NORTH DAKOTA OUTDOORS MAGAZINE

Badlands Classroom

Zachary Eshleman

This past summer I decided it was time to fill a gap in my knowledge as an outdoorsman and learn a little about hunting elk. I had never pursued them, and aside from a couple of chance sightings, I had basically no experience even observing elk in the wild. I felt intimidated by it and a little inadequate, especially as someone who works in the outdoor industry, so I set out to change that. With elk tags in the state being a rare thing, I figured I would hunt them with my camera for now, but that brought me to a bit of an ethical dilemma.

The best time to photograph elk is the rut, and that is also when the season is open. I wasn’t about to be hustling after bugles on public land where somebody else might be making the same stalk.

That is what led me to Jesse Kolar, a friend and the North Dakota Game and Fish Department’s upland game management supervisor in Dickinson. He filled his tag years ago, so now he gets his local elk fill with a camera in the backcountry of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. After a few conversations, I had some map pins, advice, and a general location he said I should start.

That is how, on a September afternoon, I found myself alone, dropping down a butte in the park’s South Unit with a camera on my chest, an overnight pack on my back and a backcountry permit in my pocket. I worked my way around the bison and wild horses, spooked a couple of mule deer and turkeys, and used game trails to weave toward where I wanted to be. I was walking into my first lessons.

Jesse Kolar glassing for elk

Jesse Kolar looking for elk in the badlands.

Maybe I was distracted by the hike and the amazing landscape, or maybe there weren’t any elk near me, but I heard no bugles on my way in. I chose my campsite on a little plateau just as the sun set, and I slept under the stars in my hammock. It was a warm night, and my minimal packing worked out just fine.

The night was far from silent. Shortly after it was too dark to see, I heard crashing in the junipers below me. The sound of antlers against wood felt like it was right there, but I had no chance of finding it. Still, the sound was invigorating; there were monsters in the dark.

Then the bugling started. So close that I could hear the breathy trill off each note. The responses came echoing from far behind me. They could have been a few hundred yards or a mile away. The hills bent the sounds and disguised their location.

I slept lightly, waking regularly to more bugling throughout the night. I was newly motivated to experience what the morning light would reveal.

But was this all a waste of time? I mean, you can see elk from your car if you’re lucky out here. And wasn’t I just chasing “park elk?” I could probably just walk up and pet them, right? There is no way this would translate to any future hunting pursuits.

Well, it’s complicated.

As of 2026, the herd inside the fence is not a separate tourist population. It is the source of a lot of the elk a hunter finds once the park boundary ends. For example, the elk on the October 2024 cover of North Dakota OUTDOORS, photographed by Kolar in the park, was actually killed by a hunter that same year outside the park’s boundaries.

To understand the behavior of the elk here, as opposed to the mule deer in the park (which do behave completely differently from their exterior counterparts), you need to look at their history.

Elk were gone from the badlands by the late 1800s. On March 13, 1985, the park released 47 elk in the South Unit, eight bulls and 39 cows from Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota. The objective was to rebuild the population to around 400, but they blew past that goal. Once the population in the park grew past 1,000, something had to change. In 2010 and 2011, the park brought in volunteer hunters and culled roughly 900 elk, focusing heavily on cows, to get back toward its goal. Volunteer hunters were not allowed to pose with elk they shot, and meat was donated to tribes in North Dakota and to Sportsmen Against Hunger.

Before that, it was true that these were mostly park animals. Elk slipped out occasionally, but they spent most of their time inbounds. However, after experiencing the reduction and continued human hunting pressure in the form of continued culling, herds settled north and south of Medora and stayed out. The elk that did remain primarily in the park spent more time out than before. A 2019-23 Game and Fish study found that 60% of the elk collared inside the South Unit used land outside the park at least sometime during the year.

The elk in the park were also far more wary of people after the culling, and they spent their time in more remote areas of the park, and they stuck to the cover of junipers throughout the day.

I’m not going to argue that finding elk there and photographing them is the same as hunting. However, I do think you would struggle to find a better simulation anywhere else.

I woke up in the morning to fresh opportunity. It was nearly a full moon, and the bugles were echoing long before the sun rose. I didn’t need a headlamp to move around, so after sitting for a minute and only hearing them far off behind me, I decided to just go for it. I picked out a bugle and went in that direction.

I worked down a canyon and expected to see a bull around every bend. With continued disappointment, I followed a sound that seemed the same the whole time. I came to an abrupt end in the cut I was walking and made my way up the steep butte, still heading in the direction of the bugling.

A mile and a half in and starting to lose hope, I sat glassing from the edge of a coulee. In front of me the land dropped away for a few hundred feet before rising again with the far side covered in those impenetrable junipers. The bugles of one bull now sounded like he was standing in front of me on the other side, but I still couldn’t get eyes on him.

After about 20 minutes of watching and listening, I figured the echoes had thrown off my sense of direction. I moved farther along the edge so I could see more of the valley floor to my left, hoping he was there instead.

About 40 yards later, he came into view. A 6x6 bull, minding his business about 600 yards away. I watched him for 10 minutes as he moved from my side of the small valley to the opposite. Then he worked around a curve where a small rise blocked my view.

Time to close the distance.

I hurried into the draw. It took maybe 10 minutes to get down and over to the edge where he had gone out of sight. I turned the corner slowly, crawling to look over the little rise, expecting him at 100 yards or so.

Nope. There he was at 25 yards, facing me. I froze. A small tree blocked his direct view of me. When he went back to grazing, I slowly brought my camera up, and I inched to the side to get an angle on him. He stood there long enough for a few frames and let out a bugle that I could feel in my chest. Then he continued slowly away into the junipers. I took no shot and left with no meat. It was just a heart-pounding stalk, and my first introduction to elk in one of the best classrooms our country has to offer.

Return to North Dakota Outdoors November 2026 Edition