Ep. 95: Success in the Elk Woods
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what some of us that love to hunt, we live all year for. And today I'm going to jump into a few listener questions, but I really wanted to go over some real life situations that I've been in, um, some call-ins, what has worked, uh, how we've adapted and how we've made it, um,

you know, happen. So I think I've got five or six different scenarios that I laid out and things that kind of stick out in my mind that really kind of helped make those situations work. And as I went through and built this list, I was kind of surprised that

there's not a lot of repetition. So what it really kind of leads to is you need to be an elk hunter that can adapt. You need to be an elk hunter that has a lot of tools in the tool bag. You know, I always kind of use the analogy of a guy that builds your house. He's got,

20 different saws. He's got a circular saw, a radial arm saw, a ReSip saw. He's got all of these things that cut boards, but they're all used in certain situations to make his job easier. The same thing with a hammer or a level. There's so many different tools and right ways to do it to be efficient.

versus tools that can get it done, but they're not going to be as efficient. They're not going to be as effective. And so that's kind of how I relate that. And going through and building this list, I was kind of surprised I went back and there were some

common themes and things that worked on multiple ones but like the the things that I consider to be the main contributing factors of the success on that specific hunt didn't really overlap so I'm excited to jump into these you know six or seven scenarios and and kind of lay out what I think worked there but first off we're going to jump into some listener questions and I was able to go down to New Mexico last week and do a calling clinic and an elk hunting educational um

for some guides and outfitters. And these were the questions that they brought to me during the seminar. So I'm just going to kind of repeat them. I know that it's probably some things we've talked about before, but figure it's worth covering again with Oak season, just a month and a half around the corner. Today's question and answer session is brought to you by Pendleton Whiskey.

So the first question we have, what calls do I personally carry on me for an elk hunt? And it's going to be the same on almost every elk hunt. I will change the number of diaphragms depending on whether it's a spike out overnight multi-day trip. But for me, it's the same thing every time. I will take a beagle tube. Right now, I've been using the metal beagle tube on all of my hunts. So I'll have one beagle tube.

I will have an easy estrus or a mini X, one or the other. I've been carrying the mini X. So an external cow call, I will carry the easy sucker, um, in, in my vinyl harness. I don't use it all the time, but it's a great finishing call. And the reason, you know, some people may say, well, why do you carry the mini X? Why do you carry the easy sucker? Um,

I'm a firm believer that at certain times on certain elk with certain personalities, you need to have a call that gets them going. There may be times where they will answer only one of those and not your diaphragms or one or the other and, and not the, you know, and so, um,

I carry those and then I carry typically pink, you know, my pink signature diaphragm. I also carry a green amp. And then at times I will carry some pitch black twos. Now, if I'm going on a day hunt, I can usually get by with, you know, I'll grab two pinks and a green because I inevitably going to lose one somewhere through the hunt. Typically don't lose one every day, but, you know, I want to back up and then I also want to be able to change it up. So, you know, two pinks and a green will typically get me through, you

a day, the calls are going to hold up longer than that, but that's just to make sure I've got an extra and don't have enough. Now,

if I'm going on a backpack hunt, you know, and I've got the Liberty, I'm saying this is the guy that gets to make the calls before I leave. Yeah. I may grab five or six, you know, keep three in my, in my pouch or in my PDO. And then I'll maybe keep a couple tucked away in my pack. So they're separate in case something gets lost and I lose all three of them. Um, all six of them aren't in the same spot. Uh, so I'll, I'll usually tuck those away in my pack and, uh, in a, in a pocket somewhere. So

that's it. I I'm not the guy that has, you know, seven lanyards around my neck with a bunch of different externals and this and that I can do it all with a few diaphragms, a beagle tube, um, a mini X and an easy sucker. So that's what I carry. The second question, what's in my opinion, or in your opinion is how the question was proposed is what's the single most important thing that leads to success. And I had to think about this for a while. And I

Being a skilled hunter and all of that is important, understanding elk. But let's say everybody has a basic understanding of that. I honestly feel the single most important thing that leads to success is time in the field.

you know, I'm very fortunate, blessed to get to spend, you know, 30, 45 days chasing elk. And I've been in some great units where it's happened very quick. I've been in great units where sometimes the wind isn't helping the wind won't sit still, no matter what I do, right. No matter how much work and effort I'm putting in, I still come up short. And so sometimes on those hunts, you need time on your side just before things click and kind of come together. Um,

So, yeah, I honestly believe that the majority of guys out there are good enough woodsmen, understand elk enough that even just by being out there a lot, you're eventually going to stumble into some success regardless of whether you really truly know what you're doing or not. You'll eventually find some success by time. And to piggyback onto that, I feel that people will sometimes wait for premium training.

or premium opportunities. Maybe they've been saving points in a Western state or they pay to go on a New Mexico guided hunt or a Colorado guided hunt or wherever it may be. I feel that being used to the nerves, feeling what those nerves feel like, go out there and practice on cow elk. Pick up a cow elk tag and go out there and experience what works, experience what doesn't work.

