If you’ve spent any time chasing elk in Montana’s river bottoms during archery season, you already know the feeling — bugles bouncing off cottonwood timber, shooting lanes that close faster than you can pick a spot, and bulls that seem to materialize from nowhere. Buckmasters founder Jackie Bushman found himself right in the thick of it on a recent episode of Buckmasters UNCUT, and the footage is worth every minute of your lunch break.
River bottom elk hunting is its own beast in Montana. Whether you’re working the Yellowstone corridor, the Bitterroot, the Clark Fork, or any number of smaller drainages that cut through both public and private ground, elk that live in those dense riparian tangles behave differently than their high-country cousins. They’re pressured from multiple directions, they use thermals unpredictably, and when the rut cranks up in mid-September, a bull can be on top of you before your rangefinder even locks on. Montana’s general archery elk season typically runs from early September through mid-October, which means hunters who put in the time during that prime rut window — right around September 15th through the 25th — are hunting some of the most electric, chaotic, and demanding conditions of the year. That’s exactly the window this episode drops into.
What’s worth paying attention to here isn’t just the action — it’s the setup. Bushman’s crew describes leaning on a little “southern ingenuity” to get into position, which is a polite way of saying they had to think outside the box to work elk that were essentially all around them. That’s a problem every Montana bow hunter has faced. When you’re surrounded, the standard playbook goes out the window fast. Do you sit tight and let a bull commit? Do you reposition and risk blowing the whole show? The decisions made in those moments are what separates filled tags from “you should’ve been here yesterday” stories back at camp.
If you’re deep in your elk season prep — scouting topo maps, hanging cameras on creek crossings, or just trying to mentally walk through setups before opener — this one’s worth watching with a notepad nearby. River bottom hunting doesn’t get as much screen time as high-country bugling videos, but for a lot of Montana hunters working accessible public land along major drainages, this is closer to the reality of what September actually looks like. Pull it up, take notes, and get back to work.
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