Speaker 1: Welcome back to Cutting the Distance. Today we're recording from
Speaker 1: the mountains of Oregon. The rudd is finally starting to
Speaker 1: pick up, the bowls are starting to get pretty vocal,
Speaker 1: and the weather's starting to cool down. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to hunt these last ten days of September. Here. Today's
Speaker 1: guest is my good buddy and longtime camera guy, David Frame.
Speaker 1: He grew up in Dayton, Washington, where he became passionate
Speaker 1: about photography and began shooting, photographing, and shooting wildlife at
Speaker 1: a young age. David has been very fortunate to film
Speaker 1: hunts to take pictures all across the US. He may
Speaker 1: be behind the camera most of the time, but what
Speaker 1: he knows about hunting is second to none. He knows
Speaker 1: what he's doing out there. I love being able to
Speaker 1: bounce ideas off of him during a hunt, not to
Speaker 1: mention once something is down. He's pretty handy with a
Speaker 1: heavy pack. Welcome to the show, Dave.
Speaker 2: Hey, thanks Phelps for having me on today.
Speaker 1: How's everything going.
Speaker 2: It's going good. Falling the mountains so can't beat it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's awesome. Like I said, you know, most
Speaker 1: time you're behind the camera, but I really enjoy hunting
Speaker 1: with you. You know, you're just like a buddy, except
Speaker 1: for most time you're you're behind the camera and they
Speaker 1: got for some reason, my ugly mugs in front of
Speaker 1: the camera. So no, we've had a lot of good
Speaker 1: hunts together. That's what we're going to kind of cover
Speaker 1: today is what we've you know, some of the hunts
Speaker 1: we've been on together and what's what you know where
Speaker 1: we found the success and we're gonna go over some
Speaker 1: of those hunts. I think we've got four or five
Speaker 1: hunts we've been successful on since we've started working together
Speaker 1: back in eighteen or nineteen. So, like we start all
Speaker 1: Cutting the Distance episodes, though, we're gonna start with some
Speaker 1: listener questions. These all came in from email. We got
Speaker 1: three questions today, and if you have questions of your
Speaker 1: own for us here at Cutting the Distance, feel free
Speaker 1: to email all them to us at CTD at phelpsgame
Speaker 1: Calls dot com, or send us a message on social
Speaker 1: media and we'll do our best to get those on
Speaker 1: here for me and my listeners to answer. So the
Speaker 1: first question today is from Brian Rosen from Butte, Montana.
Speaker 1: He was hunting last week in southwest Montana, and he
Speaker 1: was able to randomly hear two bulls biggling on a
Speaker 1: neighboring ridge. Everything had been pretty quiet up until that point.
Speaker 1: He exchanged some calls back and forth for about a
Speaker 1: half an hour, but they never seemed to actually move
Speaker 1: towards him. He eventually attempted a spot in stock since
Speaker 1: they were still responding but not getting drawn in. Once
Speaker 1: he was within eighty eight yards of what he says
Speaker 1: is a big six point, he continued to grunt and bark.
Speaker 1: The bull continued to grunt and bark in his direction,
Speaker 1: but simply would not close the distance with bull or
Speaker 1: cow calls from him. The bowl eventually casually walked off
Speaker 1: into the timber. Brian did not pursue him, is he
Speaker 1: didn't want to blow him out of the area, and
Speaker 1: it was almost the end of the day anyways. So
Speaker 1: his question for us is, how do I get a
Speaker 1: bull that will respond to biggling only? How do you
Speaker 1: get how do you get that bull within shooting range
Speaker 1: given that he will not respond to cow calls, raking,
Speaker 1: any of that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I mean you're gonna have a lot more
Speaker 2: knowledge on this subject than I do. Phelps, but I
Speaker 2: would think. The first thing I would be trying is
Speaker 2: maybe maybe even just get the wind right, figure out
Speaker 2: where the where the rest of the herd is, figure
Speaker 2: out where some of the cows might be betted or
Speaker 2: hanging out, and try to stock in on some of
Speaker 2: those cows and get get within bow range or rifle
Speaker 2: range and just hang out, sit down, try to be
Speaker 2: there as long as long as you can, and hopefully
Speaker 2: the herd bowl will come circling around eventually and might
Speaker 2: get a shot.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And and that's right off the bat, with that
Speaker 1: bowl bigling and responding but not wanting to come any closer.
