This bull made me earn every inch.

For years, I’ve been chasing a dream—a DIY, general-unit, public-land elk hunt. Not interested in patterning elk on private land boundaries, just me, a rifle, and Montana’s backcountry. As a native Montanan, I’ve struck out time and again, humbled by these mountains and the creatures that call them home. But I kept at it, not because it’s easy, but because it’s worth it.

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I was on day 3 of an elk hunt in new country. The previous year I missed the opportunity to harvest a bull on some type 1 BMA close by (a story in itself). After 3 days of scouting lower country, I determined most of the bulls were still in higher elevations. I decided to roll the dice on a new spot I’d picked out through e-scouting. Never set foot in it before. At 3 AM, I loaded up, laced up my boots, and started postholing through snow that was already crunching loud enough to make me wince. My plan? Get to my glassing spot an hour before shooting light to observe the avy chutes and drainages, then build a strategy for the next few days. But elk hunts rarely follow plans.

A couple miles in, the first sign came: fresh tracks cutting into thick timber. Too early to follow, I marked the spot and pushed on. My first glassing point offered a view straight out of a postcard—moonlight flooding a basin, jagged peaks forming a cathedral around me. But despite the promising scenery and more tracks, first light came and went with nothing moving.

The snow made stalking noisy, so while I wait for the sun to warm up the frozen layer, I climbed another thousand feet, trying to get a better lay of the land. Still nothing. Frustrated but determined, I backtracked to where I saw the tracks earlier and started following them into the impossibly thick north-facing timber. This was a bachelor group, three bulls working their way through a spring-fed creek and feeding in a clearing big enough to park a few school buses. Judging by the sign, they’d been there for days but left just before I arrived.

The timber was a labyrinth—deadfall everywhere, footing that felt like it wanted to break an ankle, and snow concealing hidden hazards. But as I pushed deeper, the air changed. Fresh droppings, the unmistakable musk of elk, and then... a bugle. Deep, guttural, and impossibly close. My heart hammered like it was trying to escape my chest.

I crept forward, slow as molasses, until—snap. A hidden branch betrayed me. I froze, cursing under my breath, straining to hear if I’d blown my chance. After a minute, I pressed on, the adrenaline now a mix of determination and panic. The tracks looked like they picked up the pace a tiny bit, but my cover wasn't blown yet.

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I continued on, painstakingly creeping my way through the timber.

When I finally saw him, the sight stopped me cold: broadside but slightly quartered away, patches of brown and antler no more than 40 yards ahead. I slowly raised my rifle, exhaled, and squeezed off a shot. The crack echoed through the timber, and he bolted. My heart sank.

“How could I have missed?” I muttered, my breath fogging in the cold. I racked another round and went to where he’d stood. No blood, no sign—just tracks. My gut twisted as I began following them. Fueled by a massive adrenaline dump, I follow the tracks for around 700 yards without any sign of blood. Determined, I doubled back to where I took the shot to double check. I realized in my adrenaline dump that I missed the obvious blood trail from a lung shot on the fresh snow. I had been following the tracks of a different bull.

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The trail led me to him about a mile later. He stood there, defiant, even after taking a lung shot that should’ve dropped him. I steadied my rifle again, aimed for the boiler room, and fired. This time, he didn’t go far. When he finally collapsed, I stood there in stunned silence, overwhelmed by respect and gratitude.

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He wasn’t the biggest bull you’ll ever see, but he was mine—a hard-earned prize after miles of trekking, 2,000 feet of climbing, and a day that started before dawn and ended at midnight. Fortunately, my brother came in to help me pack out the last load of meat. Packing him out with my brother was grueling, but every step felt like a celebration.

This bull reminded me why I hunt. The resilience of these animals, the challenge of the chase, and the gift of filling the freezer with the best meat on earth—it’s more than a trophy. It’s a connection to a place I love and a tradition I hold dear.

If this is the last bull I ever take, I’ll count myself blessed. Because this hunt wasn’t just about the kill; it was about the journey, the struggle, and the wildness that keeps us coming back. Finished the day with around 19 miles travelled.

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I did a lot of scouting through the year and it seems unusually warm for this time of year. Haven’t seen anything yet, and staying away from a lot of the traffic coming through. Mostly concentrated the last two days around sunflower flat area. Any advice is appreciated.

Found this guy while looking for mule deer in the prairies.

My kids and my dad have a cow tags in Idaho for November and December. I tagged out on a bull in October and had set cell cams all over the place for my tag. I decided to move cameras to the cow unit for the family yesterday to make the winter hunt easier.

One of my co-worker’s husbands also has the tag and has never gotten an elk in 10 years. He moved from Colorado and said rifle seasons there were crowded.

We had one free day so he tagged along while I grabbed and moved cameras.

