Speaker 1: Welcome back to cutting the distance. We are about a
Speaker 1: month and a half away from September, which means archery
Speaker 1: l cunting the rut some of us that love to
Speaker 1: hunt we live all year for. And today I'm gonna
Speaker 1: jump into a few listener questions, but I really wanted
Speaker 1: to go over some real life situations that I've been
Speaker 1: in some call ins, what has worked, how we've adapted,
Speaker 1: and how we've made it, you know, happen. So I
Speaker 1: think I've got five or six different scenarios that I
Speaker 1: laid out and things that kind of stick out in
Speaker 1: my mind that really kind of helped make those situations work.
Speaker 1: And as I went through and built this list, I
Speaker 1: was kind of surprised that there's not a lot of repetition.
Speaker 1: So what it really kind of leads to is you
Speaker 1: need to be an elk hunter that can adapt. You
Speaker 1: need to be an elk hunter that has a lot
Speaker 1: of tools in the tool you know. I always kind
Speaker 1: of use the analogy of a guy that builds your house.
Speaker 1: He's got you know, twenty different saws. He's got a
Speaker 1: circular saw, a radio alarm saw, you know, a resip saw.
Speaker 2: He's got all of these things.
Speaker 1: That cut boards, but they're all used in certain situations
Speaker 1: right to make his job easier. You know the same
Speaker 1: thing with a hammer, a level. There's so many different
Speaker 1: tools and right ways to do it to be efficient
Speaker 1: versus tools that can get it done, but they're not
Speaker 1: going to be as efficient. They're not gonna be as effective,
Speaker 1: and so that's kind of how I relate that and
Speaker 1: going through and building this list, I was kind of surprised.
Speaker 1: I went back and there were some common themes and
Speaker 1: things that worked on multiple ones, but like the things
Speaker 1: that I consider to be the main contributing factors of
Speaker 1: the success on that specific hunt didn't really overlap. So
Speaker 1: I'm excited to jump into these you know, six or
Speaker 1: seven scenarios and kind of lay out what I think
Speaker 1: worked there. But first off, we're going to jump into
Speaker 1: some listener questions. And I was able to go down
Speaker 1: to New Mexico last week and do a calling clinic
Speaker 1: and an elk hunting educational for some guides and outfitters,
Speaker 1: and these are the questions that they brought to me
Speaker 1: during the seminar, so I'm just gonna kind of repeat them.
Speaker 1: I know that it's probably some things we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: but figure it's worth covering again. With elk season just
Speaker 1: a month and a half around the corner. Today's question
Speaker 1: and answer session is brought to you by Pendleton Whiskey.
Speaker 1: So the first question we have what calls do I
Speaker 1: personally carry on me for an l cunt And it's
Speaker 1: going to be the same on almost every out count.
Speaker 1: I will change the number of diaphragms depending on whether
Speaker 1: it's a spike out, overnight, multi day trip, but for
Speaker 1: me it's the same thing every time. I will take
Speaker 1: a Beegle tube right now. I've been using the metal
Speaker 1: Beagle tube on all of my hunt, so I'll have
Speaker 1: one Bagle tube.
Speaker 2: I will have.
Speaker 1: An easy estress or a Minix one or the other.
Speaker 1: I've been carrying the Minix so an external cow call.
Speaker 1: I will carry the Easy Sucker in my binal harness.
Speaker 1: I don't use it all the time, but it's a
Speaker 1: great finishing call and the reason you know, some people
Speaker 1: may say, well why do you carry the Minix? Why
Speaker 1: do you carry the Easy Sucker. I'm a firm believer
Speaker 1: that at certain times, on certain elk with certain personalities,
Speaker 1: you need to have a call that gets them going
Speaker 1: there may be times where they will answer only one
Speaker 1: of those and not your diaphragms, or one or the
Speaker 1: other and not the other, you know, And so I
Speaker 1: carry those, and then I carry typically pink, you know,
Speaker 1: my pink signature diaphragm. I also carry a green amp
Speaker 1: and then at times I will carry some pitch black two's. Now,
Speaker 1: if I'm going on a day hunt, I can usually
Speaker 1: get by with. You know, I'll grab two pinks and
Speaker 1: a green because I'm inevitably going to lose one somewhere
Speaker 1: through the hunt. Typically don't lose one every day, but
Speaker 1: you know, I want to back up, and then I
Speaker 1: also want to be able to change it up. So
Speaker 1: you know, two pinks and a green will typically get
Speaker 1: me through a day. You know, the calls are going
Speaker 1: to hold up longer than that, but that's just to
Speaker 1: make sure I've gotten an extra and don't you know,
Speaker 1: have enough. Now, if I'm going on a backpack hunt,
Speaker 1: you know, and I've got the liberty I'm saying, this
Speaker 1: is the guy that gets to make the calls. Before
Speaker 1: I leave you, I may grab five or six, you know,
Speaker 1: keep three in my in my pouch or in my
Speaker 1: pdo and then I'll maybe keep a couple tucked away
Speaker 1: in my pack so they're separate in case something gets
Speaker 1: lost and I lose all three of them, all six
Speaker 1: of them are in the same spot, so I'll usually
Speaker 1: tuck those away in my pack, in a in a
Speaker 1: pocket somewhere.
Speaker 2: So that's it.
Speaker 1: I'm not the guy that has, you know, seven land
Speaker 1: yards around my neck with a bunch of different externals
Speaker 1: and this and that. I can do it all with
Speaker 1: a few diaphragms, a Beagle tube, a Mini X, and
Speaker 1: an easy sucker, So that's what I carry. The second question,
Speaker 1: what's in my opinion or in your opinion, is how
Speaker 1: the question was, you know, proposed, is what's the single
Speaker 1: most important thing that leads to success? And I had
Speaker 1: to think about this for a while, and you know,
Speaker 1: being a skilled hunter and all of that is important
Speaker 1: understanding elk, but let's say everybody has a basic understanding
Speaker 1: of that. I honestly feel the single most important thing
Speaker 1: that leads to success is time in the field. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm very fortunate, blessed to get to spend you know,
Speaker 1: thirty forty five days chasing ELK. And I've been in
Speaker 1: some great units where It's happened very quick. I've been
Speaker 1: in great units where sometimes the wind isn't helping, the
Speaker 1: wind won't sit still. No matter what I do right,
Speaker 1: no matter how much work and effort I'm putting in,
Speaker 1: I still come up short. And so sometimes on those
Speaker 1: hunts you need time on your side just before things
Speaker 1: click and kind of come together. So yeah, I honestly
Speaker 1: believe that the majority of guys out there are good
Speaker 1: enough woodsmen, understand elk enough that even just by being
Speaker 1: out there a lot, you're eventually going to stumble into
Speaker 1: some success. Regardless of whether you really truly know what
Speaker 1: you're doing or not, you'll eventually find some success by time.
