Speaker 1: Welcome to Cutting the Distance Field Reports, breaking news from
Speaker 1: the Elk Woods and now your host, Jason Phelps. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to another edition of Cutting the Distance Field Reports.
Speaker 1: I'm here in Oregon with Charlie Smith, just finishing up
Speaker 1: our elk hunt. We were on um pretty limited tag
Speaker 1: uh in this unit, and we're just gonna kind of
Speaker 1: go over what we saw red action wise, what worked,
Speaker 1: what didn't um, we'll probably spend more time on what
Speaker 1: didn't work. UM, since we you know, got got a
Speaker 1: good education on some of these bulls and they really
Speaker 1: reacted a lot different than what I'd say we're used
Speaker 1: to um one hunting, So what what would you say?
Speaker 1: The overall action was here this week as far as
Speaker 1: we're hearing bighicles where we you know, find an elk
Speaker 1: that wanted to cooperate, we were able to locate fairly easily.
Speaker 1: That was that was good. UM yeah, so I think
Speaker 1: for the most part, these elk were running the right game.
Speaker 1: We we could get to a high point like we
Speaker 1: normally would, we could locate and if there were bowls there,
Speaker 1: especially um on that first bugle, you know, when you
Speaker 1: show up to an area, that first bugle usually gets
Speaker 1: them going and then we would kind of struggle right
Speaker 1: and then maybe getting to answer a second or third time.
Speaker 1: So you really had to listen very very closely for
Speaker 1: that first bugle, um to make sure you picked it up,
Speaker 1: because a lot of times you could sit there bugle
Speaker 1: again in five minutes, ten minutes, they wouldn't veigle. But
Speaker 1: sometimes it's it's one of those things and I don't
Speaker 1: know why they do it, but if you maybe wait
Speaker 1: twenty or thirty minutes, you can probably get them to
Speaker 1: bugle again. It's just it's almost like they don't want
Speaker 1: to answer you too many times in a row. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we we were able to locate and had
Speaker 1: no problem locating bulls. So that part of our system,
Speaker 1: our program we were running, our program was working just fine.
Speaker 1: But where we started to run into a little bit
Speaker 1: of different a difference here and our system kind of
Speaker 1: ran into some trouble was you know, getting close cal
Speaker 1: calling biggling um, let's kind of give give a little
Speaker 1: rundown on a typical scenario. You know, we located a
Speaker 1: herd bowl. We we didn't give them what we do
Speaker 1: from there, located herd bowl. We always try and cut
Speaker 1: the distance once we cut the distance to a safe
Speaker 1: distance from the herd where we don't think we're a
Speaker 1: scaring We might have to locate again. Usually with cal calls,
Speaker 1: hopefully they respond, check the distance, figure out where they're at,
Speaker 1: move closer, and start putting pressure on them. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much our our thing, you know. And on
Speaker 1: this hunt, a lot of times we would cut the distance.
Speaker 1: We try not to veagle, but we would he I mean,
Speaker 1: we need to do a little squeal bveagle, just something
Speaker 1: that never get an answer back. Um, if you got
Speaker 1: too close, you know, under two yards, you typically they
Speaker 1: would take their cows and leave. They would give us
Speaker 1: a couple of beagles, round up their cows and they'd
Speaker 1: be out of there, and they'd keep a safe distance. Well.
Speaker 1: A lot of times on this hunt we learned early
Speaker 1: on that all right, biggling isn't working. So you're first
Speaker 1: instant because let's switch it up to cal calls. So
Speaker 1: we're moving very tight, get the wind right, do everything
Speaker 1: we're supposed to. And know I'm talking tight on cow calls.
Speaker 1: I'm talking most of the time we were under a
Speaker 1: hundred yards hundred twenty. We we we did, we did
Speaker 1: get very close to a lot of cows, didn't really
Speaker 1: bump them, but we you know, obviously would spot them
Speaker 1: in the timber, and we had switched the cow calls
Speaker 1: and and those didn't seem to work. You know, they
Speaker 1: worked at times, but not very well, not even on
Speaker 1: the satellite bowls that are around, which really kind of
Speaker 1: has me scratch my head. And we've got some theories
Speaker 1: and we might dive into it here in a little
Speaker 1: bit on on why these bulls were just not responding
Speaker 1: to cal calls either. Yeah, that was tough. I mean,
Speaker 1: usually when your cal calling near heard, you always get
Speaker 1: a satellite come in to three little fives, little sixes, whatever,
Speaker 1: and it just kind of keeps the momentum going with
Speaker 1: the herd bowl. Sometimes you get those satellites big in too,
Speaker 1: and then the herd bull starts being going a lot,
Speaker 1: especially in you know like this, with a lot of
Speaker 1: a very high bowl of caw ratio, you would expect
Speaker 1: for there to be a lot of you know, those
Speaker 1: semi mature satellite bowls, you know that are just looking
Speaker 1: for any sort of cow. But our theory was maybe
Speaker 1: they assumed that all the cows are already taken by
Speaker 1: herd bowls and they were a little bit reluctant to
Speaker 1: come in to those calls. So we noticed that caw
Speaker 1: calls weren't as effective as they have been in the
Speaker 1: past and other units, and um, you know, I would
Speaker 1: say we ran it ten plus times, right, we would.
