Hard-core Wilderness Hunter

Hard Core Do it yourself Old Schooler.  No guides-No private land.  Solo Wilderness backpack hunter long before cell phones or anything could save you. 

I’ve hunted solo do it yourself in many of the western states with a lot of success—plus Alaska, Canada, Africa, Europe, and Asia. Got gobs and gobs of cool stories. On this webpage are details in published stories in Sporting Classics, the Gold Standard for outdoor adventure writing and shared experience.   I was a driven animal when it came to hunting and left no stone unturned physically and mentally and connecting all the dots.   Most western game animals I’ve gone after, I’ve got trophies, a couple of Booners—record book trophies—to show for it. Some big mule deer, a bunch of really big pronghorns, numerous bull elk—taken with bow, rifle, and muzzleloader. Killed a stud Mountain Goat Billy, two trophy Bighorn Rams, Moose, Mountain Lions, and enough wild meat to feed myself five times a week for life.  Never had any guides, you just get a tag for an animals and units with huge variety of terrain, and challenges and forest, and canyons, and cliff, and weathers, an rivers  and altitude, so any factor that comes into play and that doesn't even begin to touch on trying to find figure out smart wild animals whose senses and physical capabilities are 100 fold of ours.  I think it is truly the last real adventure left. 

Hunting has had such a deep and profound effect on my life that it’s hard to imagine my journey without it. Like going through life without ever eating or laughing. The kind of hunting I did was brutal and physical. And for a guy built with fast-twitch muscle—bodybuilding, weightlifting, raw power—that part came naturally. But I was never an endurance athlete. That part was a grind. It just made it harder and hurt more, but nothing was stopping me from throwing myself fully into the wild and all its possibilities.

Still, I had something else—sheer will. I look back now and shake my head at what I threw myself into, the things I did, the things I overcame—and I loved it all. I remember many brutal pack-outs and thinking even then: relish it. And I did. Because there will come a time when you can't go deep into a wilderness and kill a bull elk with a sharp stick and carry it out on your back, piece by piece.  In my world, in my circle of friends, that idea seems like a normal thing, but typing it out it is rare and special, and I was blessed, to have done it many times. 

The mountains I charged with nothing but a backpack and a fire in my gut.

 These days, most of my hunting is in Africa—Cape buffalo mostly. Still drawn to the danger. Still craving that edge, that when the time was there, you fully engaged with the opportunity, the thrill, the risk, the wild world, and all its incredible layers and treasures.

There’s a section on this website "stories" with some of those stories in detail. True-life adventures, most published in the top-tier magazine I write for, Sporting Classics. And the many and the inspiration for starting the bronze sculptures I create—are game animals. I love them so deeply it’s hard to put into words. And yes, I try and kill them. And I do. But the relationship is more than pursuit. It’s intimate. Spiritual. Feels timeless and something deeper and harder to explain. Maybe something only hunters and artists can begin to understand.

My engagement with the most hardcore hunting may be more in the past than the future. But the animals I’ve chased—and the reverence I hold for them—are cast in bronze. And those bronzes will last for millennia. and their stores are written here and in my soul. 

I was born a hunter.  Its in my primal heartbeat.   I got a b-b gun when I was six and took the suction cups off my arrows from my “Geronimo” bow set and into the pencil sharpener they went to make them more lethal.  When I was 12, we lived east of Colorado in a subdivision surrounded by Wheat fields.   I would have all my hunting gear laid out carefully and when the bus would drop me off about a mile away I would run home and get on my Stingray Bike, uncased, 20 ga Shotgun held while gripping the handle bars through the subdivision by myself to the fields and go hunt doves and geese and pretty much anything else dared to show a bit of fur or feather. My dad had won my shotgun playing Gin Rummy while in the Air Force in WW2. I remember those hunts as vividly as if they happened yesterday.  Hunting is like that.  

Passage from a story I wrote for Sporting Classics the magazine I write for   Do-it-Yourself Bighorns in "Lightning Strikes Twice.”

* One of the best things about hunting is it brings you to places you would never visit otherwise. You go where your quarry lives, some places so beautiful they stun you and hardly seem possible, and places desolate and inhospitable.  All these places change you. Hunting pushes all your envelopes.   As a hunter you are a predator in the circle of life and not just merely observing. You got skin in the game.  Your senses become keener, more primal; your mind processes your surroundings differently.   It allows you into a much deeper and meaningful engagement with your animal instincts, all the flora and fauna, the mysteries of the wild places, the mighty and grim forces of nature and the humbling Grace of the Heavens. Your choices can lead to life or death.   You consume your quarry's flesh, the spiritual and physical essence of those wild places and its life force, energizing and nurturing your body, soul, and spirit and those of your family and clan.   It has been a lifetime of finding and losing myself in those places and journeys, the soaring highs and the crushing lows, the struggles and overcoming, the anticipation and reflection.  Done right, with full engagement it becomes a life of transcending, being a hunter is not something you do it is who you are.

