Ep. 96: How to Call an Elk - Fundamentals First: Cow Calls and Bugles
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Meadeater Radio Live is the newest addition to the Meadeater podcast feed. Every Thursday at 11 a.m. Mountain Time, we'll be going live from Meadeater HQ on the Meadeater Podcast Network YouTube channel. This one-hour variety show will feature call-in guests, segments, and live feedback from the Meadeater audience. Then, on Friday morning, the episode will be available in audio form on the Meadeater podcast feed.

So come hang with me, Steve, Yanni, Cal, and the rest of the Medeater crew every Thursday at 11 a.m. Mountain Time on the Medeater Podcast Network YouTube channel. And remember, it's live, so anything can happen. Does that mean I can finally do my segment about animal sex? Well, almost anything. Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance Podcast. I'm Dirk Durham.

And it is August 1st. And you know what that means. We have 31 days until September. I don't know if anybody else is counting those days besides me, but man, this is the time of year that I get kind of excited.

You can almost, it's been super hot and you can almost kind of feel a change in August, especially the further along we get. Usually by the 15th, I start feeling those changes. The mornings are a little cooler. The air is a little fresher. You get maybe a little more of a crisp. You can tell we're on the cusp of entering fall. And as hot as it's been, and it's been dry and hot across the West here, I think we're all probably welcoming those kind of mornings here.

Definitely. So we have 31 days to finalize our preparations. Are we ready? Where are you at on your fitness goals?

So I really, really like to ramp my fitness stuff up in August, stay pretty active all summer. But in August, I'm really going to get more granular on my day to day fitness. I need to be hiking the hills, do some bicycle work, taking the dog for a walk around the neighborhood, whatever I can do to get steps in every day.

Um, here in the treasure Valley, we have, uh, the Boise foothills, which have a really great trail system. And, um, there's some really steep ones and there's some really mild ones, but you can really get in some good, good hikes in there. So I really like to, to start hiking those a lot more often, um, in August. So that way, um,

I'm prepared to climb mountains and chase elk. And the good part, I guess, and the bad part is those foothills, there's no trees, there's no shade. It's just hot. So unless you get up super early in the morning and beat the heat, which I never can seem to do. I'm not an early riser. So I'm usually suffering in the heat, but it's good because

If I'm used to dealing with hot sun and sweat and discomfort during those hikes, then it's going to acclimate me to doing the same thing during September when the mornings are cool. So that's a great way to fulfill my fitness goals. I also like to do some dumbbell workouts, you know, I'm doing dumbbells.

Curls for the curls, as they say. I'm doing a lot of shoulder stuff. I just want to be able to be strong. And that way when my pack goes on my back, I won't get fatigued all September. That kind of goes along with your hiking, right? You're rucking, put your pack on, put a little weight in there, you know, 20 pounds at the beginning. And as season approaches, put a pretty good load in it.

Shooting your bow. That's paramount at this point of summer. We should have started. If you haven't, you should have probably started that a couple months ago. But shooting, you know, a pretty dedicated schedule of shooting. I like to shoot in the mornings before it gets warm here, before I start my day.

shoot a few rounds. I'm not a big believer in shooting 100 arrows a day like some people. I feel like high quality, shorter rounds, shorter amount of reps works better for me. That way I can just focus on all the fundamentals. I'm focusing on hunting the bow or holding the bow. I'm focusing on releasing the arrow correctly. I'm just working on all the muscle memory of doing it right.

And when I start getting fatigued, then that's when things start slipping. My group starts slipping. I start practicing bad habits. So I like to, I like to practice good habits and acquiring gear. Um, it seems like once you hit the 4th of July, everybody starts getting pretty, pretty ramped up on buying their gear, you know, for hunting season, whether it's new, new hunting gear or

freeze dried meals or elk calls or what have you, then yeah, it's time. Get that stuff ordered. If you're ordering clothes or boots, get those ordered up right away or bought from your local retailer that we have time. That's like, ah, these don't fit quite right. You can always return them, get them,

get the right size. That way, come September, it's all good. You don't have to worry about waiting on that stuff to get shipped out right away to you or maybe they're not in stock in your local retailer. And then last but not least, learn to call. That, you know, I always recommend starting months in advance of September. That way, come September, you have really a really good grasp on calling and you feel really confident

