I drew the only available wild bull bison hunt in Wyoming with 8% draw odds. The draw odds used to be tougher, but the hunt dynamics and hunt success rates have become more challenging in the past 5 years because of bison behavioral changes and drier weather patterns during the hunt, which keeps the bison in the national parks for almost the entire season. Many hunters just quit applying for this hunt.
Immediately, I was nervous owning a bison tag. I knew there would be challenges but I just didn’t know what they were yet. I spent hours talking to biologists, game wardens, previous tag holders, and everyone that knew something about bison.
A positive to this hunt is its lengthy season. Sept.1 to January 31st. The Wyoming Game and Fish makes this season long to give the persistent hunter, maybe, an opportunity that a bison leaves a National Park and steps on National Forest land or on the US Elk Refuge where they can be hunted.
So, bison aren’t really tough to kill. They’re big targets and are not known for their stealthy avoidance of humans. The major challenge of this hunt is they spend almost the entire season in the parks, where hunting isn’t allowed.
There are two areas to hunt, the main area is down along the edges of Teton Park near Jackson. Those bison eventually winter onto the National elk refuge, where they can be hunted. The problem has been for the past 5 year, the bison have been arriving into the refuge in mid to late January, rather than a month or two earlier as in the past, which has always been when most hunters fill their tag.
The other area is 6 hours to the north of the Teton herd, a small 1-mile piece in Wyoming that is sandwiched between Yellowstone Park and the little town of Silvergate, Montana, where a small handful of Yellowstone rogue bulls wander through post-rut. We will call this area the “Bannock trail” in this story to avoid confusion from the Teton area.
I would consider this small section in Wyoming to be maybe where a bull spends .5% (yes, that decimal is supposed to be there) of his time on, so to catch a bull in this area is considerably lucky, but a couple persistent bison hunters every year seem to be at the right place at the right time.
The Bannock trail is 1.5 hours from my home, where the Teton herd is 5+ hours. One of my strategies for this hunt was to drive up to the Bannock trail every chance I’d get, even after a work day, and maybe get lucky.
The more I learned about bison, the more obsessed I was about their historical plight and successes. I read book after book, including Steve Rinella’s, American Bison and Michael Punke’s The Last Stand. The bison has such a deep history of providing food, shelter, and survival to generations of different human cultures across North America. This interdependence between Indian and buffalo is exemplified by Lakota Holy Man, John Fire Lame Deer:
The buffalo gave us everything we needed. Without it we were nothing. Our tipis were made of his skin. His hide was our bed, our blanket, our winter coat. It was our drum, throbbing through the night, alive, holy. Out of his skin we made our water bags. His flesh strengthened us, became flesh of our flesh. Not the smallest part of it was wasted. His stomach, a red-hot stone dropped in to it, became our soup kettle. His horns were our spoons, the bones our knives, our women's awls and needles. Out of his sinews we made our bowstrings and thread. His ribs were fashioned into sleds for our children, his hoofs became rattles. His mighty skull, with the pipe leaning against it, was our sacred altar. The name of the greatest of all Sioux was Tatanka Iyotake—Sitting Bull. When you killed off the buffalo you also killed the Indian—the real, natural, "wild" Indian.
The species nearly went the way of the Dodo bird through greed and carelessness during the late 1880’s. One of our nation’s best conservation stories is the critical moment when the last few remaining (in Yellowstone) were protected by forward thinkers, and through strong conservation efforts, we can, once again, hunt the native bovine of America. I feel so alive and connected to this great history with this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hunt wild bison here in Wyoming.
Let’s get on with the hunt. After the bison rut, older-aged bulls are prone to wander off in bachelor groups or alone away from the rest of the herds. This is typically the September/October period. This could be a good time to run across a bull wandering on and off the park according to people in the know.