Solo back country hunts-Starting in the 80's

I started doing serious solo hunts in the mid-eighties. No cell phones. No Google Earth. No safety nets. No Spot rescue. No internet. No Huntin’ Fool. No information sharing. No game cams. No hunting blogs on how-to or where-to. No private land. No special limited tags. No KUIU performance gear. No YouTube. No GPS. No checking the weather other than looking at the sky. No "I wonder if I can get service on that rock point" so I can check the score or call home—and no calling for help if you screwed the pooch.

You were totally on your own. Your grit, your glory, and maybe even your life or death. I never used guides or guide services, and I never had a scouting posse. On paper, it was a big risk—but it never felt that way. The biggest risk is balking when awesome stuff is right there for the taking and you pick safety. I felt able to overcome anything the wilderness might throw at me and it was my mindset. . In reality, of course, that wasn’t true. I had some deathly close calls—like a bunch. Teetering on cliffs with sure death below, wild blizzards, seeing stars in the desert from heat exhaustion. I remember thinking, “I need to sit down,” and then thinking, “If I do, I don’t think I’ll get back up.”  And knew that and flat land Pronghorn hunt found me in 100 degree heat and miles from my truck and water gone from a leaky bottle had made dangerous turn.   Battling every cell in your body through pain to pack out a bull elk you’d shot way, way back in the wilderness—because that’s where they were. Lighting storms so intense it seemed other worldly hell was upon you.  Having hard fall deep in the wilderness, breaking a couple of ribs.  Each breath was a new adventure in pain and a zillion breath to go. Sleeping in a frozen tent in a wet sleeping bag. Never comfortable, no matter how cool the tent ads make it look. Eating like a caveman. But the glory of it all—the glory of it all—ran so deep, it makes typing words on a keyboard feel trite and silly just to try and capture any of it.

I was manically driven. Full of enthusiasm. I thought about it all the time. It was a huge force in my life, my being, and my soul. But that’s the way you’ve got to look at it. I feel strongly that confidence—believing in yourself—is one of the keys to life. But I also knew there were a lot of ways to die out there, so it’s a gamble. Still, the jackpots are incredible—and they’re there for the earning. That's really it, you have to earn it and it is not an external reflection, there is my fooling yourself in such a deeply engaging pursuit. your the only one that is going to hike over that far ridge to look for animals, you’re the only one to put one boot in front of the other when your exhausted and you’re in an unexpected blizzard.   My masculinity ran thick, driven by hunting, God, and sex. There was raw adventure out there, and my sense for it, my primal urge and wonder, made me climb mountains to chase it.

The willingness to take risk has led to some of the best things in my life. Not reckless risk—calculated risk. I’ve lived my life by that motto. You were completely on your own, and both glory and death were in the mix. It was real. It was raw. And it was awesome. You laced up your boots, found elk country, and headed for the gnarliest terrain you could find to keep the riffraff out. A big barrier—a giant mountain, a steep canyon, a thicket of lodgepole or spruce, or just miles and miles off trail—and you’d find glorious wilderness all to yourself. You were completely disconnected, beautifully alone. Hunting. 95% solo. Mostly backpacking, boot power, but I used llamas when I could. And what a glorious journey it was.

I reflect back in wonder on those days, and the suffering I brought on myself just to go where the game lived. Most of the good public land hunting was far and deep. That was the rule. You had to put a wall between yourself and the rest of the world—a mountain, a canyon, a wall of downed timber—and it weeded out the soft and the weak. Which I was neither. So mostly, I had pristine elk country all to myself. You’d unfold a map, looking for likely spots. Or glass the distance.  That was pretty much it.  As I mentioned before, all the bells and whistles we have now were nonexistence, the experience was more raw, more to the point engaging.   It was your public land. Your America. The kind of land you’d die for. Not for some politician’s idea of freedom in D.C.—but for the dirt under your boots. That dirt is your blood, Your America. The one you own.

The Rockies are vast, and she doesn’t give up her real treasures to those who don’t dare to look, suffer, and embrace the glory of the experience. It’s hard—really hard. But you relish the hard. Humping a heavy load of elk meat out of deep country, because there will be a day when you’d give anything just to feel that weight on your back again. Bushwhacking out, your legs like tree trunks, your back on fire, your soul lit with fire because you knew—you were doing this amazing thing.