But if you haven't done that, um, not to worry. I mean, we can, we still have time, but you're gonna have to be dedicated. You're gonna have to spend some time here. We're going to have to do, um, you know, every day practice every day. It doesn't have to be hours a day, but that 10, 15 minutes a day will let you crush that learning curve, um, on your commute, on the way to work, um,

Maybe when you get home and out in the garage or somewhere where you're not annoying the rest of the family. I mean, it's kind of tough to call it home sometimes when you have a family because everybody doesn't appreciate those loud bugles like a lot of us do. But this is going to kick off our series, Learn to Call Elk. And we're going to talk about fundamentals first, cow calls and bugles. And now whether you're a seasoned vet or a beginner, I got you.

I always like to tell people to practice the fundamentals first. If you've been calling for a long time, if you practice these fundamentals, it will definitely help you improve your game. It'll help you make your calls a lot more realistic. Now, I always like to say you want to crawl before you walk, right? We want to build muscle memory and balance.

We want our tongue and our internal diaphragm to know how much pressure to put, how much air to blow, how much tongue pressure to blow. Every single time we put that call in our mouth, that way we build confidence to when it comes time to blow it in the elk woods, then you know what's going to come out of your mouth, right? If you haven't practiced much, sometimes it's like, okay, I'm going to try to make this certain call and you go to make it and it's like,

Oh, I didn't come out like I anticipated. And that's just lack of practice. So tuning up your calls every day for 10, 15 minutes will definitely take that guesswork out. But crawling before you walk has to do with

If you're a new caller, don't just open a package. If you never tried to call a bugle before, don't just open the package and throw the reed in your mouth and try to rip a big bugle because I promise you it probably won't sound anything like an elk. Then that can be kind of discouraging and be like, oh man, wow, that was crazy. I don't know if I know I can do this elk calling stuff. So get your diaphragm, put it in your mouth,

If you're using a Phelps amp call, we have the little silver dome on top of our diaphragms and you want to put that

that silver dome on top towards the roof of your mouth. And you want to put the latex, the flat end of the call, not the rounded end, but the flat end of the call, you want to put that towards your teeth. And you want to put that up in your mouth there and get it on your tongue. Now don't put it too far back because that's where that gag reflex will come in. And you get it too far back, you'll start gagging. And if you get it too far forward, a lot of folks have a problem with a tickle. It'll tickle their tongue.

So you try to find that kind of a happy place in the middle of your tongue where your tongue feels the strongest. Now, I like to picture having a grape on my tongue. And if I were to push pressure with my tongue on that grape and I want to crush it,

I'm going to put that grape in the strongest part of my tongue. So if you put that grape too far forward, you just don't have, you just don't have any leverage. It doesn't seem like you're the tip of your tongues is as strong as right in the middle. You put it too far back there again, it's not very strong. So find that strong part right in the middle that you feel like you can push the best pressure. And that's, that's where that, that diaphragm is going to want to sit. And then you want to, you want to push it hard against the roof of your mouth and

And you want to seal off all the air. You want to exert a little bit of air pressure. Now, we're not going to try to push so much pressure that we're trying to air up a tire with our mouth. We're just trying to push enough pressure to where how much air would you blow if you were trying to just blow some air through like a straw, for instance, like a drink straw. It's not a huge amount of air, but you want to push a little bit of air.