Speaker 1: And to piggyback onto that, I feel that people will
Speaker 1: sometimes wait for premium tags or premium opportunity. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe they've been saving points in a Western state, or
Speaker 1: you know, they go pay to going in a Mexico
Speaker 1: guide a hunt or a Colorado guided hunt, or wherever
Speaker 1: it may be.
Speaker 2: I feel that being used.
Speaker 1: To the nerves, feeling what those nerves feel like, go
Speaker 1: out there and practice on cow elk, you know, pick
Speaker 1: up a kwalk tag and go out there and experience
Speaker 1: or experience what works, experience what doesn't work. Go out
Speaker 1: there and have a tag that you're more than excited
Speaker 1: to shoot a raghorn or a spike or whatever it
Speaker 1: may be. Get the experience, Feel what the adrenaline is like.
Speaker 1: See if you can keep your stuff together on a
Speaker 1: call in So in addition to time, I also feel
Speaker 1: that you should have time under elk, if that makes
Speaker 1: any sense. You should have time with elk at twenty
Speaker 1: thirty forty yards. You should have time trying to call
Speaker 1: elk and and see why it doesn't always work like
Speaker 1: you think it may be. Give yourself time to maybe
Speaker 1: when it's not as important. Hey, I'm gonna bugle with
Speaker 1: this bowl and see what his reaction is. Uh in
Speaker 1: the in the right time. So time in the field,
Speaker 1: and then time prior to special hunts or premium hunts,
Speaker 1: so that you are ready for that opportunity and can
Speaker 1: take the most of that. I think people a lot
Speaker 1: of people get hung up on, you know, one or
Speaker 1: two big elk hunts in their their life and they're
Speaker 1: not necessarily ready for it. So spend some time out
Speaker 1: in the field with the elk during the rut. See
Speaker 1: what you can get away with, See what movement, you
Speaker 1: can get away with, see what works cows? You know,
Speaker 1: cows sounds, bowl sounds, can you spot in stockable?
Speaker 2: Can you get away with? Draw on your bow?
Speaker 1: And then you know, all of these things are are
Speaker 1: much better to figure out during a a you know,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to say a less less important hunt,
Speaker 1: but a hunt that maybe doesn't mean as much to
Speaker 1: you or or you know, all the hunts mean mean
Speaker 1: a lot to me. I want to kill every you know,
Speaker 1: elk that I've got a chance to so I can
Speaker 1: fill my freezer. But you know, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: not such a premium hunt. Go out and practice and
Speaker 1: get used to all this stuff. The third question I
Speaker 1: got it camp, was what is the biggest mistake when
Speaker 1: calling elk in? And I learned this the hard way,
Speaker 1: you know, growing up seventeen eighteen, the Internet wasn't really
Speaker 1: a big thing.
Speaker 2: I didn't have a you know.
Speaker 1: I got to watch the Primos videos, you know, the
Speaker 1: Truth series and see how they did it, but it
Speaker 1: didn't really translate to the way things were working here
Speaker 1: in western Washington. When I was calling Roosevelt bulls in,
Speaker 1: I couldn't set a collar up, you know, one hundred
Speaker 1: yards back and have bulls come running by me. I
Speaker 1: couldn't do these things I had. I had to change
Speaker 1: and make some changes to my system. So for a
Speaker 1: long time I would I could get bulls to be,
Speaker 1: you know, bugle fairly, fairly routinely, you know, every morning
Speaker 1: we were on multiple bulls. But what I found is
Speaker 1: that I would, you know, maybe let's say I'm three
Speaker 1: or four undred yards away from a bowl. I bugle
Speaker 1: and I get him to answer two or three times, like,
Speaker 1: all right, he's there. I think I know where he's at.
Speaker 1: I'll maybe walk towards him one hundred yards, whether it's
Speaker 1: down the ridge or in the timber or through a
Speaker 1: clear cut, whatever it may be. And I bugle again,
Speaker 1: and he may be in this spot, so I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm gaining ground on him. And then I'll move
Speaker 1: another fifty hundred yards and I'll buggle again. Because I'm
Speaker 1: unsure of my decisions I'm making. I want to check
Speaker 1: the wind again, I want to make sure he's still there. Well,
Speaker 1: this time, he's now one hundred yards further away, so
Speaker 1: we're the same distance that we just were. I'm not
Speaker 1: gaining any ground on him, or sometimes he will gain
Speaker 1: more ground on you. He might be one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty yards further away, and you're trying to figure this out,
Speaker 1: and it goes back to that idea that these.
Speaker 2: Bulls are there to.
Speaker 1: One, you know, live and number two, you know, experience, recreate,
Speaker 1: you know, make new elk. So between those two things
Speaker 1: and we throw in the idea that we're trying to
Speaker 1: reverse nature a little bit. You know, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons bulls are so much louder than
Speaker 1: cows and you can hear him for so long is
Speaker 1: it's his way to announce to other cows or elkin area,
Speaker 1: like I'm down here. Like if you're a cow and
Speaker 1: you're interested, come on down here. So, whether we're beagle
Speaker 1: and our cow calling, that bull wants to maintain his
Speaker 1: cow so he can breed them, and he wants to
Speaker 1: stay alive, so he's not going to necessarily leave them
Speaker 1: to come to your location. But what he is doing
Speaker 1: is rounding up his cows and pushing them away from
Speaker 1: the incoming bowl. So if you're bugling, you know, I
Speaker 1: would say you're going to have a better opportunity to
Speaker 1: col call your way in. Then you are to bugle
Speaker 1: your way in. So from my experience and my experience alone,
Speaker 1: the biggest mistake I ever made when calling ELK was
Speaker 1: to bugle my way into a bowl. Let him know
Speaker 1: I'm coming, Announce I'm coming, Announce the direction I'm coming
Speaker 1: in from. And what I did for days on end
Speaker 1: earlier in my archery, you know, hunting, you know, days
Speaker 1: I would play cat and mouse all morning, you know,
Speaker 1: following these out to bed, or i'd bump them through
Speaker 1: their beds, or I would change the direction they wanted
Speaker 1: to go to bed, and I would I can remember
Speaker 1: the four or five long hour cat and mouse. I
Speaker 1: could never get any closer, you know. At times the
Speaker 1: closest I would get is when I would elect to
Speaker 1: be quiet, move in, try to get closer, bugle again,
Speaker 1: and then we'd start the game all over. So try
Speaker 1: to as much as you can, refrain from talking your
Speaker 1: way into a bowl, at least bugling your way into
Speaker 1: a bowl. Try to make your best guests on where
Speaker 1: they're at, and try not to make another peep until
Speaker 1: you get in there. You know, if the wind's right,
Speaker 1: you make a good guess. Be aware of satellite bowls
Speaker 1: as you approach, but you do all that right, you
Speaker 1: should be able to get close enough to these things
Speaker 1: to call them in without calling your way in and
Speaker 1: keeping them out ahead of you. So that kind of
Speaker 1: wraps it up for the Q and A today. If
Speaker 1: you have questions for me, for Dirk, for any of
Speaker 1: our guests that we have on here, feel free to
Speaker 1: email them to us at CTD at phelpsgame Calls dot com,
Speaker 1: or send us a message on social media Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and we'll do our best to get them plugged into
Speaker 1: the podcast. We really appreciate all your listener questions. So
Speaker 1: the bulk of today's podcast, I just went through and
Speaker 1: kind of looked at past calling things that worked well,
Speaker 1: things that worked you know, efficiently and effect actively, and
Speaker 1: I just kind of wanted to walk through those. And
Speaker 1: some of you may have you seen some of these
Speaker 1: videos or I would, you know, not to give myself
Speaker 1: or our video is a shameless plug, but maybe go
Speaker 1: back and try to find some of these and you
Speaker 1: can see where some of these things I will talk
Speaker 1: about you can see kind of happen, you know, on video,
Speaker 1: and it may make a little bit more sense. So
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, I drew a big horns elk tag and Wyoming.
