As Friday morning rolled around, David Mercado of Casper was headed out for three days of elk hunting in a remote area near Muddy Mountain, which is amazing considering how his last hunt turned out.
He was back home from what could only be described as the Wyoming elk hunt from hell when he spoke over the phone with Cowboy State Daily late Thursday.
Mercado, his son, father and a good friend from Texas headed into the Emerald Creek area near Dubois with high hopes.
Things started to go badly when his friend, Neil Richard — on his first Wyoming elk hunt — got bucked off his horse out in the middle of nowhere and broke his leg.
Then Mercado and his son missed a camping spot where they’d intended to stop. And they kept going, clear up above timberline and about as far back as they could get.
That in itself wasn’t a big deal as Mercado has plenty of backcountry experience, and they had everything they needed in their horses’ saddlebags.
Then they were charged by a grizzly bear, and in the ensuing chaos, their horses ran off, taking most of their gear and leaving them stranded.
The plus side?
Everybody made it out alive, although Richard had to have several bone screws put into his leg to begin his long healing process.
‘I Feel Horrible For Him’
Mercado and Richard met through work, and he and his friend had been eagerly looking forward to the hunt for months. It was Richard’s first hunting trip in Wyoming.
He’d hoped to go home with a trophy, but instead returned to Texas with bone screws in his leg.
“It sucks. I feel horrible for him,” Mercado said.
It’s not the first time that things have gone badly for him and his family out hunting.
In 2020, he and his wife, Trudy Archuleta, were hunting elk in the same remote area near Muddy Mountain that he was headed to Friday.
During the 2020 hunt, Archuleta’s thumb was nearly ripped off by a mishap with her crossbow string.
“I’m hoping that I’m not bad luck,” Mercado said with a chuckle. “This is the second time I’ve had an emergency with somebody in the backcounty.”
Horses From A Different Source
Mercado had been eyeing the Emerald Creek area for a while.
A hunting outfitter takes clients there, “and I was seeing pictures of some of the big bull elk they were pulling out and I thought, ‘I’d like to try getting one of those,’” he said.
He doesn’t own horses, but frequently rents them to get into the deep wilderness he loves so much.
However, his usual source for horses wasn’t available, so he went with another stable to rent some mounts for the hunt.
That meant the hunting party would be using horses that Mercado wasn’t familiar with.
“I had to get different horses than I usually do, and you can have problems with that,” he said.
But never mind, he thought. He was going to get out there with his dad, son and a good friend. They were going to do their level best to bring home at least one of those monster bulls.
What could go wrong?
Plenty, as it turned out.
Broken Leg, Shattered Hopes
Their plan was to go quite a distance back on the first day, about 3 miles past the outfitter’s camp – which itself was many miles beyond the trailhead.
Richard has only a little experience with horses, but at first everything seemed fine.
After a few hours of riding, Richard’s horse started bucking for no apparent reason.
They stopped, and Mercado checked the horse’s rigging and hooves. Perhaps it had a tender hoof or part of the rigging was pinching the horse.
He found nothing.
Out of caution they decided to walk and lead the horses for a while. Maybe Richard’s horse was just getting tired and cranky.
They came to a large clearing, a perfect spot to stop for lunch, which also would give the horses more time to relax and graze.
After lunch, thinking everything was OK, they mounted back up.
“As soon as Neil got back on, that horse started instantly bucking again,” Mercado said.
“Just as he was tying to jump off, that horse bucked again,” and Richard hit the ground at a terrible angle and ended up on his back.
“I told him not to move,” Mercado said.
They checked Richard for any signs of paralysis or neck injuries. Luckily, he seemed to be in the clear in that regard.
Then they tried to help him up.
“As soon as he moved, he just screamed in pain and he started having really bad muscle spasms,” Mercado said.
They decided to give it some time. Mercado gave his friend some aspirin to reduce swelling, in case it was nothing more than strained or torn muscles.
‘Stay Here, Kill A Bull’
After a while, some bighorn sheep hunters came riding in from the other direction. They’d been high up in the mountains above timberline looking for bighorn rams.
“I asked them if they’d seen any elk. They said, ‘Yes, there’s a shit-ton of elk back up high. We haven’t seen any sheep. All we’ve seen is elk,” Mercado said.
By then enough time had passed that they decided to take another crack at helping Richard get up.
“It still didn’t get any better. He said, ‘It’s not going to happen. I’m not going to be able to get up,’” Mercado said.
They knew it was time to call for help, and they had a satellite phone with them.
Before long, they heard the thumping on an incoming helicopter’s rotors.
At first, the chopper just circled around and Mercardo was worried that it wasn’t going to land.
“Neil worked on offshore oil rigs, so he knows choppers pretty well,” Mercado said. “He told me not to worry, they were just making sure the wind was right before they came in,” he said.
After the chopper landed, medics attended to Richard and got him loaded into the aircraft.
His hopes for a Wyoming elk hunt had been shattered, but he made it clear that he wanted the others to keep going.