And you want to be able to seal that air off. So seal it off with your tongue and also around the sides of your teeth and the sides of your, of your, of your cheeks. Don't let it escape around those places. Now, once you have things sealed off, you want to relax your tongue just ever so slightly. And if you can, um, some of us have a, a very articulate tongue where you can like, you can roll it up like a leaf, um,

You can control how much pressure or strength you put into things depending on what part of your tongue you're using. So I like to try to relax, if I can, that middle part of my tongue to where the air would pass between my tongue and that latex. I'm going to relax just enough to let...

a little tiny bit of air go across that latex. And it's going to make a tiny little noise. It's going to make a little noise like a mosquito. And it's going to sound something like this. Now, I'm not pushing lots of air. Like I said, we're just getting some air flowing. It doesn't have to be loud, but I just want to make that first initial noise. And at first, you may not get that high note. You may get a note like this. ♪

If you're getting a little lower pitch note, that means you're not pushing hard enough with your tongue. Apply more pressure and apply more pressure until you can raise the octaves of that sound to this. An experiment. You notice how I went from low to super high to a little lower. You're just going to have to find that right pressure. And this is a little bit difficult in the beginning.

Because your tongue's never done this before. Or maybe if you're a seasoned vet, this is not how you normally typically do it. But if you can find that high note every time you put your diaphragm in your mouth, then later when you try to bugle, it's going to be easier to hit that high note. Because a lot of people struggle with hitting that high note. It seems like some folks just can't get that high note, that high ringing note, which is what a lot of elk really respond to, especially when you're going to challenge them. So...

figuring this out right from the beginning will help you later on. So once you find that note,

then we want to practice that. Now, this is boring and this is not sexy. That's not these big, sexy, badass bugles. It's like, oh, wow, you may impress your friends with, right? This is just kind of annoying. And little kids do this. Like you have a kid, a diaphragm. And before you know it, that kid's running around making all sorts of crazy noises, annoying you. Pretty soon they're trying to talk like,

like a Donald Duck or talking like whatever they can with this stupid read in their mouth. Right. That's why kids learn, pick this up so quickly because as adults, we're, we're a little bit stoic, right? We don't really typically act like that or do those kinds of things. And unless your baby, a little bit of a character and like to mess with people, but

Um, but experiment, find the boundaries of that diaphragm, you know, uh, with just a little pressure, just barely touching your tongue to that diaphragm, you can get that really low note.

And that really high note takes a lot more pressure. So from the low to the high, play with it. Try to make all sorts of weird noises. Just finding the boundaries that this call has will help out. It's like, okay, I'm starting to see how this thing works, right? Light tongue pressure, low notes. Hard tongue pressure, high notes. So practice that mosquito noise and it's going to be boring. So I always say, take a deep breath, let that air start seeping out.

And then hold that same note for the length that you have a breath. And, you know, towards the end, it's going to get weird because you're fighting for air, number one. Number two, the air pressure, you're running out of air pressure, air volume. So you're going to have to change how hard you're pushing that air. And we're not going to want to push the air with our lungs. We're trying to push this with our internal diaphragm, bracing our core tight.

and using our internal diaphragm to push air across that reed or diaphragm. So that may take a little more tongue pressure, a little less tongue pressure, or a little more push on air pressure. But as you play with it, you'll understand it. And pretty soon your brain, your tongue, your core, all that stuff's going to start working together. They know their job at this point.

That's where that muscle memory comes in. So practice that, that mosquito noise until every time you put that diaphragm in your mouth, you've got it. You know, it, there's no hesitation, just like what I did. I don't have to search for the note. It just, I put it in and my tongue knows exactly how hard to push. My, my diaphragm knows how much air to push across the reed and everything comes out. Perfect. Now, once you get that down, now we want to learn variance. Okay.

And, you know, from the high notes to the low notes. So I always tell people practice the siren sound. So it's going to sound like a siren. So you're going to start at the low sound, barely any tongue pressure. You're going to push, push, push until you get that up to that mosquito sound. Hold it and then let it slide back down the other side to that low note.

And if there's a lot of work to be done by your core here, by your internal diaphragm, there's a lot of work to be done. If you brace up and just really try to articulate those, those note changes smoothly all the way up, all the way down.

That's where the key of controlling your elk bugles comes from. So this is where the old veterans elk callers could maybe use a little help if they don't have perfect elk calls already. Because some of us, as we climb those notes, our diaphragm may crack or pop or may break that sound. And then it'll kind of take back off. So this is where we practice that to get those really, really smooth transitions. And it's going to sound something like this.

Start out slow in the beginning. And once you get better at going up and down that staircase, then you can speed up your siren sound. You notice mine kind of broke that little cracking noise, right? I tried to rush it a little too quick. So let the call climb up.