Go out there and have a tag that you're more than excited to shoot a raghorn or a spike or whatever it may be. Get the experience. Feel what the adrenaline's like. See if you can keep your stuff together on a call-in.

So in addition to time, I also feel that you should have time under elk, if that makes any sense. You should have time with elk at 20, 30, 40 yards. You should have time trying to call elk and see why it doesn't always work like you think it may be. Give yourself time to maybe when it's not as important, hey, I'm going to bugle at this bull and see what his reaction is.

um in the right time so um time in the field and then time prior to special hunts or premium hunts so that you are ready for that opportunity and you take the most of that um i think people a lot of people get hung up on you know one or two big elk hunts in their their life and they're not necessarily ready for it so spend some time out in the field um with the elk during the rut

see what you can get away with, see what movement you can get away with, see what works cows, you know, cow sounds, bull sounds. Can you spot and stalk a bull? Can you get away with drawing your bow? And the, you know, all of these things are, are much better to figure out during a, a, uh, you know, and I don't want to say a less, less important hunt, but a hunt that maybe doesn't mean as much to you or, or, um, you know, all the hunts mean, mean a lot to me. I want to kill every elk that I've got a chance to, so I can fill my freezer. Um, but you know, you know what I mean? Uh,

not such a premium hunt, go out and practice and get used to all this stuff. The third question I got at camp was what is the biggest mistake when calling elk in? And I learned this the hard way. You know, growing up 17, 18, the internet wasn't really a big thing. I didn't have a, you know, I got to watch the Primo's videos, you know, the truth series and see how they did it, but it didn't really translate to the way things were working here in Western Washington. When I was calling Roosevelt bulls in,

Um, I couldn't set a collar up, you know, a hundred yards back and have bulls come around and buy me. I couldn't do these things. I had, I had to change, uh, and make some changes to, to my system. So for a long time, I would, I could get bulls to be, you know, bugle fairly, fairly routinely, you know, every, every morning we were on multiple bulls. But what I found is that I would, you know, maybe let's say I'm three or 400 yards away from a bull. I bugle.

And I get him to answer two or three times like, all right, he's there. I think I know where he's at. I'll maybe walk towards him 100 yards, whether it's down the ridge or in the timber or through a clear cut, whatever it may be.

And I bugle again and he may be in the same spot. So I feel like I'm gaining ground on him and then I'll move another 50, a hundred yards and I'll bugle again because I'm, I'm unsure of my decisions I'm making. I want to check the wind again. I want to make sure he's still there. Well, this time he's now a hundred yards further away. So we're, we're the same distance that we just were. I'm not gaining any ground on him or sometimes he will gain more ground on you. He might be 150 yards further away and you're trying to figure this out and you're

It goes back to that idea that these bulls are there to...

uh, one, you know, live and number two, um, you know, experience or recreate, you know, make new elk. So between those two things, um, and we throw in the idea that we're trying to reverse nature a little bit, you know, in my opinion, one of the reasons bulls are so much louder than cows and you can hear them for so long is it's his way to announce to other cows or elk in the area. Like I'm down here. Like if you're a cow and you're interested, come on down here. So whether we're bugling or cow calling, um,

That bull wants to maintain his cows so he can breed them and he wants to stay alive. So he's not going to necessarily leave them to come to your location. But what he is doing is rounding up his cows and pushing them away from the incoming bull. So if you're bugling, you know, I would say you're going to have a better opportunity to cow call your way in than you are to bugle your way in. So from what I'm seeing,

my experience and my experience alone, the biggest mistake I ever made when calling elk was to bugle my way into a bull, let him know I'm coming, announce I'm coming, announce the direction I'm coming in from. And what I did for days on end earlier in my archery, you know, hunting, uh, you know, days, I would play cat and mouse all morning. Yeah.

you know, following these elk to bed or I'd bump them through their beds or I would change the direction they wanted to go to bed. And I would, I can remember the four or five long hour cat and mouse. You know, I could never get any closer. Um, you know, at times the closest I would get is when I'd elect to be quiet, move in, try to get closer, bugle again, and then we'd start the game all over. So,

Try to, as much as you can, refrain from talking your way into a bull, at least bugling your way into a bull. Try to make your best guess on where they're at and try not to make another peep until you get in there. You know, if the wind's right, you make a good guess. Be aware of satellite bulls as you approach, but you do all that right, you should be able to get close enough to these things to call them in without calling your way in and keeping them out ahead of you.