Speaker 1: For those of you that remember it better by me
Speaker 1: losing the bet to Dirk and dressing up as whole Cogan,
Speaker 1: it is that hunt. So one thing I wanted to
Speaker 1: point out, you know, to start that one right off,
Speaker 1: we did some scouting. We were there a day and
Speaker 1: a half before we were able to get some high ground,
Speaker 1: and we just watched a lot of elk. And this
Speaker 1: is kind of a you know, something that should make sense,
Speaker 1: but some people don't fully understand it. At night we
Speaker 1: would watch the night before the opener. We would watch
Speaker 1: elk come out of some timber for the first time
Speaker 1: that evening. And they may go through a meadow, back
Speaker 1: through some timber, back through a meadow, back through some timber,
Speaker 1: but keep in mind the timber that they originally came
Speaker 1: out of. Try to see does that make good betting?
Speaker 1: Is that where they were betted? And ninety nine percent
Speaker 1: of the time the timber that they originally come out of,
Speaker 1: you know, let's say at six o'clock at night when
Speaker 1: the shadows hit, is likely the timber that they are
Speaker 1: going to go back into the following morning. So that
Speaker 1: day we watched the target bowl that you know, I
Speaker 1: was excited to go try to get a chance at
Speaker 1: come out of some timber. We caught them what we
Speaker 1: feel was in the first meadow, and then we kind
Speaker 1: of followed them for the rest of the night. We
Speaker 1: kind of watched them go through some meadows, through some
Speaker 1: you know, draws, through some meadows. But the next morning
Speaker 1: we were to go back and we were able to
Speaker 1: catch them back in that timber. Now things didn't work.
Speaker 1: We had some wind swirl do some things, but those
Speaker 1: elk and the herd that we wanted to be on
Speaker 1: with the bowl we wanted to be on, came back
Speaker 1: in that timber. So it seems like maybe a you know,
Speaker 1: an obvious you know, outcome, But pay attention to that
Speaker 1: timber they came out of and don't get caught maybe
Speaker 1: chasing beagles way off where they want to be, Like
Speaker 1: you're gonna you know, I talked a lot at that
Speaker 1: seminar in New Mexico. If you can kill this bull
Speaker 1: or have a chance to set up on a bowl,
Speaker 1: whether it's an ambush and call a little bit, if
Speaker 1: you can get in front of that bowl and not
Speaker 1: make him do what he doesn't want to do, it's
Speaker 1: going to be a lot easier to call that bowl.
Speaker 1: In another thing we did on that twenty nineteen Wyoming hunt,
Speaker 1: we stayed on the mountain all day. Do not, if possible,
Speaker 1: do not talk yourself into going back to the truck,
Speaker 1: going back to the side by side, going back to camp.
Speaker 1: Let everybody else on the mountain go back to camp
Speaker 1: and make a sandwich and get a nap, whatever it
Speaker 1: may be. By staying on the mountain all day, we
Speaker 1: were able to be in position. We were able to
Speaker 1: have the wind right when we were ready. We kind
Speaker 1: of had ideas where Ell could win, and it put
Speaker 1: us in the game, you know. On that hunt specifically,
Speaker 1: we had people watching us. They didn't hunt the night,
Speaker 1: they hunted the morning, and then they watched us through
Speaker 1: a spotting scope that night. We were able to talk
Speaker 1: to them. While they were at camp, we were up
Speaker 1: on the mountain still hunting. So we stayed on the
Speaker 1: mountain all day put us in position we were.
Speaker 2: We were very close.
Speaker 1: To getting a bowl to Bogle that evening when the
Speaker 1: when the shadows dropped and the bulls got active, we
Speaker 1: were we were right in the wheelhouse and I feel
Speaker 1: if we had to, if we would have went back
Speaker 1: to camp, like crossed our minds multiple times. We would
Speaker 1: have never been able to get on on the bowl
Speaker 1: we ended up taking. So we went, we closed ground.
Speaker 1: We were aggressive, but one thing we waited was for
Speaker 1: kind of that prime time. We didn't we didn't force
Speaker 1: the issue during the heat of the day. We didn't
Speaker 1: write an area off because we were We didn't get
Speaker 1: a beagle at three o'clock in the morning, so we
Speaker 1: sat and it was tough. We sat until the you know,
Speaker 1: the shade shade got to a point the weather had
Speaker 1: cooled down, and then we started to check kind of truth,
Speaker 1: check patches of timber and draws to see if elk
Speaker 1: were in there. And when we did get beagles, we
Speaker 1: closed the ground and we were very aggressive. We used
Speaker 1: the terrain, we used the the vegetation, and we closed
Speaker 1: ground very very quickly, because especially at night, you only
Speaker 1: know where the bull's at when he bugles. If he
Speaker 1: doesn't bugle for two or three minutes, he might be
Speaker 1: one hundred two hundred, three hundred five hundred yards off
Speaker 1: the next time.
Speaker 2: You hear him.
