And then the wind swirled suddenly. A cold breeze shot up my neck. The tips of antlers were no longer there. Scenting us, the bull had become alarmed and slipped silently back into the forest. "Go after him," Wayne hissed in despair. Then he bugled again, trying to convince the bull that his nose was wrong. But this was an old, educated elk that had lived out a long life on hard-hunted public land. He was too smart not to believe his sense of smell. I caught only a brief glimpse of the frightened bull racing away through the dark woods.
    We had been so close. If only the wind shift had come seconds later, after the bull had stepped into the clear; if only I had been positioned where Wayne was, with a better view; if only the hull had been standing still when I snuck up on him at the end and had given me time to aim properly—any one of these small differ­ences in the scenario would have meant an enormous 6x6 elk on the ground. If only...
    It was nearly dark. We knew the hike to camp would be a long one, so we trudged back reluctantly, regretting the outcome, but also reveling in the joy of the close, dramatic encounter with the huge bull.
    When we arrived back at the tent, Tony was there with a hearty supper waiting. Unfortunately, he had not heard or seen an elk or deer all day.
    The next morning several inches of snow lay on the ground, weighting down the yellow and purple wildflowers that still bloomed in the lush meadows. The sun was struggling to break through the clouds, though, and we believed that the weather would improve soon. We rode the horses to a new area three hours from camp, and the first spot we tried was where Wayne drew the response from the chicken-heart­ed elk that shut up when we climbed down to confront him.
    After climbing back up out of the canyon, we left that persnickety bull and rode on, pausing in likely spots to call. Wayne drew several answers from elk, but the animals were acting out-of-sorts, perhaps from the days of nasty, ever-changing weather. They would answer once, maybe twice, then grow silent. It was frustrating, because they were bugling just enough to let us know they were all around us, but not enough to let us get a fix on them and either make a stalk or call them into muzzleloader range.
    We both agreed that the unsettled weather was likely the cause of the sporadic bugling. But whatever the explanation, the lack of responsive bulls finally drove us back to the first elk we had approached that morning. The elk tooted hack immediately again when Wayne called and this time he was almost directly below us.
    "He's the only game in town," Carlton said, and we started down a sharp rock slide after him. But halfway there, suspi­cious of this bull's intentions, we paused to call again and make sure he was still talking. The elk bugled back—from half a mile farther away!
    "He's done it to us again," Wayne said in disgust. "That bull's actually running from us. I've never had an elk do that before. Usually even small ones will come in if you don't try to sound like a big bull. Something's wrong with that elk."
    We climbed out of the canyon, found the horses and began the long, dark ride back to camp. Tony had seen no elk that day, but watched a herd of bighorn sheep for over an hour and had stalked within 30 yards of a trophy mule deer, only to have thick, intervening cover prevent a shot with his bow.
    On the final day we packed up camp at dawn, then tried calling from several more areas on the ride out, but to no avail. The rain, hail, snow, wind, thunder and light­ning had snuffed out the bugling activity before it ever really got going. This time around, the elk had won. But at least I had a consolation prize—our close encounter with the heavy-horned 6x6 bull. That's one animal I won't forget.