So that kind of wraps it up for the Q&A today. If you have questions for me, for Dirk, for any of our guests that we have on here, feel free to email them to us at ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com or send us a message on social media, Instagram, Facebook, and we'll do our best to get them plugged into the podcast. We really appreciate all your listener questions.

So the bulk of today's podcast, I just went through and kind of looked at past Collins, things that worked well, things that worked, you know, efficiently and effectively. And I just kind of wanted to walk through those. And some of you may have seen some of these videos or I would, you know, not to give myself or our videos a shameless plug, but maybe go back and try to find some of these. And you can see where some of these things I will talk about, um,

you can see kind of happen on video and it may make a little bit more sense. So 2019, I drew a, a bighorns elk tag in Wyoming. Um, for those of you that remember it better by me losing the bet to Dirk and dressing up as Hulk Hogan, it is that hunt. So one thing I wanted to point out, uh, you know, to start that one right off, we did some scouting. We were there a day and a half before, um, we were able to get some high ground and we just watched a lot of elk,

And this is kind of the, you know, something that should make sense, but some people don't fully understand it at night. We would watch the night before the opener. We would watch elk come out of some timber, um, for the first time that evening.

And they may go through a meadow, back through some timber, back through a meadow, back through some timber. But keep in mind the timber that they originally came out of. Try to see, does that make good betting? Is that where they were bedded? And 99% of the time, the timber that they originally come out of, let's say at 6 o'clock at night when the shadows hit, is likely the timber that they are going to go back into the following morning. So that day, we watched the target bull. I was excited to go try to get a checkup.

a chance at come out of some timber. We caught them. What we feel was in the first meadow. And then we kind of followed them for the rest of the night. We kind of watched them go through some meadows, through some, you know, draws through some meadows. But the next morning we were to go back and we were able to catch them back in that timber. Now things didn't work. We had some winds whirl, do some things, but those elk and the herd that we wanted to be on with the bull we wanted to be on came back in that timber. So it seems like maybe a, you know, an obvious, uh,

you know, outcome, but pay attention to that timber they came out of and don't get caught maybe chasing beagles way off where they want to be. Like you're going to, you know, I talked a lot at that seminar in New Mexico. If you can kill this bull or have a chance to set up on a bull, whether it's an ambush and call a little bit, if you can get in front of that bull and not make him do what he doesn't want to do, it's going to be a lot easier to call that bull in.

Another thing we did on that 2019 Wyoming hunt, we stayed on the mountain all day. Do not...

If possible, do not talk yourself into going back to the truck, going back to the side-by-side, going back to camp. Let everybody else on the mountain go back to camp and make a sandwich and get a nap, whatever it may be. By staying on the mountain all day, we were able to be in position. We were able to have the wind right when we were ready. We kind of had ideas where elk had went, and it put us in the game. On that hunt specifically,

We had people watching us. They didn't hunt the night. They hunted the morning and then they watched us through a spotting scope that night. We were able to talk to them while they were at camp. We were up on the mountain still hunting, um,

So we stayed on the mountain all day, put us in position. We were very close to getting a bull to bugle that evening when the shadows dropped and the bulls got active. We were right in the wheelhouse. And I feel if we had went back to camp, like crossed our minds multiple times, we would have never been able to get on the bull we ended up taking.

So we, we, we closed ground. We were aggressive, but one thing we waited was for kind of that prime time. We didn't, we didn't force the issue during the heat of the day. We didn't write an area off because we were, we didn't get a bugle at three o'clock in the morning. So we sat and it was tough. We sat,

um until the you know the shade shade got to a point the weather had cooled down and then we started to check um kind of truth check patches of timber and draws to see if elk were in there and when we did get beagles we closed the ground and we were very aggressive we used the terrain we used the the vegetation and we closed ground very very quickly because especially at night

You only know where the bull's at when he bugles. If he doesn't bugle for two or three minutes, he might be 100, 200, 300, 500 yards off the next time you hear him. So if the terrain and vegetation allows, take that information for what it's worth, close distance very, very fast and see if you can get in the game at that point instead of trying to trail him and make the game happen somewhere else.