“One of his last requests before they left with him was, ‘If there’s anything I ask. Stay here, kill a bull. There’s nothing more I want to see than a photo of your son with a bull,’” Mercado said.
Missed The Camp, Decided To Keep Going
With their friend out of harm’s way, they agreed to honor his request and keep going.
The bighorn sheep hunters had told Mercado that he and his dad and son were welcome to use their campsite. It was just a little way below timberline close to where all the elk had been.
So, they set off again and kept going.
And going.
As the trees began to thin out, they figured they’d probably missed the bighorn sheep hunter’s campsite, ridden right past it.
Mercado’s father decided he’d had enough and decided to head back down the trail and find that campsite, or at least another suitable area.
Mercado and his son decided to keep going just to see what they could find.
They’d have to watch out for grizzlies.
“That area back there is just full of grizzlies,” he said. “When I told my wife where we were going, that’s the first thing she was worried about — grizzlies.”
Mercado’s son, Gary Barkly, had just turned 18 and had gotten a brand new Glock 20 10 mm pistol for his birthday.
The 10 mm cartridge is regarded by many as a great for defense against grizzlies. Mercado also had a can of bear spray.
While he respects grizzlies and certainly didn’t want to tangle with any, Mercado figured they’d be OK.
‘She Came At Us Like A Bat Out Of Hell’
They kept ascending until they reached an attitude of 10,937 feet.
The scenery was amazing, but there were no elk to be seen. Just lots of tracks, droppings and other sign.
By then, it was getting near sunset, so they figured they should head back, find Mercado’s father and set up camp for the night. They were giving the horses a rest and walking when they rounded a corner and saw what Mercado hoped they wouldn’t.
“It wasn’t like, ‘What is that?’ Right away, we knew it was grizzly bears,” he said. “It was a huge sow (female) with two big cubs. Two really big cubs.
“I told my boy, let go of the horses, ‘Get your gun out.’”
He also got his bear spray ready.
“That grizzly bear stood up on two legs, and her cubs took off,” he said.
The mama grizzly initially dropped back down on all fours and followed the cubs.
Mercado started to relax, thinking the bears would just go their own way.
“Then she stopped, turned sideways and ‘woofed’ at us a couple of times,” he said. “And then she just came for us at 20, maybe 30 mph. She came right at us like a bat out of Hell.”
For the second time during that hunting trip, things had gotten gravely serious.
“I just told my boy, ‘Shoot, shoot shoot!’” Mercado said.
Barkley fired about a half-dozen shots in rapid succession “and I could see the bullets kicking dirt up around the bear,” Mercado said.
He was just about to cut loose with his bear spray when “she skidded, stopped and took off back the other way toward her cubs,” he said.
The bears scrambled up a steep slope and were gone.
Once the adrenaline died down, Mercado and his son noticed that, although the bears were no longer a direct threat, all was not well.
“Our horses were just gone,” he said. “They’d just bolted off.”
And nearly all their gear was on the horses.
“We did our due diligence” in checking the area for blood or any other signs that the grizzly had been hit.
Finding nothing, they did the only thing they could do — started hiking back down the mountain.
“I wasn’t about to stay up there in the dark with no gear and those bears possibly still around,” Mercado said.
Hardly Done Hunting
After trudging along for a few miles, they heard “a single shot,” Mercado said, and he guessed that it was his father trying to signal them.
He was right. Once they were reunited, it was too late to do anything but try to make the best of the night.
“We had to sleep next to a big old fire. No tent, no food, no nothing,” Mercado said.
They awoke the next morning and got moving again.
It would take “at least a full day, maybe two” to hike all the way back to the trailhead, and they weren’t looking forward to that, he said.
As they neared the outfitter’s camp, they heard what has sweet music to their ears.
“As we were approaching their camp, they were yelling at us, ‘We have your horses!’ And we were like, ‘Oh, thank God!’” Mercado said.
What’s more, despite the horses’ panicked scrambling during the grizzly charge and gunfire, none of the gear had been lost from their saddlebags.
They got settled back into their own camp and scouted out another good place to go after elk. The hunt was back on, it seemed.
Or not.
As they tried to mount up the next morning and head upslope toward where the elk were, the horses were having none of it.
“Our horses were acting up so bad after that thing with the grizzly bears,” Mercado said. “They wouldn’t even leave camp.”
Rather than risk another horse wreck and more injuries, they decided to let the horses have their way and headed back out to the trailhead.
“We had to call it and just leave,” Mercado said. “It goes to show that a horse can either make your hunt, or break your hunt.”
Everybody made it back out alive. Nobody even had a chance at elk, but they have some crazy stories to tell.
Mercardo’s hardly done hunting, not even for this season. Or in the future, once Richard recovers and is ready to give Wyoming elk hunting another try.
Mercado hopes that he’s gotten all of his bad luck out of the way so perhaps he and his son can still get big bulls and send photos to their friend in Texas.
“My wife tells me, every few years or so, you just seem to have a horrible hunt,” he said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
