Ep. 94: Non-Typical Elk Calling
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My wife and I and the dogs and my son and his wife, we spent some quality time out in the great outdoors. I checked a lot of game cameras, hiked all over, rode dirt bikes. It was great. It was really fun. We did have to cut the trip short. We came home on July 4th, the day, and we got back to town probably 10 o'clock at night. So it was just getting pretty dark. And

We live in the Treasure Valley here, the Boise, Idaho area, if you don't know where the Treasure Valley is. And as we're coming into town and driving to our house, it was crazy how many people were letting off fireworks.

um it was probably the the most money i've ever seen people spend on fireworks and i don't know if this is normal for every year down here because we're normally in the mountains on the fourth of july um my black lab jocko he's not a big fan of him he gets pretty scared of them um but we're always in the mountains uh camping and doing our our due diligence for uh summer summer elk scouting and stuff but uh anyway there was

Man, there were some big, impressive displays of fireworks all over town. It didn't matter where you were out in the valley. There were just huge, huge fireworks going off everywhere. In fact, it looked like the whole town was on fire burning as far as how much smoke was in the air. It was crazy. The smoke was everywhere. Driving down the freeway, it was just a fog. In fact, you could even smell it. You can just smell that smoke.

that that sulfur-y, pungent smell fireworks make. You all know that smell. It almost smells like gunpowder. Almost my favorite smell. I think my favorite smell might be pine sap and elk pee. But anyway, it's 44 days till September, but I don't know who's counting besides me. I bet a few of you are counting out there.

But I will say I do love September. It's my favorite time of year, but I am pumping the brakes a little bit. I do love my summertime. I love camping. I love checking trail cameras, like setting trail cameras. I love being in the mountains. I love dirt bike riding. I got me a dirt bike. I don't know if it's a midlife crisis purchase or what, but I got a new dirt bike this year. It's a KTM 350 EX.

EXC-F for you dirt bikers out there. It's a pretty badass bike. I've been enjoying it. My son bought a new bike and we've been riding those around. It's been super fun. But anyway, this week I want to talk about non-typical elk calling. Now, when I say non-typical, I'm not saying I'm trying to call in a non-typical bull elk. I mean, I would love to call it a non-typical bull elk.

They're just so uncommon. But what I'm talking about is using vocalizations that aren't maybe your cookie cutter type vocalizations per se. We all know that three note bugle, that we've all grown accustomed to love. But I will say over the years, I've found that

don't always, they're not always making that same bugle over and over. They have a pretty big repertoire in their vocabulary. Now,

I'm not going to sit here and try to say I'm Dr. Doolittle and I know exactly what these elk are saying. I'm not saying that. But usually I can tell by the way they sound with the intensity, the temperature, if you will. If it's hot, if they sound mad, you know, you can tell it's an aggressive type sound. But some of these sounds are non-aggressive, but they're still talking.

And that's what I want to go over today. Maybe you guys watched my film called Ghost Bulls of the North on YouTube that was released earlier this year. If you haven't, check it out. It's on the Phelps Game Calls YouTube channel. Anyway, if you notice in there, I don't go straight to a lot of those movies.

cookie cutter, three note bugles, just your typical elk calling sounds that maybe you've grown accustomed to hearing while someone's calling elk. Now locating, I kind of go through those just to try to get an answer. But once I make contact with the bull, then I'm going to assess his disposition, his temperament, and I'm going to assess what he responds to.

And kind of go from there. So as that conversation builds with that bull, I'm going to figure out what he's responding to best. Now, sometimes we'll get this conversation going, we'll get two or three bugles out of him. And then I will make a bugle that he won't reply to. And I almost feel like it's the same as having a conversation with a person. When you say something to them that

make them that maybe takes them back a little bit or maybe they kind of they don't respond because it made them uncomfortable. I kind of in my mind, I kind of use that same thought process. So if I've made a bugle or a certain call and he stops responding, I have to analyze this. Did he not like that sound? Was I too aggressive? Was I not aggressive enough? How had the conversation been going before?

Maybe he'd been giving me those kind of lackluster, moany type bugles. And I tried to escalate a little bit by giving him a three note bugle with a little bit of gusto behind it. I'll demonstrate the gusto behind it. Maybe I gave him one of those and that just shut him down. All of a sudden, he don't want to talk anymore. So in my mind, I think, well, maybe that was too aggressive. Right?

I need to tone it down a little bit. So I need to go back to where we kind of started back to where, what he was answering with and responding with. And a lot of times it's the same groaning bugle. So I'm doing kind of a copycat bugle and it's going to be that low moany groaning type bugle. It could mean the bull's just not looking for a fight, but he wants to talk and say, Hey man, how's it going? Or I'm over here too. If there's any ladies around, but I'm not trying to fight anybody.