September is obviously mule deer season and until a mule deer was killed, bison wasn’t my first priority. Plus, who wants to kill a bison in 80 degrees weather? Well, my friend Landon did. I’m not sure he really wanted to but that’s part of the stress you feel with a bison tag in your pocket…you better go every chance you get, no matter the weather and probability. Landon beat the odds, coming around the bend of some trees and stumbling on an old, ornery bull taking a dust bath. 200 yards from the Teton park boundary. Did I mention it was his second day of bison hunting?
Landon was barely able to get the meat and hide out before spoilage with the warm temperatures, and that’s only because Landon knew some horseman driving through the area. I’m happy it all worked out so well for Landon. I happened to be up at the Bannock trail that same day Landon killed, in hopes a bison moved into Wyoming.
I crossed Soda Butte creek carefully over a log jam, and then jumped on the Bannock trail at first light. The one-mile trail is surrounded by towering conifers and a few small meadows. It used to be the road going from Cooke City to Yellowstone park, but now it’s a hiking trail for yuppies, an access trail for mountain goat hunters, and occasionally used by bison. To my surprise, there were fresh bison tracks on the trail heading through the Wyoming forest!
I was overly-excited, because at this point, I hadn’t seen a fresh bison track up there yet, and this was my fourth trip up to the Bannock, which at that moment seemed pretty excessive at 5$ for 87 octane.
I scurried along the trail following the tracks with my rifle in hand. The idea of coming around the bend on the trail and coming face-to-face with a monstrous bison, and that I had a tag in my pocket that would allow me to kill it, still didn’t seem real to me. I constantly would play out scenarios in my head of suddenly having a 1500# beast just standing there. It somehow seemed like an unreal expectation to have, almost impossible.
I’ve never played the lottery, but I imagine for someone obsessed with money, it would be the same feeling one would feel playing the Powerball. They invest money with actual little hope they’d win, but can only imagine what they would do if they came “around their bend” and saw their numbers read on the screen.
In no time I was gaining ground on this big bull track, when I heard some chatter up ahead. I stopped to identify the noise, and much to my disappointment, it was the distinct sound of human jubilee. I walked around the bend in the trail to find 3 other people skinning out “my” bull that had made these tracks. This is grizzly bear country and the hunter’s heads were constantly on a swivel, so they spotted me fairly quickly. They were great folks and I was truly happy for them and their success. The story was the evening before, the hunter came around his bend of the trail and stood face to face with the bull at close range.
The drive back home was long. I wondered how many more trips I would need to make before I would have the chance to round the bend and stumble onto a bull, or would it happen at all? With a decomposing bison carcass along the trail now, it should make the trail hike a bit more interesting with the myriad predator/scavenger species in the area, and it did.
The next trip resulted in a big chocolate black bear, who stared me down as I slinked past him. He never budged, with shoulders flexed atop the carcass. I had a bear tag but wasn’t in the mood to break down a bear, I have killed dozens of bears, and planned on bringing Hunter back up the first chance he’d have.
The next trip I was alone, I slowly crept along the trail towards the carcass. Through the openings between the trees, I could see the same boar on the carcass acting agitated, I scanned around the bear and there stood a large male wolf. The two were in the middle of a stare down when the wolf turned to wander off. At 40 yards, the wolf gave me an off-hand shot and I capitalized on the opportunity. The grey/blue colored canid fell to the ground.
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| Notice the wolf laying dead |
The bear was startled from the shot, but held his ground. I skinned out the wolf that evening 40 yards from that bear for the next 90 minutes. We never fully trusted each other, both of us casting long stares, but we ultimately agreed that we’d let each other live as long as we kept our distance from one another’s prize.
The following evening after work, Hunter and I found ourselves in repeat mode, creeping along the trail towards the carcass. Hunter spotted the bear first. He ended up killing the bear which was a different bear than the original boar I had been seeing, but a good boar nonetheless. Its long chocolate hide was perfect, with a white star tattooed on its chest, and a tan muzzle. A perfect first bear.
