TIME. THAT IS THE essence of a successful Nevada bowhunt: time not measured in minutes, hours, or days, but time measured in weeks.

To do well as a bowhunter in Nevada you must have patience, and patience requires time. I know this well. I've drawn several tags in that state and each hunt has been an experience in endurance.

Take my desert bighorn hunt, for example. On the day 21 of the hunt I pulled myself up a red sandstone cliff, eased my exhausted body onto a ledge, and peeked over the top, 15 yards from a feeding sheep. I rose up with violently shaking limbs and arrowed that ancient ram.

I have also hunted deer there. After being consistently outsmarted by a buck whose giant rack was only outsized by his eerie intelligence, I tagged a lesser deer on day 17.

I thought my elk hunt would be different.

I was wrong.

RURAL NEVADA, OR, MORE accurately, Outback Nevada, has been left behind. Geographically speaking, 99 percent of Nevada lies outside the clutches of the sin cities, Reno and Las Vegas. In the rural, things haven't changed much in 30 years. Life moves slowly and people are friendly. Out there, it is as if you've entered a time machine and been shot backwards. Out there, if you are lucky, you will find yourself settling into Nevada time.

You'll know you are on Nevada time when your mind quits racing, your pulse slows, and your breathing becomes steady. You'll take the time to sit down after the sun sets and watch the moon rise. You'll lie down after a morning hunt and take a nap under a juniper tree. You'll skip an evening hunt and sit around camp, eating elk steaks and watermelon. Elk steaks cooked over a real bed of coals. Then you are on Nevada time.

I always sense this change while passing through Las Vegas on the way from my home in Arizona to the Nevada hunting grounds. The line of demarcation is distinct, and once I'm beyond that city, time slows down. This trip was no different.

When Greg Krogh and I first drove into my elk area in August, the desert was oozing moisture. We looked at the top of the mountain in my hunting area and saw snow. At least it looked like snow. It later proved to be hail, huge nuggets of ice, nearly a half foot of it stacked up. Huge swaths of trees and brush were denuded of leaves, twigs and bark. The roads to the mountain had been washed out by a torrential flood.

"This seems like something out of the Old Testament" Greg said.

How could any living creature have survived? we wondered.

MY GOOD FRIEND Greg is a guide by profession, one of the best. He looks like a cowboy and usually dresses like one. He is accepted into this lonely country as though he were born here. Greg and I have hunted together many times. I help him, he helps me.

But Greg was different on this trip, not his usual carefree, happy-go-lucky self. He was the father of brand new twin girls, and he worshipped them. I could sense some deep angst flowing through him.

We set up camp in a little patch of stunted juniper trees on the edge of antelope country. When we'd finished we sat back and watched the sunset. Greg was uncharacteristically silent as the last of the colors faded to black.

"Miss your girls?" I asked.

He kicked the ground. "I can't explain it," he muttered, almost embarrassed. "Leaving on this first trip of the year was one of the hardest things I've ever done."

"It won't get any easier," I said.

"I'm going to have to get a new profession, something that keeps me closer to home," he said, seriously.

Greg had volunteered to help me look for elk while scouting for his rifle deer hunts. Then he would be off to Arizona to attend to his paying clients -- and his family. Because his help is always indispensable, I wanted to make the most of his time here. We had several days before the season opened. Our plan was to split up and glass, looking for a concentration of elk to hunt. The day before the opener, Greg found a good bull.

"What do you think?" he said.

After some thought, I replied, "I think we can do better." With the entire season to hunt, I wasn't anxious for my elk season to end.

Greg grinned. "You're taking this trophy hunting pretty seriously, aren't you?

I looked down a while before speaking. "This is a tough tag to come by, and I want to make the most of it."

"Well, suit yourself," Greg said. "But I seem to recall the last time you passed up an animal early in the hunt, you nearly went home empty handed."

"I'm willing to take that chance," I said, sounding more sure of myself than I felt.

Elk hunting in Nevada is not unlike sheep hunting, as you move and glass, move and glass. With elk so spread out, the traditional method of moving and calling would be frustrating. It might take a week to get an answer. One afternoon while glassing from a vantage in what appeared to be poor elk range, Greg spotted a big bull walking alone below him. The bull had two huge nontypical points off the main beam just behind the fourth points. Greg knew this was a shooter.

So we returned there the next morning to get a better look at the bull. We heard him bugle in the distance, but then he vanished completely.

A FEW DAYS LATER, Greg had to leave. I watched him drive away across the broad valley. His dust cloud was like a contrail, marking his progress long after the truck was out of sight. I was alone.

When younger I dreaded being alone in the wilderness, but with age I've come to embrace loneliness. Yes, it's uncomfortable, but it can make an experience far more powerful. Few places make you feel as lonely as the high desert of Nevada, especially when the time is long – as it always is in Nevada. With two weeks remaining, this hunt could be a powerful experience.

Over the next week I saw perhaps 2-dozen bulls, mostly from a distance. None seemed large enough to justify a closer look.

One afternoon, as time drug on, I was feeling unusually lonely. Tired of my own cooking, I drove 20 miles across the short grass prairie to the nearest commercial establishment, 10 miles from any pavement. It was an interesting place, a combination general store/cafe surrounded by items billed as antiques. To my untrained eye, they looked like junk.

The place seemed deserted. I sat at the only table, wedged between shelves drooping with old candy bars, Mason jars full of rocks, antique irons, and 30-year-old comic books. The waitress/cook/proprietor materialized suddenly and quietly – as if my wishing alone had made her so.