So during this call-in, we get very, very close, maybe a little bit too close. We get up to a spruce tree and it's one of those trees that you can kind of see through a little bit. And I realized when we had got there, we kind of hugged the upper edge of the timber. When we got there, I could see the elk on the other side at about 40 yards away, kind of through the trees. He had never really picked us off. Well, what happens during this call-in, we're there for about 10 minutes, right?

call him back and forth 40 yards away with a, you know, I'm right up against the spruce tree and he's, you know, 40 yards on the backside of it. We're getting more, you know, we're, we're picking up,

the, the argument, you know, he's screaming, I'm screaming, we're going back and forth. And all of a sudden this bull barks at me. And I've, I've said it before. I don't get too caught up on language and what this sound means or that sound means, but I think it's pretty universal that when a bark happens and some people will say alarm bark versus a nervous grunt, nervous bark, whatever it may be. It's very, very tough, tough to differentiate. Yeah. The elk may act different, but in this instance, it was very clear. It was basically a, Hey,

Show yourself type of a sound right we've all agreed when a one an elk barks typically they've seen something or Heard something that they don't trust and by barking they will typically you know say show yourself and in Colorado a lot of times and some other places we hear some bulls tend to during a call-in when you bring them in they will bark scream or bark chuckle at you and You know, it's like hey, I've came 200 yards to you I should be able to see you now come show yourself sort of a sound so the bark is

If you've watched that hunt, I barked back immediately. Now, I did have my bugle tube kind of down between my knees, kind of in its resting place. I didn't have a whole lot of time. So I just bark with my voice with a diaphragm. And just like clockwork, that bull instantly puts his head down and walks about 10 yards to the right out in the wide open while I'm at full draw. So being able to bark at that bull kind of saved it.

And it was kind of in my response, I was like, hey, you show yourself. I've been here for the same amount of time. Show yourself. I'm not showing myself sort of a response. And that bull was able to come out to 30, 32 yards and was able to make a great shot on that bull.

Um, and the last thing on that is we continued to call. We didn't get too crazy and pump fists and yell and scream. I was able to call that bull back in why the first shot was definitely going to kill it very quickly and effectively. He came back in and I was able to put another shot, um,

you know, high and back in the lungs, probably only caught one lung, but I was able to be quiet and get an additional arrow into that bull. So, uh, you know, don't go crazy after a shot. Don't scream and yell at your buddies and fist bump, you know, stay calm, try to call the bull back in. You always call after a shot to try to slow the thing down in case it doesn't know what happened, um, reduce that blood trail length. Um, but that was kind of the, the, the, uh, factors that went into that being a successful hunt.

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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.

There's also millions of wide open acres chock full of different landscapes, meaning the hunt in one county is often completely different from just a few counties over. But what really makes South Dakota the greatest goes way beyond just hunting a colorful bird. It's the pursuit of something more like the camaraderie that awaits all kinds of hunters from all walks of life and partaking in South Dakota tradition over 100 years in the making.

It's about taking the greatest shots and watching your dog work the greatest fields in the greatest lands, carrying on the greatest heritage and making the greatest memories. So what are you waiting for? From the rush of the flush to the stories at the end of the day, experience a thrill like no other. Learn how at hunt the greatest.com. So the following year, 2020, we went to New Mexico, uh, myself, Dirk and John, and, uh,

I had come off of a, a different New Mexico hunt with Rinella that year. Um, this was a, no, no, no, excuse me. I'm, I got my years mixed up, uh, 2020 New Mexico. This is a hunt where me, Dirk and John had tags and we, we had hunts before that. So we get there and we didn't really have any time to scout. We had, um, we had to figure out what was going on in the area, you know, where the elk were at and how they were going to adapt. So, um,

We started to kind of get our butts kicked a little bit there. We were chasing elk. We couldn't get in. We'd start them on water and started paying attention to tracks on the ground. They're coming into water midday. The bulls are coming in midday.

We started to cover different ground, um, just trying to find out where the elk were at and where the elk wanted to be. So I felt like right off the bat, we wanted to try to hunt some areas that maybe looked good on onyx or areas in the past that had been good. We had to adapt and we found ourselves in areas that we typically hadn't hunted before or didn't think about hunting to go find the elk. And so right off the bat, we adapted. Um, we, it's kind of funny if you watch this video, this was filmed for a loophole project. Um,

We just, we were getting our tails kicked. John had killed a bull on, on the evening of night four. And then I think we were going into like the morning of the eight, the eighth morning of the hunt. Me and Dirk still hadn't killed a boy yet.

and uh dirk dirk was kind of joking over there he was given you know his if this was his first elk hunt ever he might just hang it up and not ever elk hunt again because we were just getting our tails kicked he's like this is the way it always is you know kind of having a little bit of a pity party and falling in it there which was we were all in that he was just the only one to say it you know he kind of looked a little bit sad he had a bloody nose and had some toilet paper in there and uh

Kind of explaining how this elk hunt was as miserable as it could be, but we were still out there, right? We weren't back at camp. We weren't at the truck. We were still trying to find a bull to get going. And as we were midday going to head back to the side-by-sides to go try a new area, we did hear a faint bugle. And so don't ever give up out there. Like being in the woods, having times in the woods is always going to, you know,

It's always going to have better success than being back at camp. 99.9% of the time, unless you have a bull walk through camp, being in the woods, being in the game is more important than being back at camp. You're going to find success that way. So when we got there to where we heard the bull bugle, um,

