. We have a hope, a driving belief that there is a life after this one. It is because of our hope in a better life, a hope that things will work out in the temporal and eternal scheme of things that we have faith. I challenge you all to show faith to God by obeying his commandments. I testify that if we pray daily, go to church, and exercise faith in Jesus Christ that the quality of our lives will be improved and our families will be blessed in ways that we never though possible. I hope that someone will read this and that they will in some way grow closer to Heavenly Father and His Son. It is by my faith that i publish this blog for everyone to see.

Love yall
Elder Savage