Brace your core, let it climb, and then let it descend. Just smooth transitions top to bottom, top to bottom, top to bottom. It's boring. It's a weird noise. But the great part about it is you can practice these two exercises, mosquito and siren, in the comfort of your car on the way to work, and people won't look at you weird like when you're practicing with a bugle. Ha ha ha.

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So how do these relate to calls, right? Well, those are kind of fundamental sounds to call. So that mosquito noise, we can put that to work in a cow call. We can put that to work in a locator bugle. The siren, we put that to work in a standard full bugle. So we're taking that mosquito noise to a cow call now. So hit that high note, that mosquito noise, you hit that high note.

And then just kind of relax your tongue real slow and just let it fall off the back notes there. Just let it go slow. And then as it goes lower and lower on the note scales, as you get to where your tongue is barely touching that call, the notes will get a lot deeper. So it's going to sound something like this. ♪

So practice in that. Now we can shorten that up. It doesn't really sound like a cow call just by the speed and the tempo of the call, but it's the same notes. So as we speed that up, so we don't linger so long at the high note. We don't linger so long in the low note. We just let it kind of, we kind of make that cow call and it's going to sound like this. And we want to do this with just light, light air pressure, right? Okay.

We're trying to make cow calls right now that are relaxed, that aren't alarming, that aren't excited. We're just trying to make those super sweet, mature cow calls. Now, the more you let your tongue linger on the low side, on those lower notes, the more mature it's going to sound. The less you let it linger on the low side, it's going to sound more like a calf. So here's a demonstration. Meow.

That's a mature cow. Just a little bit of high note, but a little bit more low note. It lingered a little longer on that low note. Now the calf call is going to be slightly different. We're just going to give a little bit more of that high note and we're just not even going to give the low note. We're staying that higher octave. So we're not loosening our tongue all the way up. And calf calls, they take even less air pressure than the cow calls because the call is a lot longer. So

This is kind of a delicate procedure. And at first, it'll probably be a little bit tough to control that air pressure because we'll tend to like, a lot of folks really have to work on that air pressure control a lot in the beginning and tongue control, of course. But getting those to work at the right time together, it does take some work. That's why back to that whole mosquito, the siren, we're learning that tongue control long before we're trying to learn how to make a call.

That way it makes this a lot easier and you can make a lot more realistic kind of sounds. Now, if your calls are kind of harsh or squeaky like this, you may be tensing up your mouth too much. Oftentimes it's almost the human nature to kind of like brace your mouth, like your cheeks and every part of your mouth to make this call. And when you do that, it'll make a squeaky or a kind of a

less calming sound of a call. So my cheeks are relaxed. The only thing that's flexing is my tongue. Okay. And as I go from the high note to the low note on that cow call, I might even be slightly relaxing my jaw, dropping my jaw down a little bit. So experiment with that to see how it best suits you. I know some guys will drop their jaw and let

a lot and let them create a larger cavity inside their mouth for the sound to resonate out of and they just do it all with tongue work. Now that takes a lot of strength in your tongue and a lot of practice and discipline and in practicing in front of a mirror. But just to start out, I wouldn't try to open your jaw too much. I would just kind of let your tongue do most of the work and then slightly as you hit that lower note, just slightly let your jaw relax.

Now, bugles. That's the one everybody likes to do, right? Cow calls, cow and calf calls are deadly. There's a lot of folks that love to use cow and calf calls to call in bulls. I like to couple my cow and calf calls with bugles. Whatever camp you're in, right?

Bugling is very effective. Now, maybe you don't, maybe you don't finish your elk with bugles, but you get them started, right? You're trying to locate a bull from a long distance. Bugles are loud. You're just trying to get that bull to sound off to you. So it's important to bugle. If you want to call elk, you got to learn how to bugle elk. So for bugles, we're going to go right back to our good friends, mosquito and siren. First things first though, when you bugle, I always recommend

to practice with a tube. You can definitely practice without one, but everything you learn without the tube changes when you put a tube to your mouth. I've conducted a lot of training courses with folks hands-on in person when we learn bugles. And if we practice too much without a bugle, then when they put the tube

bugle to their lips, it's like something changes and then everything that their tongue and diaphragm and brain knew, it's all changed. It's all out the window. Now we have to relearn. So I like to recommend, make sure you practice your bugles with a tube. And also they're just going to sound better.

