Country music star Chris Janson says a Colorado elk hunt he expected to wrap up quickly instead turned into a grueling week-long test, with his bull finally falling just 30 minutes before the trip ended.
Janson has made the annual trip to hunt elk in the Colorado mountains for six years. He told OutKick OutDoors that he usually fills his tag within the first day or two, and this time he planned to do the same so he could spend the rest of the trip fishing.
“I went in a little cocky,” Janson said. “I went in a little bit like, ‘I got this, and I’ll get this done, and I’ll get an elk the first day, and then just fish the rest of the trip.’ But it didn’t happen that way.”
Instead, he and his hunting companions spent days working the high country, running into elk repeatedly but unable to close the deal. Janson said dry weather may have thrown off the animals’ usual September rut behavior, making bulls less vocal and predictable than in past years.
“We were up in the high country a lot and just had a lot of opportunities that just didn’t come together right at the last little bit,” he said.
The streak of near-misses tested his patience. “I take hunting so damn serious that I’m almost not even fun to be around sometimes whenever it’s not going my way,” Janson admitted. “That’s the hunter spirit in me. I hate to lose, and so I just want to get out there and get it done.”
With the trip nearly over and no elk down, the group abandoned the high elevations and dropped to lower ground. “We’d hunted high all week and hunted semi-high and then ended up being in the low country where we probably should have been from the very beginning,” Janson said. “But that’s hunting.”
That change paid off with just half an hour left before the hunt had to end.
Janson also described the physical toll of elk hunting in Colorado’s mountains, which involves long hikes, steep climbs and rough terrain. He said he does no formal training for it. “I’m not really a training kind of guy. I don’t work out,” he said. “But I call that my workout for the year because it’s all on foot, of course, and you’re just climbing here and you’re climbing there, and you walk mile after mile after mile.”
He said mental toughness matters as much as physical conditioning when a bull is bugling nearby and another steep climb stands in the way. “I’ll climb over any rock, crevice, mountain, river. It doesn’t matter,” he said. “If it gets the mission done, then I’m into it.”
In the end, Janson said the effort was worth it. “Nice bull, and I’ve already eaten about half of it,” he said. “And it’s been really good.”