Speaker 1: I instantly it's like we've got a herd bowl, most likely.
Speaker 1: But I'm also in the back of my head knowing
Speaker 1: that he had two bowls over there. Obviously one of
Speaker 1: them most likely wasn't heard bol I guess you could
Speaker 1: have two herds that had come together and that other
Speaker 1: bowl left. But depending on what you're after, how picky
Speaker 1: you're being, and what you're looking for, you could have
Speaker 1: just sat down with heavy cow calls and it may
Speaker 1: take a while. Like bulls coming into a cow call,
Speaker 1: a lot of times they're not as vocal. They take
Speaker 1: their time a little bit more so it may be
Speaker 1: a long game. Yeah, you may hear that bigger bull
Speaker 1: responding and he's not coming in, but you may be
Speaker 1: able to switch tactics. Now, if you're going after that
Speaker 1: herd bowl, sometimes you have to be very aggressive, you know,
Speaker 1: try to find a way to approach pretty quietly. And
Speaker 1: as Dave said, if you can get to within shooting
Speaker 1: distance or the edge of his cows, typically he will
Speaker 1: come between you and them. But he won't leave those
Speaker 1: cows to come all the way to He's not gonna
Speaker 1: leave his for sure thing to come find some cow
Speaker 1: that's calling him or a bowl that's challenging him. But
Speaker 1: the bowl. You know, now, if you were able to,
Speaker 1: if the vegetation and train allowed, and you kept bugling
Speaker 1: your way right into him, he's either got two responses, right,
Speaker 1: he can leave or he can stay and fight you.
Speaker 1: And so it just depends on how that terrain and
Speaker 1: vegetation laid out on that ridge. The other thing you
Speaker 1: can you know, if it allowed, you know, we don't
Speaker 1: have enough information here, but with that you could have
Speaker 1: used that ridge dear advantage, like if you knew which
Speaker 1: side they were on, you could have stayed concealed on
Speaker 1: the opposite side and then popped up. Is you know,
Speaker 1: as close as you can. Maybe he did. It's hard
Speaker 1: to speculate exactly what happened here without all the information,
Speaker 1: but we use that a lot, you know, we kind
Speaker 1: of call it the shock in awe. You're just the tighter.
Speaker 1: You can get to that bull and leave him no
Speaker 1: other choice but to come. In a lot of times
Speaker 1: we have great success. Like I wish I could say
Speaker 1: it's skill all the time, but there are many times
Speaker 1: we're moving through the woods and we catch a glimpse
Speaker 1: of a bull. We might be thirty forty fifty yards away,
Speaker 1: Like we got way too close. We didn't exactly know
Speaker 1: he was there, and we were able to call those
Speaker 1: bulls and like my that bull that dirt called in
Speaker 1: for me and New Mexico in twenty twenty, we only
Speaker 1: called that bowl in ten yards before I shot him.
Speaker 1: He was already at fifty yards as soon as we
Speaker 1: sat down. He just didn't pick us out, you know,
Speaker 1: So you can use that ridge get real close, and
Speaker 1: you know, it may have helped. And I think everybody's
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm not saying Brian's searching for like
Speaker 1: a guaranteed answer because a lot of times we're still
Speaker 1: out there. You know, how many times do we on
Speaker 1: any given setup, like should we approach this way? Should
Speaker 1: we go this way? Should we you know, we're always
Speaker 1: questioning what we're doing. And you got the plan kind
Speaker 1: of evolves multiple times. You start out with the plan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know the old quote for Mike Tyson, everybody has
Speaker 1: a plan to punched in the face. Well, the wind's
Speaker 1: hitting the you know, right now, the wind's hammering us,
Speaker 1: and so we go a different direction. And we realized
Speaker 1: we wasted forty five minutes because by time we get
Speaker 1: to where we want, the wind was actually right, you know.
