Elk School

Does chasing bugling bulls mean betting against the odds?

- Bob Robb

Having hunted elk pretty seriously since the late 1970's, some years I even pursued bulls in three or four states every year and occasionally traveled up to British Columbia, Canada, and gave it a go there too. I chased them with rifles and muzzle loaders a fair amount, but my real love is hunting rutting bulls during the September bow seasons. After a while, I got pretty good at it – enough so that I felt comfortable writing a couple of books on the topic. So maybe when I headed over to western New Mexico a couple of seasons back, I was a little too big for my own britches, because I got taken to school by both the elk and a trio of Arkansas residents who, when it came to bow hunting elk, were as inexperienced as a newborn baby.

West-central New Mexico is nothing like the steep, rugged, high-elevation mountains of Colorado, Idaho or Montana. Instead, it’s more rolling hill country dominated by pinon/juniper flora, lots of sagebrush and areas of tall conifers. A hunter can glass much of it, and once you find the elk, you can come up with a game plan that generally doesn’t involve physical effort of herculean proportions.

I met Jason Smith, William Dismang and Bobby Bowen in our camp. Wonderful fellows all, they were serious whitetail hunters who wanted a taste of elk hunting with their bows. We all had landowner tags for a beautiful ranch, but while the ranchers did give us a little advice on how to navigate the property and where the boundaries were, it was a do-it yourself hunt.

The evening before the season opened I went off on a little scouting foray and immediately found elk. Just like that, I glassed up a small herd with two really good bulls pushing the cows around. I gave it a quick assessment and came up with a plan. Meanwhile, the Arkansas boys had done some glassing of their own, and they also spotted some elk. Everyone went to bed with their spirits high.