I made several more trips up there in that time period (around the beginning of October) with zero luck on seeing a bison. The Bannock trail was familiar to me now and I could walk it with my eyes closed. The hikes were beautiful as the leaves of the aspens and willows were losing their Indian summer greens and giving way to crimsons and golden yellows.
It was time to experience the Teton area and try my luck there. I’m fortunate to have solid friends that are always willing to come along on a hunt. On this hunt, I had Brady, Tyler, and Marty. Emily and Laynee swung through one night as they were traveling through for volleyball. Hunter showed up in camp one night, as he was out deer hunting nearby with a couple friends. The camaraderie was better than the actual bison hunting. We saw bison all six days, but they were mostly all comfortably within the park boundaries.
It was obvious that we were in the right area for a bull to come out of the park by the amount of bison skeletons that dotted the landscape. It seemed like anywhere you’d imagine a bison wanting to be, there would be one or two older skeletons from years past.
It was easy to pretend to be a fur trapper/hunter from the early 19th century, as the Jackson Hole area was the hub of rendezvous and prime beaver trapping on the tributaries of the Snake river. From my glassing ridge, there was very little human disturbance and I imagine bison skeletons were scattered across the land back then just like they are now.
One evening, I had a bison with 30 yards of the forest border, but I had spotted it from 7 miles away. By the light of the moon, Tyler and I hiked in the 3 miles the next morning and rather than finding the bull bison in the spot, there was an exceptional bull elk. The elk must be able to read refuge boundary markers as well because this 370-380” bull followed the edge of the park, 77 yards from my general tag unit, into the safe, deep timber of Teton park.
Later that day, we did manage to find our bison bull, and with the scorching heat, I sat in some sagebrush on the border with him the entire day…140 yards from the Forest boundary, but he ended up heading back into the park. Brady and Marty elk hunted the forest around Teton most days, but never did wrap a tag around a bull. There were plenty of animals, just on the wrong side of the boundaries. The struggle of hunting along boundaries was catching up to me. The time and money invested in this hunt was adding up.
It was an experience to hunt within view of the mighty Tetons to my west. Often, you find yourself just staring at the jagged peaks in awe, especially when the sun would hit them just right.
When I arrived home from the Tetons, most of my hunting friends were in the middle of deer and elk hunts. I definitely felt like I was missing out on some of my normal hunt adventures but I continued to focus on bison. I reminded myself that this is a once-in-a-lifetime tag, no regrets! I began heading back up to the Bannock trail. Of course, while I was in Teton the weeks before, a bison had left its tracks on the Bannock trail.
One day after work I pulled up on the Bannock to find that another bison hunter had arrived a few hours before me just in time to watch three bulls walk out of Yellowstone Park on the blacktop highway, The moment they crossed into Wyoming, he knocked one down, 20 yards off the highway.
I trailed the other two bison across Soda Butte creek where they jumped a 4’ embankment back into the forest and into Yellowstone Park. I was mostly impressed with such a heavy animal making such a jump and now regret not taking some pictures of the embankment. That was the second bull killed around Bannock trail, there would still be one more…
By this time, it was the third week of October. I had put in around 21 days of hunting bison. The Bannock trail was quickly turning into winter with frigid mornings and some snow. One weekend, I told myself I would commit Friday-Sunday, no matter how much of a time-waste it felt. I say time-waste because once you walk the trail and cover the mile of Wyoming, there’s not much to do but hope and wait a bison will walk in…then you walk the trail again a few hours later. There are a lot of hours in-between walks in your truck waiting…and questioning.
You can’t do this hunt with a pessimistic attitude or you’ll never last. You need to constantly be wondering the “what if”….what if a bison just made his way up the trail. What if a bison just came down the Yellowstone highway and crossed into Wyoming. A pessimist could find a million reasons to not make one more hike down the trail.
Back to the Fri-Sunday weekend…I came around the bend to find a Toyota Tundra already in my spot. I walked up to the man sitting in the truck and immediately recognized him as Chuck Adams. If you don’t know who Chuck is, Google him and know I’m a little offended, as he’s been an archery mentor of mine since I was a kid.