Speaker 1: And so you just every all these plans evolve and
Speaker 1: you're always you're always changing as you go. But getting
Speaker 1: close to a herd, bulls, cows, or to him is
Speaker 1: is going to be to your your best bet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I will say to that point of being
Speaker 2: a little bit aggressive and getting close to animals that
Speaker 2: are maybe even a little bit spooked, but don't have
Speaker 2: your wind. A few years ago I did spook end
Speaker 2: up spooking, spooking a herd, and and and the bull
Speaker 2: ended up spooking as well. But the bowl thought that
Speaker 2: there's another bowl coming in, and so he just chased
Speaker 2: after the cows and the whole herd and he was
Speaker 2: trying to get them rounded up again, and I ended
Speaker 2: up just following them. They didn't have my wind at
Speaker 2: all and ended up bugling, and that bowl just whipped
Speaker 2: around and came right in. You have big herd bull, and.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I've I've bumped cows before. You know,
Speaker 1: we almost had the opportunity yesterday. I think we bumped
Speaker 1: some cows and I thought we might have still had
Speaker 1: a shot with the bull because we were kind of
Speaker 1: in a little bit of a bugling battle, and ultimately
Speaker 1: I think he ended up going with his cows. But
Speaker 1: a lot of times you can bump cows, sometimes that
Speaker 1: bowl thinks that you're another bull that bumped him, and
Speaker 1: he'll still come over. So not all is lost if
Speaker 1: if you're too aggressive. And that's that's how I grew
Speaker 1: up hunt Roosevelts. I didn't really know what I was doing.
Speaker 1: I was very aggressive and we would bump cows but
Speaker 1: still be able to call the bowl.
Speaker 2: In afterwards, as long as you have the wind and
Speaker 2: they don't yep yep.
Speaker 1: So all right, thank you for that question, Brian. Moving
Speaker 1: on to a question from Levi Molloy out in New Mexico,
Speaker 1: he said he just got done with an either sex
Speaker 1: archer hunt. I'm assuming it was the first season in
Speaker 1: the southern part of the Lincoln National Forest. He said
Speaker 1: they weren't running real hard yet, but they were active.
Speaker 1: He was primarily losing cow calls and throwing beagles out
Speaker 1: anytime he heard a beagle. He said he was able to
Speaker 1: call two mature bulls into about one hundred and fifty yards,
Speaker 1: but when they crested the ridge across the canyon or
Speaker 1: the little ravine from him and his brother, they were interested,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't pull them any clear two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty yards. He's asking what should he have done in
Speaker 1: that situation. He said, they hadn't spotted them, they were
Speaker 1: for sure of that, and they had good wind, but
Speaker 1: they weren't able to close the distance anymore. So what
Speaker 1: would what would you have done in that scenario?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I mean that that's happened to me so
Speaker 2: many times. I mean, it happens all the time, but
Speaker 2: I think, just looking back hindsight's twenty twenty, I would
Speaker 2: have I would have tried to use that terrain, use
Speaker 2: that ridge and maybe parked myself, maybe just just on
Speaker 2: the other side of that ridge in the direction the
Speaker 2: bulls were coming, so that they had to as soon
Speaker 2: as they had to look over that ridge. You're sitting
Speaker 2: there at twenty yards or yep or whatever, just a
Speaker 2: little bit of cover using that ridge.
Speaker 1: Yep. We we talk about that all the time. Is
Speaker 1: you know, don't don't try to set up or don't
Speaker 1: try to call that bowl until you're within shooting range
Speaker 1: of where they're going to show up. And if you
Speaker 1: knew ahead of time where you were standing you wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to approach where you thought they would, then
Speaker 1: you might as well not call again until you can
Speaker 1: get your set up a little bit better. You don't
Speaker 1: get that vegetation, get that terrain, whatever you're using to
Speaker 1: your advantage there, you need to be within bow range
Speaker 1: when you start calling, you know. And and you know,
Speaker 1: one thing, like I said, we're speculating on this question,
Speaker 1: like was there a way you could have backed out
Speaker 1: and made a big circle, Like you know, as much
Speaker 1: as I always wanted to be point A to point
Speaker 1: B to get to get to these elk, like is
Speaker 1: there an alternate route? You know that that revolt you
Speaker 1: know involves a big circle or a big loop that
Speaker 1: keeps your wind right, you know, and maybe that was
Speaker 1: your chance to move in closer.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It depends on how how aggressive you want to be
Speaker 1: or how much you know, work you want to put in.