Speaker 1: Once we realized the biggling wasn't working on her bowls,
Speaker 1: we'd get in cal call, maybe get a response or two.
Speaker 1: Wasn't really interested in the need of the cows, would
Speaker 1: get frustrated with us and kind of bugger out or
Speaker 1: the bowl just you know, not even responding. They would
Speaker 1: just keeping their their pattern and hang out. Then the
Speaker 1: next time they would respond, they'd be three yards out.
Speaker 1: That just yeah. And one thing I want to talk
Speaker 1: about a little bit, Um, I would say, there are
Speaker 1: wolves in this unit kind of scattered out. We only
Speaker 1: really found like a high concentration in one area that
Speaker 1: was completely void. About for how pristine of lk Habitat
Speaker 1: was the most perfect elk Habitat period and beautiful, no
Speaker 1: no elk to be seen completely void. And I'm not exaggerating.
Speaker 1: We probably walked two miles a road on the top end,
Speaker 1: two miles of road on the bottom end, and no exaggeration.
Speaker 1: There was a pile of wolf crap every ten to
Speaker 1: fifteen ft on this road the entire length. Um, I've
Speaker 1: never seen so much wolf. Yeah, the first day we
Speaker 1: went through an area looked really good, just like everything
Speaker 1: else we found in this entire time. UM went in,
Speaker 1: we found a wallow so you could see what's been around, um,
Speaker 1: you know, in the mud. And sure enough we've seen
Speaker 1: more wolf and cougar tracks than we did elk. Which
Speaker 1: that not I'm not saying that the rest of the
Speaker 1: area wasn't good. It's just it's obvious that there are
Speaker 1: some dead zones in here. And so there were some
Speaker 1: days or times where we you know, we really wanted
Speaker 1: to check an area out and just void of elk,
Speaker 1: which so the wolves had a little effective I wouldn't
Speaker 1: blame you wolves on on you know, non vocal elk necessarily.
Speaker 1: We do think one day maybe they had moved through
Speaker 1: an area and kind of made some melt quiet because
Speaker 1: they were still there. And yeah, it was obviously I mean,
Speaker 1: seeing the tracks on the road and stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: not just kind of makes me feel like that the
Speaker 1: elk aren't gonna respond. Is easy. But I mean, even
Speaker 1: with some a few tracks and stuff here and there.
Speaker 1: We were able to get him to talk, but it
Speaker 1: seems like when you got closer is when they just
Speaker 1: wouldn't say anything. Yep, um running. Let's jump in a
Speaker 1: little bit, because we always promote kind of running our
Speaker 1: system um. And I think we found ourselves wanting to
Speaker 1: always go back that because we even talked about it,
Speaker 1: like our system I would say works time. It's not failproof, right,
Speaker 1: but it works enough times and eventually it's it's going
Speaker 1: to work. You put enough pressure on the bull, you
Speaker 1: set up enough times, eventually getting close close enough to
Speaker 1: that herd bulls cows close enough to him, you know,
Speaker 1: and challenging him work or if you know their satellites around,
Speaker 1: you get close enough to heard, you know, potentially pulled
Speaker 1: herd bull off with cal calls. Um. So we do
Speaker 1: a very methodical system, and I think, uh, as we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, you found out it wasn't going to work,
Speaker 1: but we always we would go into set ups right
Speaker 1: saying we weren't going to call it all and we
Speaker 1: go right back to calling. It's just you feel like
Speaker 1: it's eventually going to work, Like, yeah, maybe our odds
Speaker 1: are lower, maybe it's ten percent in this unit. Um,
Speaker 1: but we found ourselves every time. We're not going to
Speaker 1: call around and do anything. You just instinctively go back
Speaker 1: to it. And I think that's one of my biggest takeaways,
Speaker 1: is you we should have adapted earlier and been a
Speaker 1: little bit more like steadfast and we're too stubborn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we like to do it the way we do it.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. We've been doing it for plus years
Speaker 1: maybe more than that, and it's worked so well so
Speaker 1: many times that it's just it's tough to go in there.