It was kind of a rut fest. And so there's a few different sayings, you know, like when in Rome, do what the Romans do. So these bulls were cranking. We had spotted a bull across the way, kind of chasing cows. You could hear a couple of different bulls over the ridge going crazy. So it was obvious you had some bulls or herds that had come together or satellite bulls that had come together and were really kind of causing some havoc. So we wanted to join the party. We started calling a lot. We were bugling very aggressively. We were cow calling very aggressively and,

And that bull we spotted, we originally called in to about 25 yards of Dirk. But on that one, that bull came in so silent after he bugled, we had no idea he was there. And the lighting was real, real bad. And I think Dirk ended up getting picked off. But we knew at that time that that bull may have ran back over there, but those other bulls didn't know what was going on, right? The other two bulls that we could hear,

So as soon as that bull crested back over the ridge, we took off down and after him. We got up over there. And this setup was one of my favorite because you don't ever want to set up where the elk that you're calling into should be able to see your location. So this ridge had a pretty good roll in it. And I was able to kind of crawl over the roll and get set up just on the front side of the ridge. And Dirk was able to stay on the backside of the ridge. So in order for an elk to be able to see...

you know, where Dirk's calling location was from, it was going to have to get up on top of that Ridge, walk by me and get up over that. So it could, you know, get the visual on that. So that elk had no idea I had crawled forward and got set up under a juniper. And Dirk was in 20 yards behind me just over a roll, which was an ideal setup. We, we eliminated all chances of hanging up on that setup. If that bull was to come into Dirk, who was the caller of the bull. Um,

You know, amazing setup, kept the shot distances really tight. I knew it was going to be 20 to 30 and it worked out excellent. And so take a little more time on your setup if you can, you know, in instances like that where it works just perfect.

you know, otherwise use that terrain, use that vegetation, make sure when the bull gets the 30, 40 yards, you've got a chance to shoot and you're not going to force that thing to hang up. Um, you know, don't set up across from a meadow that's a hundred yards wide because you're likely never going to kill that bull with archie equipment. It's going to hang up at the edge of the meadow. Look for the cow that should be at the other edge of the meadow. And you, you know, it's going to be, it's just not going to work out. The other thing to know on that hunt, we killed bulls three different ways. John killed his sitting over water.

We killed mine with aggressive bugling, like herd bull tactics, challenge bugles. And then Dirk killed his bull a day later with just natural bedded herd sounds. We spread out over a ridge. We kind of followed a herd to bed with what we assumed was a herd bull and a satellite bull. We got on an adjacent ridge to him and we spread out 150 yards and it was just calf call, cow call.

Lazy bedded bugle calf call cow call cow call calf call you know we were and it wasn't quick it was you know maybe one or two calls every five minutes we were just being very natural we weren't trying to call elk we were just trying to make it sound like a herd had come in and bedded on the knob next to him.

and you could hear the bull eventually get up out of its bed and bugle, a little more active bugle, and then we could hear the bull slowly come across the drainage. He was bugling kind of on his way in. We had to do a little bit of a hopscotch. Dirk was on the opposite end of the ridge, and we had to get him to the side of the ridge that the bull was going to come in on, and we were able to kill that bull. So don't be stuck with...

Happen to always be aggressive, you know, sit in water. There's multiple ways to find success on some of these hunts. And on that hunt, we used them all.

My 2012 Washington bull, we had fire danger here. Industrial timberlands kind of shut down. Don't be afraid to just go try a new area. I wish I could say I knew this bull was here. We had scouted him, but we didn't. I had no idea that that bull lived in that area. We had scouted it before on a very foggy day. And the only thing I had to go off of was tracks in the trails. Like we never seen any elk on that scouting mission, but we just went and tried it. Like, hey, it's there. We didn't see anybody at the trailhead. We went and tried it.

So don't be afraid to try new areas. Sometimes some of my best hunting spots are, you know, me throwing a dart at a dartboard, abandoning what maybe has worked in the past. Let's go find something new. And I, that's one of my favorite things about hunting is just finding new areas that produce or can produce, you know, in the future.

On this one, I shouldn't have been the one to kill this bull. I called in that big bull the day before. My buddy Derek, I had sent him down to set up where I thought the bull was going to come in and didn't realize he had kind of set up behind kind of like an iron wall of high mountain cedar. It was like an impossible, penetrable wall. And I called that bull into about 15 yards from him, about 60 yards from me.

Um, so on that setup, if you would have set up with his back to that wall or at the last of those Cedar trees, um, he would have had a chip shot. So, um, you know, always make sure when you set up, set up in front of, or to the side of a tree, I prefer to be standing if possible. Um, you know, my left shoulder facing to where I think that bull will go and then, um, be able to shoot as much of the shooting lanes as possible without tucking in behind something.

