Utah Archery Bull Elk Hunt – First Time Using Big Game Guide

By: Isaac Erickson

My Utah limited-entry archery bull elk hunt lived up to all my expectations and ranks amongst my most memorable hunting experiences ever.  After applying for 8 years to draw this permit, my anticipation levels were through the roof. I had visions of screaming bulls for months leading up to its start. What was my first step in preparing for this rare opportunity? This mostly self-taught, DIY hunter, who has never thought about a big game guide in his home state, did just that.  So, why did I hire a guide?

1) Hunting Math: It had taken me 8 years to draw, the waiting period to apply again is 5 years, and with point creep, it could be more than 17 years until I could draw an archery permit of this caliber again.  I could be 60 by then!  Amortize the cost of a guide by 25 years and the numbers made sense to me.

2) Success Rate: I switched to archery hunting to have more hunting opportunities, but that comes with trade-offs, namely success rate.  The archery unit I was hunting saw a success rate of 23.9% in 2023, 17 people harvested bulls out of 71 in the field.  This is with an astounding average of 23.8 days in the field!  If this was the long-awaited opportunity that I may not have again until I’m 60 – am I ok with a 3 in 4 chance that I do not harvest a bull? I get the, “it’s not always about killing your quarry” mentality, but this is not how I was approaching this hunt. Yes, of course, if you don’t harvest, one always looks for the positives in the experience, of which there certainly would be many.  However, for as long as I’ve waited for this, failure was not going to be an option.  Could I be successful without a guide, of course, but the numbers tell a different story?  Am I better or luckier than the 75% who won’t kill a bull?  I did not have that level of confidence or the time to build it throughout the summer.  A guide brings a huge level of experience not only from scouting that year but also from the many years hunting in that area.

3) Hunting Buddies:  We all have them and we love hunting with them, but are they able to come be your eyes, ears, caller, and set of hands for the number of days that you plan to spend in the field during your limited entry hunt?  If yours are able and willing, that is fantastic!  I’m sure if I pushed, begged, and pleaded I could have got some friends to come spend some time out there with me, but it just isn’t the same as having a guide dedicated to your success both before and during your hunt.

4) Sense of Satisfaction: As a hunter who is largely self-taught and engages in DIY hunts almost exclusively, I had major reservations about how accomplished I’d feel hiring a guide.  To me, this was just a balanced equation with success rate.  Breaking the equation down: I’d feel a 0% sense of accomplishment if I failed to harvest a bull and I’d feel a 100% sense of accomplishment if I harvest a bull solo/DIY. Using a guide would be somewhere in the middle, but weighted towards the higher end. This is a simplification, but in reality, you have control on what your experience will be like. If you want a guide to do just about everything for you, you can definitely pay for that.  However, if you need an experienced hunting partner that is going to be focused on your success, while still letting you do any of the work that you want to do for the experience, then you can have that, too. This was my experience by design and it helped build the sense of satisfaction I wanted out of my hunt.

With that tough decision being made, most of my anxiety dissipated as I enlisted Eric Nielson of Mossback Guides & Outfitters for my archery elk hunt. I can’t say enough about the experience with Eric as my guide, I’d recommend him to anyone.

As the time finally neared, I spent some pre-season time scoutinging and building my knowledge of the area. We set some trail cams and watched quite a few bulls from afar. As the season started, we continued to glass, put some miles on the boots, sat in a lot of locations, and I ran down some canyons and up some ridges trying to get into some bulls.  All this felt like I was really just messing around, hoping to get lucky while we waited for the main event – that magical time when the bulls would start to announce themselves.

When bulls finally started bugling, strategies changed. I tried catching up to a bugle and bumped some bulls out of there. I scrambled to a glassed bull high on a mountaintop to hear a few bugles in the morning only to go silent the rest of the day. We called in a couple of bulls at last light in bad wind and watched them scurry off after we were made.  We told ourselves they weren’t shooters anyway.  Things were getting interesting, but hadn’t got western, yet. 

Fast forward a couple days, we slipped a long mile into a nice shelf with sparse aspen and interspersed pines to see who would respond to us. We didn’t get any action at first, but it did seem that we called another hunter our way. After a brief exchange, he kept heading in the way we came, leaving us with the spot we intended to ourselves. We moved into the center of a meadow and took positions about 15 feet apart in a small aspen stand. 

