Real Elk Hunting

Elk hunting isn't what it used to be, of course. Nothing is. So when a fellow approached me the other day and said he wanted to go on a real elk hunt, I had to ask him what he meant.

Turns out he wasn't sure. "But I have to get an elk," he said.

So, apparently, did stag hunters in 15th century England. Dogs helped ensure success. The bayed stag would be shot with arrows and sometimes hamstrung before the huntsman killed it with a knife. Later, the drive added efficiency: "In 1822, the late Prince Esterhazy held at Ozora a battue, the drivers of which amounted to four thousand men, by whom, during a day and a night, the game of a great circuit... was driven into the central forests; and in the six days of shooting... there were killed ten hundred and eighty-seven head, including deer, wild boars, wolves, foxes and hares..." (from "Lays of the Deer Forest," by Sobieski and Stuart, 1848).

During the 17th and 18th centuries an English "squirearchy" appeared, comprising gentleman farmers who paid others to till their ground and combined small holdings into hunting concessions for their own amusement. Most of these men were keen to hunt, and hunting became a demonstration of their social status. Their enthusiasm perpetuated a strong market for books on hunting.

So in some ways stag hunting in England before our Revolution resembles elk hunting now, but tools and tactics have changed a great deal.

Devices for calling elk have become a cottage industry. Seminars, videos and articles in hunting magazines describe big elk trotting to an elk bugle like ranch hands to a dinner bell. Archers and riflemen rewrite the record books routinely with elk summoned from the dark timber--in whose depths bulls grow big antlers while awaiting the arrival of an appropriately seductive bugle-meister.

You can make a compelling argument that coaxing a herd bull from timber is both exciting and the best way to nail a big set of antlers to your barn. The assumption, of course, is that you can hunt during the rut and that you can access land where elk harvest is controlled to ensure a ready supply of eight-year-old bulls. Alas, the great unwashed have no such prerequisites.

Most elk seasons for riflemen occur after the rut, in October and November when sex-weary bulls think more about putting on fat and avoiding bullets than jumping on cows. Also, most hunters are relegated to looking for elk on public land. In units open for the taking of any bull, antlered elk that pass adolescence are about as common as talking rocks. In my home state of Washington, spikes-only is the legal mandate, unless you draw a coveted permit for branch-antlered bulls--the odds of which slightly exceed those of your being asked to direct the New York Philharmonic.

Real elk hunting, in my view, is for the disenfranchised. It's hunting without the privilege of early seasons, limited access, special permits and the services of a world-champion elk caller. It's tough hunting, but consequently rewarding, in a way that hunters who routinely find record-class antlers in the scope can hardly appreciate. Having guided hunters on land that produced big elk, I understand the allure of long tines on beams the diameter of irrigation pipes. However, process matters to me. You'll get immense satisfaction from a real elk hunt once you forget about antler score--even when you don't get a shot.