Or maybe it's in the middle of the day and you've heard that same moany bugle from that same little spot, that same little north facing patch, little, there's a steep ridge with a little saddle or a little bench on it. And you keep hearing that same old moany bugle. And when I say moany bugle, it's going to sound kind of like this. And it's not going to sound exactly right. Of course, I'm not an elk, but this is my, this is my rendition of it. Woo! Woo! Woo!

Just a kind of low bugle. It almost kind of sounds like an elk who don't even really know how to bugle. That's the kind of sound it is. So if he's making a lot of those, then I'm going to be making a lot of those because I'm not going to try to, I don't want to push him away too quickly. So it's no different than a conversation. When you walk up to someone, you start having a conversation and you start talking.

you know raising your voice and getting aggressive with them a lot of times people just back off and just like what's wrong with this guy and they leave i don't want to do that to the elk i want to have him i want to engage him in this conversation with the same amount of same amount of attitude right and as we talk back and forth after a while if you just keep it up keep it up

A lot of times they will escalate because finally they're just like, I'm kind of tired of talking to you. And they may give you a little bit more of an aggressive bugle, which is what I'm really after. So I'm trying to trick him into getting mad. So if he does a groaning bugle, I'm going to do a groaning bugle. Something like that. Now I may even, I don't know if I've talked about this before on this podcast. I talked about a lot, a lot of different podcasts out there. I've been the guest on, but I,

A lot of times when I'm having these groany bugles, they don't reply back and forth real quickly. You know, it may be four or five minutes in between from the time I call to the time he replies. So what a lot of times I'll do is I'll set my stopwatch on my phone. And as soon as I bugle, I push go. And I time how long it takes him to reply. Now, this may take, you know, an hour or two of back and forth with this bull.

Depending. Maybe not. But I'm timing how long it takes in between him and I for him to reply to me. And as soon as he replies, I push stop and look at it. And then I push it again and I wait that same amount of time before I reply again. So I'm giving him space. So then I just keep in my head, like, how long did it take him? Three minutes? Five minutes?

And after 30 minutes, maybe even an hour, I'll start seeing that time decrease. So instead of waiting five minutes between his reply and mine, it's now three minutes and two minutes. So I can see things are progressing, right?

By doing this, it's easy to get distracted. You know, you may want to take a nap or you may want to sit there and watch the squirrels or eat lunch or whatever. But if you keep track of the time on it, you can say, man, things are starting to pick up here. So you can kind of ready yourself and start making the game plan of what to do next. And once things pick up, and especially once he makes that more aggressive type call, then that's when you want to escalate your calls.

Okay, now I want to move on to the next thing is bark, chuckles and bark screams. What's a bark chuckle? I'll demonstrate. What's a bark scream? Why in the world would you bark at a bull elk? Isn't the bark like a sound of alarm? Yes, it is. Also,

It's a sound that elk use, bull elk use, when they're coming in to another bull. See, you have two bulls exchanging bugles. They both go towards each other. And at some point, the bull hangs up. Like this happens to real elk too. It's not just for hunters. Elk hang up on elk. Elk are very visual. They want to size up their opponent. So,

They get in there pretty close. And typically it's about that 50 yard marker. So a lot of times they hang up about 50 yards in between them. And...

the bull that I'm trying to call will come in and hang up and then display. He'll start, he'll start rubbing a tree, start ripping the crap out of the ground. He'll, he'll rub, you know, he's like, Hey, I'm, I'm the big man. This is my spot. You know, maybe he's working himself up into a frenzy, you know, getting enough bravery to come in and fight. I don't know exactly what's coming, going through his head, but I think there, I think that's some of it. But if this standoff lasts too long,

let's say five, 10 minutes, bulls start becoming a little suspicious and they will sometimes bark and then they will bark again and chuckle or they will bark again and scream. And it seems like the correlation, if they're barking and chuckling, they'd been doing a lot of bark. They'd been doing a lot of chuckling on the way in. They've been doing a lot of chuckling during this, this exchange, or if it's a bark scream, they're

They'd been doing a lot of bark and screaming or excuse me. They'd been doing a lot of screaming on the way in. So either one is great because at that point when he barks, I know he's like, well, he thinks I'm an elk, but he just wants to see his adversary, right? He's trying to call me out. He wants to see me. He wants to see how big I am. He wants to see who I am. So at that time I will bark, right?

and chuckle to him or bark and scream at him. And this may have to take place maybe once, maybe three or four times. And a lot of times if I bark, chuckle or bark and scream and move up, you know, 10 yards, five yards, just make noise, moving towards him a little bit, that's all it's going to take. And he will really, he'll reveal himself and he'll come out. And a lot of times he's going to come out in more of a broadside fashion, sometimes straight on, but a lot of times he'll

