Submitted Photo Kami Hanson achieved her once-in-a-lifetime elk hunt in North Dakota. This is her second once-in-a-lifetime hunt.

DES LACS – Filling her tag for a once-in-a-lifetime hunt of an elk wasn’t Kami Hanson’s only recent achievement. After suffering a severe injury last year she was able to return to hunting this year.

Hanson, of Des Lacs, isn’t new to achieving a once-in-a-lifetime hunt in North Dakota. When she was 17 she shot a moose, another game animal in which hunters are part of a draw for a once-in-a-lifetime hunt in the state.

But this time, after a severe injury, she had to work hard to recover so she could hunt again.

“I had a pretty bad brain injury last year,” said Hanson. She suffered the brain injury when she missed a step and accidentally fell down a flight of stairs.

“Last fall I couldn’t even hunt. I couldn’t even hold a gun. I lost my motor skills. I couldn’t open up a microwave. I could hardly do anything, so for me to recover and do this this fall really meant a lot to me. It was cool to come back and be able to shoot an elk,” she said.

The hunt requires a lot of physical labor, including hiking, Hanson said. To get herself in shape, she put on a backpack filled with 40 pounds and would hike two miles.

“I wanted to be able to do it (hunt) so I had to push myself. I wasn’t cleared from the doctor until this January to be able to shoot or anything,” she said.

Hanson’s most recent achievement took place on Thursday, Nov. 23, Thanksgiving Day, when she shot a 6×6 bull elk in the Badlands near Beach.

Every weekend, starting in September, she had been making a trip to the area, even on the opening weekend of deer season when she filled her deer tag at Des Lacs, shooting a 4×4 buck.

Her trip to the Beach area on Thanksgiving Day was the magic time.

“I’d gone out so much. This time I was looking at the weather and there was a cold front that came through. You pay attention to that when you’re hunting. You could see all the animals and the deer moving,” she said. She said she thought to herself, “I think this is going to be a good weekend to finally get one.”

During past trips to the area she saw on private land many elk with smaller spikes or rag horns.

“I held out for the bigger mature one,” she said. She said the one she shot was “the biggest one I’d seen the whole time.”

Hanson camped at Buffalo Gap near Medora the night before. When she got up the next morning, she said, she had an idea of the general area where elk would be.

“The original plan I had was to go to some private land where the landowner had given me permission,” she said. Another hunter would be there that day so she went with her backup plan to hunt on public land.

“Sure enough, right at first light I saw the herd. There was a herd of nine bulls together and they were fighting. I got a little closer to them. They were distracted by fighting. I got down and got pretty close, picked out the biggest one of the nine and shot him,” she said.

Of her decision not to fill her tag the first weekend she went out, she said, “I wouldn’t change it because I got to experience the whole total package. I was out there when it was 90 degrees. I was out there when it was raining. I was out there when it was snowing. It was pretty cool.

“I saw them in rut. I got to hear them bugle. I saw a rattlesnake – he was dead, thank god – and I saw encounters like that,” she said.

Because this was her second once-in-a-lifetime hunt, Hanson said, the recent one also was special to her because both animals were bulls and she got them by the time she was 30. She’s now 31.

Hanson said her family has always hunted elk.

“I’ve actually gone out to Montana elk hunting with them. I’ve always been a big deer hunter. When I was 16, I started when I got my hunter’s safety and then I got my moose when I was 17,” she said.

Hanson, who volunteers for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, said some of the people helped scout for her and pointed her to where she needed to hunt, but she did most of it herself.

“My big brother (Jade Hanson of Minot) helped too. He lent me some gear that I was lacking because elk hunting is a little bit different than deer hunting,” she said.

Hanson processed the meat herself. She is having a taxidermist make a mount of her new trophy to place in her home near her moose trophy.

What’s next?

“My next goal is to shoot an antelope. I’ll probably go out of state for that and the third (once-in-a-lifetime hunt) is the bighorn sheep in North Dakota. Eventually I’d like to but the drawing results on that are also tough,” Hanson said.