Um, the other thing on this, this hunt was persistence, right? We, I ended up missing that bull the day before I did shoot at it from what I thought was 55 yards away. And it was actually 45. I shot right over its back, but we were persistent. We went back in there. We never, we went back there that night. We went back there the following morning when I killed it. Um, don't, don't become frustrated. Um, you know, we had other people show up.

that evening before and we just kind of held tight. We needed to stay with that bull. We needed to try to figure out what he was going to do. And by staying there, you know, the other hunting group had left with about two hours left in the day. Well, guess what? We stayed there until dark and the bull bugled an hour before dark after those guys left.

So I was able to, to, you know, get that bull to, to beagle again. We knew he'd be there in the morning and we went back in there that next morning and killed it. So be very persistent. Don't just give up on, on things that, you know, don't go your way. Um, you know, it was the last day of the hunt and I was able to kill that, you know, the best bull in my life, um, by just going back and, and, you know, just putting time into that elk and not wanting to change, not go to a new area, thinking I had screwed it up, um, held tough and made it work.

2014 Idaho bull. This was my first trip, um, out of state from Washington kind of when, uh, you know, started to hunt elsewhere and we could still buy tags in Idaho over the counter back then. Um, so we showed up, it was a relatively new area. We did some Onyx scouting and did some of that. So when we showed up to the area, we, we, there were other hunters at the trailhead. I'm not

I'm not ashamed to say that I'll talk to anybody around us. Hey, how's the hunting going? You seen any good bulls? What's the action like? Are they talking?

Well, this guy right off the bat says, you know, up and, you know, around blah, blah, blah mountain. We we've had a couple of good bowls going. We just can't seem to make it work. And you know, this area is good. The wolves have moved over into this area. So use, use whatever people are willing to give you. Now, you know, if, if that guy says like, we're going back in there, we didn't end up going into their spot, but it was, it was good for me to end up saying, all right, at this mountain, this sort of an area, this sort of elevation, um,

these, these elk are talking, um, you know, it just gives you some ideas on what's going on. Um, you know, a couple of days later, uh, he, he said, I'm out of here. We're leaving. Like, if you want to go in there, um, go ahead. We didn't end up going in there cause I killed my bull that day. And then Charlie, we were able to get on some, you know, elk in a different spot, but, um,

We just went in there, covered as much ground as possible. So we had a plan. We were going to walk ridges. We were going to walk some road systems, some gated off-road systems, and we were just going to cover as much of that ground as possible, try to get it figured out, and then figure out where the elk are at and then go from there. So I was able to get a bull to bugle. We went on a little six-mile jaunt, got back to the truck,

Um, didn't really have any great success yet, but we're like, Hey, we're on this long road system. Nobody's hunting it. Let's just bugle occasionally off of the road into a big giant Canyon. I don't remember if it was our third or fourth bugle. All I know is Charlie was eating a bag of purple Skittles. And every time I would, uh,

think i heard a bugle i would hear the crunching bag of purple skittles or him chewing on purple skittles and i remember getting out of the truck because he's driving me nuts and i listened a little bit better and sure enough we got a bugle to you know a bold bugle so we went and and dropped the trailer came back and this is a good instance of if you can get a bull to do what the bull wants to do it's going to be easier to call him in and i'm jumping ahead a little bit here um

This bull was going up the drainage and you could hear it between beagles. He was going up the drainage and we were going to have to come in behind him because of the wind at that point. He was in a, it had a flowing Creek. It was the, the, the sun was starting to go down in a steep Canyon and we knew the wind was going to be getting sucked down the Canyon. So we had to come in behind him, but he was trying to travel up it, which is smart. You know, he's keeping the wind in his face, doing good, making good, smart elk decisions and,

So we had to come in behind him. Trying to relocate him, I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest mistakes is calling your way into elk. He was moving so fast, I did elect to call to this elk on our way in.

You know, location bugle, nothing. Cow call with my diaphragm, nothing. And one of the reasons I carry all these elk calls is back then I was using the Easy Estrus. I cranked on that and he fired off instantly. So I knew he had heard the bugle, didn't answer. I knew he had heard the cow call with diaphragms, but he liked the sound of that Easy Estrus. So we move in another 150 yards. This is a big canyon, so it's taken us a while to make up this ground.

Move forward. I want to know where he's at one more time. Thinking the bull will maybe now he'll answer bugle. Maybe now he'll answer an easy estrus or a diaphragm cow call. Nothing. Hammer's on easy estrus. So it's like one of those things, if I hadn't had that call, we may have never been able to kind of complete this call in. So one of those reasons why I carry multiple calls on some of these hunts.