They'll come towards you and then get broadside because they want to look big. They want to show off. They want to show you what they brought, right? I'm a big animal. Look at me. I'm going to show you my antlers from the side. Who are you? And if you're ready, you can capitalize on that with a shot. Now, here's a really non-typical example.

elk vocalization that I've been using. Now, I can't say that it has worked for the good or worked for the bad, but it's silly. And I always kind of giggle to myself when I'm doing it. And cameraman Dusty, the first time I did it, he made a funny face, but it's lip licking. So,

Why I do the lip licking is one of my trail cameras. I had video of a bull. Well, first a cow walked by the camera, you know, she's just having a day and just a few steps behind her was in a really nice bowl. And he kind of stopped right, right in mid camera and let out a bugle. And then he followed on to her. But as he did it, he went, he was licking his lips, making a little lick,

popping noise with his lips or with his tongue. Now, it's not to be confused with a glunk. Now, the glunk is that more of that hollow, the thunk, the thunk, the thunk noise. This was literally lick-lipping. You can see it. Lip-licking. And he's more licking his nose, right? So his tongue's going up and it's hitting his nose and he's licking pretty fast. I hope that picks up.

And you look like an idiot doing it. Well, I do. And people are going to say, what are you doing? It's so weird. But.

I thought, you know, I saw that. That's real elk sounds. I'm going to try it. Maybe that's the proverbial silver bullet everybody's been looking for, right? Like, man, I'm going to do this. The first time I do this to a bull and he's close, we just won't kind of commit. He's going to hear that. He's going to come boiling in here to fight because he knows there's a cow ready to go. So I did it to no reaction.

And I find that's the same reaction for milk I get with glunking. You know, people will attempt to glunk with their mouth. Some people attempt to glunk with a diaphragm into their tube. Some people just do it with their tube. I'll demonstrate with the tube. Now, the cadence may sound like a glunk.

And some of the little, that almost a little boing noise almost sounds like a glunk. But honestly, it doesn't really sound like a real elk glunking. I've done it a lot over the years. Did it work? No.

Did it make him run away? No, it didn't make him run away either. So I'm pretty on the fence on the glunking thing and the lip-licking thing. So take it or leave it. O'Reilly Auto Parts are in the business of keeping your car on the road. I love O'Reilly. In fact, the other day, I'm not kidding you, the other day, I went into an O'Reilly Auto Parts looking for a part. I needed a different thing that wasn't really in there, you know, only like tangentially related to what they carry.

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This is Brent Reeves from This Country Life. What makes South Dakota the greatest for pheasant hunting? With over 1.2 million pheasants harvested last year, South Dakota boasts the highest population of pheasants in the nation. In fact, you'd have to add up the total harvest from neighboring states just to get that many birds.

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So the next portion of the podcast is the Q&A section. So we have some listeners call in with some questions. I'm going to answer right here on the air. This portion of the podcast is brought to you by Pendleton Whiskey, Letterbuck. All right. Caller number one. Hey, Jason. Hey, Dirk. This is Blake from across the pond, North Idaho. Just...

Colin was less of a question and more of a challenge for Dirk. Jason sells more signature calls than the Maverick series. I say Dirk has to hunt this year with his recurve.

have to hunt on his Idaho tag with a recurve. Thanks guys. Love the pod. Bye. All right. Old Blake Lyons from North Idaho. I know that kid. Good guy. Good elk hunter. Thinks he's kind of a wiseacre, it seems like. Hey, Blake, as much as I would absolutely positively love to hunt elk in Idaho this year with a recurve bow,

I think we both know that Jason's not going to sell more pink diaphragms than, than Maverick diaphragms. Um, I, I know it's a big aspiration for him and he someday maybe he'll crack the code, but, but man, um, man, that Maverick militia, the, uh, all my Maverick elk diaphragm people out there that love it so much. Um, I don't think they're gonna let that stand. Um, but,

We may have to figure out some other contest. Or maybe I'm just going to go and shoot, you know, go hunting with a traditional bow. I do have one. I do have a recurve. I love shooting it. It's fun. It reminds me of being a kid shooting slingshots and my old recurve bows. It just takes you a different time. It's so fun. It's so free fun.

it's definitely a different experience than shooting a compound. So anyway, thanks for calling, Blake. All right, caller number two. Hey, guys, it's Blake Lyons again from northern Idaho. Just calling again to kind of pick your brain on a couple things. Guy who's hunted north Idaho, been successful in north Idaho for probably the last 15 years. Yeah.

What would a guy have to expect? What are the main differences going from hunting North Idaho to, say, jumping down in maybe a southern unit in Idaho or maybe more of a southern state situation?

I understand water is going to be scarce, but what are some other things that a guy needs to be more prepared for? Elevations aren't too different. We're ranging up here anywhere from 3,000 upward to 7,000, so the elevation is not a factor. But what are some other types of things a guy needs to take into consideration before jumping down south? Thanks.

That's a great question. Blake with a twofer. Two calls. Yeah, so, you know, since I cut my teeth growing up hunting and growing up in North Idaho, then in my mind, I always thought, oh, well, I'm going to start hunting South Idaho. There's going to be a lot less brush. You know, North Idaho is, it's a jungle, really. It's nasty, thick brush everywhere for the most part.

South Idaho is different in the way as so you're a lot of the lot of the units in southern Idaho or let's say if you cut the skinny part of the state off and everything in that rectangular box in the bottom, a lot of those places, your south facing slopes won't have much space.

for vegetation. Now there may be some trees depending on the company country, you know, the further North you get in that box, you'll have more, more timber and a little bit of brush on those hillsides. But the further South you get, especially if there's a lot of sagebrush present, those South facing slopes, you'll have sagebrush and grass and virtually no other kind of brush. And sometimes no sagebrush depending on how, how dry the hillside is. And then on the North face, you'll,

will have timber of some kind. Now, some places will have sparse timber. Some places will have heavy timber with tons of brush. So, for instance, some of the places I've been in southeast Idaho, they're great. I thought north Idaho was brushy. It's just a different kind of brush. Those north faces can be just as brushy, if not brushier,

Also, you'll find stands of aspens. So growing up up north, I always thought, oh man, I would love to be able to hunt aspens. Man, some of them places here down south, these aspen stands, big, beautiful aspen stands, you look at them from afar, you're like, oh yeah, oh, I heard some bugling up there, let's go. You get up there and underneath the canopy of the large mature aspens is

is brush and a lot of it is immature aspens and also this brush it's called serviceberry serviceberry i've heard different people call it different things um for where i'm from but it's a thick brush very stiff branches it can grow pretty tall can grow 10 feet tall

And it has a little blueberry on it, which looks like a huckleberry or kind of like a huckleberry, but more like a blueberry. Doesn't taste anything like a blueberry, a huckleberry. You can, hey, knock yourself out, pick a bunch, eat them, make a pie, put them in your pancakes, fool a buddy, whatever. But, you know, they don't taste bad. They just don't taste like much of anything. They're kind of just kind of green. Not a lot of flavor there.

But anyway, that brush is almost impenetrable. But if you can get through it, find your way through it, you know, you can chase bugles all day and you'd have bulls five, 10 yards away and not have a shot.

while the leaves are still on. Now, once the leaves fall off of those later in September, the leaves will fall off those serviceberry or serviceberry bushes. They're almost like a small tree. But once those leaves fall off, you can see, you can see probably 40, 50 yards ahead of you, but you can't shoot five yards. You can't shoot three yards, a lot of that stuff. So,

You can chase bugles around all day in those kind of places and never, ever get close enough to even lay eyes on a bull. He'll just stay right outside. He'll stay at the edge of the one of those, you know, just 50, 60 yards out to where he's just like, oh, he sees some movement coming. Now he goes, goes away again. So that's super challenging. That's one of the things about Southern Idaho that's different. Um,

Water is a big deal, too. Down here in southern Idaho, elk will travel a long distance to get water. Now, some places that look dry as can be, you think, oh, man, there's not any water anywhere out here. But there's really good springs and little ponds or a lake or something. There's some pretty good water in some of these places. But other places, there's just hardly any water. So they have to go somewhere.

down from the top of the mountain, down to the bottom, down to the creek bottom, you know, a large drainage to get water every day. And sometimes those are close to roads, sometimes they're close to people's camps and they don't seem to mind it because it's nighttime, they go down there. So those guys that run generators all night in their campers, they're not hearing those bugles. That's a pro tip, don't run your generator all night. Maybe you need it for your CPAP, I don't know.

But anyhow, or even first thing in the morning, I've been around people's camps. I've been up on the hill and hear a generator running first thing in the morning. And I got bulls bugling everywhere around me. I was like, I bet those guys don't have a clue there's elk bugling up here. And because they're, you know, running their generators. Maybe they get up, run their generators, get their...

put their heaters on, get their, their day spark, brew some coffee, get ready to go hunting and maybe leave them running all morning to, to charge their batteries or something. I don't know, but yeah,

So elk will travel long distance for food and for, or excuse me, for water and for food. Some areas that have a lot of agriculture, you know, there's irrigation down here where, you know, North Idaho, it's all dry country farming, you know. They don't irrigate hay fields. They don't irrigate wheat fields. They don't irrigate their agriculture up in North Idaho. Down south, they have to.

So, you know, you'll have irrigation pivots and irrigation lines down there everywhere in the valley floor. So those elk, they can travel five, six miles from the peak of a mountain all the way down at night to eat alfalfa and then turn around before first light and get halfway up the mountain before the sun ever rises. So that's something to keep in mind. So if you're, you know, you're hearing bugles at night,

down by those fields. It's probably not, on all that private land, it's probably not the best place to think, I'm going to try to hunt down here in the morning. No, you want to kind of try to figure out where those elk are going to go during the daytime. So they're going to climb up a probably a pretty barren hillside until they find a nice, nice North face, two, three, 4,000 feet above the valley floor to bed down for the day.

And also, maybe, you know, of course, using your calls a lot works good down south. But a lot of times, you know, maybe that the first few, the first hour of light every morning would be better served getting on a high point with binoculars, with a spotter, and just finding out what's going on.

find an elk, finding animals. And it's like, you know, a lot of times it's really big country. You know, you can, you can cover a lot of big country because it's pretty open and you'll be able to see those animals right at that first light moving from food source. You know, maybe there's no ag around, but you'll see them move from the south side of the mountain over to the north sides. You'll catch them lingering in some of the edges and stuff. And then now you have a game plan. It's like, okay, I know where the elk are at and,

We'll make a mark on our on X map and then go after them. So that's my take on south versus north. And oh, one more thing I will say. There are more elk in south Idaho. North Idaho, there's some patches, there's some pretty decent elk. But for the most part, it's a little barren up there. There's a lot you can, if you don't know where you're going,

You can spend a lot of time even trying to find an elk track, let alone an elk. So I will say there are more better units down south, better, easier winters, less wolves. And a lot of the units down south are managed for better conditions.

better numbers, better trophy quality. A lot of the rifle hunts are controlled. That means you have to apply. You have to apply for a lottery to see if your name gets drawn for an elk tag to hunt with a rifle. But some of them are over-the-counter archery. Some are a capped zone. That's where they only sell a very limited number of these tags in that zone. So there can be

Several different reasons why there's more elk in that part of Idaho. But I probably shouldn't have said that. I just let the cat out of the bag. All right. On to caller number three. Hey, Dick. Randy Godfrey out of Boise. Just got through listening to your episode 87, hunting season plans and hunting questions.

My question is we are going into units. Well, I'm not going to tell you. I guess I can tell you when it doesn't matter. We're going into the Frank Church, right into the Frank Church. And I know that, you know, we're backpacking in, we're doing all that, and we're going to have a base camp and then a bibby camp here and there, wherever we find the elk, the deer, whatever. And, uh,

My question is, when you're out there doing that kind of hunt, and you don't, I mean, we're flying in, so we're kind of stuck in this spot. How would you go about hunting that type of a scenario as far as, you know, when you're not in anything and you don't have the ability to move fast, you can just move kind of slow. Is there any, like, just...

scenarios or ideas that you guys have run into when you can't really just jump out on a truck and head out or on an ATV and go somewhere different a couple 10 miles away or whatever. What would you do in that scenario as far as trying to track down the game you're looking for? Wow, what an adventure flying into the Frank Church wilderness. Some big, gnarly country. I believe it's the largest expansive wilderness in the lower 48th.

And right here in Idaho, big gnarly country. It's steep and deep. So if you get flown into one of those backcountry landing strips, chances are you're not going to be alone. There could be other people there. I know certain times of the year, like mule deer season, for instance, later on in November, those places can be very busy with other hunters. So I would plan on bivvy hunting. I would have my camp planned.

in my backpack, right? I'm not going to hunt right there from the landing strip and just kind of hunt within a mile or two of the landing strip. I feel like it's going to take the type of effort you're going to have to get at least

two, three miles away from that landing strip to get away from a lot of people and maybe even beyond that. Now, I'm not familiar with the area. I haven't really even looked at the Frank Church. I've never been there myself. I don't know if there's any if there's good trail systems there from those from those landing strips. But maybe if you can find a good trail and just get some miles between you.

and that landing strip and other people distance yourself. Then once you get a ways on that trail, then I would go cross country. I would climb, I would climb elevation. I would get out of there, um,

I would imagine if it's September, if it's early season, elk are going to be higher. If it's in November, elk are probably going to be lower. You know, they're going to probably be in that bottom third of the canyon versus September. They're probably going to be upper in upper elevations and that probably in that, that top from right in the middle, maybe. But, but that being said, the, those drain, the drainages there are so huge and so vast, you know, it could be 4,000 feet, maybe further several miles from the river clear to the top and,

It's not a small undertaking by any means. So I would have a bivvy camp ready to go on your pack, prepared to camp out for three to five days, depending.

