Introduction

Joe Giglia comes from humble beginnings having grown up in the backwoods of the Carolinas, knowing what it means to get by and learning to put food on the table with just about any weapon or fishing line that brought in the catch of the day. He started shooting the bow at the age of six, which quickly became his weapon of choice. The woods were his classroom and the outdoors have always been where he feels the most comfortable. 

Joe came to New Mexico in 1980, the first in his family to attend college. It was there that he met and married the love of his life, Loretta. Being a young college couple, Joe again looked towards the woods to help supplement the table, and it was a deer hunt that first year hunting New Mexico that changed everything. He saw his first elk. “All I could remember was seeing this massive and majestic critter walk by me in the silence of the morning, and I remember thinking at that moment, buddy…I’m home!”. 

It was the next year that Joe took his first elk with the bow. A cow elk at 40 yards in the Pecos Wilderness. “I had no idea how to ‘elk hunt’, but I understood how animals moved, ate and drank and I just used what skill-sets I had grown up with”. But it was on that first elk hunt that Joe heard his first elk bugle. The event that started it all. Since then, elk meat has always been a staple at the Giglia home. “Both my girls, Brittany and Ashlee were raised on elk meat and they turned out pretty darn beautiful and incredible!” Joe laughs.

Now, 40 years later with his lifelong hunting partner, Leroy “Chav” Chavez, right beside him almost every step of the way, Joe has had over a 90% success rate hunting elk with his bow in the last 40 years on Public Lands. He has been a professional elk guide for over 20 years and called in over a thousand elk. For him, scouting and guiding for most of the year has been an incredible education into the full circle of an elk’s annual cycle, patterns, behaviors and priorities. “When you see these animals habit’s and priorities throughout the year, you really get a complete picture of what makes them tick” Joe says.

Before retiring in 2015, Joe was a 30 year high school teacher and a 34 year coach. Joe brings that very same teacher and coach skill-set on every hunt he guides. He takes pride in the fact that he has never been a point and shoot guide. “My goal has always been to pass on my passion for elk hunting to anyone I hunt with. If I do my job, they really don’t need me in a couple of years. That is, unless they just really enjoy hunting with me!”