Chuck is from Cody as well and also has a bison tag. He mentioned he’d planned to be up here for an entire three weeks, not three days, like myself. Well crap, I thought to myself. We saw each other throughout the day as the area is too small for two hunters to cover and we both knew it. Chuck, being a little more extroverted perhaps, said maybe we need to hunt together. So we did.
On Saturday, Chuck drove up to the trailhead with an excited look. Mike, there are two bulls in Silvergate slowly feeding towards Wyoming!, he whispered loudly from inside his truck. We sat in the truck for a few hours and waited. The evening light faded with the bison only 100 yards from Wyoming. I enjoyed spending time with him and hearing his stories, he’s a man that’s accomplished a lot in his life, but still possesses a humility that’s hard to find. He’s a one of a kind.
Sunday morning found the same two bison not too far away from where we left them the night before. We sat in the truck and waited and waited. Like watching paint dry, Chuck repeated several times. Finally around noon, he decided he was going to head back to his hotel and take a nap and come back before evening. I told him I might still be around, but if I get too bored I was going to head off the mountain in time for supper with the kids.
We exchanged phone numbers, and he headed to the hotel. I tried to wait around in hopes the bison would do something…anything. They laid in their beds 150 yards from the border. Finally, they stood and started feeding in the directly away from Wyoming! I cut my losses and drove home around 2:30. Here’s where the story get interesting…
Around 6:30, we just sat down to eat supper and my phone rings. Chuck was calling. I knew what had happened before picking up the phone, but I couldn’t wait to hear how it unfolded. Chuck said he slept in a bit and rolled down to the trailhead around 5:00 pm. The bison were walking towards Wyoming, so he picked up his archery equipment and hiked out to get in front of them!
He said when he was in position, they were coming his direction and when one came around the bend into view at 20 yards, he made a good shot on the smaller of the two. It died quickly while the other bull just stood there. He had to throw rocks at the bull to scare it off just so he could approach his dead bull… he was half in tears telling me this story, full of excitement but wishing I was there with him. It most definitely would’ve have been a double slam…and with Chuck Adams to boot! I was genuinely happy for him, but I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell curse has been bestowed upon me.
Meeting Chuck Adams was one I of the highlights of my bison journey. He’s been in touch a few times since our hunt, motivating me to keep after it and that one of these times when I come around the bend, my bison will be there.
Shortly after Chucks hunt, the Bannock trail landscape made a drastic change to heavy snows and subzero temperatures. I made a few more trips up there seeing bulls in the town of Silvergate and in Montana, 90 yards from Wyoming, but no sign of them in Wyoming. The nights in the back of my truck were getting colder and longer. Everyone’s big game hunts were coming to an end and I didn’t see any sort of end in sight. All I knew was how not to quit.
Day 28 of my bison hunt was my last time on the Bannock trail. I wasn’t sure how many times I had actually walked the trail this season, but my guess is 75-100 times. It is a beautiful place that really grew on me. The highway doesn’t get snow plowed into this area and I was starting to see more snowmobile tracks than tire tracks on the road. One more big snowstorm came through and the road was officially done for wheeled vehicles. I was done with the Bannock trail for the rest of the season.
The heavy snows were really beginning to limit my options of hunting areas. I spoke to Jon Stevens, the game warden for the Teton area, and he shared with me that on December 1st, heavier snows had pushed 28 cows and calves on to the refuge, making this year the earliest migration in the last few years. This was great news and I decided it was time to spend some time around Teton.
Emily had gotten used to me picking up and leaving by now and was a tremendous support throughout this hunt. I’ll always be grateful for her. Saturday, December 3rd, we shared breakfast at the house, and then I took off alone towards the Tetons. As I dropped elevation from the ice-covered Togwotee pass, the snow depth became deeper and the temperature was dropping fast. The Jackson Hole valley was -2 at 2:00 PM and covered with a thick blanket of snow.