Speaker 1: So if the train of vegetation allows take that information
Speaker 1: for what it's worth, close distance very very fast and
Speaker 1: see if you can, you know, get in the game
Speaker 1: at that point instead of trying to trail him and
Speaker 1: you know, make the game happen somewhere else. So during
Speaker 1: this call in, we get very very close, maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit too close. We get up to a spruce
Speaker 1: tree and it's one of those trees that you can
Speaker 1: kind of see through a little bit. And I realized
Speaker 1: when we had got there we kind of hugged the
Speaker 1: upper edge of the timber. When we got there, I
Speaker 1: could see the elk on the other side at about
Speaker 1: forty yards away, kind of through the trees. He had
Speaker 1: never really picked us off. Well, what happens during this
Speaker 1: cal in? We're there for about ten minutes, call him
Speaker 1: back and forth forty yards away with a you know,
Speaker 1: I'm right up against this rose tree and he's, you know,
Speaker 1: forty yards on the back side of it. We're getting more,
Speaker 1: you know, we're we're picking up the argument. You know,
Speaker 1: he's screaming, I'm screaming. We're going back and forth, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, this bowl barks at me. And
Speaker 1: I've said it before. I don't get too caught up
Speaker 1: on language and what this sound means or that sound means,
Speaker 1: but I think it's pretty universal that when a bark happens,
Speaker 1: and some people will say alarm bark versus a nervous grunt,
Speaker 1: nervous bark, whatever it may be, it's very very tough
Speaker 1: tough to differentiate. Yeah, the elk may act different, but
Speaker 1: in this instance it was very clear. It was basically
Speaker 1: a hey, show yourself type of a sound. Right, we've
Speaker 1: all agreed when when an elk barks, typically they've seen
Speaker 1: something or heard something that they don't trust, and by barking,
Speaker 1: they will typically, you know, say show yourself. And in
Speaker 1: Colorado a lot of times and some other places we
Speaker 1: hear some bulls tend to during a call in when
Speaker 1: you bring him in, they will bark, scream or bark
Speaker 1: chuckle at you. And you know it's like, hey, I've
Speaker 1: came two hundred yards to you. I should be able
Speaker 1: to see you. Now, come and show yourself sort of
Speaker 1: a sound. So the bark, if you've watched that hunt,
Speaker 1: I bark back immediately. Now, I did have my bugle
Speaker 1: tube kind of down between my knees, kind of in
Speaker 1: its resting place. I didn't have a whole lot of time,
Speaker 1: so I just bark with my voice with a diaphragm,
Speaker 1: and just like clockwork, that bowl instantly puts its head
Speaker 1: down and walks about ten yards to the right out
Speaker 1: in the wide open wine at full draw. So being
Speaker 1: able to bark at that bowl kind of saved it.
Speaker 1: And it was kind of in my response. I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you show yourself. I've been here for the same amount
Speaker 1: of time. Show yourself. I'm not showing myself sort of
Speaker 1: a response. And that bowl was able to come out
Speaker 1: to you know, thirty thirty thirty two yards, and I
Speaker 1: was able to make a great shot on that bowl.
Speaker 1: And the last thing on that is we continued to call.
Speaker 1: We didn't get too crazy and pump fists and yell
Speaker 1: and scream.
Speaker 2: I was able to call that bull back.
Speaker 1: Why the first shot was definitely going to kill it
Speaker 1: very quickly and effectively. He came back in and I
Speaker 1: was able to put another shot, you know, high and
Speaker 1: back in the lungs, probably only caught one lung, but
Speaker 1: I was able to be quiet and get an additional
Speaker 1: arrow into that bowl. So, you know, don't go crazy
Speaker 1: after a shot, don't scream and yell at your buddies
Speaker 1: and fist bump, you know, stay calm, try to call
Speaker 1: the bowl back in. You always call after a shot
Speaker 1: to try to slow the thing down in case it
Speaker 1: doesn't know what happened, reduce that blood trail length. But
Speaker 1: that was kind of the the factors that went into
Speaker 1: that being a successful hunt. So the following year, twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: we went to New Mexico, myself, Dirk, and John and
Speaker 1: I had come off of a different New Mexico hunt
Speaker 1: with Ranelda that year. This was a no, no, no
Speaker 1: excuse me, I got my years mixed up. Twenty twenty
Speaker 1: New Mexico. This is a hunt where me, Dirk, and
Speaker 1: John had tags and we had hunts before that. So
Speaker 1: we get there and we didn't really have any time
Speaker 1: to scout. We had we had to figure out what
Speaker 1: was going on in that area, you know, where the
Speaker 1: elk we're at and how they were going to adapt.
Speaker 1: So we started to kind of get our butts kicked
Speaker 1: a little bit there. We we were, you know, chasing elk.
Speaker 1: We couldn't couldn't get in. You know, we'd start them
Speaker 1: on water and started paying attention to tracks on the ground.
Speaker 1: You know, they're coming in to water midday, the bulls
Speaker 1: are coming in midday. We started to cover different ground,
Speaker 1: just trying to find out where the elk we're at
Speaker 1: and where the elk wanted to be. So I felt like,
Speaker 1: right off the bat, we wanted to try to hunt
Speaker 1: some areas that maybe looked good on on X or
Speaker 1: areas in the past that had been good. We had
Speaker 1: to adapt, and we found ourselves in areas that we
Speaker 1: typically hadn't hunted before or didn't think about hunting to
Speaker 1: go find the elk. And so, you know, right off
Speaker 1: the bat, we adapted. We It's kind of funny if
Speaker 1: you watch this video. This was filmed for a loophold project.
Speaker 1: We just we were getting our tails kicked. John had
Speaker 1: killed a bull on the evening of night four, and
Speaker 1: then I think we were going into like the morning
Speaker 1: of the eighth, the eighth morning of the hunt. Me
Speaker 1: and Dirk still hadn't killed a boy yet. And Dirk
Speaker 1: was kind of joking over there. He was giving you know,
Speaker 1: his if this was his first elkount ever, he might
Speaker 1: just hang it up and not every el kind again.
Speaker 1: Because we were just getting our tails kicked. He's like,
Speaker 1: this is the way it always is, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of having a little bit of a pity party, and
Speaker 1: falling in it there, which was we were all in that.
Speaker 1: He was just the only one to say it. You know,
Speaker 1: he kind of looked a little bit sad. He had
Speaker 1: a bloody nose and had some toilet paper in there
Speaker 1: and kind of explaining how this elk count was as
Speaker 1: miserable as it could be. But we were still out there, right,
Speaker 1: We weren't back at camp, we weren't at the truck.
Speaker 1: We were still trying to find a bowl to get going.
Speaker 1: And as we were midday going to head back to
Speaker 1: the side by sides to go try a new area,
Speaker 1: we did hear a faint bugle, And so don't ever
Speaker 1: give up out there, Like being in the woods, having
Speaker 1: times in the woods is always going to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's always going to have better success than being back
Speaker 1: at camp. You know, ninety nine point nine percent time
Speaker 1: nless you have a bullwalk through camp. Being in the woods,
Speaker 1: being in the game is more important than being back
Speaker 1: at camp. You're going to find success that way. So
Speaker 1: when we got there to where we heard the bull bugle,
Speaker 1: it was kind of a ret fest. And so there's
Speaker 1: a few different sayings. You like, win in Rome, do
Speaker 1: what the Romans do. So these bulls were cranking. We
Speaker 1: had spotted a bowl across the way kind of chasing cows.