You will find more beauty, more self-knowledge, more honest spiritual reckoning on a hard and beautiful wilderness hunt than anywhere else on earth. Those hunts—those struggles—those days of touching the face of God. And yeah, I’d say: “I should be out in a week… but don’t call the cavalry. If I’m really into elk, I’ll stay longer.”


Hunting has had such a deep and profound effect on my life that it’s hard to imagine my journey without it. Like going through life without ever eating or laughing. The kind of hunting I did was brutal and physical. And for a guy built with fast-twitch muscle—bodybuilding, weightlifting, raw power—that part of it came naturally. But I was never an endurance athlete. That part was a grind. Still, I had something else—sheer will. I look back now and shake my head at what I threw myself into. The mountains I charged with nothing but a backpack and a fire in my gut.

These days, most of my hunting is in Africa—Cape buffalo mostly. Still drawn to the danger. Still craving that edge. It’s like a fighter hanging around too long. My back won’t do what I loved justice. I still hunt—and always will—but my bighorn hunt was the most incredible hunt of my life and tied for the best day of my life with the other big ram I took on a solo hunt.

It was a hundred silver dollars landing on their edge for it to come down the way it came down—clearly a God blessing and farewell from the high-country hunt. That story is in this website folder. All the planets lined up for that one, and I wrote the story with real joy in my heart, knowing it was something special I wanted to share with those who will never experience such a thing—or those who have, and can relate to the brotherhood of hunting the oldest of places.

There’s a section on this website with some of those stories in detail. True-life adventures, most published in the top-tier magazine I write for, Sporting Classics. And the majority of the bronze sculptures I create—are game animals. I love them so deeply it’s hard to put into words. And yes, I try and kill them. And I do. But the relationship is more than pursuit. It’s intimate. Spiritual. Something deeper and harder to explain. Maybe something only hunters and artists can begin to understand.

My engagement with hunting may be more in the past than the future. But the animals I’ve chased—and the reverence I hold for them—are cast in bronze. And those bronzes will last for millennia.

But sometimes things go sideways—it's the nature of the beast. its like God give us free will, if this type of hunting was easy the successes wouldn't be so incredible.  What would have been my biggest bull elk, and the dream of a really big bull I have pursued harder and given more extreme effort toward than anything else.  That animal soul sucked up two rifle rounds, never to be seen again. When I realized, I wasn't going to find him after a few days of searching (although I searched over the next four months on numerous occasions, waiting for fresh snow and the hope a set of coyote tracks might lead me to him), I knew he didn’t make it out of that drainage.

 The day after when I found out my chances of finding him were really slim I sat in my truck and bawled like a baby. It was that perfect 360-class public land bull with dark antlers and polished tips I had been dreaming of since I was a boy. For most—including myself—the Holy Grail of Western Hunting. A gold medal I had built myself  for and now it was gone. I wanted a bull like that DIY more than anything I ever wanted in my life. Hunting can hand out the most incredible treasure—and wound you in the darkest ways that you will never get over. I was shaking my head in pain just typing these last sentences about that bull—and it’s been fifteen years now. Hunting can bring you to heights of primal ecstasy that nothing else can, and hand out disappointments deep, dark, and haunting. You do it long enough, it will go sideways sometimes. It makes the struggle real and has real consequences.

The Brotherhood

My circle of friends... I’ll mention two of them who, in my eyes, have earned the monikers “Killer Bill” and “Killer Carl.” I would put myself in the NFL and, in my prime, a starter, even a pro-bowler.  I’d put them at twin Tom Brady's or Jon Jones, first ballot Hall of Famers. You’ve never heard of them because they don’t do any social media. They don’t post pictures, knowing internet snoops can track a background or mountain range to their special spot. Someone might even put a hidden tracker on their truck.

Plus, it’s almost a guru-like approach—proud of their accomplishments among friends who understand the process—not trying for likes or shared videos or any kind of attention. They don’t do it for attention. They do it for something inside that needs to be loved, quelled, tamed, and set free into the wild. To the contrary, they don’t want attention. Attention brings snoopy people and the chance to hurt what they’re doing. Serious hunters don’t like company on the mountain—or others trying to draw tags they’re looking for—or mimicking their approach to success.