So back to it's easier to do or it's easier to call elk in if they're doing what they want to do. So that means if an elk wants to go from point A to B, I don't want to call him from point B back to A, if that makes any sense. So I want to get in front of him. I want to get alongside of him if the wind allows.

Um, and, and do that. So this hunt, we had to change setups, um, setups multiple, multiple times because that bull wanted to keep going up the Creek and we were trying to catch up to him kind of coming up behind him.

So we set up multiple times trying to get that bull to come in. And finally, we were able to put enough pressure on him to get him to come in. That was one of the bulls that I shot on a pretty heavy quartering to more of a frontal, but a slightly quartering, you know, on that one, we had to set up in some pretty tight quarters and some brush, but changing setups was

And, you know, putting pressure on that bull is really what kind of changed that scenario to the positive because that bull was very, very hesitant to come in. 2018, Idaho. Some Idaho was on fire that year. Our original hunting, you know, spot was on fire. Thankfully, back then we could still change units because we hadn't bought our tags yet.

So something we don't talk a lot about and sometimes we're too tired to do. But on that hunt, we did some night bugling. I did some night bugling prior to my buddy showing up on this hunt. And I got three or four, I don't remember, five, six, maybe bulls to bugle. And so I started making pins on my, on Onyx is I got bulls to bugle and where they were bugled from and about how far I thought.

Well, the next couple of days we hunted and it was very, very hot and dry year. You know, the reason there were fires, the majority of the vegetation above tree line had burnt up, either been burnt up, been ravaged by, you know, sheep that had been, you know, in the area and it just wasn't good. So,

We had to become smart elk hunters, right? If the elk can't maintain, if they don't got food, if they don't got water, they're not going to be here. No matter if that's where they want to be during September or not, they've got to survive. They've got to find water. And I had the idea that,

that there are elk around because I've heard them bugling at night. And so the night bugling kind of saved that hunt because I maybe would have pulled anchor and went and tried a complete different area within the unit. So we realized what the elk really needed. They were able to give up their preferred food, their preferred bedding, their preferred rutting areas because they needed water. Elk have to water daily, if not multiple times a day during the rut in that hot weather.

So we adapted, we moved where we wanted to hunt. We were in timber a lot more, um, but we, we went and found the elk, um, uh, you know, when calling this bull in. So this is actually my buddy Tyson's bull. We were able to spot some elk. We were up early. We weren't, you know, sleeping in. We spotted a bull pushing a cow over a ridge. It basically the first bit of light that we could, it was barely daylight enough.

Um, for it to happen, but we spotted elk and that really got that whole day started. So we had a pretty good jaunt, you know, hour and a half hike up to that ridgeline to get up and over there. And there was a major rut fest going on the backside, which is exactly what we needed. Um, we moved in, we let them do the talking. We didn't have to make a peep. So a little bit of shock and awe as we got in on this setup.

Um, we, we, the elk had no idea we live there. The thermals had switched coming up into us cause we had to climb up to the ridge. It was just an ideal setup until we got down to where the elk were bedded and the amount, uh, the distance of, of shooting lanes, the distance of, you know, an arrow not getting hit by brush was very, very, uh,

tight. You know, we, we had five to 10 yard shooting windows. So we finally found an area that was as good as it got in some of this big timber. We had about 15 yard shooting lanes and I needed to set up. I like to be able to set up so I can see my shooter. And then hopefully I'll be able to see, um, you know, an elk and be able to react to them. So Tyson got set up and I backed up only about 10 or 15 feet above him and started to call. Um, it,

call a herd bull in. We had a spike come in, kind of check us out. And then the herd bull kind of started ripping up, up the hill. We were able to get within about, I'm guessing a hundred yards of where they were bedded, but we couldn't get any closer due to the brush and the proximity of where those elk were bedded. So this bull comes in fairly quickly, but it's so brushy. He gets,

about to 20 yards and Tyson needs him at about 15 yards to have a legit shot. And, and the bull loses interest and starts to head back to his cows, which is typical. They will come check it out. They should expect to see you there. If not, they're going to turn well.

as the caller, I was able to see him turn and head away from us. And I instantly hammered him with a lip ball. I was able to see how aggressive he was on his, on his way in. I knew that I could probably take advantage of a very aggressive lip ball that was, you know, 20 yards away from him. And that bull on a dime flipped a,

additional 180 in the direction he was and he came right back in. He broke through the brush, kind of pushes his head through and Tyson was able to make a great shot at 15 yards. But if I wouldn't have been able to see that elk or if Tyson wouldn't have been able to communicate to me, we would have never killed that bull. So there's a great reason why

I think the color needs to be sometimes close and the color also needs to be close in order to create a threat for that bull. If I'd have been backed up a lot from that, you know, now the bull that's close to your herd is 150 yards away and not a hundred yards away. And, and, you know, so sometimes I'm a big, uh,

I'm a big fan of having that collar right on top of the hunter. That way you're not creating any more separation because you're exponentially going to have better call-ins or more successful call-ins when that collar is right on top of the shooter at times.

