Wyoming Bison hunt

[Gynaroo]

Earlier this year I found out I was successful in drawing a Bison tag in Wyoming. I’ve been putting in for about 5 years (random draw for residents). Once I drew the tag I started looking the hunting forums to see if I could find any pointers or tips. Read lots of stories. Listened to Randi’s podcast he did with a few bison hunters. Spoke to friends that drew the tag.

I live in Laramie and mostly hunt around the 1-2 hr driving radius of town. My biggest worry about where I hunt is other humans and the occasional black bear. Hunting up in Northwest Wyoming adds a few extra predators I’ve tried to avoid (we do see an occasional wolf in our Mtn Range). But I don’t know what to think about Grizzly bears. To be honest I was freaked out about them. So I bought a 10 mm and started practicing. Practiced so much my palm and trigger finger have a slight callus. Got some bear spray and did a few practice runs with it. Feel pretty good about heading into that country.

A few months later my wife says you should go once the bears are denned up. And have you thought about getting a guide. I hadn’t at that point. But looked up the different guiding Outfits that do Bison in Wyoming. One is the exclusive guide and drag out service for the National elk Refuge. The other hunts the forest north of Jackson up by Moran. After watching lots of YouTube videos with hunts on the refuge I knew it wasn’t the type of hunt I wanted. To me it was similar to a ranch hunt. So I went with Dan Martin at Martin Outfitters. Many people recommended him and spoke highly about the area. So I call him up book the hunt for November right before Thanksgiving. I chose that for multiple reasons. The biggest was get through elk and deer season with my kids and to avoid grizzly bears.

I practiced with my Weatherby 338 rpm in the back country model all summer. My rifle shot 200 accubonds at 2875 fps an was right at an MOA. I felt really good for ranges out to 400 with that rifle. I even shot my bull elk with that rifle. Our local range can get to around 1000 with steel if you want. Well a few days prior to leaving I went to shoot and verify my zero. To my dismay I was good left and right but a group of 5 shot 3” high. I was frustrated and confused. I rezero’d the rifle. My back up rifle was going to be a 300 weatherby shooting 208 Barnes lrx at 2880. The day before I leave I take both rifles to the range and they are both great.

So my son and me are meeting two of my brothers on Sunday in Jackson. We meet up get to the apartment and everyone is excited. We will be on Horseback and we are hunting bison.

Weather look like a few inches of snow on Monday and then clear and cold
The rest of the week. We get to the meet up spot, get on the horses and start moving into the country. We see probably close to 1000 elk on their migration down towards the refuge. No deer. No moose. No grizzly. It snows all day and visibility is 100-200 yds. We do get a break in the weather and see a single bull bison 1000 yds in the park feeding slowly towards forest. So the plan was to leave him for the night and hope he crosses in the forest and then we can hunt him the next day.

 

[masmcclintock]

Dan is fantastic. He hauled a bull out for us a few years ago! You are in good hands with him

 

[Gynaroo]

Day one I took my 338 but because of it being high at zero check, I decided that it was gonna stay at the apartment for the rest of the hunt.

Tuesday morning came with excitement about the possibility of that lone bull making it onto the national forest. We met Dan again at the prearranged spot and got on the horses and started making our way into the forest. There are three or four areas that he is hoping and expecting to see bison in as we’re riding in. All those areas were void of any bison or fresh bison sign. So we continue to ride further into the forest. All of a sudden, I catch movement out of the side of my eye, and realize there’s a bull bison standing 200 yards to my left. I get Dan’s attention and he rides over to me and breaks my heart and tells me we are just inside the park boundary and we need to ride away and try not to spook it so that it doesn’t continue into the park even further. We continue that loop through the lower part of the park to see if there’s any bison that are further out trying to stage before they come into the forest and loop back to a glassing point to overlook the area. Right as we’re getting up to the glassing point, Dan starts to get his horse tied up pretty fast so that usually means that something’s over the hill. He gets all of her horses taken care of and as he’s helping each person, he informs us that there’s a herd of bison just over the hill, but they’re in the park. That we need to watch them and not skyline ourselves and we also need to keep our voices low. It’s lunchtime at this point so we get some food in our bellies. Get a few mountain naps and keep an eye on this herd of bison. The herd contained probably 40 to 50 head of animals in it. They were feeding down from the valley floor up past the aspen towards the pine trees in the national forest. They were about 700 yards from the national forest. We watched them until around 3:30 PM and they really hadn’t moved more than 100 yards in that four hours we were watching them. So we decided with the time that was left, we would ride out in hopes of catching something that had crossed behind us onto forest. No bison were spotted on the way out, but we did see a whole bunch of elk.

That night, the ride back to town. The excitement was high as we had just seen a big herd of bison mostly cows calfs with some younger 3 to 5-year-old bulls and it looked like they were making a move to the forest.

 

[Darkside]

Good Luck
You will have one down mid morning, be confident take a deep breath and squeeze the trigger. Sha - Zam you got a trophy.

 

[Gynaroo]

Wednesday morning comes. The excitement was high. My body was ready to go and we were all mostly up before our alarms went off. Everybody got their breakfast warmed up in the microwave and we headed out. Same daily routine meet Dan at a pre arranged spot get on the horses and ride in.


