National Elk Refuge provides an opportunity for sportsmen with disabilities
It’s a warm, sunny, fall afternoon on the National Elk Refuge and, leaning up against refuge officer Dan Huckel’s truck, hunter Monte Haas is trembling.

He’s not shaking from the cold; his MS is acting up.

“My doctors tell me to come up to the high elevation and the cooler climate,” says Haas, an Evansville resident who has hunted on the refuge for 24 years. “I tell you one thing, the elk refuge is good at dealing with the handicapped. The access is fantastic.”

Indeed, the two drive-up handicapped spots put other hunters with disabilities right in the path of hundreds of migrating elk. But today, instead of using one of the spots, Haas brought his horse.

For hundreds of sportsmen like Haas, disabled or not, hunting on the nearly 25,000-acre elk refuge is a tradition that extends back decades. This year, more than 5,000 elk will migrate down from their summer range to the hayfields as winter rolls into Jackson. Alongside those elk, about 1,100 bison, several wolf packs, coyotes, ravens and thousands of tourists will jockey for alfalfa pellets, gut piles and photos. MORE