I stood on the crest of the Monarch Pass in the Colorado Rockies with one foot on either side of the Continental Divide. If I looked East I was on the Atlantic side and if I looked west I was facing the Pacific side.

As the sun was setting, I couldn’t help but to think of the song “America the Beautiful.” The words “Purple Mountain Majesty” struck a chord with me as I saw it happen right before my eyes. The purple hue was intoxicating and I knew the meaning of those words now.

Every day of my Colorado elk hunt revealed new sights and experiences that I couldn’t help but to soak in constantly. Crossing the mighty Mississippi River near Hannibal, Missouri, the home of Mark Twain, I couldn’t help but to think of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn rafting on that river.

We also followed the historic Santa Fe Trail that was a major gateway from Independence Missouri to the southwest states.

No matter where we traveled in the area, we found history alive all around us.

We drove more than 1,800 hundred miles to meet up with our hosts, Jan and Jerry Scharf, at the Saltado Creek Ranch and found their description of the country true to form.

This was a cattle ranch up in the high mountain plateaus and was surrounded by even higher mountains and dome mountains. Many of these mountains were covered with quaking aspen and spruce forests that hundreds of elk called home.

We were greeted warmly as we met our guides in the town of Montrose, Colorado. The guides — Brandon, Tyrell, Jake and Eric — would be our right-hand men for the hunting adventure that we would be embarking on.

The first order of business was to sight in our rifles after the long journey to make sure we were still on target.

Shooting ranges for the public are just as hard to find in the west as they are at home, but we were given the opportunity at a private range for $10 each.

We would not be shooting at the ranch property unless it was at an elk. Elk are fickle animals, if you spook them they can move 100 yards or 25 miles depending on their mood that day. We always kept that in mind, the plan was to hunt the edges of the property and leave the interior cover undisturbed.

We hunted out of blinds that were located in crossings, wallows and meadows.

Daybreak and evening hunts were the norm as the elk preferred to bed down during mid-day.

We had our primary meal in the afternoon before the evening hunt. The camp cook tent was set up with all the conveniences and each day we had superb culinary experiences. Jan, Kathy and Tara always had the coffee on and kept everyone happy at meal time.

If you went away hungry at this camp it was your own fault. Tara, one of the cooks was married to my guide Brandon and a sister to Tyrell. She relayed the story of hunting elk with her daughter slung across her even as a 6-month-old and being able to harvest a bull that scored over 300 points.

The hunting was excellent with men in our camp harvesting a bull elk nearly every day.

I was hearing elk, but not getting to much of an opportunity. The last two days of camp changed my hunting luck. Two or three herds of elk began to travel in the areas that I was hunting and I started to see elk. Albeit the elk were at a distance but we knew that we were getting closer after each encounter.

The next to the last evening hunt found as slow hunting a mountain park which is a small clearing in the trees. I saw two cows sneaking past us but then heard a bull close by. He was bugling and Brandon figured we could see them from a nearby vantage point and so we hurried along.

Elk were where he thought they would be but at a greater distance than I wanted to take a chance with. We settled in and watched a herd spread out across a meadow and feed until dark.

The next morning found us heading back to the same meadow before dawn. We were in place but foiled when a hunter from another camp drove up an access road and spooked the elk into the timber.

Now we were forced to use the evening hunt as a last opportunity to bring in a bull elk.

We discussed the best locations and came up with two choices. Both were proven spots, one was over a wallow and other was in the meadow. We chose the meadow and waited, near dark with about 45 minutes of shooting time the elk started to filter out of the timber.

Jay Hewitt is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle