Ep. 55: Muzzleloader Hunt Recap and Hoof Rot
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Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance. On this episode, I'm going to go over a quick recap of my recent Western Washington Roosevelt muzzleloader hunt. I'm going to talk a little bit about hook rot and just the general decline we're seeing in this area in our elk herds, what we think the cause may be, and then what we can do moving forward. But first, like all Cutting the Distance episodes, we're going to take a few listener questions. If you have any questions for me or my guests, let me know in the comments.

feel free to email them to us at ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com. Send us a social message and we'll do our best to get them on here. So our first question comes from Austin Smith. He wants to know what a strategy for late November archery bull hunt would be. The elk are going to be quiet. The landscape severely limits glassing. It's snowing. Water's readily available. Thanks for your input, he says. So

Austin, if I was, uh, you know, I was back when my, my early start to archery hunting, we had a late November, early December, um, archery hunt here. And it was a lot different than the early season where I relied heavily on bugling, relied heavily on calling. I always tell people, I still get this question a lot, even, uh, in my backyard, uh, what calls should I use in November? And I

I tell everybody you should always have an external call, a cow call around or a diaphragm around, but I typically will only use it if I need to stop them for a shot or if I need to call to settle them down. So as far as calling goes, in my opinion, it can actually hurt your chance of success by putting them on alert, looking in your direction. So once again, if I need to stop them for a shot,

Uh, or if I need to call him a herd down that may be a ridge over or in the area, um, you can use it. Now with that said, we have successfully called elk in during that late season, using some calf calls, cow call communication and whatnot, even some lost cow calls. But in my opinion, um, in those instances where it worked, I feel like the odds were still kind of stacked against us. So as far as a strategy on just, uh,

You know how I would hunt an area that one, you can't see very good due to the landscape. So it's either flat, uh, or it's timbered, you know, vegetation's not helping you. Um, I like to cover a lot of ground, but I like to be strategic on how I'm going to cover that ground. Um,

I'm going to cover ridge tops if they're in the area, which I don't want to make the assumption this is flat, but if ridges are there or passes or areas that you know elk are using, definitely go check those out. You're looking for sign, you know, and it's different sign than in the rut. So we're no longer looking for rubs. We don't care where those were at two or three months ago. We don't necessarily care where, you know, where they rutted out. It's where they at now. So, yeah,

By this time, November, a lot of your bigger bulls have broken off from the herd. They're still typically solo. So if you're in an area, you know, a lot of November hunts, uh, allow, uh, you know, cows, um, to be, to be harvested or killed, um,

It depends on what you're after. If you're in a bull area only, I would much rather follow a solo track. Uh, you know, obviously if you can tell that it's a bull, um, but those solo tracks are typically going to be your bull tracks. Um, your herds are still going to be running together at that time. Um, you know, scouting is going to pay off, uh,

you know, leading up to this November hunt, if you can put in time, you know, where they're at in early November, middle of November, they're probably still typically going to be there in late November, unless you're in a major migration, uh, you know, type unit. And if that's the case, then you're going to find where those elk are at. And you're going to probably move down in elevation in those same drainages, in those same bridge lines, um, those same areas.

Uh, but yeah, you're just going to have to follow basically tracks on the ground, you know, scat where it's on the ground and, uh, use that to your advantage, covering lots of ground, being very strategic as well as being strategic about where your wind's going to end up. You don't necessarily want to, you know, just, you know, uh,

Just run across the landscape and cover as much ground. You're trying to think if I go here, you know, can the, are the elk going to win me here? Is it safer to go in the creek bottoms to try to pick up sign? If you're on the ridge tops, you should do it in the middle of the day. So maybe the thermals are pushing with you. You know, you'd be a smart, um, you know, hunter as you move through, but that's really, it's a lot tougher Austin, in my opinion. Um, you know, it goes back to, to.

your, a lot of your rifle strategies where we're doing a lot of spot and stock, we're doing some ambushing and we're doing some patterning, um, with calling taken off the table for me. Um, it resorts back to those typical, um, you know, methods of, of hunting. And, um, you know, another great way is if you know they're frequenting an area, uh,

if you're a tree stand guy or a ground blind guy, if you're confident enough that their pattern is routine, uh, it's very routine and it's predictable enough. Um, you can definitely try, um, to utilize some of those, uh, other methods, um, you know, is to, uh, to hunt and be successful. So,

That's my best advice I've got for you there, Austin. Our next question comes from Zach McQuillan. A few years back, we had some conversations about hunting Roosevelt elk and he wanted to reach back out to me and ask a few questions. So this year they decided to move from, I'm not going to mention units from one unit to another unit, and they got a permit through a timber company, which is very typical around here in Western Washington. Now we'll get into that in a little bit as I do a recap on my hunt. So you get a permit to access and be on these timber companies' properties.

So he was saying that they scouted pretty much the entire area and realized that 95% of it is thinned and reprod. And so for those of you that don't know what we're talking about is on industrial tree farms, typically they go in and plant the trees at a very close proximity. And it's almost the survival of the toughest. Whichever trees kind of take off the faster, they go in there and do conifer releases or they will thin or commercially thin trees

these timber patches. And it happens at all different ages. You can do it when the trees are... And I'm going to get my dates wrong. I'm not a forester by any means, but...

you can do it at, let's say 15 years. And a lot of times that timber has no value. They will slash it and then leave it on the ground, which basically you leave your, your, you know, coniferous trees to come up and then you've cut out, you know, 30 to 50%, 40% or whatever that appropriate number is to give those trees that are still standing the best chance to grow, grow faster and be ready for harvest.

And so what he's saying is when it's 95% thinned and it's reprod, it's a lot of that slash pile. So you basically cut out every other tree, but then by doing that, you've left basically just a jackstrawed mess of, of crunchy sticks, timber, small timber on the ground. And so his question for us is how would you tactically hunt this type of terrain for what he calls the elusive Roosevelt elk. And I would agree with him the more time that goes on, the more elusive these Roosevelt elk are becoming and,

Um, how would you hunt that? The one disadvantage we have is for some reason elk seem to like that, um, ground just as much as anywhere else at times. Um, they will go in there, they will live in there, they will feed in there. Um, they don't get presented with as many problems as humans do being in there. You know, we, we don't want to go in there making a ton of noise. We'll never sneak up or get close to anything. Um, it's, it's just a lot of work to climb and crawl our way through that stuff.

But elk seem to have no problem. You know, some of that, those jackfurs and reprod, they still have some brush established and you open that up to a little bit of light. There's good feed in there.

It's tough. I would say during the rut, you can make it work. You make that elk work in there, even though you're going to have to do some movement. The nice thing about archery elk is elk expect you to make noise. So you can get away with a little bit more noise than they can. And you're going to have to locate them in the middle of that because in my opinion, you're not necessarily going to be able to sneak in on them unless they think an elk's coming at them.

Um, the other thing is, is if you're 95% thin, which seems to be a pretty high number, but, uh, you know, if it is truly that high, I would go look at where are there elk in that other 5%. Are there roads through this system? A lot of times they won't thin and cut across the roads. Can I use these roads in Roosevelt country to, to use my setups and, and, and, uh, you know, use that as my shooting lane to get close. A lot of times,

you know, in this Western Washington, Western Oregon, industrial timberlands, there are roads cut everywhere because these timber companies want to log it as efficiently and quickly and cheap as possible, um, in order to maximize their profits.

So, uh, can you use these road systems, um, to get in close? You know, we do this still on, on reprod or, um, Jackfers that, that aren't slashed to, to get close. Um, you know, that a lot of time that, that is our approach is using an old road bed, um, an old cat road, an old skidder road, whatever it may be to get close. So use those to your advantage. But, um, you know, if you're not in, in the rut and able to call those bulls through that a little bit, uh,

It's going to be real tough. I tend to stay out of those things because it's difficult to sneak in and it's still sometimes difficult to get a shot because those trees are, you know, only 15 years old. They've got a lot of brush. The ones that are standing have a lot of low lying, um,

you know, limbs. And so I typically stay away from that. So I don't know if that was a great answer, Zach, but that's kind of my, my best advice is can you hunt around it? Can you hunt the roads through it? Um, and, and worst case scenario, if you've got to go into it, uh, by all means, um, you can make it work, but it definitely helps when they're ready and you can call and then call back.

Our third question today comes from Ryan Jeffries. His question's on the smell of elk. Anybody that's been out there, you know what the smell of elk is. You know, a lot of times when they're rutting, it's very pungent and a very strong odor. But they typically will always smell like a barnyard is the best way I can describe it. You know, you kind of get that, you know,

cattle mixed with horse kind of mixed with just that barnyard stench. Um, and so his question is if you can smell them, how fresh is that odor? Um, he's walked into areas with fresh sign many times and experienced a strong elk odor associated with these spots, especially where beds are found. I also routinely catch a whiff of elk odor carried by the wind when scouting or hunting. Just curious how fresh the smell may be or how long that odor can linger in the area.

And so I'm, I'm not a scientist. I don't know a lot about that, uh, you know, the scent or whatnot, but I'll tell you what my experience is from just hunting and the amount of times I've ran into that smell or smelled them and then ultimately ran, you know, either into the elk or, uh, you know, found them very close by.

And it depends on the weather. If it has rained a lot and you can still smell them, I would say that's a hotter sign. That means those elk have been there more recently. When it's hot and dry out, a lot of times it seems like that urine or whatever is making that scent, a lot of times it seems to be the urine that is in their beds, whether it's a cow or a bull.

that can last for two three four days um you know we we did a lot of testing whether you know we snuck up or been right behind elk they've urinated in their bed they've got urine in there it's a very very strong it's more pungent but you can go buy a bed three four five six seven days later

if it's continued to be warm and there's no longer signs of wet urine in the bed and you can kick the dust, you can smell it, you can, and you can still smell elk and you will get whiffs of that as you go through these areas. So I would say weather plays a big, big factor, but a lot of times I always assume, and you have to be a little bit smart about it, but if I smell elk right where I'm at on this last hunt, muzzleloader hunting, we smelled elk a few times and

I instantly, what is the wind doing right now? Um, it is because typically you need to go into that wind direction a little bit to either one, figure out where the elk signs coming from, whether it's coming off of, uh, you know, beds or if it's coming off the real elk and it's a safe play, right? If you smell, uh, elk or signs of elk, uh, you put your nose to the wind and go that direction because that's where the scent is coming from. Now there's a little bit of a, of a

of a skill and experience that comes in. Some of us, and I'm not saying I do it right all the time, but some people that have been out there a whole lot can start to smell the difference between

live elk, like an elk, uh, an actual elk, the live elk, the smell that comes off of them is sometimes different than the urine and stuff that comes out of their bed. It doesn't always match up. And so one thing you need to try to figure out is do you have live elk if possible? Um, if not you're, you're approaching beds or bedding areas or areas where they may have just fed through. Um, that's the other thing I'd like to talk about when, when smelling elk, they, is it,

Are they there now? Did they travel through there? Did they lay there? Is the wind carrying where they're at? Or did they cross through here? So there's all of this stuff. And now we're trying to look for tracks. Like, does a track...

you know, are the tracks letting me know, are those elk there? Did they travel through here? Where are they at? And so you just, you just want to become a more educated, um, elk hunter. Um, when you start to smell elk, we always slow down. We always assume, you know, elk are going to be around the next corner. Um, we're, we're trying to, you know, we're always playing the wind, but now we're playing the wind a little bit different. Do we want to walk into the scent? Do we want to circle the scent? Um,

Another thing we will do at times, if we're not really familiar with the area, we'll pull out, you know, on X and try to decide if those elk, if that sense coming from this way, if we think they're that way, we make an educated guess and we try to play an area that's on the map. You know, are they bedded in this flat just over the ridge? Are they, did they feed through here in the morning and they may be over there?

We're trying to just be educated hunters so that we don't screw up. I take every one of these opportunities as, as you know, the last time of the year or the hunt where we're going to be successful. So I'm probably overly cautious at times, but.

um we're playing that scent or us picking up that scent is the hottest information we've got it's a hot sign it's a hot and and we go with it now as far as like answering your exact question on how fresh it is or how they've been there it just depends um and like i say i always end up

kind of defaulting to, if I can smell elk, they've been there very recently. Um, you know, especially if I'm not digging in beds, I'm just walking along a trail and maybe we've seen a little bit of fresh sign as we've got in the timber. Um, we're,

we're on high alert and we're playing that like an elk. Um, and that's the other thing, like you're using the, from the time I get out of the truck and my feet are on the ground, I'm picking apart every bit of sign, you know, is there, is there any elk sign in here? Was there elk sign from two weeks ago? Is, is there ever been an elk in this piece of timber in my life? You know, you're, you're trying to look at all of that and it kind of all adds into what you think's going on as you hunt through timber. Um, you know, the, the best

If you're on somewhat fresh tracks, you know, a day or two or it's rained and tracks are washed out, but you're back on fresh tracks and you smell elk, like that's got a very high probability of there being elk, you know, somewhere around me versus, ah, there's really no good, good sign. But maybe you're in a patch of timber that leads between a great bedding area and a great feed area. You're like, well, they might just be going through here. Uh,

You're putting all that together. So I don't have a great answer for you there, Ryan, but I just play any scent or odor from elk is being extremely fresh and going with that. So we appreciate those questions from you guys. Once again, you have any questions for me or my guests, feel free to email them to us at ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com and we'll do our best to get those on the podcast here.

So now I'm going to do a little recap. We've tried to do these recaps on all of our hunts. And a lot of times, you know, I'm not a great storyteller, but I feel like a lot of information can be learned and gained. And I always like to take just as much time

I like to learn just as much from my failures as well. And so if I can pass some of those on to you, um, I'd like to do that. And, and we'll get into one here on the, on the third morning of our hunt that, uh, you know, my setup wasn't great. Um, and I, I went in there a little bit, uh, you know, over, overconfident that I had a muzzleloader in my hand and no longer had my bow and it came back to bite me, but we'll, we'll, we'll get into that at all. Uh, get into it here in a little bit. Um, after we, we go through the first part. So, uh,

For those of you that don't know, I grew up hunting Western Washington in my backyard. I grew up in what I would consider maybe the best elk hunting anywhere in the world. Now, with that said, I'm basing that on quantity. We had a crazy density of elk, especially after they made it three-pointer better in this area. It just seems like we had...

Never ending elk to hunt. I can remember growing up, I would ride by legal bull after legal bull trying to get to better bulls that I had scouted and whatnot. So I came from an area where it was, I don't want to say it was easy, but elk were plentiful.

I haven't been back here since 2013 was the last time I had a tag in Western Washington, I think, or at least that I hunted in Western Washington. I came back in 2015 and 2018 and helped some buddies on some muzzleloader hunts. And then I did some special hunts on the east side. But aside from that, like hunting around home, uh,

I haven't, haven't jumped in the woods with a, with a tag in my, my hand. Um, and I had started to hear reports, you know, there's, there've been a lot of, you know, there ain't any, there aren't any elk left. Um, I don't know what's going on. It seemed like we had bounced back from hoof rot, but things are way worse. Like people aren't even buying tags around here because, you know, there aren't any elk left. And so for me, that was a, uh,

a bummer. Um, you know, and then there's a little bit of, of overconfidence that like, Oh, you guys don't know what you're doing. Like I can scout better than you. I can hunt harder than you. I can, I can hunt better than you, whatever it may be. I think there was a little bit of a, I didn't believe him because when we left it, it was so good. Uh, but with that said,

I decided rather than hunt locally to my house, I was going to go back out to the east end of the county. My county that I live in is very, very diverse. The west side industrial timberlands, the east side butts up against the Cascades. And so I love hunting in the mountains. I don't like some of this low land industrial timberland stuff where it's very, very...

competitive as far as the hunting. I like the mountains where it's like, I can let my legs get me away from people. I can get higher. I can get up earlier. I can hunt it right. And, um, typically it's me versus the elk instead of me versus, you know, hunter ABC and the elk. So we went out there. Um, but one thing I was very surprised the last time I was up there,

We'd killed a bull off of a road. It's nobody hardly ever goes out this road. It's, it's overlooked. Everybody hunts around it, but this road on this mountain is pretty dang good. And last time we were there, we killed a great six by seven Roosevelt, you know, right out of the road. And there's always been signed there. We hike up there about five miles. Um, first off, I want to, uh, reminder to people that these road systems can change a whole lot in, in eight to 10 years. Um, it was, uh,

10 times more difficult because all the brush had grown up. We were basically dodging and weaving and ducking brush for an entire five miles. But we walked all the way out this road, bugled a few times the night before just to try to locate and nothing.

Um, so it was a defeating walk back. That was kind of our plan a to get away from people. So plan B was to go back into the same area where I had killed my big bull in 2012, hoping that the elk that used to be around there were still there. One of the reasons we didn't go there first is it seemed like shortly after I'd killed that bull and muzzleloader seasons were opened up to all units, um,

The area kind of got overran with camps and hunters, and it just wasn't the quality hunt I was looking for. We went up there, nobody around at all. So we, we left early that morning, just threw out our sleeping bags on the ground, jumped up in the morning, loaded everything up. And then we were on the trail going in. There wasn't a lot of sign though. Down low, we would typically get into elk sign. And so I was going in, you know, with the headlamps were like, man, there's not a lot of sign, but thankfully about a mile and a half in, we were able to cut some tracks, uh,

was moving through there and, and started to pick up scent, just like we were talking about earlier. And it looked like the tracks, um, were, were very fresh, um, picking up scent. So we were, I was just talking to Tyler, who's one of our employees and was kind of filming this hunt for me. Uh, I was just getting ready. I had turned around to tell him like, stay in my hip pocket. I think it, you know, it could happen anywhere in here. And as I was talking to him, he was looking over my shoulder, the direction we were going. And he spotted a cow feeding up into the open, um,

We were up there about two miles or so and range it. And she's about 140, which for me was very confident. And so we're watching cow after cow. And I think there's one calf in the group of nine cows. And then finally the bull bugles behind them and follows them up. I always talk about my mistakes and typically I should be smarter than this. And I don't know why I wasn't.

I rest on my pack a hundred and he ends up stopping at about 156 yards. Um, a shot I'm very comfortable with, with my muzzleloader and my brain has a little malfunction. We talk about this a lot, archery hunting. Like I've, I shoot my bow a lot more than I shoot my gun and it becomes instinct, but on muzzleloader, I don't know why. And I still can't explain why.

My, my peep sight, my bead, everything went down to sit right on the heart of the bull. A third, you know, a third up its body as I squeeze the trigger. Well, my gun, I didn't sighted in high at 100 so that we would be on. I sighted on dead on at 100.

And at 155 yards, my gun is going to drop, you know, eight to eight to 10 inches, um, at that range. I'm not shooting a crazy load. We didn't go through a whole bunch of development. I didn't want to shoot, you know, necessarily shoot long range, um, on a gun that I have that's capable. So, you know, on the video we get to watch and I, I splashed the dirt that looks about two to three inches below his brisket. I'm very thankful we didn't touch him and it actually went low, but it was very, uh, defeating, you know, it was, it was a great five point bowl. Um,

you know, very healthy, very good five and just completely missed and botched it. The more depressing thing maybe than missing, don't get me wrong, I wasn't real happy with the miss.

But we spent, me and Tyler spent the rest of the day hiking and hiking some more without anybody around us. No boot tracks, multiple different areas. We would, you know, hit a trail, run the ridge lines because in some of this Gifford Pinchot stuff, that's very, very steep. We would run the ridge lines, try to cut tracks and just couldn't cut tracks in areas that

always held elk some of my best areas we would run them nothing um and not this isn't a point to say that we hiked a long ways or look how much effort we did it was more to show that there weren't elk aside from the one herd we did a little over 17 miles on that first day and cut one set of fresh elk tracks the entire day and that's the herd that i missed a bowl out of um

rinse and repeat. So we've now got two days and we've got a 9.7 mile day in and a, and a 17 and some odd mile day, day three. I changed up my plan. I, as I mentioned earlier, I don't like combat hunting. My goal was to let's go look at an area that usually has more elk, but more people. I just want to see if there are elk there. If the sign's still there, go there, put in a, an 11 mile day and nothing, not a single elk track, lots of people.

And so I make the decision that after that day, we're going to head home and we're going to hunt more local. Um, if we can, my, my dad had texted me, he had missed a bull on opening morning, got, got rushed a little bit. And so I had a pretty hot tip on where I should be able to get into legal bulls. Um, and, and so we headed home, but I want to recap that Gifford pin show a little bit. Um, there's an old burn on the Yakult.

uh, way back. I can't even get the dates right. Early 1900s that burnt the top of the Gifford Pinchot off. And that was where all the deer and elk have fed. And I believe over these last 10 years, we're starting to finally get that like final growing growth where a lot of their food sources are done. Um, the trees that the brush is kind of choking up their feed. And what we're seeing is, uh, we're seeing less and less elk in that country. Um,

I put a number on it. I'm going to use this number in both locations, both the high country and the low country. I would bet we've seen a 70 to 75% reduction in our elk numbers compared to what I used to be able to see up there, uh, compared to what's up there. Um,

I'm not an environmentalist at all. I grow up in the middle of industrial timberlands. My family have all made their livings off of logging. And I think that may be one of the things that we're running into up there is where the Gifford Pinchot and whatnot have always been logged.

I would say the forest logs a little bit more strategically, but they would always log at 60, 70 year cycles. And what that does is, is clear cutting opens up new growth, new food, new brush sources for elk. Elk are browsers. They need to have that brush and they need to have it staged out in a way that when one clear cut, the jackfurs grow up, the brush goes away, they can move to the next one. And right now, aside from doing some fire break cutting along some of these roads, uh,

We are logging hardly anything up there, especially not clear cutting. We're doing some thinning.