We left home at 3am for about a 2-2.5 hour drive. It had snowed about 6” the day before and a little fluff overnight. We took an ATV in case the access roads were impassable but they ended up being ok. I grabbed a camera just off the unit in the dark and headed to a trailhead.

We hiked up in the dark and just before we topped out the shooting started. This was about a mile in.

It was still 18 minutes until legal light. The private ag land below us has a lot of locals who just hunt their hay piles but the elk leave pretty early so they sometimes just take a cow in the dark.

We hustled to the top expecting the herd to basically get pushed straight at us. There are 3 valleys that lead out of the fields and I felt like we were in the right spot for a freebie. In our rush to the top we bumped what I think was 2-3 cows 200 yards below us. They jumped off an open sage hill and dumped into some heavy timber and disappeared.

We waited for the herd for a bit but they didn’t appear so I assumed they had gone up a different valley and we needed to do a big circle to have a shot at the bumped cows.

We were walking a fairly easy ridge top and could have made good time but both sides of the ridge were open to glassing so we kept it steady and glassed a ton to avoid bumping anything else.

About the time we reached the connecting ridge to circle back to our bumped cows I decided pushing just a half mile further would give us a view of another valley that we should check out before chasing bumped cows.

At the next view point we spotted a big herd filtering through some trees and across a ridge at 1.3 miles.

This was almost certainly the herd that got shot out of the fields. They looked alert and were moving with more purpose than just browsing along. I had been to the area they were headed towards and knew it opened up in about half a mile and they would be reluctant to hit that area in full light so they were likely to hang up on the edge of the trees or in the heavy brush on the edge.

These elk really like bedding on ridges in this area so we had a target in mind. He hammered over that way and at about a mile I spotted a handful of cows browsing a sage covered ridge before it opened up more.

They were at about 600 yards. We plopped down and got out the spotter and counted a handful of cows and 3 bulls. Several of the cows fed away from us and out of sight over the ridge and a few bedded in the brush. The bulls all bedded in plain view at 560 yards in a classic cross valley shooting setup.

My partner was not down for a shot over 400 and I was totally fine with that. He was shooting a 308 factory copper load and doesn’t shoot all that much.

We moved down slope to close some distance but as we did he realized the bulk of the herd was in the saddle below us. They spooked and split up and some headed towards our left and some to our right, all through heavy timber.

There was a single shooting window, fairly small from a standing position. I tried to freeze a few cows in the window with a calf call but only a bull stopped. He passed on several moving/standing/tough shots. I climbed back up and verified that the bedded elk were still there.

We snuck out to various positions on our side of the valley to try to get shots but if you got close enough to shoot they were over the horizon and safe. We retreated to our 560 yard spot to watch and wait.

If they eventually decided to go with the bulk of the herd we would have a shot. We spent maybe an hour finding different shooting lanes and options to move quickly and kept watching.

Eventually 2 of the bulls decided to get up and head away from us and disappeared over the ridge out of sight. They didn’t seem rushed and were maybe just moving out of the sun. We were down to 2 cows and a bull and the cows looked smallish.

I decided to make yet another loop ducking into the timber and working around to the back of the ridge we were watching to see if more of the herd was on the back and maybe in range. My partner stayed on the front side in case I bumped the elk towards him.

The map seemed to imply a 250-350 yard shot if they were there and visible. There was a radio tower that I had seen during scouting and I thought it would provide numerous shooting platform options if we needed to push the yardage.

As I rounded my way out of the timber and started shed out onto the face below the tower I immediately spotted a cow bedded down. It was clearly close and I tour out my range finder but it had gotten cold and decided to stop working. It was about 24 degrees and I had it on an external bino harness. I moved it to my armpit and texted my partner that I believed he would have a bedded cow at 250-300 yards of he came around.

I texted some waypoints and a track. I backed out and put in a coat and waited. He made good time and we scooted back out onto the face with a working range finder. The best cow was at 228 yards. He did have to stack packs to build a platform but he had a lot of time as the elk didn’t seem to notice yet and we had zero wind and good thermals.

He cracked one off and it was a hit. I watched it move downhill and left while the rest of the herd headed up and right. It stood broadside and he put another round center of mass. It stumbled and rolled and layed down. We high fived and started to pack up.

Then it stood up and started heading towards us. It was clearly limping but moving better than I would expect from a cow that was dead 15 seconds ago.

He took a low percentage shot and thinks he missed. The final round in the mag found sternum/brisket at 125 yards and it absolutely folded and rolled.

We finished packing, gave it another 15 minutes to resurrect and headed down to start the process. It took 2 hours to go gutless. It was his second big game animal, the first being a pronghorn.