I would leave camp with plenty of water. I'd have a water bladder completely full. I would probably have a couple Nalgene's full of water. That's just me. I like to carry them in those Nalgene's or some kind of other water carrying bladder, something that you maybe have another 64 ounces of water. At least that way, if you can, if you get away, you hike out, you can get away from the people for at least a day or two.

And let's say you run out of water and it's like, well, gee whiz, I wish, you know, we had some water to filter there. There should be some water to filter in certain places, but expected to be a pretty dry country for the most part. Elk are probably not going to be right at the river during September. And it would be my guess. So you may have to like branch out like, you know, you may have to go out this direction for two or three or four days and and see if you find any elk.

You may have to go the complete opposite direction. The next go around, you just kind of have to kind of use that, um, landing strip as your base, as your base, and then go out for a few days, come back, replenish your supplies, go a different direction or go back. Maybe you did find elk, then go back and load up heavy with, with more supplies to where you can stay for a little longer. It's like, well, we know there's a bunch of elk over here. We can hunt for several days. We'll go ahead and take extra food. Um,

We found lots of water, so we don't have to weight ourselves down with a bunch of water. You kind of, it's one of those things you kind of don't know until you go. But I feel like the best practice here is going to be get away from that landing strip. Because it's ugly, intimidating country. And it's going to be an undertaking. It's going to be an undertaking. But be in the best shape of your life and have a positive mindset. Just get after it. All right. Caller number four.

Hey, Dirk. On the show, my name is Drew. Drew is a FedTag, so long as I'm over-the-counter, and I'm a FedTag in Colorado this year. And I was wondering if you had any tips, techniques, or advice

Okay, that colors, the quality was real scratchy. So I'm going to try to preface what he said or not preface. I'm going to try to, I'm just going to try to repeat what he said. Um,

Because it was really hard to hear. So he's a Colorado elk hunter and he drew a bear tag to go along with his elk hunt this fall. And he was just kind of wondering what kind of tips and tactics would he use to try to secondarily fill his bear tag. So,

If I were in his shoes, I do know some friends at certain parts of Colorado have tons of bears and they run into bears a lot during the hunt. So you just may just shoot one just out of the blue. You'd be walking along, oh, there's a really nice bear. You shoot it. Or maybe the bear comes to your calling setup. You shoot it then.

But maybe you're having a slow day elk hunting, but dang it, there's a dandy bear over on that hillside and you want to take after him. So I would go over there, get set up, get where the wind's good. And there's a call that I take with me everywhere. It doesn't matter if it's September, October, November, December. I have this little call I always have with me. It's called a fawn jack call that we sell here at Phelps. And if you blow lightly on it, you can make the sound of a fawn in distress.

If you blow hard on it, it sounds like a jackrabbit. So here's the fawn, and then here's the jackrabbit. Sounds awful. Annoys everyone in the house. But bears, coyotes, mountain lions, wolves, everything that's a predator likes the sound of an animal in distress. And it makes them think, oh, here's a free meal, here's an easy meal. So...

maybe the bear's not in a good stockable spot, but you can get semi-close and start blasting with one of these here predator calls or a predator call, whatever one you have at home. Um, and then just keep calling. So once you get the bear's attention, he starts coming towards you. Keep calling, keep calling, keep calling. If you have a buddy, let him get behind you a little ways. That way the bear walk right into you. Um,

It could be a hair-raising experience. But bears kind of get sidetracked a little bit as they're coming to that. So if you call, call, call, and then you stop, once he kind of disappears, he may just lose interest and walk off. So just keep calling until he comes in, especially if you have a buddy that can back up and call for you. But that's how I do it. Or...

Or maybe even just calf and distress calls, you know, like a calf elk that's lost its mama or it's, it's hurt or something. You can make those calf and distress calls and bears love those too, especially spring bears. They love those, those little calf elk that are in distress. I'll demonstrate what it sounds like. Very high pitched, very needy, very scared. That's the kind of sound you're going to want to bake with your diaphragm. Um,

So I was just using my Maverick elk diaphragm just then. So whatever diaphragm that you like to use that you can achieve that really high pitch, that's the way to go.

If you don't have one, you might try the Maverick because it is a very tight stretch, very thick like decks, and you can push real hard on it and apply a lot of air pressure to get those high-pitched sounds. O'Reilly Auto Parts are in the business of keeping your car on the road. I love O'Reilly. In fact, the other day, I'm not kidding you, the other day, I went into an O'Reilly Auto Parts looking for a part. I needed a different thing that wasn't really in there, you know, only like tangentially related to what they carry.