But my understanding is they try to set out units and it gets shut down in courts. You know, there's, there's special interest groups, there's environmental groups that are shutting down the logging of these national forest service. And in my opinion, it's ultimately hurting the elk and the deer as they've relied on that for many, many years in that area as their food sources. And now with the high country also compounding that there's just not enough food to sustain, you know, life up there, I guess, as far as elk herds and even deer are concerned.

the other major issue they have up there are cats right now. Um,

We think we have problems down here in the lowlands with cats. The high country is just overloaded with cats and cats cleaning up damages. Like I mentioned earlier, that herd had nine cows in it and we had one successful calf to that entire herd. So when you're getting recruitment, it's just barely over 10%. It's just not going to be sustainable to keep those populations growing. You're barely able to maintain. If you assume that those cows are all going to be gone by 10 years, you're basically replacing...

one one cow per year and so basically you're not growing um you're just barely trying to hang on to your population um and and we all have to assume that as elk numbers go down the cats are going to even do more damage to those elk that are left and it's just a compounding issue but um so we left the high country we came back down um to what i would consider my local grounds um here in pl

And I meet up with my dad on that next morning. He's hunting and I decide to just kind of play defense like, Dad, you're bull, you go hunt it. We'll just kind of walk the other edge and just kind of see if you do kick something up, we'll be over there.

So we, we get through it. Um, a few fresh elk tracks in there, probably from the day that he had missed a couple of days prior. And it's a great, great piece of timber. It's one of those pieces of timbers. You can look a hundred, 150 yards through, um, got good trails in there. So we're able to move really, really quietly and just perfect. Uh, so we're making our way through there.

Um, we're, we're finishing our loop. He's finishing his, and we get to a spot where we can hear some, some brush rustling around, rattling around here off the trail. And this is where it's very important. I should have been paying more attention to how everything laid out in this patch of timber, because at the point where we hear the elk rattling around your, your instinct is to go in there and try to get a view of where they're at.

But if I would have paid attention prior and I'll get to this after, as I left this setup, it was way, way better on anywhere else. I could have went besides where I was. But regardless, we go in, we go into this piece of timber about 40 yards and anybody that's ever, you know, got into a fringe or a road break. You know, they call it that shade line where, where there's no shade where, where the sun can hit. You always got this wall of brush. So we kind of get through there real quietly. We can still hear the elk up there.

Um, break and brush. So we just do a little bit of cow calf sequence calling, um, kind of a cow back to a calf calf back to a cow. And we get a bull to bugle up in there as well as here in the brush rustle around. And then we get a bull to bugle back to our left as well as we're calling. And you can hear it's one of those things where you feel like you should be able to see the elk, but it's so thick and so brushy, but I had a few lanes to the right of this pile of brush and to the left, which is probably 80 yards up the hill. Um,

And, uh, just as, as I would love liked, I've got a cow comes through my shooting lane at like 70 yards wide open. And the second cow comes through and the third cow comes through. Well, why this is happening? I can see a cow and a calf that are walking down the shooting lane towards us. I'm like, well, this is great. That bull was with them. He's going to cross.

But I gave myself no ability to shoot to the left or right of the shooting lane. And guess, just like I should have expected, no surprise, when that bull comes through the shooting lane, he's running behind the next cow that comes across. He shoots across that in a second. And I had no shot.

Um, we sit there for a little bit. I don't know where my dad's at. He doesn't know where the elk are at. Um, he claims he didn't walk up the, the, the spur road that was above them, but ultimately these elk wind us and bust out. Um, and, and they don't wind up me there or, or Tyler, my camera guy, they win something else or something else isn't right because we have the wind perfect the whole entire time. Um, but.

when I back out of this timber, I'm frustrated with myself. I'm like, gosh, dang it. I wish that thing would have just walked through there. I'd had a great shot is I moved just 10 yards down the trail I was walking on before I pushed myself into this brush. I could have seen all of those elk in the wide open the entire time. And so it was just being, uh,

you know, not thinking about my setup, not thinking about how this lays out. And if these elk do come out where I'm going to be able to shoot in the same thing, if I would have been 10 yards back down the road, I probably could have seen, but I decided to nose in right in this, you know, little draw where it was brushy and I did it to myself. Um, so that legal bull kind of ended up getting away. We chased them around a little bit, caught back up to him twice, um, but ultimately could never, never make that happen. Um,

So we spent the next three days around home, um, hunting every patch of timber that, that we, you know, either had a hot lead or a warm lead or, you know, spots where I used to hunt. And, uh, it was dismal. It was, it was extremely bad. We had, it was pouring down rain, which most people don't like, but for hunting the timber around here, I absolutely love, I can sneak in. I can be quiet. Um, nothing. We didn't see an elk for those three days aside from some down low, uh, you know, actually near my house.