Speaker 1: You could hear a couple of different bulls over the
Speaker 1: ridge going crazy, so it was obvious you had some
Speaker 1: bulls or herds that had come together or satellite bulls
Speaker 1: that had come together and were really kind of causing
Speaker 1: some havoc. So we wanted to join the party. We
Speaker 1: started calling a lot. We were biggling very aggressively, We
Speaker 1: were cow calling very aggressively. And that bull we spotted,
Speaker 1: we originally called into about twenty five yards a Dirk,
Speaker 1: but on that one, that bowl came in so silent
Speaker 1: after he beagled, We had no idea he was there.
Speaker 1: And the lighting was real, real bad, and I think
Speaker 1: Dirk ended up getting picked off. But we knew at
Speaker 1: that time that that bowl may have ran back over there,
Speaker 1: but those other bulls didn't know what was going on, right,
Speaker 1: the other two bulls that we could hear, So as
Speaker 1: soon as that bull crested back over the ridge, we
Speaker 1: took off down and after him we got up over there.
Speaker 1: And this setup was one of my favorite because you
Speaker 1: don't ever want to set up where the elk that
Speaker 1: you're calling into should be able to see your location.
Speaker 1: So this this ridge had a pretty good role in it,
Speaker 1: and I was able to kind of crawl over the
Speaker 1: roll and get set up just on the backs or
Speaker 1: the front side of the ridge, and Dirk was able
Speaker 1: to stay on the back side of the ridge. So
Speaker 1: for an elk, in order for an elk to be
Speaker 1: able to see, you know, where Dirk's calling location was from,
Speaker 1: it was going to have to get up on top
Speaker 1: of that ridge, walk by me and get up over
Speaker 1: that so it could you know, get the visual on that.
Speaker 1: So that elk had no idea. I had crawled forward
Speaker 1: and got set up under a juniper and Dirk was
Speaker 1: in twenty yards behind me, just over a roll, which
Speaker 1: was an ideal setup. We we eliminated all chances of
Speaker 1: hanging up on that setup if that bowl was to
Speaker 1: come into Dirk, who was the caller of the bowl.
Speaker 1: You know, amazing setup kept the shot distances really tight.
Speaker 1: I knew it was going to be twenty to thirty
Speaker 1: and it worked out excellent. And so take a little
Speaker 1: more time on your setup if you can, you know,
Speaker 1: in instances like that where it works just perfect, you know, otherwise,
Speaker 1: use that terrain, use that vegetation. Make sure when the
Speaker 1: bull gets the thirty forty yards you've got a chance
Speaker 1: to shoot, and you're not going to force that thing
Speaker 1: to hang up. You know, don't set up across from
Speaker 1: a meadow that's one hundred yards wide because you're likely
Speaker 1: never going to kill that bowld archie equipment. It's going
Speaker 1: to hang up at the edge of the meadow. Look
Speaker 1: for the cow that should be at the other edge
Speaker 1: of the meadow, and you know it's going to be.
Speaker 1: It's just not going to work out. The other thing
Speaker 1: to note on that hunt, we killed bowls three different ways.
Speaker 1: John killed his sitting over water. We killed mine with
Speaker 1: aggressive bugling like herd bull tactics challenged bugles, and then
Speaker 1: Dirk killed his bowl a day later with just natural
Speaker 1: betted herd sounds. We spread out over a ridge. We
Speaker 1: kind of followed a herd to bed with what we
Speaker 1: assumed was a herd bowl and a satellite bowl. We
Speaker 1: got on an adjacent ridge to him and we spread
Speaker 1: out one hundred and fifty yards and it was just
Speaker 1: calf call, cow call, lazy betted bugle, calf call, cow call,
Speaker 1: cow call, calf call. You know, we were, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't quick. It was, you know, maybe one or two
Speaker 1: calls every five minutes. We were just being very natural.
Speaker 1: We weren't trying to call elk. We were just trying
Speaker 1: to make it sound like a herd had come in
Speaker 1: and bedded on the knob next to him, and you
Speaker 1: could hear the bull eventually get up out of its
Speaker 1: bed and bugle, a little more active bugle, and then
Speaker 1: we could hear the bull slowly, you know, come across
Speaker 1: the drainage. She was bugling kind of on his way in.
Speaker 1: We had to do a little bit of a hopscotch.
Speaker 1: Dirk was on the opposite end of the ridge and
Speaker 1: we had to get him to the side of the
Speaker 1: ridge that the bulls to come in on, and we
Speaker 1: were able to kill that bowl. So don't don't be
Speaker 1: stuck with happened to always be aggressive, you know, sit
Speaker 1: in water.
Speaker 2: There's multiple ways.
Speaker 1: To find success on some of these hunts, and on
Speaker 1: that hunt, we used them all. My twenty twelve Washington Bowl,
Speaker 1: we had fire danger here, industrial timberlands kind of shut down.
Speaker 1: Don't be afraid to just go try a new area.
Speaker 1: I wish I could say I knew this bowl was here.
Speaker 1: We had scouted him, but we didn't. I had no
Speaker 1: idea that that bowl lived in that area. We had
Speaker 1: we had scouted it before on a very foggy day
Speaker 1: and the only thing I had to go off of
Speaker 1: was tracks in the trails.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 1: We never seen any elk on that scouting mission, but
Speaker 1: we just went and tried it, like, hey, it's there.
Speaker 1: We didn't see anybody at the trailhead. We went and
Speaker 1: tried it. So don't be afraid to try a new area.
Speaker 1: Sometimes some of my best hunting spots are you know,
Speaker 1: me throwing a dart at a dart board, abandoning what
Speaker 1: maybe has worked in the past. Let's go find something new.
Speaker 1: And that's one of my favorite things about hunting, is
Speaker 1: just finding new areas that produce or can produce, you know,
Speaker 1: in the future. On this one, I shouldn't have been
Speaker 1: the one to kill this bull. I called in that
Speaker 1: big bull the day before my buddy Derek had you know,
Speaker 1: we we had. I had sent him down to set
Speaker 1: up where I thought the bull was gonna come in
Speaker 1: and didn't realize he had kind of set up behind
Speaker 1: kind of like an iron wall of high mountain cedar.
Speaker 1: It was like an impossible penetrable wall, and I called
Speaker 1: that bowl into about fifteen yards from him, about sixty
Speaker 1: yards from me. So on that setup, if you would
Speaker 1: have set up with his back to that wall or
Speaker 1: at the last of those cedar trees, he would have
Speaker 1: had a chip shot. So you know, always make sure
Speaker 1: when you set up set up in front of or
Speaker 1: to the side of a tree. I prefer to be
Speaker 1: standing if possible, you know, my left shoulder facing to
Speaker 1: where I think that bowl will go, and then be
Speaker 1: able to shoot as much of the shooting lanes as
Speaker 1: possible without tucking in behind something. The other thing on
Speaker 1: this this hunt was persistence, right we I ended up
Speaker 1: missing that bowl the day before. I did shoot at
Speaker 1: it from what I thought was fifty five yards away
Speaker 1: and it was actually forty five. I shot right over
Speaker 1: its back. But we were persistent. We went back in there.