Speaker 1: And this is where like my biggest takeaway, maybe we
Speaker 1: should have just flat out like stuck to a different system. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, we'll keep that in mind. And I'm more
Speaker 1: worried in future hunts. And I'm not gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be scared to death the bigle now just because all
Speaker 1: the results we got here. My next hunt, I'm biggle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm they're gonna bogle in your face. So I don't
Speaker 1: care if it doesn't work. It doesn't work, I'll fell
Speaker 1: how I know, Bath. So towards the you know, probably
Speaker 1: about halfway through the hunt, the writing was on the wall, Um,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to hunt these things like meal deer,
Speaker 1: which is a little bit frustrating because we come out
Speaker 1: in the woods with uh an idea of how we
Speaker 1: want to hunt these elk. Right, we want to find
Speaker 1: a bull that's biggling, We want to find a bull
Speaker 1: that wants to be called in, and we want to
Speaker 1: run the game. Are we we want to get biggles?
Speaker 1: We want stuff biggling in our face. We did get that,
Speaker 1: but a lot of times it was a bagle in
Speaker 1: our face right before they left, you know, with the cows.
Speaker 1: So um, I want to jump into another challenge on
Speaker 1: this hunt, which archery hunting very very difficult rifle hunt.
Speaker 1: Of course it would have been easier, rightfle but this
Speaker 1: area has a burn that went through it, and it
Speaker 1: changed the dynamic of We always talked about having terrain
Speaker 1: and vegetation for cover so we can move in close.
Speaker 1: What this brush did was put us exposed time out
Speaker 1: in the open. And number two, it was louder than hell.
Speaker 1: Number three, it gave you very very little possibility to
Speaker 1: ever set up and shoot because even when we did
Speaker 1: call bowls in, their vitals were going to be completely covered,
Speaker 1: you know, with with brush. And so jump into a
Speaker 1: little bit of how this brush kind of changed our huh.
Speaker 1: You know, we focused on a certain bowl for two
Speaker 1: and a half days, and then ultimately we just had
Speaker 1: to like it's literally trying to get him to be
Speaker 1: in the perfect spot, which there wasn't very many perfect situations,
Speaker 1: you know, where he would actually give us a shot.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like, you gotta move with these elk
Speaker 1: as they're going to their feed or bed and hope
Speaker 1: that they get in these little i'd say, what semi
Speaker 1: open areas, which there's not very many of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is where as an elk hunter, once again,
Speaker 1: I struggle. It's easy for me to tell everybody like
Speaker 1: you just have to like know that there's no light
Speaker 1: at the end of this plan. You know, they're if
Speaker 1: you're if you're going into these areas and you're hunting
Speaker 1: on a one or two percent chance of success and
Speaker 1: you're really just like hoping and praying. We just had
Speaker 1: to finally, we we looked at each other and we're like,
Speaker 1: we gotta get out of here. We're never gonna kill
Speaker 1: this bowl um with where he's feeding in a burn
Speaker 1: and he's betting in a burn with even taller brush
Speaker 1: we cannot physically kill him. We just we didn't have
Speaker 1: the time. I mean that's maybe if he had three
Speaker 1: weeks to work the same way. Yeah, you would wait
Speaker 1: for him to be in the optimum spot, which we
Speaker 1: kind of got him in on on one attempt. But um,
Speaker 1: once again, we weren't really privy to how these cows
Speaker 1: are going to react. Um, we thought we were dialed right.
Speaker 1: We moved into within seventy yards of this bowl. Um
Speaker 1: it that was a high percentage of having good success
Speaker 1: on that. These cows were there. We wind was perfect,
Speaker 1: We were real, real close. So on this instance, Um,
Speaker 1: I think we raked before we bogled right or did
Speaker 1: we Maybe you bagled first and he hit us right back.
Speaker 1: And then we went to some raking and I can
Speaker 1: see the bull face. I said about seventy yards, Um,
Speaker 1: oh my, oh, this is this is gold, you know,
Speaker 1: and he screamed at you again. I think you bi
Speaker 1: go back one more time on your second vehicle. The
Speaker 1: cows his cows didn't like it and they went out,
Speaker 1: and then sure as crap. You know, sometimes in that instance,
Speaker 1: don't leave when cows spook, right, because a lot of
Speaker 1: times that bold either push him off or they just
Speaker 1: know to leave and he's gonna stand his ground and
Speaker 1: do his thing. But in this instance, I've seen the
Speaker 1: cows going and he was right behind him. He just
Speaker 1: kept which you know, so I always give it time.
Speaker 1: And if you don't know that bowl left, um, you
Speaker 1: know to stay. But yeah, that everything you did right, Like,
Speaker 1: we couldn't have got any tighter to this bull. Um,
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's just one of those things. Finally we
Speaker 1: hunted him two more days. Um, did you just you
Speaker 1: have to just weigh your options and the chances of
Speaker 1: actually killing them nothing um on this hunt in particular,
Speaker 1: these bulls have a higher age class there. You know
Speaker 1: their experience, They've had all these calls thrown at them.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of spike hunters in the woods.