And all tubes are not created equal. You know, the old vacuum cleaner style that everybody grew up using back in the eighties. And even today, some people still prefer those kind. Those sound good, but they don't always sound as good as possible. Um,

I know hunters who have been using those for a long time and you hand them like a newer style tube, the ones that look like a baseball bat, right? Here at Phelps, we have the Renegade, we have the Unleashed, we have the Unleashed V2, we have the Metal Tube, we have the Unrivaled. We've got a lot of different tubes, but they're not those flexible, flexible,

vacuum cleaner style tubes. But when you give somebody that's been bugling their whole life with one of those flexible tube styles, you give them one of these larger bat style tubes,

It's an immediate improvement. And what I mean by that, it sounds more crystal clear. It's the back pressure is better to where as they put air pressure into the tube, not all of it leaks out the opposite end. And it lets them build those notes up the, of the octaves a lot easier without, without putting, pushing so much, so hard and pushing so much air pressure in there. So it kind of retains some of that air pressure there.

So it can make a okay or decent color into a great color just by switching tubes. That's just kind of a little pro tip.

So back to learning how to bugle. So our good old friend mosquito, right? So we're going to, for a locator bugle, you just hit that high note. You hold it for a while. Then just like the cow call, you drop it off the backside. But this time, instead of being slow and lazy with the way it comes off the back end, what we're going to do is come off pretty quickly, abruptly. And then we're going to add our voice. We're going to inflect our voice to it. And it's going to sound like somebody punched us in the gut.

Now, we're not going to growl like a bear. We're not going to do that. We're going to take a punch to the gut because that adds just the right amount of bass in there. That bass resonates in the tube and it just sounds good. And it doesn't sound too growly. If you growl too much, it just doesn't sound quite right. But if you just add that to the end.

then it will sound a lot better. So practice this by starting out with your siren and then drop it off abruptly and then a punch to the gut. Now, that didn't really sound much like a note bugle at all. But if we do it to a tube, it's going to sound a lot better.

sounds way better. And you can feel that bass with inside the tube. So you get good feedback, whether it's audibly and you can actually feel that bass in the tube. So your hand felt picks that up and say, okay, yeah, that felt right. Sounded right. I like it. So practice that. And the transition from that mosquito noise down to the, to the punch to the gut can sometimes be challenging for people. So

it's sometimes it's really hard for people to blend those together. So I'll do this in slow motion, slow, slow audio motion, I guess. So, because there is kind of a, a disconnect from the bugle to, or from the mosquito noise to that, to that punch to the gut. Yeah.

So some people have to break it down. They'll have to do the mosquito noise and then let their brain reset and then go, oh, at the end. So even if you have to do that, that's okay. Because as you do that over and over and over again, pretty soon you can connect the two a lot quicker to where it sounds like this. Okay. That's your locator bugle. Now to do a full bugle,

That's where you start at the bottom, take it to the top note, hold it for a little bit, and then drop off the backside. Now, that's where we're going to use our old friend siren, right? So in the beginning, when that diaphragm is barely touching your tongue, you're getting that first low note. We're going to inflect our voice. Now, again, we're not going to growl hard like this. We're going to do more of a... Like...

Like you're clearing your throat, like let's say you had some phlegm in your throat or, you know, you get a little bit sick or you got a frog in your throat per se. It'd be almost like clearing your throat. So it's not like a, an odd, like a, you're using your voice to growl. You're just, you're just clearing your throat. So it's more just like the, the, you're tightening your throat to make that noise versus using your vocal cords, right? We don't want to use, overuse the vocal cords because then it kind of overdoes it.

And then once you get that first note started and you start that wheeze or that throat clearing growl at the beginning, once you get that established, then we start climbing the octaves. And it doesn't take much air pressure. Some people kind of overdo it in the beginning. They like really do it super loud. Like they do put lots of air across the diaphragm. They put a lot of air through their throat.

