Waiting on Wapiti: a Lifetime Hunt for a Bull Elk

When every one else is getting ready for Pumpkin Spice lattes and scarves, my family welcomes fall in a different way.

September is archery hunting season.

Being part of a hunting family includes some oddities. For example, the first time I ate a steak at a restaurant when I was 10, I leaned over and told my mom the meat tasted funny. This is because I grew up eating elk steak and elk burger. One elk feeds my family for a whole year and it’s my family’s go-to protein. Additionally, I never went through the ‘where does meat come from?’ phase, nor the shock that beef comes from cows and pork from pigs. Instead, I was helping to butcher my dad’s and uncle’s kills at eight years old. Even if my parents didn’t let me slice the meat with a knife, my brother and I were still there to push chunks of elk into the grinder to make burger and to wrap pounds of meat in butcher paper and to label the packages.

It’s the kind of thing where if you know, you know. But if you’re not part of the hunting world, then the ins and outs and ups and downs are like a foreign culture.

This fall I spent 9 days hunting with my dad in GMU (Game Management Unit) 201. My dad has dreamed of hunting this unit in northwestern Colorado for 25 years. It is the best area in Colorado to hunt elk and it takes 25 years to get a license for the area. Needless to say, he was excited.

And he was not alone. My dad always says, “it’s not what you do, it’s who you do it with,” and he has lived this maxim his entire life. For a decade my dad has been taking other people hunting, helping them get animals, ensuring they have fun, bugling in elk for them to shoot. Now that my dad has the chance to achieve his dream, all those people and more rallied around him. Over the course of the month, my brother, my mother, myself, my cousin, two uncles, and my dad’s best friend all planned to participate in this hunt, hoping and praying and doing what we could to help my dad shoot a bull elk.

Because this isn’t just any hunt. This is a once in a lifetime hunt.

At the beginning of September, after hours of driving, a small group of us set up camp in the soft dusk. The next morning at 5am, the hunt begins as we crawl from the tent into the darkness, trying not to get dew on our camouflage clothes. Orion’s belt is blazing above our heads and the elk are bugling.

Quick aside: September is the rut, when elk mate to produce offspring (the cycle of life, you know). Bull elk bugle during the rut as a way to communicate. It can be used to keep their herds of cows (female elk) nearby, to tell other bulls where they are, to establish dominance, and to challenge another bull to a fight (sigh, boys).

Check out the videos below to hear elk bugling on Diamond Peak.

We see five bulls the first day, smiling and elbowing each other as we peer through our binoculars. Usually seeing five elk in a season is great, but here, in 201, it’s an ordinary morning.

My brother and uncle arrive and we have a late breakfast in the shade of our camp, but always we fall back into the hunting. Bugles carry on the wind; elk creep over ridges in the near-dusk; antlers gleam in the small circles of our spotting scopes.

It’s magical. It’s like being in Rocky Mountain National Park except the elk are wild. (Elk walk down the road in Rocky Mountain not caring about the hordes of people eight feet away with cameras flashing).

Every night after the sun has gone down and the chill has crept in, we stand among the lights in our camp, huddled around the cook stove as we heat up the meals my mom made, and we share what we saw. Nicknames spring up: Fifty Cent, Splitzy, Goal Post, and soon we know the whole area like the back of our hands. The stories come pouring out of past hunts and past jokes, and lines are drawn between this hunt and every other hunt, stringing them together like a bedded necklace until they’re all part of all of us.

One morning, my dad, my cousin, and I dress with fervor in the darkness and set out from camp. We keep our head lamps off because the bugles are really close this morning, and pick our way through the aspen grove with only the light of the moon. As the sky lightens, we find a tight group of aspens and lift our binoculars, trying to see in the dark. The bugles are so close and we’re looking for the curve of an ear or the forked tips of an antler. It’s so early that we’re looking for shadows.

The sun is not even fully up, just spilling light over the lip of the earth, when we see the herd coming over a small ridge into the scraggly spread of aspens. There are multiple bulls and forty or more cows grazing silently and moving with decent speed.

Before we can even decide what to do–try to sneak closer, start bugling ourselves to see if we can draw in a bull–a vehicle drives by on the dirt road about a quarter mile from the herd, and they spook. The cows and bulls take off in a quick jog, headed away from us. A few cows turn and go back the way they came, passing within 100 yards of us. Suddenly, there’s movement in the aspens 70 yards away.

Through some miracle, the bull stops broadside at thirty five or so yards. My dad pulls back in the grey light of dawn. And shoots.

The arrow hits. The bull spooks, taking off into the trees away from us. My cousin and I charge my dad with silent smiles and whispered whoops.

My brother and uncle arrive, having only been a half hour out in their drive from Minnesota. We begin scanning the area for blood or for the arrow. As time goes on, all spirits begin to sink. Once we find the arrow–snapped at the tip with only a few drops of blood–we are now certain that it wasn’t a kill shot.