Uh, and, uh, we could tell that some were, were hoof rotted in this herd. You know, we probably had 60% of the elk in this herd limping. And, uh, I didn't really, you know, we, we got permission, um, to hunt this piece, uh,

And I'm like, I'd rather go try to find something up in the hills or something that's not have any issues. And then ultimately the last day rolled around, I was able to spot these elk kind of staging to get back into this piece of private. So I knew they should be back that morning. They were going to come down in the farmer's field and kind of hang out there for the night. So we get out there the next morning. We're able to, it's very, very foggy on Friday morning.

Um, we can spot just silhouettes, barely silhouettes at probably, you know, 400 yards away out in the field. And so we, we make a move, come down a road that, that I have some property on. And one of the guys I graduated with had property on, we were able to access, um,

into this area through there. And, uh, you know, a lot of times these private land hunts, don't get me wrong. They're, they're just as much shooting, um, an elk as it is hunting an elk. So I'm not trying to claim, but this was a little different. These elk had pushed out to the middle of the field in the far end kind of, and, uh, with a muzzleloader, you can't just

you know, shoot across the field, like, like you normally would. Um, so I, I get to the first fence and I'm ranging things. I'm like, all right, 250 yards, 300 yards, you know, the elk were split between two 50 or 300. And I had another fence row about 120 yards away. I'm like, all right, if I can get to that, I should have a good shot. Um, the only problem is it was a balance of, uh, getting daylight. It was shooting light well before I could actually shoot due to the fog and the clouds. Um, it was the,

the ground was saturated and wet. And yet I didn't know how well they could see me through the fog. Cause I couldn't actually see him with my naked eyes. I could only see him with the binoculars kind of looking through the fog. And so I make the decision that I'm just going to kind of belly crawl or knee crawl or low crawl when I can and try to get as close to that next fence fence row as I can. Um, after some, you know, three or four stops getting out there, uh, we were, we were able to get to that, that fence. Um,

There was a bigger bull out there with the herd. They were actually still rutting pretty good here on October 13th. It was Friday the 13th. The bull that I wanted to kill anyways, the one with a little bit of hoof rot had a drop, kind of his main beam drops off of his ear. And then he had three eye guards kind of coming up.

Uh, we, we were able to get within, he was the last bull in the herd. It was him in two spikes at the back. And then the herd bull was kind of pushing cows around. Um, I was able to get within about 145 yards of him, um, get a great rest and was able to, to take that bull. So, um, yeah, it was, it was a difficult hunt. I would have just assumed do it on up on public, but, um, you

you know, some of these elk with hoof rot, you know, we, we still don't know how they spread or how it works. And so at times we're all more than willing to, to take one of these out in hopes that, or that it prevents the spread of this. So, um, that was kind of my, my muzzleloader hunting a wrap. They were still bugling, um, you know, in the high country, they were still bugling around home, which a lot of times when you get into that, you know, uh,

That third point of October, October 10th, they typically start to be quiet, but we still had some pretty good bugling even for our resident elk. But

That was, that was the recap on that. And so I want to, I want to roll into hoof rot. A lot, you know, a lot of people that are listening may not know exactly what hoof rot is and where it comes from. And I don't claim to be a biologist. I'm working with Cal here at MeatEater. It's been very important. It's been a sensitive topic and important to me that we try to figure it out. I know Dr. Wild over at Washington State University is doing research on it. They're now collecting hooves from, you know, any elk that shows to have signs of hoof rot and

Uh, but there's, there's a lot of speculation. Um, and some people may be mad at me for saying speculation, but a lot of people, you know, there are, there are strains of hoof rot within cattle. There are supposedly up to 40 strains of hoof rot within the elk. Um, and, and don't, don't take these all, uh, verbatim or, or for, uh, you know, the ultimate truth. I'm just passing on, you know, what I know, but what ultimately happened about 30 years. And we were kind of the epicenter of this hoof rot, um,

We started to notice our elk were limping and we would kill these elk that would have, basically what happens is their hoof will start to get extended. It will grow long and brittle. A lot of times, even if you think of like an elf shoe, some of these elk's hooves have started to curl up and under themselves and they get very long, brittle. They ultimately break them off. And then this infection or abscess, whatever you want to call it, will then go up the leg. We've killed some of them that are almost all the way up to their knee, basically walking and hobbling around on it.