Um, the problem is if you start out with lots and lots of air, as you climb the notes, it's harder, harder, harder to control your diaphragm. It's almost like driving your car, right? Whenever you, you pull out onto a street, if you have a car with a lot of horsepower, if you just mash on it from the, from the red light and you take a left or you take a right.

You can break traction. It's just kind of hard to control. Whereas if you just kind of putt, putt, putt, putt out into the intersection, and once you get on a straight line, you gas it, way easier to control, right? It's the same thing here. Start out with a modest amount of air. And then as you climb the notes, put more air pressure behind it. So as you tighten your tongue, then tighten your core and push more air pressure. So it's going to sound like this. This is without the tube. Ah!

So just like our locator bugle, once you get up to that top note, you hold it for a little bit. And then when you drop off the backside, we come down quick. Come down quick and add that punch to the gut.

Now to add some variance to your call, you can draw that out on the backside when you bring it down. But just for beginner purposes, just to start off, start learning how to do this right off the bat, I would come off the backside pretty quickly. Because it seems like if you start out the other way, draw it way out on the, you know, draw it like a longer note coming off the backside, right?

it's hard to kind of break that habit and then to gain more variance. So the important part about calling elk is like these first few calls I'm showing you, these are just the basic call. Once you get those mastered, then you're going to want to practice adding some variance to them. So you can shorten up the first half. You can shorten up the back half of the call, of the bugle. Same with the cow calls. Same with the calf calls. You can change

how hard you push your duck with the tongue on the diaphragm. It can change how much air you're putting across. You could like for cow calls, for instance, you can make, you know, push a little more air pressure, a little more tongue pressure, make some real loud calls and then kind of back it off, make some quiet, quiet, quiet ones, almost a whisper. This adds depth. It adds the illusion that there's more than one cow elk there.

The bugles, not every bugle, bull bugle is the same. Not every one of them sounds like a dinosaur. Not every one of them sounds like a kid just hit in puberty that has a little bit of a weird kind of voice. They all sound a little different. And at different times, the same bull may bugle differently. You know, if he's bedded, he may just kind of groan at you. If he's chasing cows and getting feeling frustrated and trying to keep these cows in line, he's going to scream and rip these huge bugles out.

So you just never know. That's why it's so important to learn that variance to these calls. So back to making this bugle. So start out on that low end of your bugle, barely touching your diaphragm, getting that first note. Add some throat clearing sounds. And then climb up the octave.

That's with the tube. See? Sounds so much better with a tube.

So I encourage you, if you can, practice with the tube right off the bat. Now one huge important thing while using a tube is, I see veteran callers do this, I see new callers do this, but they don't seal their lips around the tube, right? We have to make an airtight seal on that tube with your lips. We don't want any of the air escaping out the side of your lips and the cracks, right? So we want to form our lips tight.

to the tube in a kind of a round fashion. That way we, we make it a good airtight seal connection. That way all the air's going into the tube and it'll help you articulate those notes. Now, some advanced calling, there are times I do break that seal, like on a, like on a,

like a challenge bugle scream or something. I may hit that high note and have a little bit of air seepage on the sides of my lips, just a little bit air come out of there, just so I can scream a lot easier, and then I'll tighten up as I come down. It'll sound something like this. But for most intensive purposes, you're going to want to seal your lips off on that tube. So...

back to gaining good control and smooth transitions.

the best thing to do is spend that 10, 15 minutes a day practicing that on your commute with your tube. People are going to look at you like, what is that guy doing or gal doing? And some people might think you're drinking a bottle of wine. If you have, if you have one of these tubes, it looks like a baseball bat. It almost looks like a bottle of wine. Some of them do. So it, you might get some funny looks from people. I know, I know a,

a guy that told me he got pulled over by a cop one time and he said he was turned in by somebody said he was drinking a bottle of wine

And the cop pulled over. He's like, oh, I had a report you were drinking and driving. And he's like, no, I'm practicing my Elk Bugle. He looked over in the seat and showed him the tube. He's like, OK, I get it. Yeah. All right. Have a good day. So be careful on on that. You know, people, especially if you live in the city, people kind of give you some funny looks. But maybe that's part of the fun anyway. Right. We've all seen plenty of gadgets and fads come and go. But here's one product that stood the test of time.

