Chandler Jackson V KAALTV
September 26, 2025 – 5:05 PMPlay Video
Minnesota’s elk hunt
(ABC 6 News) – Hunting in Minnesota provides multiple different paths for those interested from pheasants and turkeys to white tail deer and even bear.
But there’s one that’s even more unique than the others: elk.
Hunting an elk in Minnesota is truly a once in a lifetime experience that draw thousands of Minnesotans every year, each vying for the chance to bag one.
The only elk hunting range available this year was all the way up in Kittson County on the Canadian border, about seven hours away from Rochester.
That’s where George Clements, a long time hunter and one of only four hunters who acquired a tag this year, found himself for a week.
To say he was excited when he got the news would be an understatement.
“You might ask my wife; she said I was literally jumping up and down,” he said. “She said I had the biggest smile she’d ever seen on my face.”
Elk, and many other types of big game, aren’t new to Clements.
“The other elk that I shot was a cow, I got that with a bow and arrow in Colorado,” he said. “And that’s when I got my first taste of elk and decided that I wanted to do this again.”
But elk hunting in Minnesota, even in a good year, is a rarity.
Over the last few years, the numbers of available licenses have dwindled.
In 2020, there were 44 up for grabs, but only the four in 2025.
That mostly has to do with the elk population, carefully managed by the state’s Department of Natural Resources.
“In the wintertime, we get up. We do an aerial survey and we count how many elk we have on the landscape,” said Kelsie LaSharr, Minnesota’s elk coordinator. “Based on that number, we are legislatively mandated to maintain certain population limits. And so that’s really where hunting comes into play. Elk harvest helps us maintain them if the populations are growing.”
Except those populations haven’t been growing, hence the lack of tags.
“While this does feel disappointing for hunters, it’s also an opportunity for us to apply less pressure to those elk herds so that they have the opportunity to grow and thrive,” LaSharr said.
It also makes getting a tag such a big deal for someone like Clements, who turned 69 during his hunting trip.
“Climbing to 8,000 or 10,000 feet in Colorado’s probably not in my recipe file any longer,” Clements said. “It is almost a spiritual experience for me. I spent a lot of time sitting there quietly. Many times I’ll pray. And it’s part of life.”
Exposing the Big Game 