Um, and, and the sad part is we, we tried to let everybody know 30 years ago, but nobody seemed to care when it was just, you know, Western Washington, Roosevelt elk. A lot of us locals got very concerned. We talked about it, but nothing was really done.

Now what we have are elk in Oregon that are also infected with it, elk that are in Idaho that have confirmed cases. And so it's very disturbing to think that this may take off. And where does the spread stop? So I think everybody should become aware of it. Everybody should get involved. It's not just a Roosevelt thing. It's able to go Roosevelt, Rockies, and it's just...

it's, it's, it's the most disheartening thing ever to see a herd of elk out in the field and 70 of them, or, you know, 70% of them limping. Uh, it just, it sucks. Um, you know, we had a herd here just in my yard at my house. Uh, it was snowing. I went out just to look at their tracks and you could have, you would have thought somebody had shot an elk and, uh, should be tracking them because there's blood and, and, and their tracks as they go along. Um, like I

like I say, there's a lot of speculation. Um, you know, some people like to blame, um, you know, Timberlands and their, their spring, um, and, and how it may affect the immune system of elk. That's now allowed when we catch it. Some people may say it's, it's D

you know, I, I don't claim to know if it's bacterial or virus or how any of that stuff works. It's just, it's disheartening. And, and I'm got my fingers crossed that Dr. Wild and the WSU staff can kind of figure this out. But, um, yeah, Washington department of fish and wildlife has a, has a great couple of websites and pages on how fraud, if you want to learn more. Um, but I,

I encourage everybody to get involved, um, urge Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation to get involved. Um, it's something I think, you know, nobody cares until it's in their backyard, but I think it's something that all elk hunters and everybody that, that, uh, you know, has a love for the animal, um, should care about. Um, we talked about it earlier, elk populations in Western Washington. We grew up in an area that was probably some of the most dense elk

you know, populations anywhere. And we are well below carrying capacity. Well, well below. Um, I don't know what the solution is. Um, I always hate proposing that we take away opportunity, but at some point, if we can't get a plan in place to manage predators, which the fish and wildlife commission has ultimately said, they want to take away from all of us, regardless of, you know, we don't even have hounds. We don't have baiting, but if we can't hunt them at all,

We're going to be really, really hamstrung on how we're going to deal with this. In my opinion, the way to get it back is to take out more cats, take out more bears, take out more coyotes, things that attack the calves and can put a dent into them. We need to have more recruitment as far as calves, and we really need to hunt predators more than we are animals.

Especially since we have the ability to hunt with hounds and bait taken away from us. So that's my opinion. It comes down to a predator issue. But at some point, if we can't, like us as hunters may need to look at

Are we over-harvesting? I know it's what nobody wants to hear. Do we need to look at shorter seasons? But in my opinion, the resource itself and the health of the resource is more important than my ability to hunt. And I know a lot of people will say, well, you're fortunate you get to hunt out of state and go to where there are elk. I agree. I am very fortunate. But regardless, I think it's important that we give this elk herd a chance to come back and

Another thing that's not going to be very liked is I don't think there should be any cow tags given in an area that's well below capacity. It doesn't take a biologist or a scientist to understand that you rebuild your herd through the cows. So with that said, I think one of the ways we can make a difference, hunters are very, sometimes we're not lazy in the sense that we get after it on the mountain, but I think hunters are very, you know,

They don't like the idea of getting involved. And right now, I think we need to be as involved as ever. And that's not just for Washington State residents. That's for everybody. You know, whether it's, you know, the HAL organization or like we just formed a new coalition for wildlife in Washington. We need to get involved because, you know, we've got a commission meeting here in Washington, the 26th to the 28th.

um, where they're talking about and voting on whether we're going to hunt predators at all, whether coyotes, whether cats, whether bears, um, cougars, any of that stuff is hunted at all. Like whether they're going to take it off the table. Um, so we got to get very involved. I encourage anybody in state or out of state, um, jump on our WDFW, um, website and send our commissioners, uh, uh, well thought out, um,

you know, a message or, or a note on, on why, um, you feel that that's a mistake, um, and why they need to get back to the North American model for wildlife. But, um, I appreciate all of you joining in. That was my, uh, 2023, uh, muzzleloader elk hunting recap. Um,

Yeah, it was a tough one. Very fortunate to kill a bull. Not exactly the way I wanted, but enjoy all of you guys. Send in your questions. Keep sending them to us. Until next time, thanks for listening to Cutting the Distance and good luck to everybody out there in their fall pursuits.