We had 5 game bags. I had 3 game cameras, 2 solar panels, a swaro spotter and the usual winter day hunting stuff. I was already at probably 30 pounds before meat.

We were 5.5 miles deep but not too much elevation but there were no trails.

We figured out how to get to a closer access point and had friends heading up to hunt the next day. They agreed to pick us up. We had about 1.5 miles of rolling, trail free packing. They met us at dark and we rolled back to my truck and headed home.

3am leave home

6am start hiking

7am shooting and first spotted elk

8am spotted bigger herd

9am relocated bigger herd

10am bumped main herd

11-12 repositioning

Noon 0 5. Dead cow

2:00 done processing

5.5 hours to make 2 trips out and back.

7:30 done

I would attribute success to the following things in order of importance.

1. luck. You always have to get at least a little lucky.
2. scouting. I know the area well and it helped make good decisions
3. effort. ‘Just another half mile’ was the phrase of the day.
4. skill. We made pretty good choices. We usually left ourselves plan b and c. We stayed dry, warm and took care of our gear to extend the day.

Gear notes in comments.

Out chasing deer and elk and this happened

Does any state still offer non-resident OTC archery tags? Anyone have thoughts on the states with best chances of drawing non-resident archery tags? Thanks!

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After reading the post about different pack options that people liked it got me wondering the best place to go look at multiple different options. It would be nice to have hands on and see how it fits, how it adjusts, pockets, straps, etc. Do you have to go to multiple places to see the different packs or does a place like Cabelas, REI, etc have many brands? Thanks.

Hey first time elk hunter here, going into nevada unit 081 with a bull elk tag.

I went out and scouted this weekend didn't see anything except for 11 hunting camps in the area. So I'm assuming it's a good idea for me to go to areas that dnt have alot of trails and is gonna take some of the pressure off.

Temperatures are still around 40f to 20f, maximum altitude is around 6400ft in the area. Should I concentrate my effort around the areas with juniper cover and water or go higher up with dispersed cover. (It has been abnormally dry this year)

ANY advice on how to find these guys in the nevada desert would be appreciated.

I currently have a Kifaru long hunter with duplex frame. I am thinking of getting a new pack system and handing this one down to my son. I have had it for a dozen years and it works great so I have had no reason to look. So, I am curious of what you are using and what you like/don’t like about your system. i mainly either back pack or drop camp hunt so in either case i will be carrying quarters on my back. Thank you in advance.

Long story short I used to be big into hunting and kind of lost touch for a while. Well I’m back now and would like to try an elk hunt. I would prefer to not wait 5-10 years to draw a tag for my first elk hunt so looking for something I could do next year or two. I’d like to keep my budget under 10k if that’s doable, as much under as possible of course! Does anyone have experience with an outfitter that would fit what I’m looking for? I’m leaning rifle just to have a higher chance at my first one but not 100% against archery. One other thing is I would like for my wife to be able to come along. She wouldn’t hunt but we both really enjoy hiking and the outdoors.

It's a dream of mine to harvest a wild elk and have a big freezer full of it. But, I've never once hunted anything in my life. I have no idea what I'm doing or how to get started learning what I need to know. I've also never shot a rifle beyond 200 yards and I know I need to get better at long distance to ethically harvest an elk. I currently live in New Mexico. Thoughts and advice?

Would appreciate advice. Beginner, haven’t hunted yet and hoping to DYI in the next year-two years. Is a blue pack like this usable for packing out? It’s old now but I’ve used it for backpacking many times and is a quality brand.

I’ve looked at mystery ranch’s but they really look similar to this. My concern is the blue color a no go? Otherwise it looks to have the same straps and features.

I recently harvested an elk and there are only a few game processors in my area, and their coolers are all at capacity so it will be at least 2 weeks before I can drop off my quarters for processing. It was below freezing where we were hunting so the quarters were hung outside in game bags and are still mostly frozen after making the trip home in ice chests. I have a chest freezer with room for the quarters but I’m wondering what is the best way to keep them in the freezer until the processor can take them? Should I wrap the quarters in plastic wrap or freezer paper? Or is there another way to store them?

I was wondering how everybody did this year. I've hunted 3rd rifle four years now. I've seen elk every year, had plenty of opportunity's, and have harvested once.

This year I didn't see a single elk on public land. It was incredibly frustrating because after I realized I was getting no where with my four wheeler, I started hiking. Probably 30+ miles. Still nothing. Came across fresh sign a couple times. Did anyone else have a rough year?

With the major brands advertising many layers for hunts, how many layers are folks actually packing? What size packs do you have? My 38L pack is completely full as we heads towards winter.

Making the drive from Iowa to Colorado to meet my cousin for an elk hunt. I want a scope I can scan with so I don’t have to walk so freaking much. Any recommendations?

Thanks!