I drove the highway past my previous bison hunting grounds from October, and all the roads were now closed with seasonal gates and 18-20” of snow.
The snow was deep enough, some of the Teton bison were starting their southward migration, which means they might travel some, and stage in a new area for possibly weeks until brutal weather pushes them further south. I had learned little spots where bulls had wandered off the park and were killed in past years while staging along their migration route. My strategies for this trip was first, just be present and ready. If I’m in the area, anything could possibly happen. I would keep tabs with Jon by phone multiple times a day. I also stopped and talked to all the cow elk hunters out and about, questioning whether they’ve seen any bison out of the park.
My other strategy with the deep snow is to watch carefully for lone tracks heading in a direction off the Park. This strategy proved to be difficult with all of the moose in the area. There were moose, elk, deer, sheep, and human tracks, and the sub-zero, dry powdery snow wouldn’t lend much detail in the track itself. Instead, I learned to determine the species leaving a track by its gait and how much foot/chest drag there was in the snow.
For example, a moose is on stilts and even in 20” of snow, they left very little hoof drag in between tracks. Before dark on Saturday, I motored up a plowed road within the park that ended in a winter parking lot for snowmobilers and cross-country skiers.
I hit the brakes and came to a stop when I saw where a big animal had come from the left side (west) and onto the road. I never could decipher the actual track, but by the width of the trail, the amount of chest drag in the snow, and distance between tracks, it appeared to be a huge animal with a lower chest than a moose. I backed down the road a couple hundred yards and found where the animal had left the road on the right side, towards the park boundary. If I walked directly towards the park/forest boundary from where I was parked, it was just over a mile.
This was promising. I wasn’t sure if it was even a bison; nor could I be sure, if it was a bison, that it continued east over a mile and is now on the forest. I was certain that it was too late in the day to catch up to it, so I marked the spot and headed to a pull-out a mile to the south to see if I could glass into the rolling hills of aspen where I suspected this animal might be.
I glassed until dark, but only saw elk from far off on the steep slopes, and a surprising number of moose in the sage flats. I had been dreading the darkness. I planned on sleeping in the back of my truck to save some money rather than finding a warm, expensive motel around Jackson. By now, I had a good sleep system down with a -40 sleeping bag, but I wasn’t excited with a full 14 hours of no light.
Sunday morning marked 30 days of hunting bison. I waited for a little heat to defrost the windshield and my body, then watched the same area as the night before with no bison sighting. I decided to take a drive and explore the north edge of the elk refuge, along the Gros Ventre river, as well as in the elk refuge.
There weren’t any bison sightings, but learned the parking areas and road systems in the refuge as I figured I would inevitably be chasing bison in the refuge, along with all the other bison hunters. I heard it can really turn into a rodeo, and I’m not a big rodeo fan. The refuge was loaded with wintering big game of all species, except bison.
I spoke with Jon in the late morning and he confirmed there was nothing really going on as far as new bison activity, as they all seemed pretty content still in the park. The track in the snow from the evening before was on my mind and I definitely needed to get out of the truck and stretch my legs, so I headed back north towards the track.
I parked along the road near the track. I packed my 30-06 Mauser (my first rifle my dad gave me when I was 12), my binoculars, rangefinder, phone, shooting sticks, and a knife. The snow was deep enough, I decided I’d be better off going light, without my backpack, as I couldn’t pack any part of the bison out where I’m parked anyway, since the Park has designated bison retrieval routes and I wasn’t parked near one.
The gait on this animal was long. I had barely gone a couple hundred yards and was already feeling the burn on my calves and hips as I tried to keep up with the stride in knee-deep snow. I made it a couple hundred more yards when I found where the animal had swung its head back and forth in the deep snow to access grass. I’ve only seen bison do that. The track continued eastward.