Speaker 1: On these type of units, there's twenty guys hunting for
Speaker 1: one person's tag. There are people everywhere educated bulls. Every landing,
Speaker 1: every every date, every road, every spot of person can
Speaker 1: be so very pressure, very pressure, very educated elk. One
Speaker 1: thing I want to talk about, which we got bit
Speaker 1: by multiple times, is you get it on a bowl,
Speaker 1: big goal and then you assume that he left or
Speaker 1: you assume that he's no longer there because maybe you've
Speaker 1: seen him walk off. We would give it some time
Speaker 1: knowing that there's the possibility he would still be there.
Speaker 1: These big bulls will literally take three steps and wait
Speaker 1: for you to show yourself again. And so I'm not
Speaker 1: very patient. We're not very patient. But just one thing
Speaker 1: to keep in mind that we could have maybe saved
Speaker 1: a few more of these stocks or situations is always
Speaker 1: assume that bowl still there. Moved very carefully with brush, trees,
Speaker 1: vegetation in your way of where you're lasting him. Go
Speaker 1: and try not to expose yourself. You know where he's
Speaker 1: gonna be able to pick you off, or don't provide
Speaker 1: him a different angle, because a lot of times it
Speaker 1: seems like they move off just enough that they're trying
Speaker 1: to pick you off at a different angle, versus if
Speaker 1: you can, you know, stalk straight in on where you've
Speaker 1: seen them keep some brush. But multiple times we would
Speaker 1: come around the tree and there'd be a cow or
Speaker 1: a bowl. Um, they're they're a lot more patient than
Speaker 1: we are. I mean, it's their home. I just I
Speaker 1: don't know. It was tough. Yeah, Um, one other thing
Speaker 1: I'd like to know I was able to just come
Speaker 1: from New Mexico where you hear a bugle and it
Speaker 1: sounds like they're you can see him, and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a mile away, and I can hear a bugle
Speaker 1: plane his day here, you know, North Pacific Northwest, you know, denser,
Speaker 1: thicker timber. Everything we heard was way closer than we thought.
Speaker 1: And and that's one thing to keep in mind, like
Speaker 1: we should have recalibrated our brains a little bit, because
Speaker 1: we got caught multiple times moving in too close. Um
Speaker 1: where it was just because we were calibrated to like,
Speaker 1: oh that bulls you know, way out there, when really
Speaker 1: they were pretty dang close. Um, so we needed to
Speaker 1: just slow down a little bit. And yeah, because then
Speaker 1: by the time we figured it out, we were too
Speaker 1: close and they were already leaving one. One thing to note,
Speaker 1: but um, no rud action seems to be going good here.
Speaker 1: It has some high days, you know that where the
Speaker 1: ruts seems to be you know, rolling and in the
Speaker 1: next day will be shut off. But um, definitely doing
Speaker 1: good enough here and and Oregon, um you know, the
Speaker 1: ruts going and uh. Yeah, these are just some little takeaways, um,
Speaker 1: from from the way we normally hunt to the way
Speaker 1: we should have hunted this unit. But I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I I was happy with the action. Um, we're out
Speaker 1: here to play the game, and Oregon didn't necessarily disappoint.
Speaker 1: It was fun. I mean, we had a lot of
Speaker 1: good action. It was good hunting. Yeah, some nice bulls,
Speaker 1: some real nice bulls. Thank you for I want to
Speaker 1: be my caller and uh trying to help out. We
Speaker 1: haven't hunted together since two thousand seventeen. I was able
Speaker 1: to call you in a little six by five on
Speaker 1: that hunt, and uh, we haven't really hunted since then. No,
Speaker 1: that's that was a fun hunt too. Yeah. Now I'm
Speaker 1: a little Now, I'm a little nervous that after hunting
Speaker 1: with you there's a little uh curse. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: believe in any of that stuff, but I'm a little
Speaker 1: nervous because, yeah, you've had a stretch of bad luck
Speaker 1: and I'm afraid it maybe you might rub off a
Speaker 1: little bit. So uh yeah, I kind of like it
Speaker 1: did to another friend of ours. No, I'm not worried
Speaker 1: about it. We'll be uh well, we'll get back at it.
Speaker 1: We're heading to Idaho next um, so hopefully the well
Speaker 1: I'm heading Idaho, You're heading home, I'm heading out. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go hunt rosies with the muzzle letter. There you go. Well,
Speaker 1: good luck on that. I appreciate being out her Organs.
Speaker 1: Been fun um. Look forward to the next time we
Speaker 1: get to hunt together. But that is the field report
Speaker 1: from here in Oregon. I hope everybody's having a good season.
Speaker 1: See yeah by m hm hm