The author's elk, a 6x6, is a good representative of the bulls that are possible in the Scapegoat, a 240,000-acre wilderness in Montana that adjoins the Bob Marshall.

Moments later we were sliding and scrambling down the steep slope, headed right for the bull. Near the canyon bottom we pushed through a tall stand of dense alders, and on the other side we ran smack into him.

I had never killed an elk and had seen precious few on three previous hunts, and I was unprepared for what I saw 50 yards downhill. There was no sense of the animal's size, none of the light tan color my mind was expecting. Deep in shadow, partially hidden in a fold in the hillside and thinly screened by brush, the bull was walking straight toward us, just the dark outline of his head and neck and a shadowy sweep of antlers visible.

John was urging me to shoot, Mike waiting to see if I had the shot. The bull was facing me dead on. The gun came up smoothly, and I centered the scope's dot on the point where the dark mane ended. The Ruger Model 77 7mm WSM roared, and the bull whirled and dashed off. We quickly followed, and I got the briefest glimpse of him before he vanished again.

We found blood. John examined it and frowned. "Muscle blood; not good." My spirits sank further as we took up the trail--a crimson speck here, a fleck there, spattered high up on the vegetation--and as the sign led higher and higher, the blood flecks became thinner and thinner. Then, finally, we lost it altogether. The blood evidence and the animal's steady uphill route suggested a neck muscle wound. And although we looked and looked, it eventually became obvious there was no way we were going to get him.

I was crushed. I'd crippled a game animal and had let down my guide and my hunting partner. They were understanding and sympathetic, but no words of encouragement could lessen the impact of what I'd done. The hike out of the canyon was brutal, all the more so for me as the mental stress sapped my strength when I needed it most.

Hours later we reached our horses and set off for camp, and as our mounts plodded through the nighttime forest, I got to thinking. I'd been on trips where similar misfortune had been visited upon my fellow hunters, and I'd watched some of them slide into a deep funk--their failures festering in their minds until an unshakable dark mood gripped them. The choice was mine to make: get over it or wallow in disappointment and self-pity. Like a baseball pitcher who's just been shelled and has to take the mound for another start, I forced myself to realize that the hunt was not over: If another chance came my way, I had to be mentally ready to make good on it.

After hunting with John and Mike for two days, we switched around and I found myself hunting with my wife, Diana, and wilderness icon Steve Copenhaver, whose father began guiding in the region back in the 1930s. Steve, himself a veteran of more than 30 years of guiding and outfitting in the area, took us to a place where he and Diana had worked to within 40 yards of a bull before it gave them the slip in heavy cover.

We started early, urging the horses up, up, up a steep ridge for over an hour. We tied them at the crest and hiked out to a little point, and as Steve blew a challenging bugle I gazed across the endless march of mountains. One ridge stood out, a sloping, ashen gray mountain covered with the spiky skeleton of what was once a forest--the result of a massive fire in 1988.