By Staff
September 17, 2004
Otha Barham / outdoors editor
It all started when I looked at my calendar and realized that the bull elk were bugling right now in the Rocky Mountains and I am not there to hear them. It wouldn't be so bad except that when they bugle they also tear up trees the size of my arm, stripping every limb off and skinning the bark. They break limbs off big trees, snapping them so loudly that you can hear the noise for a quarter mile.
They roll in mud holes until they have black mud all over them and they urinate on their legs to sustain a certain, ahh, aroma, their way of asserting to their rivals that they are the meanest and toughest beasts on the mountain and to their harem of lady elk that they are the world's finest catch.
When you bugle at them, they scream back and tear up even larger trees. Such antics excite hunters to hysteria and for the weak of heart can endanger physical and emotional health.
Annual event
All this only happens once a year, primarily in September, and I try not to miss it. But this season my mountain hunt happens after the rut and I must be content with pursuing subdued, reclusive, rut weakened bulls. If I bag one, my September whining will be forgotten. But for now I am burdened by despondency.
What I have to do is hit the dove fields and the bass ponds and the duck marshes and do the outdoor things that happen only once a year right here. Bow season is approaching fast and there are targets to shoot and gear to ready. With all these things going on there will be less time to mope around thinking about those shimmering aspen leaves, as yellow as Mississippi sunflowers, adorning a forest full of toothpick straight trees with bark as white as the snow on nearby peaks.
I suppose hunters anywhere in the world aspire to hunt game that presents a different challenge than the local, familiar game animals. Perhaps Aussies tire of hunting rabbits and such and long to take to the mountains for the deep-voiced red stags that look a lot like the American elk. Turks may seek to forego their hunts for whatever is in their neck of the woods and head for the icy peaks where Ibex with long, curved horns walk around looking at snow all day. Eskimos probably tire of collecting seals and aspire to trek off on the ice in search of a polar bear; something bigger that could bring adventure, albeit in the form of danger to life and limb.
Wild sounds
For me, and a host of others I know, the whistling shriek and deep grunts of a rutting bull elk is up there in the same league as the gobble of a wild turkey when it comes to wild and thrilling sounds.
But I know a man who lives in the Rockies and who fishes and hunts there, but whose dream is to come south and catch a stringer of black bass. It seems we all, outdoors enthusiasts, want to see what is over the hill so to speak.
So the grass isn't necessarily greener in Zimbabwe or Ontario or New Zealand or Wyoming. It is just different, that's all. It is wheat instead of oats; serviceberry instead of honeysuckle; elk instead of whitetails.
But right now I want to hear a bull elk bugle. Just once.