It's 3 a.m. for Pete's sake...the rain has been hitting the tent all night, the water has turned to ice on everything and I'm awake at the first bugle of the day resonating through the drainage I'm hunting. Confirming the time on my watch, I'm thankful for the warmth of my sleeping bag and that I can return to sleep for a couple hours. Rather, I have the option to return to sleep though not the occasion for the silence-shredding screams of several bulls that surround me.

I'm laying in warmth and comfort growing ever more eager for daybreak hearing bugle after bugle and chuckle after chuckle, knowing there are at least five bulls in my immediate vicinity...also, knowing I'm helpless to do thing one about it in the pitch black, can't-see-my-hand-in-front-of-my-face, dark of night.

Apparently, the scream fest paused long enough for me to regain my slumber; I woke to sunlight dusting the canyon in which I camped. Sporadic bugling continued until about nine a.m., though they seemed disinterested in any ploys I attempted to call them closer. The bulls hushed and retreated to, ostensibly, higher altitudes for their midday siestas.

Jake strolled into camp around five that afternoon and we formulated our hunt plan for the evening. Jared and Jake would hunt to the west and I chose to still hunt the area where the two bulls had emerged the night before.

The bulls' vocal display started around six with a juvenile bugle from the north. An answer came quickly from Jared's bugle tube and a second bull, closer than the first, bugled and chuckled to the southwest. This second bull we nicknamed, "the growler" because of the gravelly growl that preceded his bugle. His vocals sent chills down my spine and stood my hair on end! I envisioned him as a cagey, old herd bull that wouldn't be easily fooled. Though, he remained unseen that evening.

Jared and the growler engaged in "conversation" for twenty five minutes. In the midst of that, I spotted the same bulls from yesterday making their way through the timber east of me. Try as I might, I couldn't coax them out. My destiny for the evening was to simply watch from afar as they headed to the northeast.

We gathered at camp that night, each with our own tales to tell over dinner. I went to sleep again to the shrill sounds of staging bull elk.