Speaker 1: We never we went back there that night. We went
Speaker 1: back there the following morning when I killed it. Don't
Speaker 1: don't become frustrated. You know, we had other people show
Speaker 1: up that that evening before, and we just kind of
Speaker 1: held tight. We we needed to stay with that bowl.
Speaker 1: We needed to try to figure out what he was
Speaker 1: going to do and by staying there. You know, the
Speaker 1: other hunting group had left with about two hours left
Speaker 1: in the day. Well guess what. We stayed there until
Speaker 1: dark and the bowl beagle an hour before dark after
Speaker 1: those guys left. So I was able to to you know,
Speaker 1: get that bowl to bogle again. We knew he'd be
Speaker 1: there in the morning, and we went back in there
Speaker 1: that next morning and killed it. So be very persistent.
Speaker 1: Don't just give up on things that you know, don't
Speaker 1: go your way. You know, it was the last day
Speaker 1: of the hunt, and I was able to kill that,
Speaker 1: you know, the best bowl of my life by just
Speaker 1: going back and you know, just putting time into that
Speaker 1: elk and not want to change, not go to a
Speaker 1: new area, I think, and I had screwed it up,
Speaker 1: held tough and made it work. Twenty fourteen Idaho Bowl.
Speaker 1: This was my first trip out of state from Washington
Speaker 1: kind of when you know, started to hunt elsewhere. And
Speaker 1: we could still buy tags in Idaho over the counter
Speaker 1: back then, so we showed up. It was a relatively
Speaker 1: new area. We did some on X scouting and did
Speaker 1: some of that. So when we showed up to the area,
Speaker 1: we we there were other hunters at the trailhead. I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not ashamed to say that. I'll talk to
Speaker 1: anybody around us. Hey, how's hunting going. You've seen any
Speaker 1: good bulls? What's the action like? Are they talking? Well,
Speaker 1: this guy right off the bat says, you know, up
Speaker 1: and you know around blah blah blah mountain. We've had
Speaker 1: a couple of good bulls going. We just can't seem
Speaker 1: to make it work. And you know, this area is good.
Speaker 1: The wolves have moved over into this area. So use
Speaker 1: use whatever people are willing to give you now. You know,
Speaker 1: if that guy says like, we're going back in there,
Speaker 1: we didn't end up going into their spot. It was
Speaker 1: it was good for me to end up saying, all right,
Speaker 1: at this mountain, this sort of an area, this sort
Speaker 1: of elevation, these these elk are talking. You know, it
Speaker 1: just gives you some ideas on what's going on. You know,
Speaker 1: A couple of days later, uh, he said, I'm out
Speaker 1: of here. We're leaving, Like, if you want to go
Speaker 1: in there, go ahead. We didn't end up going in
Speaker 1: there because I killed my bowl that day and then
Speaker 1: Charlie we were able to get on some you know,
Speaker 1: elk in a different spot, but we just went in
Speaker 1: there covered as much ground as possible. So we had
Speaker 1: a plan. We were gonna walk ridges, we were gonna
Speaker 1: walk some road systems, some gated off road systems, and
Speaker 1: we were just gonna cover as much of that ground
Speaker 1: as possible, try to get it figured out and then
Speaker 1: you know, figure out where the elkra at and then
Speaker 1: and then go from there.
Speaker 2: So I was able to get a bull to bugle.
Speaker 1: We went on a little six mile jaunt, got back
Speaker 1: to the truck, didn't really have any great success yet,
Speaker 1: but we're like, hey, we're on this long road system,
Speaker 1: nobody's hunting it. Let's just bugle occasionally off of the
Speaker 1: road into a big giant canyon. I don't remember for
Speaker 1: his our third or fourth bugle. All I know is
Speaker 1: Charlie was eating a bag of purple skittles. And every
Speaker 1: time I would think I heard a bugle, I would
Speaker 1: hear the crunching bag of purple skittles or him chewing
Speaker 1: on purple skittles. And I remember getting out of the
Speaker 1: truck because he's driving me nuts, and listened a little
Speaker 1: bit better, and sure enough we got a bigle to
Speaker 1: you know, a bowl of bugle. So we went and
Speaker 1: dropped the trailer, came back, and this is a good
Speaker 1: instance of if you can get a bowl to do
Speaker 1: what the bull wants to do, it's going to be
Speaker 1: easier to call him in. And I'm jumping ahead a
Speaker 1: little bit here. This bull was going up the drainage
Speaker 1: and you could hear it between bugles. He was going
Speaker 1: up to drainage and we were gonna have to come
Speaker 1: in behind him because of the wind. At that point.
Speaker 1: He was in a it had a flowing creek. It
Speaker 1: was the sun was starting to go down in a
Speaker 1: steep canyon, and we knew the wind was going to
Speaker 1: be getting sucked down the canyon, so we had to
Speaker 1: come in behind him. But he was trying to travel
Speaker 1: up it, which is smart. You know, he's keeping the
Speaker 1: wind in his face, doing goods, you know, making goods
Speaker 1: smart elk decisions. So we had to come in behind
Speaker 1: him trying to relocate him. I mentioned earlier one of
Speaker 1: the biggest mistakes is calling away into elk. He was
Speaker 1: moving so fast. I did elect to call to this
Speaker 1: elk on our way in you know, location bagle, nothing
Speaker 1: cow call with my diaphragm. Nothing and one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I carry all these ELK calls is back then
Speaker 1: I was using the easy estress. I cranked on that
Speaker 1: and he fired off instantly, so I knew he had
Speaker 1: heard the bugle, didn't answer. I knew he had heard
Speaker 1: the cow call with diaphragms, but he liked the sound
Speaker 1: of that easy estress. So we move in another one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty yards. This is a big canyon, so
Speaker 1: it's taken us a while to make up this ground.
Speaker 1: Move forward. I want to know where he's that one
Speaker 1: more time, thinking the bowl. Well, maybe now he'll answer bugle.
Speaker 1: Maybe now he'll answer an easy estress or you know,
Speaker 1: a diaphragm cow call. Nothing hammer's on easy estress. So
Speaker 1: it's like one of those things. If I hadn't had
Speaker 1: that call, we may have never been able to kind
Speaker 1: of complete this call in. So of those reasons why
Speaker 1: I carry multiple calls on some of these hunts. So
Speaker 1: back to it's easier to do it's easier to call
Speaker 1: ELK in if they're doing what they want to do.
Speaker 1: So that means if an ELK wants to go from
Speaker 1: point A to B, I don't want to call him
Speaker 1: from point b back to a if that makes any sense.
Speaker 1: So I want to get in front of him. I
Speaker 1: want to get alongside of him if the wind allows.
Speaker 2: And do that.
