Elk With a Saddle Gun

My heartbeat quickened as I peered through my binoculars at the burn on the mountainside above me. Elk.

- Landon Wardell

I’d been hunting for weeks and seeing only glimpses of elk a couple times in my search for a bull. I had one of Utah’s three-season tags good for any of the “any bull” units. I’d struggled through the archery portion of the season with high temperatures, lack of elk, too many other hunters, and sickness that knocked me out for the last couple weeks of the season. I wasn’t alone; hunting had been hard for everyone, due to the warm temperatures and lack of the elk gathering. Instead, elk were transients appearing in ones and twos, never staying in one spot more than a day.

Rifle season was also difficult, especially for me. This was my first year hunting elk in Utah, following my recent move there. I was largely unfamiliar with the area. I grew up on the White River, west of Rangely Colorado, where my family had access to hundreds of acres of private land at the exact point where two migrating elk herds came together: one herd from Blue Mountain to the north, the other from the Bookcliffs to the south.

I was accustomed to hearing elk bugle while lying in bed at night, window open, seeing elk on the beach across the river from my parent’s house. The main complication with hunting at home was the river provided the only dependable water for miles around, and it was the boundary between hunting units 10 and 21. Area 10 was a trophy unit where hunters typically took decades to draw a tag. Area 21 was where we usually hunted. The trick was to find the animals on the right side of the river, at the right season, at the right range. Seeing animals was easy, killing them not so much. However, I was now finding out just how spoiled I’d been.