Always looking for new thrills and challenges, Knievel participated in local professional rodeos and ski jumping events, including winning the Northern Rocky Mountain Ski Association Class A Men’s ski jumping championship in 1959. In the army, his athletic ability allowed him to join the track team where he was a pole vaulter.

Shortly after getting married, Knievel started the Butte Bombers, a semi-pro hockey team. To help promote his team and earn some money, he convinced the 1960 Olympic Czechoslovakian hockey team to play the Butte Bombers in a warm-up game to the Olympics. Knievel was ejected from the game minutes into the third period and left the stadium. When the Czechoslovakian officials went to the box office to collect the expense money the team was promised, workers discovered the game receipts had been stolen. The United States Olympic Committee wound up paying the Czechoslovakian team’s expenses to avoid an international incident. Evel Knievel also played with the Charlotte Checkers of the Eastern Hockey League.

During this period in his life when the young man was trying on many different hats in an attempt to find his calling, Knievel started a hunting outfitting service called Sure-Kill. As a man who always insisted on walking the walk he talked, Knievel found himself right in the middle of a conservation debate between Montana’s hunting guides and outfitters and the National Park Service. There had been a long-standing practice of park rangers slaughtering the excess elk numbers in Yellowstone National Park. In 1961, the Yellowstone herd numbered over 10,000, calling for a drastic reduction of some 5,000 animals.

In response, Knievel decided to hitchhike from Butte to Washington, D.C. in December 1961 to lobby to have the elk relocated to areas where hunting was permitted. After his conspicuous trek (he hitchhiked with a 54-inch-wide rack of elk antlers and a petition with 3,000 signatures), he presented his case to Representative Arnold Olsen, Senator Mike Mansfield and Interior Secretary Stewart Udall. As a result of his efforts, the culling was stopped, and the animals have since been regularly captured and relocated to areas of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.

After returning home from Washington, Knievel joined the motorcycle racing circuit and had moderate success, but he still couldn’t make enough money to support his family. During 1962, Knievel broke his collarbone in a racing accident. The doctors said he couldn’t race for at least six months. To help support his family, he switched careers and sold insurance for the Combined Insurance Company of America, working for W. Clement Stone. Stone suggested that Knievel read Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude, a book that Stone wrote. Knievel credited much of his success to Stone and his book.

Knievel was successful as an insurance salesman (even selling insurance policies to several institutionalized mental patients) and wanted recognition for his efforts. When the company refused to promote him to vice-president after a few months on the job he quit. Wanting a new start away from Butte, Knievel moved his family to Moses Lake, Washington. There, he opened a Honda motorcycle dealership and promoted racing. During the early 1960s, it was difficult to promote Japanese imports. People still considered them inferior to American built motorcycles, and there was lingering resentment from World War II, which had ended less than 20 years earlier. Always the promoter, Knievel offered a $100 discount to anybody who could beat him at arm wrestling.

After the closure of the Moses Lake Honda dealership, Evel went to work for Don Pomeroy at his motorcycle shop in Sunnyside, Washington. It is here where Jim Pomeroy, a well known motorcycle racer taught Knievel how to do a “wheelie” and ride while standing on the seat of the bike.