Speaker 1: So this hunt, we had to change shut ups, setups
Speaker 1: multiple multiple times because that bull wanted to keep going
Speaker 1: up the creek and we were trying to catch up
Speaker 1: to him, kind of coming up behind him. So we
Speaker 1: set up multiple times trying to get that ball to
Speaker 1: come in, and finally we were able to put enough
Speaker 1: pressure on him to get him to come in. That
Speaker 1: was one of the bulls that I shot on a
Speaker 1: on a pretty heavy quartering to more of a frontel
Speaker 1: but a slightly quartering, you know. On that one, we
Speaker 1: had to set up in some pretty tight quarters and
Speaker 1: some brush. But changing setups and you know, putting pressure
Speaker 1: on that bowl is really what kind of change that
Speaker 1: scenario to the positive, because that bowl was very, very
Speaker 1: hesitant to come. In twenty eighteen, Idaho, some Idaho was
Speaker 1: on fire that year, our original hunting you know spot
Speaker 1: was on fire. Thankfully, back then we could still change
Speaker 1: units because we hadn't bought our tags yet. So something
Speaker 1: we don't talk a lot about and sometimes we're too
Speaker 1: tired to do, but on that hunt, we did some
Speaker 1: night bugling. I did some night bugling prior to my
Speaker 1: buddies showing up on this hunt, and I got three
Speaker 1: or four, I don't remember, five, six maybe bulls the bugle,
Speaker 1: and so I started making pins on my on on
Speaker 1: x is as I got bulls to bagle and where
Speaker 1: they were bugled from and about how far I thought. Well,
Speaker 1: the next couple of days we hunted and it was
Speaker 1: very very hot and dry year, you know, for the
Speaker 1: reason there were fires. The majority of the vegetation above
Speaker 1: tree line had burnt up either been burnt been ravaged
Speaker 1: by you know, sheep that had been you know in
Speaker 1: the area, and it just wasn't good. So we had
Speaker 1: to become smart elk hunters. Right, if the elk can't maintain,
Speaker 1: if they don't got food, if they don't got water,
Speaker 1: they're not gonna be here, no matter if that's where
Speaker 1: they want to be during September or not. They've got
Speaker 1: to survive. They've got to find water. And I had
Speaker 1: the idea that there are elk around because I've heard
Speaker 1: them bugling at night, and so the night biggling kind
Speaker 1: of save that hunt because I maybe would have pulled
Speaker 1: anchor and went and tried complete different area within the unit.
Speaker 1: So we realized what the elk really needed. They were
Speaker 1: able to give up their preferred food, their perfood bedding,
Speaker 1: their preferred running areas because they needed water. You know,
Speaker 1: elk haf to water daily, if not multiple times a
Speaker 1: day during the rut and not hot weather. So we adapted.
Speaker 1: We moved where we wanted to hunt. We were in
Speaker 1: Timber a lot more, but we we went and found
Speaker 1: the elk. You know when calling this bowl in so
Speaker 1: this is actually my buddy Tyson's bowl. We were able
Speaker 1: to spot some elk. We were up early, we weren't,
Speaker 1: you know, sleeping in. We spotted a bowl pushing a
Speaker 1: cow over a ridge. It basically the first bit of
Speaker 1: light that we could. It was barely daylight enough for
Speaker 1: it to happen, but we spotted elk and that really
Speaker 1: got that whole day started. So we had a pretty
Speaker 1: good jaunt, you know, hour and a half hike up
Speaker 1: to that ridge line to get up and over there,
Speaker 1: and there was a major retfest going on the backside,
Speaker 1: which is exactly what we needed. We moved in. We
Speaker 1: let them do the talking. We didn't have to make
Speaker 1: a peep, so a little bit of shock and awe
Speaker 1: as we got in on this setup. We the elk
Speaker 1: had no idea we lived there. The thermals had switched
Speaker 1: coming up into us because we had to climb up
Speaker 1: to the ridge. It was just an ideal setup until
Speaker 1: we got down to where the elk were bedded, and
Speaker 1: the amount, the distance of shooting lanes, the distance of
Speaker 1: you know, an aerowaut getting hit by brush was very very.
Speaker 2: Tight. You know.
Speaker 1: We we had five to ten yard shooting windows. So
Speaker 1: we finally found an area that was as good as
Speaker 1: it got in some of this big timber. We had
Speaker 1: about fifteen yard shooting lanes and I needed to set up.
Speaker 1: I like to be able to set up so I
Speaker 1: can see my shooter and then hopefully I'll be able
Speaker 1: to see, you know, an elk and be able to
Speaker 1: react to them. So Tyson got set up and I
Speaker 1: backed up only about ten or fifteen feet above him
Speaker 1: and started to call.
Speaker 2: It, call a herd bull.
Speaker 1: In We had a spike that come in kind of
Speaker 1: check us out, and then the herd bull kind of
Speaker 1: started ripping up up the hill. We were able to
Speaker 1: get within about I'm guessing one hundred yards of where
Speaker 1: they were betted, but we couldn't get any closer due
Speaker 1: to the brush and the proximity of where those elk
Speaker 1: were betted. So this bull comes in fairly quickly, but
Speaker 1: it's so brushy. He gets about the twenty yards and
Speaker 1: Tyson needs him at about fifteen yards to have a
Speaker 1: legit shot, and the bull loses interest and starts to
Speaker 1: head back to his cows, which is typical. They will
Speaker 1: come check it out. They should expect to see you there.
Speaker 1: If not, they're going to turn.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: Fortunately, as the caller, I was able to see him
Speaker 1: turn and head away from us, and I instantly hammered
Speaker 1: him with a lipball. I was able to, you know,
Speaker 1: see how aggressive he was on his on his way in.
Speaker 1: I knew that I could probably take advantage of a
Speaker 1: very aggressive lip ball that was you know, twenty yards
Speaker 1: away from him, and that bowl on a dime, flipped
Speaker 1: an additional one eighty in the direction he was, and
Speaker 1: he came right back in. He broke through the brush,
Speaker 1: kind of pushes his head through, and Tyson was able
Speaker 1: to make a great shot at fifteen yards. But if
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have been able to see that elk or
Speaker 1: if Tyson wouldn't have been able to communicate to me,
Speaker 1: we would have never killed that bowl. So there's a
Speaker 1: great reason why I think the coller needs to be
Speaker 1: sometimes close, and the caller also needs to be close
Speaker 1: in order to create a.
Speaker 2: Threat for that bowl.
Speaker 1: If I'd have been backed up a lot from that,
Speaker 1: you know, now the bowl that's close to your herd
Speaker 1: is one hundred and fifty yards away and not one
Speaker 1: hundred yards away. And and you know, so sometimes I'm
Speaker 1: a big I'm a big you know, a big fan
Speaker 1: of having that collar right on top of the hunter.