After 30 days, I still felt like killing a bison was an impossible task. Struggling with each step in the deep snow, my mind was having its own inner-war. The optimistic side of my brain was pumping positive thoughts that this could actually be a bison on the forest, while the more realistic, careful side of my brain wouldn’t allow these positive thoughts, and quickly smashed anything positive like a mental game of whack-a-mole. The realist in me knew I couldn’t handle much more disappointment and was in self-protection mode. Then, I kicked the proof I needed. A frozen bison turd in the trail! Now I knew I was definitely on a lone bull track and it was headed directly toward the forest!
I kept pulling up my onX app (gps) to see if I was getting close to the forest boundary. I was just over 400 yards. The tracks were still lined out in the perfect direction. It was around 5 degrees and there was a light snow falling. I just followed the tracks into and up and out of a ravine, and noticed a big snow-covered opening ahead blocked mostly by a veil of aspens in between.
With a whole new level of enthusiasm I kicked my way forward around the bend of the trees, and that’s when I first saw him. Huh?!! Is this real? Is that really a bison standing there? Did all this hard work finally present me with an opportunity? Is he on the forest or in the park?!
I fell to my knees into the snow, and pulled out my binoculars. The bull was mostly covered in a thin layer of fresh snow, rocking his head through the belly deep snow for the grass underneath. He was oblivious to my presence just a few hundred yards away. Now I needed to verify he was indeed on the forest, and if we was, then get myself on the forest to shoot! I slowly made my way in a J-pattern to the north.
From the looks of the park boundary markers and the use of gps, I was certain he was only 20-30 yards on the forest so there was little room or time for bad judgement. Everything would have to work perfect for this to be a clean, legal harvest. When I reached the forest, I dropped to my knees, pulled out my shooting sticks and rested the Mauser with a steady aim. The bull was broadside and only 100 yards away, I slowly squeezed the trigger. “Click”, the hammer dropped but there was no explosion! I lifted the bolt and tried again…”click”!
I flung the cartridge into the snow and hoped my firing pin wasn’t frozen. I loaded another cartridge and squeezed…”KaPow!” The bison lifted his head and a second bullet was already on its way. The bison fell to its chest and then to its side, he never even kicked a leg. Both bullets tore down the front scapula and through the top of the heart and lungs.
I laid on my back and let the flakes gently land on my cold cheeks. I was tired and in disbelief. I closed my eyes for a moment and let the memories of this entire bison hunt race through my head. What a challenge and what a way to end it, in the middle of an aspen forest, alone, after a long track job.
I tried hard to take the time to sit and admire the bull, but the overwhelming thought running through my head was how the hell am I going to get him out of here? How am I going to even start disassembling this beast?! I tried to get some pictures but that didn’t work so well, I couldn’t even lift or turn his head out of the snow! Not knowing what else to do, I began making phone calls and although I had plenty of guys that would come and help, they wouldn’t be able to make it up till tmw morning, as it was already 2:00. I don’t think we’d be able to finish the skinning and quartering, let alone flip over the frozen carcass, in the morning after he’d have frozen solid in these temperatures. I had another plan…
I made a call to a local company that I had gotten a hold of in the summer called Tag N’ Drag. They are a service that helps hunters haul bison back to their vehicles with a giant mountain draft horse. For $500 he said he could be up there in a few hours. I agreed. It was the best 500 bucks I’ve ever spent. Once, I slid the blade into the hide with the initial cut, the butchering was like any other hoofed animal except the size. I had the hide completely peeled back off the right side of the animal, the two top quarters removed, as well as the back straps when the two horsemen pulled up an hour before dark.
3 comments:
It was an Honor hunting the Bannock trail with you for a day. I never doubted you would get your bull. And thank you for taking the time to go with and help me get a couple Antelope. Cody is a special place and Suzy and I loved every minute of our stay.
Keep yer powder dry.
Till next time Dano
What a hunt story! Congratulations on being able to hunt such a cool critter, and perseverance to the end. Long live the bison!
You sure know how to tell a story. I was on edge the whole time. Well done, we’ll done. You join the ranks of the mountain men as well as Chuck Adams.
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