Chasing Bugles on a Wyoming Horseback Elk Hunt

For 86% of my life, I spent more time hunting below sea level than above it. Growing up on the east coast hunting whitetail, shivering in tree stands, wiggling numb toes in our chest waders 3 feet under murky swamp water, the dream of hunting Bull Elk in the legendary Rocky Mountains, especially on horseback, is aspirational. I can remember seeing a mid-90’s ammo commercial while drooling over “ESPN Outdoors” on Saturday morning of an elk hunter headed into the mountains in search of his quarry and I was enchanted, I still vividly remember the ad spot.

As I got older, the prospect of chasing bull Elk started to take shape as a real possibility. But as a DIY public land hunter, I wanted to experience the adventure in all its back-aching, sweat-inducing, blood-drawing realities and not as a passive participant on an outfitted, guided excursion. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with booking a guided elk hunt, it’s just not how I wanted this to go down for me.

After a full day of packing, shuttling vehicles, and a long ride through beautiful country, we made it to an idyllic base camp location by a mountain stream, miles beyond our last human contact just as darkness was closing in. We quickly pitched camp, got our gear squared away and made a loose plan to check out a drainage about a mile from camp the next morning.

Upon awakening, it had turned much colder, and a wet snow was spitting from a dark foreboding sky. We trudged on in anticipation of hopefully laying eyes on our first bull elk of the hunt. My excitement grew as the light crept reluctantly over the horizon, through the low ceiling and I began to see the country and how good it looked, it just felt “elky.” We had barely made it a mile, just to the head of the area we had picked out on OnX to glass into when we heard 4 bulls begin to rip off bugles all around us just as the dawn broke.

With some difficulty we finally located one of the bulls we were hearing just across the canyon from us on a small bench in a burn area, about 450 yards away. I heard David say, “Do you want to try to shoot a really big bull, or do you want to shoot a good bull?” I’m not normally one to pass up good opportunities on mature animals and being only my second Elk hunt and on a general tag, I was not being too picky. “I want to shoot a bull,” I said. With that, we began searching for a suitable position for me to get prone and get our cameras set just right. Finally, we got set and after a bit of fumbling trying to get the bull in my crosshairs we were finally set at just over 375 yards.