And sometimes, you know, another thing we took from this hunt is the setup wasn't optimal, but you have to take what's given to you, your relation, um, your distance from the elk, your, you know, the best shot opportunities you're going to have. And sometimes you just have to make that work. Um, yeah, I would love to have been able to shoot 30 yards in there, but it wasn't possible. Um, you know, set up and, uh, we, we, we made it work the best we could.

So 2023 Oregon Bowl. This is a story I don't like to tell, but once again, it's one of those times where you need to be as skilled as possible. You don't want to be a one trick pony, so to speak. And 2023, so last year.

I had a little bit of a mental breakdown. It's big country. It was rough. We had put in some tough, rough days, but finally about day eight, I had to kind of kick myself in the butt and say, stop trying to find an easy one. Yeah, there were elk all over through the unit, but the easy ones were having more pressure.

the easy ones you have heard more people bugle from the road the easy ones were not going to be as likely to come in um compared to the harder elk that i was able to find yeah the harder elk were maybe less dense in areas they were maybe harder to get to i was going to burn more energy to get them but on that 2023 hunt we had the i kind of had to just question myself like why are you trying to find an easy one this isn't you know typical let's go find a difficult elk and uh

It really kind of helped. And that goes along with pressure. There was a ton of pressure on this 2023 Oregon hunt.

um you know people claiming areas people in areas and so i really just had to as i mentioned make an effort to go find elk that i knew other people weren't hunting and it kind of um you know turn turn the corner on the hunt but it was it was still still difficult and and so when we we stopped trying to find the easy one we had made an effort to chase every beagle and all the steep ground uh

Things just weren't working. Trying to run my system of being a, you know, a pressure hunter, you put pressure on the elk, get close to him, bugle wouldn't work. We'd bump something. We would, you know, the elk would just pick up and leave. All right, let's get real tight. And so on that day I ended up killing, we had dropped 3,700 feet and climbed 3,700 feet chasing bugles. So we would get in tight. We would go to cow calls. Same result just wasn't working.

So as a hunter that's, you know, a hunter that loves to call elk, that takes pride in being able to call elk, I had just got my tail kicked for nine days straight. And so that evening I was able to locate a bull with a location bugle. So that was acceptable. Um,

We had to make a move. So we had to come in from a different direction. During the little drive where we kind of bumped around, I said, you know what? I'm not grabbing my pack and I'm not grabbing my calls. I'm going to wear my chest harness with a range finder. We're not using calls. I'm not even going to use a call to keep him bugling. We're just going to go completely silent. And if it works, it works. If not, then I'm going to probably be cussing myself and wishing that I had called.

So this bull continues to be able throughout the evening. Um, we, we have about an hour left, so we're, we're trying to really beat feet up there, get set up. And on that one, this was the first bull I've ever killed that I didn't call in. We were able to slowly work our way in. We were able to, to spot a cow, uh,

Up ahead of us by slowly, you know, scanning the area, I was able to spot some horns through the grass. I was able to kind of figure out how he was oriented. I was able to figure out where to put his head behind a tree. And we just literally crawled, you know, walked and crawled to within 40 yards of this bull. So yeah.

why sometimes I take a lot of pride in being able to call Elkin. I also want to find success in any way that there is. And on this one, we just adapted. We put the calls away. We want to be able to use all of those tools in our toolbox and was able to make it happen on that bull. So that's kind of my wrap up. I just wanted to kind of walk through those things and to kind of

bring all that together. There are things we do on every hunt and a lot of it comes from the gut. You know, we sit on this podcast, we sit in seminars and we're able to draw up these perfect cookie cutter little scenarios and the real thing

in the real world and the real elk woods, it just doesn't work like that. There's little pieces of information that I would be here for an hour trying to explain the entire scenario. Like, oh, there was another bull 300 yards away down the ridge. And we maybe heard a cow over here. And earlier that morning, we had seen somebody on the road a half mile down. All of those things come into play that will eventually help us make decisions. But this was just to show you that

on all of these things to be a successful, a complete elk hunter, you need to be able to use all this information to help you be successful. Scouting, being aggressive, barking, sitting water, whatever it may be, all of this stuff

at times is what allows me to be successful and not necessarily the same thing over and over, if that makes any sense. So I really appreciate all of you tuning in to this episode of Cutting the Distance. Elk season is a month and a half away. So I hope you guys are all shooting your bows, getting your calls tuned in, just getting ready. It's, in my opinion, the best month of the year.

Look forward to every season. And thanks again for tuning in to Cutting the Distance. And we'll catch you on the next episode.

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