It seemed I had no sooner completed my non-resident bison application in Wyoming than I got an email explaining that this particular hunt had become very difficult with much lower harvest rates. I think it also mentioned something about Covid and that this was my last chance to cancel my application as there would be no refund of the hefty $4,400+ tag fee once the drawing took place, should I be lucky enough to draw. Turns out, the letter didn’t scare many people off as the odds ended up being about 4% for non-residents. Therefore, I was pretty surprised when I found out I was one of the lucky ones who got this true lottery, once-in-a-lifetime tag.
After studying all of the information and calling everyone I knew who had been fortunate enough to have this tag in the past, I decided I would rather hunt early in August and try to find an old bull out roaming on his own that was no longer a part of the breeding herd than wait for the snow to fall and hunt in the Reserve in November.
I went on one scouting trip in July where I was mostly interested in seeing the country. My good friend, Gary Winterton, who owns the show “Hooked on Utah” introduced me to Dennis Hunter. His son had hunted three years earlier in August and harvested a great bison. Dennis and I left his house in Lindon, Utah at 5 a.m., and he took me to the exact spot where they had found bison out of the park. In fact, on our roughly two-mile hike, we walked right to the sun-bleached bones of his son’s bison from years earlier. I didn’t see a single bison on this hike, but the trails and tracks were all over the place. This would be the place I would hunt my first day.
My group of seven arrived at our camp on Friday night, August 21st. We started our hike in the dark the next morning, working our way through the sagebrush and trees to the spot we wanted to start glassing from. When we got there, no bison. In fact, as far as we could see in every direction, nothing. Over every sagebrush hill we crested, we imagined bison just waiting for us on the other side. However, each time, hope was replaced with despair and discouragement. All we could do was keep moving forward and hope the next ridge would be the one. We stopped for a break, and I threw my binos up to look around. A bison! He was clearly a lone bull and clearly inside the park boundaries. Still, the adrenaline instantly surged through our veins at the renewed feeling of finding bison in a place we could hunt them. We followed the park boundary, and over the next small ridge, we saw two more bison that were lying down in the middle of the sagebrush. They were also in the park, but we decided to take a break and sit there for a while. We just needed to get lucky and have one of these monsters travel out of the park to where we could hunt them.
We sat in the same spot eating snacks and drinking water for about an hour. Every now and then, one of us would get up and venture in any direction to glass in hopes of getting a glimpse of one of these roaming giants. We could see bison sign everywhere, we just needed them to frequent the area again while we were there. With every passing minute, I started to lose hope as there was just nothing out there. At about 10:30 a.m., my brother-in-law, Scott Henkel, came jogging over from a spot he was watching to announce he had seen a bison and it was out of the park. We threw our gear back on and hustled our way towards the direction Scott came from. I decided to walk right down the park boundary because it would be easy to tell when we got there whether or not we could hunt this bison.
After hiking about 10 minutes, I got my first glimpse of the bison. I could barely see his back through the sagebrush as he was still a ways away and moving further away over a small rolling hill. Now we really moved fast to cut him off just in case he was headed back towards the park. When we were parallel to him and between him and the park, we walked directly towards him. At this point, we didn’t even know if it was a bull, and we certainly didn’t know if it was a shooter. Then it happened. We crested the hill he was on, and there he was. He started trotting, and I hurried to set up on my shooting sticks. He was clearly an old bull with what looked like a giant head and chaps on his front legs all the way to his hooves. Dennis was the only one among us to ever hunt them before, so we counted on him to determine if he was a shooter. “I think he’s a good bull.” That was all I needed to hear. At 200 yards, he stopped and turned broadside. I didn’t want to mess this up, so I put the crosshairs right on his chest. I squeezed the trigger, and something happened I have never seen before. Nothing! The bullet hit him dead center in the chest, and he didn’t even flinch. Before I could put another round in the chamber, he started to trot again. I got a couple more shots in him with my Weatherby .338-378 before he disappeared into the trees.
We hustled towards the direction he went, and fortunately, he had laid down, so I put a finishing shot in him and it was over. I would say I have been fortunate to hunt a lot in my lifetime, but this experience was really incredible. It maybe even felt a little spiritual, getting to hunt an animal that most will never be able to with their history and what they meant to all of the different peoples who have lived on this land.
What an unbelievable opportunity! It is certainly in my top five hunting experiences of all time. I must thank my cousin, Brad Jeffery, my brother-in-law, Scott Henkel, my son-in-law, Scott Anderson, my two sons, Kasey and Derek, and my good friend, Dennis Hunter, for all of their help. Not only could I not have done it without them, but I would be dead on the trail underneath my backpack trying to hike that behemoth out alone.
He was not a giant scoring bull, coming in at about 110", but “Old Warrior” is a fitting title. He had wounds all over him, including a giant scar on his stomach, pus coming out of several cuts, and maggots growing in a large wound behind one of his ears. Even with all of that, he was the best tasting game animal I have ever eaten. In fact, the meat was so good that my vegetarian daughter, Adaline, fell off the wagon and cooked herself a bison hamburger every day for 10 days in a row. She said she couldn’t help it, they just taste so dang good. Considering the whole experience start to finish, it was definitely a hunt worthy of the “once-in-a- lifetime” label.
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