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Help your engine run better and last longer. Pick up a can of Seafoam today at your local auto parts store or visit seafoamworks.com to learn more. We want to practice that full bugle. So to get that control, we want to bugle over and over and over and over again, kind of like our siren routine. So we're going to do this.

Just over and over and over again, that just that same routine over, you know, you go from the low to the high drop off, low to the high to the drop off. Feel free to take a breath in between, especially if you're driving because you don't want to black out, run out of air. But that that exercise that right there will create so much consistency on how good your bugles turn out.

Because if you're doing it over and over and over again, let's say you did 100 of them, right?

That built such great muscle memory to where there's no doubt you're doing a hundred of them a day There's no doubt every time you put your your diaphragm in your mouth You're gonna be able to make the bugle that you want to hear and then once you master that play with it You know, you don't have to hit that highest note Maybe you just want to do a lazy lazy bugle to where you don't hardly climb off that very first note you just in that

And then you put a little bit more of that throat clearing noise or that voice into it. It's going to sound something like this. You know, a lot less air pressure. You can do that kind of a variance. You could give it a little bit more on the back end instead of just dropping off the backside of your bugle real abruptly. Then we can come off longer.

You can play with it. You can add it. You can add whatever you want to it. But the most important thing is that it sounds like a real elk. Now,

It's fun to watch your favorite YouTubers and trying to emulate and trying to reproduce the same exact sounds they are. Um, but honestly, the best course of action, the best practice you can get is listening to real elk and outside of the rut, it's really hard to do that. So I recommend getting on YouTube, send your significant other or your family to the water park or send your significant other to the spa for the day, whatever. Um,

That way you have some time alone in the house, unless maybe they want to be part of it. You know, some families love to call together. We see, you know, little kids, you know, they love it. They want to be like dad or mom calling elk. So whatever the case is in your household, you know, make it good and fun for everybody. But I would say turn on something on YouTube. There's a ton of videos you can do some search like just elk bugling or elk hunting.

You can just get creative with your searches and there's tons and tons of videos of rutting elk in like national parks and places like that or people who just go out and record elk on the public land even. But what we're looking for is just hearing all those elk vocalizations, you know, all the cow calls, all those bugles. And what you'll find is like as you're listening to all these different elk,

Man, that one sounds really good. Like the typical elk call that we all have grown to love. But man, that other one sounds sick. He doesn't even sound like an elk or that thing sounds terrible. So the moral of the story is you don't have to sound like that perfect cookie cutter, three note bugle or some world champion elk call. You don't have to listen to that and be like, I have to really sound like that person. What you have to sound like is a real elk.

Now, I will say, whenever I say you have to sound good, that doesn't mean you don't have to sound like a real elk. I had an encounter here a couple falls ago when I was calling a bull and I called in another hunter. He come and tried to move in on me and the bull. He thought we were real elk. And he was making these noises that sounded like a puppy that was getting hurt or something. It was so odd and weird that...

I don't know why anyone would even try to attempt to make those kind of noises because it didn't sound anything like elk. It didn't represent an elk whatsoever. And it kind of, it was like, it sounded so weird. I can't even, I can't even reproduce the sound, but it was something kind of like that. So,

You don't have to sound like a world champion elk caller. Absolutely not. But you do have to have elk like sounds and that kind of a sound, that kind of a call is absolutely not an elk sound and that'll just scare them away. So if you can't make elk sounds and you've practiced and practice, maybe you just have to put the calls away. But if you can, you know, maybe it's not that perfect cookie cutter bugle, but man, you were watching some of these elk videos and some of those sick sound and bowls, um,

yeah, I kind of sound like that. That'll work. That will call elk in. It doesn't have to sound perfect, but it does have to sound like an elk. Now, another tip for practicing is videotaping yourself. So videotape, man, I just dated myself. We don't have videotapes these days. That's all digital. So take your phone. We all have a smartphone. Take your phone,