Killer Bill

Killer Bill lives in the heart of the best trophy deer country in Colorado. He has a room of trophy western animals that would blow your mind—and a garage with stacks more. All DIY, mostly solo, all public lands. He’s a super detective in calculating tag approaches and odds. He tracks everything. And I mean everything. All the western states’ stats: moisture, trophy trends, Boone and Crockett entries, rumors, winter kill—you name it, he’s on it.  He is relentless, really a small guy which makes all the equipment and animals he has to handle even harder.  Nothing stops him. 

Here’s just one example—out of scores. Thirty years ago, a trophy bighorn ram was killed in a unit in Idaho far from where all the rams had been taken for decades.   He has diligently been putting in for that rare license in the draw for like 30 years. Slightly better odds, but still horrid. He finally drew the tag. Spent 28 of the 30-day season glassing—and I mean glassing hard, all day, sun up to sunset. Mind-numbing. Day 28 he spotted a lone full curl ram—and killed it the next day.

Killer Carl

Killer Carl—who I consider my best friend—from New Mexico. Maybe you’ve heard of the Floritas Mountains and the ibex hunting there, but likely not as nobody is coming out of there with glory stories except Carl and he only shares with very close friends.  It’s legendary for chewing up and spitting out hunters’ egos in crumbling cliffs and parched landscape. More than a few Western hunters—guys with reputations—came down whimpering “never again” after facing the Floritas. Limping down from those rotten heights with their tails tucked, humbled and quiet.

The ibex come from Iran originally. The Floritas are rotten, crumbling cliffs, all cactus and thorn and infested with rattle snakes. No water on top you gotta carry it up.  Ibex are skittish and spooky. A big Billy might have saber-hooked horns over 40 inches. That’s a lot of bone on a goat-sized body. They’re fast, nervous, and if they even think something’s off, they bleat loud and the whole herd bails. In my view, a bow-killed Billy in the Floritas is at the very top of worldwide hunting accomplishments.  Just one puts you in an elite league of hunting accomplishments Carl’s done it 3–4 times with trophy animals.

On his fourth hunt, he just whiffed—52-yard uphill bow shot, right under the chest of a Big Billy.  Days later he was perched for hours in a twisted pine tree—not in a seat, no blind—just on a thick branch, and words can't describe how uncomfortable that is even after 15 minutes.  He was hoping to catch a herd moving through. He spotted a mountain lion twice in the distance on the hunt in previous days.  Then, when sitting on his branch afternoon, he looked down and saw it—eight feet below him, on the root bundle at the base of the tree, the lion was perched looking into the same draw Carl was glassing.

It was lion season. Carl had a tag.   He could have spit on it. The shot was straight down—tough to draw and anchor properly, not to add the tiniest sound would spook the lion.  But he pinned the center shoulder crease and drove the arrow down into the vitals. I got a frantic text—there was blood on the rocks, the tail and paw visible, not moving. In my eyes, that’s the most impressive hunting feat I’ve ever heard of. There are scores of high-level hunters who’ve had their egos crushed in that rotten stack of Floritas and what carl did was truly legendary, but he kept it pretty much to himself, he didn't want more people trying to draw those special licenses. He did those hunts for himself and his own internal journey not the accolades of others and social media applause.

Many Times Published-Paid Adventure Writer

I didn’t know I could write until I was about 45. My grades in high school wouldn’t suggest I’d be any good at it. I killed my first Bighorn on a DIY hunt and was so blown away by the experience, I decided to write the story. I don’t know what nouns are, what verbs do, or how writing’s supposed to be. I just write until it sounds good and rings true. Freestyle.

That first story was in eight different magazines, including Sporting Classics—the pinnacle of outdoor writing.   I just dove in, looking for something that felt right, and it helped me engage with my hunting in a different and deeper level.  Turned out I had a real knack for it. Now I’m a regular contributor to Sporting Classics, where I’ve been featured many times. That magazine’s printed re-runs of Hemingway and other Titans of outdoor writing. And now I was part of that cadre, who was to know.  It just kinda happened

There’s a story page on this website that features many of these published stories. One good sample is “Into the Cold Heart of the Tia Shan,” about an ibex hunt in Kyrgyzstan. The 25-year editor of Sporting Classics said my opening photo is the best hunting photograph he’s ever seen. I got lucky—but you gotta be looking.

My most recent story combined my two bighorn DIY hunts—both life-changing, both trophy rams. It’s called “Lightning Strikes Twice.” The 30-year owner of Sporting Classics said it was in the top three adventure stories they’ve ever published. Out of thousands. I’ve written on everything—ibex in frozen Asia, wolves in Serbia, chasing wounded black death (Cape buffalo) in Africa, the dream of a perfect marlin across Hawaiian blue, the wilds of Alaska, record-book western “Booners,” huge pronghorn, and desert oryx. Essays on man-eaters, Santiago, and The Old Man and the Sea.