Bull elk can weigh up to 900 pounds and a shot in the shoulder is like a paper cut. We spend the day searching, putting in our due diligence, but we’re certain my father’s arrow was no more than a bug bite to the mighty bull. In fact, I spot him later using my binoculars, and he walks without a limp, urging his twelve cows onward.

We rally–the missed shot is bumming us out–but we’re in elk paradise and my dad will certainly get another chance.

Two days later, my dad, my brother, and I are perched on some rocks using our binoculars to scan the nearby hillsides for elk. We’ve nearly given up and determined to move to another spot when a bugle makes us all jump in surprise. A dark elk, coated in mud, is sprinting along the hillside behind us with several cows. His massive antlers are just as dark and he bugles again angrily, urging his cows onward.

In the span of a few seconds, he disappears over the next ridge. The three of us look at each other, then scramble to grab our packs. We know there’s a water hole over the next ridge, and we’re pretty certain the bull and his ladies are headed there.

My brother pulls out his bugle (a plastic tube with a reed mouthpiece that, with a lot of skill and practice, allows hunters to attempt to emulate a bull elk’s bugle. It’s a lot harder than it sounds). I loose the old elk antler from my pack, hefting the seven pound antler in my grasp. Most elk don’t happen to walk right by a hunter. You have to lure them in. You have to pretend to be an animal. It’s like art, but embedded in nature. It’s like speaking to elk and hoping they’ll take you seriously enough to speak back.

But, like most animals, speaking is about body language as much as it is about noise. My brother will bugle, calling out a challenge and telling the elk where we are, and I’ll use my antler to rake trees, bashing and beating at an aspen until the bark is stripped and the leaves are flying. This, too, tells the bull where we are and how we’re feeling. And we’re feeling like we’ve got cows to take, or cows to protect. Either way, the other bull will want to take our cows or protect his own–hopefully.

We creep into the trees. The wind is blowing in our face so the elk won’t scent us. My brother bugles. The elk bugles back. We angle farther left, following his sounds.

As we get closer, we get quieter. My dad finds a tree to situate himself behind and knocks an arrow. My brother bugles. I start raking a tree. We intersperse cow calls among the action and all the while the muddy bull elk bugles back. It’s a stand off. Who will approach who? We need him to come to us because we can’t go to him. If he see’s us, he’ll spook and run away.

Half an hour passes. I keep looking at my brother, who keeps looking at me. We keep doing what we’re doing. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Suddenly, 20 yards away, I see a head peek over a bush, antlers bobbing. I hiss at my brother and he looks too, and we watch the young bull (not the one we’re trying to lure in) as he watches us. He cocks his head and my brother shrugs. The muddy bull bugles and my brother bugles back and still the young bull watches us, curiosity in his eyes.

We creep closer to my dad, wondering if he has eyes on the bull, and suddenly we freeze. We can’t see him, but we can hear him. I drag the antler through some bushes, sweeping it back and forth. My dad rises slowly to his feet, pulling back. We’re at the bottom of a small hill and the elk is above us.

He spooks, running off, and we track him further, but finally loose him in a stand of dark timber. Our hearts beat quickly though, with the thrill of the hunt, of being so close to a magnificent animal.

I head home the next day (I DO have a job), but my thoughts are always on the hunt, my heart rate spiking every time my phone buzzes with a text.

On the 16th day, my brother and his friend are with my dad, surrounded by bulls. Bugles are coming from every direction. He doesn’t have a shot, but they persevere, tracking the biggest for 2 hours. My brother bugles, his friend rakes trees. The bull walks away and my dad sneaks after. My brother stacks bugles (bugling the moment the bull does) in a bid to piss him off.

My dad crouches behind a large bush, eyes on the elk. Suddenly, the animal reaches his limit and turns on a dime, stalking back toward my brother and his friend who are simulating the most prideful, annoying bull elk ever. But my dad is in his path. The bull is moving, coming directly toward him. My dad’s looking for shooting lanes. An arrow is knocked, but the bull doesn’t pick a side. My dad has no other choice but to rise out of the bushes like a specter, drawing back in one smooth motion. The bull is 6 feet away, and he reels back in shock. My dad shoots—no time to aim—before the bull pivots on his legs and bounds away.

My dad scans the ground for blood as the boys run over. Nothing but churned dirt.

“You can’t have missed,” my brother cries. ”He was five feet away!” But this moment sours like the others.

Then my brother looks over my dad’s shoulder and his mouth falls open. Twenty yards away a rock is red with blood splatters. ”Look! Look!” he shouts, and then he finds blood on the ground a few feet from them…clearly visible for most people, but my dad is freaking red-green color blind.

After a few hundred yards–there lies the bull.

I wish I could have been there for the end, but I was there in spirit.

It’s a moment of awe and thankfulness and amazement and connection–to the wild and to each other.