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This is Brent Reeves from This Country Life. What makes South Dakota the greatest for pheasant hunting? With over 1.2 million pheasants harvested last year, South Dakota boasts the highest population of pheasants in the nation. In fact, you'd have to add up the total harvest from neighboring states just to get that many birds.

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My name is Noah Reynolds, and I'm from Oregon. I'm living and hunting for elk just east of the Cascades, close to the Washington-Oregon border. I'm really enjoying this podcast, so I've been tuning in a lot lately, and I have some questions about elk hunting.

So in the area I hunt in, there's just pockets of elk that are generally hard to locate. I'm going to go on an antlerless rifle hunt in late August, and I'm wondering what you guys think these pockets are going to be doing this early in the season. I'm also wondering how I should target these early season cows. Is it good to throw in some bugles? Thank you for your time. Bye.

Hey, thanks for calling in. That's a great question. In any country that has a low elk density, or maybe there's just pockets elk, you know, there may be a lot of elk in that pocket, but maybe it's a long distance between each pocket. You really, really have to cover some country. Now, I'm not sure if you're hunting country that has been logged, you know, if there's a lot of logging roads.

Um, that's a great way to, to, to cover a lot of ground is get on a mountain bike, an e-bike. If, if it's allowed, if you got one, they're kind of expensive, but even just a good old mountain bike and just cover some country, you know, you may have to push it up the hills and write it down the others, but it'll be faster than walking, but just covering a lot of country. That's how you find elk in pockets. You, you can't just kind of get hung up and say, well, I saw elk tracks here one time.

earlier in the summer and I'm going to just hunt this one spot. Well, maybe those elk move out. But from what I hear now, I've never hunted Roosevelt's, but I have a lot of friends that do. And they say Roosevelt's are pretty, they stick pretty tight to their little home area. You know, it may be one or two miles in circumference or whatever. But if you run into them there one week, chances are, and you blow it up, the next week they'll probably still be in there.

Now, early in August, and most of the time, I wouldn't target cows with bugles. I would target cows with other cow calls. In fact, I would target them with calf calls. I would call like a lost calf. I kind of talked, I just demonstrated a calf in distress for the last caller, but I'm going to demonstrate just like a lost calf call here. Okay.

Still that high pitch sound, not quite as needy or scared sounding as the calf in distress, but you can elevate it a little bit too. You can make it a little bit more, you know, scared or whatever. But if there's cows close by, let's say you've seen a lot of tracks, you've seen them feeding in the clear cuts or feeding them on an open hillside and then they go and get the timber. If you get pretty close, you get the wind right and you start running your calf calls, you're

A lot of times, especially if the cows are up moving still, if it's like in the morning, they haven't bedded down for the day. A lot of times if you can get close to them and start making those lost calf sounds, those cows will want to come over and investigate.

And if you were hunting bulls, a lot of times that's a great way to get the bulls to come with the cow will come and the bull will be in tow. Or maybe it's the middle of the day. A lot of times the bulls will come over and investigate on their own. Sometimes even in the morning and the afternoon, they'll come investigate those calf calls. So that's probably how I'd hit it. I would cover lots and lots of ground. I would use mowing.

binoculars as much as they could, you know, to see from a distance. If, if you're in kind of country that has some clear cuts and stuff, um, the summer leading up to that hunt, you know, August, you said, um,

leading up the weeks leading up to that, get out there on your mountain bike, just cover ground and make a note where you're finding elk tracks. You know, if you have, if you have Onyx maps on your phone, make, make little notes, you know, put a, a way marker, a way point where you're finding elk tracks, um,

You know, if it's early enough, if it's like right now, you can see what those elk tracks, you could kind of follow them, follow the tracks into the timber, maybe learn their trails. If there are trails, unless it's really thick country where they don't really do make a trail once they enter the timber. But you could kind of familiarize yourself with the area. It's like, oh, this is where those elk go. Learn the country now where they like to feed at night and in the morning and then where they go for those midday hours.

Do your homework now. And then by August, you don't want to, you don't want to disturb them anymore. You just want to look at them from afar. You may ride the roads, you might walk the roads, whatever, make sure they're still there. And then come, come the opener. Then you execute, you go in and execute.

I would make a list, say, okay, this is the place I really want to go. This is the best looking sign, the most elk sign. Go there first and then have plant A, B, C, D, E, F, G on through the alphabet. All your little different spots, have them marked, mapped out, maybe even write it down and say, this is my game plan.