Right after we took to calling, a bull ripped off a reply!  How far away is a bugle?  In my mind, this is binary question, it either gets your adrenaline going and the hairs on your neck standing up or it doesn’t.  In this case, it was the former and game faces were put on right away. Some back-and-forth calling ensued, mostly cow calls on our end and within a few minutes we started to see a trickle of cows and spikes enter the meadow just beyond 100 yards from us.  The wind was perfect, right in our face, and they began to feed and mess around. The best word to describe their behavior might have been frolicking. They didn’t have a care in the world chasing each other around and stopping to graze occasionally. At times the spikes were trying to get frisky, but comically didn’t seem to have any idea what they were doing.  

After what seemed like forever, the moment came and the bull stepped out cautiously and began to feed through the bottom of the meadow.  He paused to rip bugles and make the spikes nervous by short charges in their direction.  He was trying to keep all those cows in line. The whole scene was surreal, it was so cool.  It was everything I was looking for in a long-awaited limited entry hunt, I was soaking it in, loving every minute of it.  There were a lot of those minutes, too. While I wasn’t checking my watch, I think 10 to 30 minutes had transpired. Mild cramping set in from holding so still with my bow at the ready in front of me, so I forced myself to relax my body and loosen up a bit as I got ready for him to move into range.  I was glad to have the time, I noticed how I was able to get through the initial adrenaline rush and settle in. 

The bull moved in and out of range as he pushed his herd around. The aspen grove I was in blocked a few angles and I was uncertain if I could move over, because as the herd fed up, they also hooked around us and soon we had eyes locked on us from various angles, seemed like from every angle.  I could see all this in my peripheral vision, but I was locked on that bull and didn’t care.  At one point, a spike was standing 10 feet behind me, just laser-locked on what I was doing. We had talked at camp about an old-timer’s long-ago advice – “don’t worry about the other elk, just the one you are trying to kill”. This ran through my head as I sensed the herd keeping tabs on us.

In my head, the bull was good for me, but I knew there were others worth chasing and we had 4 more days to hunt as the rut was heating up.  In fact, there were 3 other bulls bugling around us somewhere! Regardless, we kept the focus on the one in front of us. I figured fate would either have all those elk blow out and take the bull with them or I’d get a shot on this bull and the whole amazing scene would solidy as the memory I was hoping to make on this hunt.

While the bull had briefly been in range around 50 yards, I had no window. When he came into a shooting lane around 60 yards, he quickly bounced to chase off a spike. He came back in view around 70 yards, but I had pine branches in my way. At long last, he started calmly feeding uphill at 88 yards, short stepping towards a window I’d be able to shoot through. I could see all the herd staring at us as they got close and I thought they’d bolt any second. Sensing the urgency now, I drew, anticipating the next 2 steps the bull would take into my shooting window.  He took his time and I felt like I was holding forever. Eric must have also sensed that we didn’t have much time now and urged me to step over, which I did, holding at full draw to gain a new shooting window.  Miraculously, even with this not-so-subtle side-step, our audience held tight and the bull remained unaware of our presence and the predicament he was now in.  

A lot of things were going through our heads at this point. Eric thought about telling me to let down and reset but could see that I wasn’t wobbling and didn’t call me off. I was wondering about the 88-yard shot I was about to take. I knew my equipment and we’ve exercised together out to 100 yards, but I’d been telling myself I’d like to shoot inside 70. That being said, my sight picture gave me confidence.  The pin was steady where it needed to be on the backdrop of that beast. I let it fly and it felt like it took forever for that arrow to complete its flight, but I could see and hear that it found its mark in due time.

He had started quartering away slightly and the shot was just back, which let it pass perfectly through his vitals at that angle.  Eric expertly and urgently let out some calls and after bucking off for 50 or 60 yards, he slowed in curiosity to the calling, looking back while only walking a few more yards. He stood at the tree-line for what seemed like forever. We both scrambled for our binos to see what he was going to do. Was he going to bolt and make for an interesting track? He stepped out of my sight, but after a few moments, Eric watched him bed down and eventually kick his head back. I didn’t know we’d done it until he uttered the words we all want to hear – “he’s down!” 

After a high five we quickly recounted all the things we wanted to say as they were happening, but we couldn’t vocalize as we were quietly locked into the moment. We walked over to retrieve the arrow, which cleanly passed through. We walked his path looking for blood casually, but weren’t too concerned, because we could see the expired bull 100 yards from where we stood. 

It finally started to sink in as I walked up on him, what an awesome beast.  It was clear he was an old bull, a gigantic body, ground down and missing teeth.  While the post-kill work was just beginning, it was dawning on me that the experience was also over for now, tomorrow I wouldn’t be out there chasing elk, a sober thought, when you’d spent 11 days in the field and would gladly spend 11 more if I could.  I was already nostalgic in my mind, replaying all the events of the hunt and wishing I could just keep hunting day after day, but I’ll have to wait for the next opportunity to try and top this, as if it ever could.