 His summer in Wyoming persuaded Rugius that the United States would be his new home; “I painted from the collected material and later in the spring of 1896, I went back to Germany...My decision to cut all ties with the Old World and to live in America got good was due in no small part to this first Wyoming trip.For my heart was in the West.”

In 1896, Rungius immigrated to the United States.After hunting and painting trips to New Brunswick in 1900-1909 and to the Yukon in 1904, Rugius’s fascination with the North American moose began.