When stopped on the street, folks often ask, “Wiltz, what’s next?” Other than pheasants, and perhaps waterfowl and grouse, Mike Hall and I are looking at a November elk hunt in Wyoming. Though I’m looking forward to the Wyoming hunt, I have some apprehensions.

I recently received an email from Wyoming Game & Fish concerning chronic waste disease. Should I bag an elk, they want me to leave the head at a drop-off station for CWD testing. They also want me to hang and freeze the carcass until I receive word that my elk is CWD free. I can then butcher, package, and freeze my elk. If my elk tests positive, they want me to dispose of the carcass. The tone of the email almost sounds like they half expect my elk to test positive. In planning ahead, I’m hoping it will be cold enough in my garage to preserve the hanging carcass.

The “Fresh Tracks” column in the September-October 2021 issue of Bugle, a Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation publication, talks about the possibility of an on-the-spot field test for CWD developed by the University of Minnesota. Urine, feces, or saliva could be placed in a test tube. The liquid in the test tube turns red if CWD positive and blue of CWD negative. Sounds like the litmus paper tests we once did in high school chemistry lab. Anyway, if I had such a kit, I could bury my CWD positive elk and continue hunting.

The article goes on to say that in 2020, the Food & Drug (FDA) administration and the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) labeled CWD positive meat unfit for consumption. Why the concern if CWD has never passed from cervids (deer, elk, moose, caribou) to humans? Both CWD and Mad Cow disease are carried by prions. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, aka Mad Cow Disease, made the jump from cattle to humans. Scientists fear that like Mad Cow, CWD could pass from cervids to humans. Both diseases are always fatal.

On the lighter side of the coming elk hunt, Joe, our guide, says we might ride horses as well as ATV’s. I haven’t been on a horse since the ten day 2002 Canadian Rockies hunt I made with Doug Koupal. That was nineteen years ago when I was a youthful 60 years-old. Will I be able to handle it? I don’t know.

I have fond memories of that 2002 hunt where I gained a new respect for horses. It seemed to me that my horse was ever mindful of grizzly bears as he sniffed the air while looking back and forth at the alder thickets as we approached a stream or river. Are horses that smart?

I just finished rereading Boss Cowman edited by Nellie Snyder Yost. If you haven’t read this highly entertaining book, do it! This book of Ed Lemmon memoirs says a lot about horses – all good. Ed tells of a famous cutting horse known as the Bosler Blue. Ed claims that Old Blue could recognize cattle brands. At roundup time when many different brands were found on an open range herd, Old Blue could cut your particular brand out of the herd.

Concerning night riding, Lemmon claimed on nights “as dark as a stack of black cats,” he trusted his horse’s sight or instinct. I don’t know about instinct when it comes to ledges, cliffs, badger dens, and prairie dog holes, but I do believe in a horse’s night vision from personal experience.

Back in the mid-eighties, my father, Ken Rehwaldt, and I were pronghorn hunting on George Gerbracht’s Perkins County ranch. We were in dad’s pickup truck with an old slip-in camper in the back. The camper lacked comfortable sleeping accommodations for three, and as I was youngest, I rolled my sleeping bag out in the middle of the yard. It was totally black out there. At some point during the night I was awakened by the sound and vibration of a thundering herd as it approached. I believed that I was a goner – trampled to death by the herd. Fortunately it was a herd of horses that split around me as they thundered on by. Horses can see in the dark.

From time to time in future columns I’ll pass on some Ed Lemmon tales. I feel a bond with Lemmon as he was a personal friend of a young Lewie Schmidt, a personal friend of mine in his later years.

See you next week.

Photo: Roger on horseback in the Canadian Rockies.