Below are excerpts from that story.   I have written many stories with similar writing style and themes.  And take note these stories were written before you could go to AI -Chat GPT, and tell it what to write and for those written in the past few years.  Why take the joy of writing these stories and leaving to a clever computer program.  I pounded out each letter each word like a rebirth in my mind and spirit, standing at my keyboard.  Remembering when my heart was fully engaged with this incredible thing and the writing and reliving letter by letter word by word thought by thought memory by memory.

 * At dawn we studied the rams from a great distance.  Moving towards us they had disappeared in impossible canyon and country.  My buddy Ken with a raptors view was perched high on a cliff a thousand yards away.   His hand signals had helped me pick the right place to wait as there they were 100 yards out still coming.   The four stud bighorns ghosted out of stunted bristlecones like grey apparitions.  It was going to be close.  The sun was just teasing the bench they were on as they moved across beams of light and back into cold shadows.    The scene was damp with morning dew, cresting sun rays danced through dewdrops that glittered gold.    Heavy circular bone, pine sap-stained helmets crowned each ram whose heads bobbed and turned to the rhythm of their stride and the steam from their breath.   I was close enough to hear hooves striking stone.

*It appeared the Devil himself was cooking up the weather. The weather on a 14,000 foot a mountain can change in heartbeat, and it did. By the time we were done with pictures, caping, and boning, the sunny skies and cotton candy clouds of midday had turned a wicked black. Those once cheery clouds now low, dark, mean and muscular, looking for trouble. Those threats soon turned nasty, really nasty. We were first pummeled with a cold steely rain which then froze, leaving the rocks and cliffs with a translucent icy glaze. Beautiful to look at, but deadly. It was just an evil tease of what was to come.

 *The storm was gaining an awesome force. Sleet whipped at us in stinging bitter lashes, the wind, snow, and sleet supercharged with booming thunderclaps echoing off the cliffs, and lightning ripping the darkening skies. Forget about being cold, wet, and miserable this was the kind of weather that could kill you. There was no cover to speak of and hunkering down to wait was not an option. It would be like waiting in the open of an artillery assault hoping the enemy ran out of shells. Nighttime was lurking and we had to keep moving up. Straight up and into the teeth of the storm.

*Hunting is a risk.  It can reward with the greatest of thrills, satisfaction and absolute wonderment and coldly hand out disappointments that are dark, deep, and lasting.  I knew what happened next would be one of the most defining moments of my life.   Make the shot and the magic goes to places only found in hunting where it lives forever, a pinnacle moment, miss and you carry a wound so deep and bitter you would never get over it.     I took a deep breath letting it out slowly... pause...the crosshairs stayed true, and I touched one off.  

This is just a synopsis of the hunting chapter of my life. Many of the detailed hunts are on this website and have graced the pages of Sporting Classics. Take some time, if you’d like, to join me on those hunts.

There is truly nothing like hunting—if it’s done right, with full engagement and an honest heart. You will open a part of your primal soul you never knew you had. You’ll awaken senses you didn’t know existed and refine the ones you did. You engage with the full spectrum—touch, smell, hearing, taste, sight—and all the raw human emotions: joy, sorrow, awe, gratitude, fear, hope, peace, rage, triumph, loneliness, anticipation, regret, serenity, obsession, reverence, frustration, longing, fulfillment, humility, confidence, heartbreak, and redemption.

But it’s more than just a sensory experience. It’s a baptism in wild truth. A stripping away. Out there, beneath the stars or crouched behind a ridge in the blowing snow, there’s no pretending. No screen, no audience, no shortcut. Just you, the land, the animal—and the question of whether you’ll rise to meet the moment, fully and richly alive.  The beating of your heart with the rhythm of the earth and wild spirit.

Done right, hunting doesn’t just fill your freezer. It feeds your soul. It teaches patience, grit, and respect. It shows you who you are when nothing is handed to you. You walk into the wild hoping for meat, but you come back with meaning.

Hunting shaped me. It carved out muscle, memory, and mindset. It built part of the man I became. And if I’ve done it right, the stories here aren’t just mine—they belong to something older, wilder, and worth preserving. The same DNA that once tracked mastodon and crept closer to the growl of a sabertoothed tiger with stone headed spears.  That blood flows through all of us pumped by our still wild hearts. It’s still in your blood. All you have to do is answer its beat.