The outfit is located on the
Belle Fourche River and equipped with a full-time taxidermy service on site.
I was on a low bluff overlooking a bend of the
Belle Fourche River, cottonwoods along the stream below; hayfields left, right, and center; timbered ridges rising a few hundred yards away.
Water for irrigation is diverted from the
Belle Fourche River to the Belle Fourche Reservoir, which holds over 185,000 acre-feet of active conservation storage.
But most of Wyoming's true trophy whitetails are concentrated in the northeastern sector of the state, where the Black Hills and the Bear Lodge Mountains spill over and down from South Dakota into the drainage of the
Belle Fourche River.
Despoiled by a century of mine tailings from Homestake Gold Mine in Lead, the creek was a foul-looking flowage that poured down out of the Black Hills and spilled onto the prairie, meandering sickly toward the
Belle Fourche River.
My good friends Russ and Wanda Roberts, owners of Western Gateway Outfitters, had chosen this spot near the
Belle Fourche River for us months before our arrival.
Like an artist slowly pulling the veil from her creation, the
Belle Fourche River has slowly eroded away the surrounding rock, uncovering the monolith we know today.
It is thought to be the core of a volcano exposed by erosion from the
Belle Fourche River over many millions of years.
In fact, after a few years of filming hunts in the area, Stroff began leasing ground and opened WRO, an operation that offers guided whitetail hunts on 35,000 acres of private ranchland along the scenic
Belle Fourche River.
The frost-glazed yellow grass brushed stiffly against our boots as we angled up the slope, and as first light began to lend form to the landscape, we stopped to listen--gazing south across the pine-studded ridges and knolls and the broad, open sweep of the
Belle Fourche River plain.