Put it somewhere pretty close to your face or you can see yourself from your waist up or whatever. And then practice. Hit your record button on the video and practice. And go through your practice routines and stuff. And trust me, I think we're all guilty of being our own worst critic. So when you watch it back...

then you'll probably discover a lot of different things, like how you maybe thought or perceived how it sounded versus what it sounds like when you play it back. Sometimes you'll spot that you're doing something odd or weird with your mouth.

or something that you're not intending to do. And if you can't see yourself do it, it's kind of hard to spot. I don't know if you remember back in middle school and gym class, and we're learning how to do cartwheels, right? And I was not like the athletic kid in junior high school at all. So we did them. And I'm like, I did it. And they're like, you didn't do it. I'm like, yes, I did. Dude, your feet didn't come two feet off the ground, right? And until you see yourself do it...

Sometimes it's really hard to understand that feedback from someone else. So as you record yourself, you will discover yourself. Maybe, maybe you are letting some air escape around your lips when you're bugling. Maybe you're doing something with your jaw or maybe you're tightening up, like maybe you're tucking your chin in or maybe you're, maybe you're,

doing weird body movements. Like people really get into this. Like I tried to like not move my body a lot. Now, if you watch me chuckle and grunt, you'll see my belly kind of bounce a little bit. Cause I'm, I'm really working using that, my, my core and my diaphragm to get those chuckles out. That's okay. But we don't, we're not trying to like be too animated with their calls because of course in the elk woods, we don't want to move around that much.

So by recording ourselves, we can kind of see some things that may be hampering or hindering good elk quality sounds.

If you're kind of hunched over and kind of tight in the chest or whatever, you may not be able to hit all those high notes. Maybe you're not getting enough air going through your calls. Maybe if you stand up straight and take deep breaths and really kind of open yourself up, that's a better way to get a little bit more air across the calls. But video yourself. It's surprising. I can video myself even right today and I'll be like, oh, I don't.

I look funnier. It's almost like hearing yourself talk, right? You listen to yourself, uh, playback. Anytime I've heard the podcast played back, I'm like, man, my voice sounds weird. It's not like a nerd. Um, so we don't always like the feedback we get from recording ourselves, but it's good if you're really trying to increase, um, how realistic your elk calls sound.

Well, that's going to be a wrap for today. Our next episode that I'm going to cover on calling elk is going to be chuckles, grunts, and barks. So that's going to take you to the next level. Those are harder, definitely harder, take a lot more effort. A lot of folks message me on Instagram, Facebook, or talk to me in person, talk about, man, I just really struggle with my grunts and my chuckles. How can, what am I doing wrong? So,

I'll kind of go over those things on my next episode and see if we can get you guys chuckling, grunting. And if you want to see this all, you know, if you want to see me making these calls, then I have an elk calling series on my YouTube channel. My YouTube channel is called The Bugler. It's just spelled out one word, The Bugler. And if you go to my YouTube channel and select playlists,

And you'll go down through the list and you'll see learn to call out. And it'll start from the basics of picking out a diaphragm all the way through the most advanced calls. So if you need a little tune up, you want to see visual on how I'm doing it, which is really helpful sometimes to see somebody do something instead of just hear them tell you over a podcast, then you might give it a look-see.

There's also some good elk hunting videos on there in case you get bored and want to get amped up for elk season. So anyway, thanks for following along today. Appreciate it. Man, 31 days, 31 days till September. I can't wait. And I hope you guys and gals are making the right preparations to have a successful hunt. So we'll see you next time.

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There are stories here about gunshot wounds, wild archaeological discoveries, getting lost for days, hunting turkeys in a tornado, and getting an accurate premonition about a 24-point buck in a dream. Order it now. It's available wherever audiobooks are sold. And, as always, you can write into Campfire Stories at...

TheMeatEater.com if you'd like to share one of your own. It's Meat Eaters Campfire Stories, Discoveries, Revelations, and Near Misses, narrated by me, Stephen Rinella.