New memoir chronicles Harwood, North Dakota, man's 50-year Colorado elk hunting odyssey
Apr. 5—One day in 1973, Charlie Butz Jr. was having coffee in a small Grand Forks cafe when he overheard a couple of guys in a booth behind him talking about elk hunting.
A construction worker by trade, Butz had hunted upland game, waterfowl and deer since he was 12 years old growing up in Bismarck, but he'd only hunted elk "a handful of times" in Montana — all without success.
Butz, who was living in East Grand Forks at the time, wanted to learn more, and a conversation with the men sitting behind him ensued. Long story short, that's how Butz met Bob McManus, an experienced elk hunter who became a lifetime friend.
By "pure coincidence," Butz recalls, the pair met again a couple of days later.
"Bob shows up at my neighbor's — he was building a camper for him," Butz said. "I had done a lot of taxidermy work and my neighbor introduced me to Bob, and I said, 'Well, I just met you a couple of days ago.' And so he came over to see all my taxidermy work, and a friendship began right there on that spot — just amazing."
McManus invited Butz to join him on a Colorado elk hunting excursion, and the rest, you might say, is history.
"I couldn't make it that year, but the following year I went with him," Butz said. "And 50 years in a row, I continue to go."
In an effort to share those experiences and memories with others, Butz, 75, just released "Elk Hunting: My First 50 Years," a memoir of his five decades hunting elk in Colorado. The book has 50 chapters — one for each year he's made the trip to "Graybeard Camp," the rustic tent camp Butz and his hunting partners set up high in the Colorado Rockies.
"We walk up about 7 miles," Butz said. "The outfitter packs the tent and the heavy stuff into our camp, but me and whoever's with me, we always walk up. We leave our truck at about 8,900 feet and our camp is at 10,500 feet. We hunt between there and around 11,000 feet.
"It's a tough hunt — it's a super tough hunt."
Butz has had plenty of success — both with archery and rifle — on those 50 Colorado elk hunts, including a trophy bull in 2015 that scored in the 360-inch range, but the book is about the stories and the memories, he says — not the techniques.
"I'm not telling anybody how to hunt elk," said Butz, who now lives in Harwood, North Dakota. "I'm telling what I went through — all my experiences — and it's just a combination of memoirs.
"I do have tips in the back of the book. Again, I'm not telling people how to hunt, but I put the tips in there that I learned myself. I learned that entire area."
The book is "actually pretty hilarious" in a lot of parts, he says, because that's just the way things are at hunting camp.
"Everything that's in that book actually happened," Butz said. "Everything from over 100 mile-an-hour wind with trees dropping all around our camp to a mouse getting in the sleeping bag.
"Everything actually happened."
Writing the book was a long process that actually began 10 years ago, Butz says, when he wrote the first chapter.
"Then I got really busy at work and just kind of forgot about it again," he said.
This past January, Butz decided to resume the writing project. He relied on memory and old photos for the first decade or more, along with conversations with McManus and others still alive who made those early trips.
In later years, Butz started bringing a notebook on the hunting trips.
"I started writing everything down for the next 20-30 years," Butz said. "Every day, I'd write the weather down, or how many (elk) we've seen or how many hunters or whatever.
"I had three or four little tablets that I had up there every year and they're all full of my notes," he said. "It took me eight weeks to write, and that was no days off. I sat there and wrote and wrote and wrote."
Once he started, he couldn't stop.
"I would remember things as I started writing," Butz said. "I might be off on a date or a day, but I started writing things and — holy cow — I'd remember this or that. I'd remember a guy's name that walked into camp and what happened. And then I'd go back to my notes again."
Released in late March, a version with black-and-white photos is available in both
paperback and hardcover form
on Amazon, and Butz will market a hardcover version with color photographs that became available in early April.
Writing was the easy part, he says.
"Unfortunately, I wrote it in longhand," Butz said. "I'm old school. I don't know how to use computers or anything like that."
A "poor gal" then had to type the manuscript to send to an editor and publisher in Texas, who in turn got the book ready for print, a process that took nearly three months.
Hopefully, Butz says, readers will understand his passion for elk hunting and the Colorado wilderness that draws him to the high country every year.
"It's the most thrilling thing I've ever done in my life, is all I can say," Butz said. "I've been in love with those elk for so many years now.
"Having a magnificent bull bugle 20 yards from you in the deep forest will put a thrill through you you'll never forget," he said. "This magnificent animal has become my passion and my life."
To order the hardcover, full-color version of the book, contact Butz at (701) 540-7929 — text message preferred — or by email at
.
* Title: "Elk Hunting: My First 50 Years."
* Author: Charlie Butz, Jr.
* Publisher: 846 Global Publishing.
* To order: Amazon.com or directly from the author at
or (701) 540-7929 (text message preferred).