Speaker 1: That way, you're not creating any more separation because you
Speaker 1: exponentially going to have better call ins or more successful
Speaker 1: call ins when that caller is right on top of
Speaker 1: the shooter at times. And sometimes, you know, another thing
Speaker 1: we took from this hunt is a setup wasn't optimal.
Speaker 1: But you have to take what's given to you, your relation,
Speaker 1: your distance from the elk, your you know, the best
Speaker 1: shot opportunities you're gonna have, and sometimes you just have
Speaker 1: to make that work. Yeah, I would love to be
Speaker 1: able to shoot thirty yards in there, but it wasn't possible,
Speaker 1: you know, set up and uh, we made it work
Speaker 1: the best we could. So twenty twenty three Oregon Bowl.
Speaker 1: This is a story I don't like to tell, but
Speaker 1: once again, it's one of those times where you need
Speaker 1: to be, you know, as skilled as possible. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be a one trick pony, so
Speaker 1: to speak. And twenty twenty three, So last year I
Speaker 1: had a little bit of a mental breakdown. It's big country,
Speaker 1: it was rough. We had put in some tough rough days.
Speaker 1: But finally about day eight I had to kind of
Speaker 1: kick myself in the butt and say, stop trying to
Speaker 1: find an easy one. Yeah, there were elk all over
Speaker 1: through the unit, but the easy ones were having more pressure.
Speaker 1: The easy ones. You had heard more people bugle from
Speaker 1: the road. The easy ones were not going to be
Speaker 1: as likely to come in compared to the harder elk
Speaker 1: that I was able to find. Yeah, the harder elk
Speaker 1: were maybe less dense in areas, they were maybe harder
Speaker 1: to get to. I was going to burn more energy
Speaker 1: to get them. But on that twenty twenty three hunt
Speaker 1: we had the I kind of had to just question myself, like,
Speaker 1: why are you trying to find an easy one? This
Speaker 1: isn't you know typical let's go find a difficult elk,
Speaker 1: and uh, it really kind of helped. And that goes
Speaker 1: along with pressure. There was a ton of pressure on
Speaker 1: this twenty twenty three Oregon hunt, you know, people claiming areas,
Speaker 1: people in areas, and so I really just had to,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, make an effort to go find elk
Speaker 1: that I knew other people weren't hunting, and it kind
Speaker 1: of you know, turn turn the corner on the hunt.
Speaker 1: But it was it was still still difficult. And so
Speaker 1: when we we stopped trying to find an easy one,
Speaker 1: we had made an effort to chase every bugle and
Speaker 1: all this deep ground things just weren't working. Trying to
Speaker 1: run my system of being a you know, a pressure hunter,
Speaker 1: you know, put pressure on the elk, get close to him.
Speaker 1: Bugle wouldn't work. We'd bump something, we would you know,
Speaker 1: the elk would just pick up and leave. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get real tight, and so on that day I
Speaker 1: ended up killing. We had dropped thirty seven hundred feet
Speaker 1: and climbed thirty seven hundred feet chasing bugles, so we
Speaker 1: would get in tight, we would go to cow calls.
Speaker 1: Same result just wasn't working. So as a hunter, that's
Speaker 1: you know, a hunter that loves to call elk, that
Speaker 1: takes pride in being able to call elk. I had
Speaker 1: just got my tailkicked for nine days straight, and so
Speaker 1: that evening I was able to locate a bowl with
Speaker 1: a location bugle, so that was acceptable. We had to
Speaker 1: make a we had to make a move, so we
Speaker 1: had to come in from a different direction. During the
Speaker 1: little drive where we kind of bumped around, I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm not grabbing my pack and I'm
Speaker 1: not grabbing my calls.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna wear my.
Speaker 1: Chest harness with a rangefinder. We're not using calls where
Speaker 1: I'm not even going to use a call to keep
Speaker 1: him buggling. We're just going to go completely silent and
Speaker 1: if it works, it works. If not, then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: probably be cussing myself and wishing that I had called.
Speaker 1: So this bowl continues to bugle throughout the evening. We
Speaker 1: have about an hour left, so we're trying to really
Speaker 1: beat feet up there, get set up and on that one.
Speaker 1: This was the first bowl I've ever killed that I
Speaker 1: didn't call in. We were able to slowly work our
Speaker 1: way in.
Speaker 2: We were able to.
Speaker 1: Spot a cow up ahead of us by slowly, you know,
Speaker 1: scanning the area. I was able to spot some horns
Speaker 1: to the grass. I was able to kind of figure
Speaker 1: out how he is oriented. I was able to figure
Speaker 1: out where to put his head behind a tree, and
Speaker 1: we just literally crawled, you know, walked and crawled to
Speaker 1: within forty yards of this bowl. So why sometimes I
Speaker 1: take a lot of pride and being able to call
Speaker 1: it again. I also want to find success in any
Speaker 1: way that there is, and on this one, we just adapted.
Speaker 1: We put the calls away. We want to be able
Speaker 1: to use all of those tools in our toolbox, and
Speaker 1: you know, I was able to make it happen on
Speaker 1: that bowl. So that's kind of my wrap up. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to kind of walk through those things and
Speaker 1: to kind of bring all that together. There are things
Speaker 1: we do on every hunt, and a lot of it
Speaker 1: comes from the gut.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: We sit on this podcast, we sit in seminars and
Speaker 1: we're able to draw up these perfect cookie cutter little
Speaker 1: scenarios and.
Speaker 2: The real.
Speaker 1: In the real world and the real Elk woods, it
Speaker 1: just doesn't work like that. There's little pieces of information
Speaker 1: that I would be here for an hour trying to
Speaker 1: explain the entire scenario, like, oh, there was another bowl
Speaker 1: three undred yards way down the ridge, and we maybe
Speaker 1: heard a cow over here, and earlier that morning we had,
Speaker 1: you know, seen somebody on the road a half mile down. Like,
Speaker 1: all of those things come into play that will eventually
Speaker 1: like help us make decisions, but these were This was
Speaker 1: just to show you that on all of these things,
Speaker 1: to be a successful, a complete elk hunter, you need
Speaker 1: to be able to use all this information you know
Speaker 1: to help you be successful. You know, you know scouting,
Speaker 1: you know being aggressive, you know bark, you know, sitting water,
Speaker 1: whatever it may be.
Speaker 2: All of this.
Speaker 1: Stuff at times is is what allows me to be
Speaker 1: successful and and not necessarily you know, the same thing
Speaker 1: over and over, if that makes any sense. So I
Speaker 1: really appreciate all of you tuning into this episode of
Speaker 1: Cutting the Distance. Elk season is a month and a
Speaker 1: half away, so I hope you guys are all, you know,
Speaker 1: shooting your bows, getting your calls tuned in, just getting ready.
Speaker 1: It's it's, in my opinion, the best month of the year.
Speaker 1: Look forward to it every every season. And thanks again
Speaker 1: for tuning in to Cutting the Distance, and we'll catch
Speaker 1: you on the next episode,