A bull moose by bow
By Nick Simonson
For hunters in North Dakota drawing one of the “Big Three” tags for a once-in-a-lifetime chance at an elk, bighorn sheep or moose, particularly a bull of any of those species, is hard enough. For some it takes decades to receive a permit and some go without the opportunity their entire lives.
As luck would have it, Kelly Dyke of Hebron received her shot at a bull moose in unit M10 in the fall of 2019, but the challenge of getting a tag wasn’t enough for the hard-charging barrel racer; she wanted to punch the tag with her bow.
Plan to Punch
“It was a big goal, but I figured why not go big or go home,” Dyke recalls of her plans after receiving the tag in the mail, recognizing the work that would be in front of her, “I knew I had to have a good weight when drawing back, so I just started lifting weights and prepping for it and practicing shooting with my bow over and over and over again; I think every night I shot my bow,” she recalled.
To get set for the hunt, she worked with a personal trainer out of Hazen twice a week, strengthening her back, core and arms to increase the draw weight to deliver a more lethal shot. As the season approached, her husband Jordan worked with her to increase the poundage on the bow.
At the time she drew her tag, the bow was set at 45 pounds, and she eventually worked her way up to around 55 pounds, eventually settling in at 52, noting that she could easily draw the bow 100 times in a day if she had to at that weight, while still reaching a level of power that could deliver in the fields around the Parshall area where Jordan’s father Milo still resided, and her planned hunting area.