That way, because a lot of times on opening day, you get there and shoot, there's somebody else there. Or maybe the elk are just not behaving. Well, you'll have another plan to immediately put into play and you're not spun out. So great question. All right. One last caller. Caller number six. Hey, Dirk. This is Bronson from Colorado. I just had a quick question about locating elk. I've noticed with...

fires in the area and stuff you can expect five to ten years before it gets heavy and going unless you get a good rain that really brings up new forest quick but while e-scouting i'll find places and think that they are the bees knees until i get out there and there's no sign of life

during after um or prior to the elk hunt um so i know to be looking at pinch points and uh saddles and uh transitions and stuff like that water thermals and uh food but is there something you specifically look at that's

kind of gives you the right idea that there will in fact be elk in there. I appreciate it. Thank you. That's a great question on burns. That seems to be a hot topic with a lot of people.

And these days, a lot of folks, there's a lot of buzz, I should say, about burns. Like, oh, you want to find elk, you got to go to a burn. Not all burns are the same. It's crazy to depend on the area, the country, the whatever. There's some burns I've been to that elk just don't ever come back in too much. They can be, I don't know if it's what grows back, they're just not really interested in.

I know some burns, they get kind of taken over by a lot of noxious weeds. Now, like some places in North Idaho, in other places, like I've seen in Washington and Oregon, a big burn, they get this long, these tall plants that has a purple flower. I don't even, I don't know what they're called. I should look it up. I should look it up. But man, at least in my hunting spots, nothing really seemed to eat those things.

I've had people say, oh, yeah, they eat those things like crazy where I'm at. But man, they don't eat them where I'm at. But then again, there's not a lot of elk where I'm at, too. So maybe, man, maybe that's why there's just no elk there to eat them. So but I will say my experience with burns, I've I've literally I've

hunted elk in a burn the same year it burnt. So, let's say in July it burnt. I'm in there September and I'm chasing bulls around. There's ash. There's even sometimes little smoky things around, you know. Elk will go right back into where it burnt right after the flames are gone. Sometimes there'll even be some smoke or some flames around an elk. They like that black burnt ash for some reason. I don't know if it tastes good to them. Maybe they like to roll in it to keep the bugs off.

I wish I knew, but they do like it and that they'll get right back in there right after the burn. And then the first two or three years after the burn, that's when the most delicate, good, yummy little green things are going to really grow up. And elk will really key into them then. Five, 10 years down the road, a lot of times that's when things can kind of get weird with a lot of noxious weeds or just maybe just overgrown brush and little saplings. Sometimes

you know if you have an area where the the jackfurs or the little the little pine trees they grow up those things can grow thick as dog's hair and they'll choke out a lot of good things that elk like to eat and deer um so it just depends on what you're looking at as far as food and feed so that could be why you're coming up short on some of the places you've been checking out is maybe it's there's not enough food or the right kind of food that they're looking for um

If there's burns that are happening this year, if they get them things put out and you're allowed to go in, that's another thing. Sometimes they don't let you into these areas until the Forest Service or BLM or whoever's property is, until they release it to be opened back up to the public. Because they'll shut it down for that fire because all the hazards...

You know, it could even be a week after there hasn't been a puff of smoke with a foot of snow on the ground, but it can take a week or longer just to get through the paperwork and the stuff to release it to make sure it's okay for the public to go into these places.

But I wouldn't be afraid to go into those places right after, especially if it didn't burn super hot and just nuke off the place. If it has, you know, there's patches where it didn't burn or maybe it just kind of slowly burned up through the understory, burning pine needles and low brush, but didn't just burn all the tops out every trees. There's definitely gonna be some elk around in that country. So that's how I would, that's how I would play the game. Well,

I appreciate everybody listening. I wanted to let you guys know in the upcoming weeks, I'm going to have an elk calling master class right here on Cutting the Distance. I'm going to call it the September Tune-Up. Each episode, I will walk you guys through how I make the elk vocalizations I personally use each September. So you're not going to want to miss that. And also,

I'm going to be doing a seminar in Emmett, Idaho on July 24th, 7 p.m. at Low Mountain Archery. Emmett, it's a tiny little town just north of the Boise area. I've been doing this for about five years out there for my good buddy, Nick, who's the shop owner. And we always have a really good turnout. It's a little warm in his shop. There's usually plenty of seating. But

But great, great place to go. I like the people there. And I love doing these kind of, you know, these kind of seminars locally. So I don't have to travel very far. So if you're in the area, if you're in this area or within short driving distance, we'd love to see you. And P.S., there's no cover charge. So everyone's welcome. This is a free show. Well, thanks for listening. September is right around the corner. So you know what that means. Monsters are coming.

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