The ride in this morning was so awesome. There were bull elk screaming all around us. Elk were everywhere. I’ll bet we saw 500 to 1000 head of elk. So as we were leaving Tuesday night, we saw three bull bison that were moving towards the national forest. They would hopefully end up in one of the areas where they like to cross. So Dan didn’t want to waste much time in the lower country looking at elk and we got to that first country really quick. No bison were noted in the first area that he likes to glass.

Second area same story. we can glass to where the bison were headed and maybe see them out in the country, but there was a lot of valleys and some topography that can hide them. So we’ were glassing out of that country and didn’t see any signs of bison.

We ride up to the glassing hill that we were on the night prior and they weren’t in the spot that we left them. Hopes were still high that they had made the move further into the forest and we would hopefully see them soon. This country is quite interesting and you pretty much ride in the national Park/forest line. So this morning was no different. We were riding that line. The national park line was 50 yards to our right, maybe 100 at the most. National forest was to our left. We come up out of a draw through some Aspen with one last pine tree before we crest the hill. I’m right behind the guide. Once he gets to the pine tree, he grabs the horse’s reins and pulls them hard to the left back down the hill. This could only mean one thing. There’s bison ahead. He tells me the herd is just over the hill. It looks like some of them are already back in the park. So we’re gonna tie up the horses and then him and I are going to belly crawl out and see if there are any bison that were still on the forest. He said if there were, they were likely to be the younger bulls (3-5 yr old) as they follow the cow calf groups. As we belly crawl to where we can see there are still approximately what appears to be seven bulls about 50-100 yards away from the park boundary still on the forest. At this point, we have no more trees to cover our stalk. The sagebrush is getting pretty limited. We continue to belly crawl to an opening that is mainly just yellow grass. The guide is to my left and we have six bull bison directly in front of us at about 300 yards. We’re looking at them to see if we can find one that is the largest body size of the group. They all appear to be roughly the same body size. Dan said that they were probably 3 to 5-year-old bulls. He said we’re not gonna see any old bulls with the cow calf groups at this time of year, and those are gonna be the singles or doubles or triples that are out by themselves. He told me the decision was mine if I wanted to shoot, but it would be an opportunity that we shouldn’t pass up.

So after looking at the bison and seeing they were all roughly the same body size the decision was to shoot the one that was the highest and closest to the park boundary. As it appeared to have a really good coat. There was one that was really super blonde, but I made the decision to go with the one that was most to the right. And appeared to my untrained eyes to be a little larger body then his buddies.

We had talked about shot placement, Wyoming game fish sends you information about the vital cavity for bison. I had watched multiple videos about shot placement as well. He said one of the things that he recommended instead of trying to put it right behind the front shoulder in that lower third of the chest cavity to put it right on the elbow of the shoulder in the lower third of the chest cavity for a couple reasons. The first was because of the park boundary, it would break that shoulder and keep the bison from being able to run onto the park and not have to deal with that struggle. The second reason was that was where the heart lives. The second rule he told me was reload quickly and shoot fast.

This day I was carrying the 300 Weatherby shooting 208 grain Barnes LRX. My scope is a Leupold VX5 3 to 15 x 44. I dialed for 4 MOA. Had my bino harness and coat as a back rest. Spartan bipod as my front rest. With the safety on a took a few big breaths. Zoomed the scope to 15 to find my the area I wanted to hit. Once ready backed off to 10 power. Clicked the safety off. Told him that once the bull cleared that was walking in front I was going to shoot. Bull clears. I ask for the ready from the spotter. Given the go ahead. Take a few breaths and slowly press that trigger. The shot surprises me when it goes off. I shoot with a Diligent defense enticer LTi suppressor. So it tames the muzzle blast a good bit. I’m watching though the scope and see the bison flex his body really hard. At the same time I hear the thwack of impact. Dan says good hit goood hit. I reload. The other bulls are moving towards the herd. My bison takes 3 steps forward and two backwards. During this time Dan is saying take another shot once he turns for a good angle. Right as he says that he tips over and I see hooves. I exhale and am relieved that we were successful
An I did my job. I keep the hooves in my scope for about 3 minutes before I get out of the rifle.

Then my brothers and son are running up to celebrate. They said waiting for the shot felt like 30 minutes. They said impact was so loud. I thanked Dan for all his hard work and dealing with all of us very novice horse people.

We get everything together and go take a look. We do need the horses to help
Chase off the other bulls as they were trying to beat up the bull I had just shot. Showing their dominance is what Dan said.

When walking up to him I was amazed at how big these animals are. Just huge. Then touching one for the first time was way didfeeent then any elk or deer I’ve ever shot. Their hair is amazing and they are just so beautiful. Plus what is more iconic of a western game animal in American history then the Bison.

Grateful my family could be there and grateful to be blessed with such an awesome experience and hopefully some amazing meat.

 

[Darkside]

WoW
Congratulations.
What a fantastic experience and you told the story, I felt like I was there with you.
Thanks

 

[Gynaroo]

Good Luck
You will have one down mid morning, be confident take a deep breath and squeeze the trigger. Sha - Zam you got a trophy.

Ended up killing at 8:01. So cool.

 

[txco]

Awesome, congrats

 

[Sask hunter]

Congrats!

 

[wihunter12]

Congratulations, awesome bull!

 

[Carl 9.3x62]

Awesome, congrats! Cool you shot it on the forest.