Speaker 1: But there are sometimes where it's like, oh, shoot, we
Speaker 1: gave up some ground. We can't move anymore, but we
Speaker 1: can back up, and it might be a mile or
Speaker 1: a mile and a half loop, you know, to get
Speaker 1: back to where we need to be. But hey, we
Speaker 1: can get behind this ridge, we can get over there
Speaker 1: and hopefully they're still willing to play at that time.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's just one of those things when a
Speaker 1: when a bull gets to a spot where it expects
Speaker 1: to see the cow or the bowl buggling at them,
Speaker 1: whether it's a challenge, whether they're coming to find a cow,
Speaker 1: they're kind of done closing distance at that point, Like
Speaker 1: they expect to see the bowl, they expect to see
Speaker 1: the cow, and if it's not there, they're like, well,
Speaker 1: life came as far as I'm gonna come. If you're
Speaker 1: really here, like they've announced their position, they're up on
Speaker 1: the ridge like you come the rest of the way,
Speaker 1: and that just seems that, you know, it's how nature
Speaker 1: works anyways, and we're trying to interact with it. But
Speaker 1: when we set up things, you know, maybe I would
Speaker 1: say wrong, But if we set things up a little
Speaker 1: bit different than than nature's intended to work, we'll get
Speaker 1: those hang ups quite a bit. Yep. So our last
Speaker 1: question comes from Michael Blanchard. I believe I didn't write
Speaker 1: down where he's from. I thought he said he was
Speaker 1: from Arkansas. But he's going on his first elk hunt
Speaker 1: in Colorado this year. It's a first rifle season, which
Speaker 1: I did a little bit of research. Looks like it
Speaker 1: opens on October fourteenth this year. He has What tips
Speaker 1: do you have for a first time elk hunter?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd probably I'd probably be looking at finding high
Speaker 2: point in the area and pulling the spot and scope
Speaker 2: out and just glassing the hillsides as much as I
Speaker 2: can day light to dark. I mean, sometimes you'll get
Speaker 2: lucky and they'll still be beigling that late in the year,
Speaker 2: but I mean, honestly, yeah, I'm mid October, I'd be
Speaker 2: looking at I'm sitting on a high point and trying
Speaker 2: to glass up bulls.
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, get high, cover a lot of ground, and
Speaker 1: I think you're still gonna until the gunshots start going
Speaker 1: off in the mountains, You're gonna still have those elk
Speaker 1: rutting a little bit, you know in Colorado. But what
Speaker 1: I would be looking for is where can I find
Speaker 1: that bowl with his cows as they go from the
Speaker 1: ret But what I'm really wanting to know, if you're
Speaker 1: not lucky enough to get it done, where are these
Speaker 1: hard to reach places? Where's where these brush holes? Where's
Speaker 1: their food? You know, these bulls come off of the rut,
Speaker 1: they're going back to replenish. They're going to eat a lot.
Speaker 1: Are they going to be in secluded timber pockets? Are
Speaker 1: they going to be in these you know, hidden meadows?
Speaker 1: Are they going to be in rough, nasty country. I'm
Speaker 1: looking around where I may find them, you know, leading
Speaker 1: up to the opener or you know, day one or two.
Speaker 1: But where are they going to go right after that?
Speaker 1: So not only might like you said, I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: up high in glass and just try to figure out
Speaker 1: the country, figure out where I could maybe shoot from
Speaker 1: or where you know, those stocks are all going to
Speaker 1: work but then where am I going to go once
Speaker 1: once those bulls start to break off. I'm paying a
Speaker 1: lot of attention to down on X as well as
Speaker 1: when I'm on the ground, like where am I going
Speaker 1: to find those elks? So, you know, his second question
Speaker 1: kind of rolls into this that do I recommend just
Speaker 1: pounding the dirt and covering a lot of ground?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: I mean I've never hunted Colorado first rifle, but I
Speaker 2: think I think initially i'd be trying to set up
Speaker 2: in one area at least me personally, and and really
Speaker 2: really get to learn it and see try to figure
Speaker 2: out the habits of the critters that are that are
Speaker 2: in there, trying looking for burned areas edges of those burns. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and just really anchor myself down in one spot, I think,
Speaker 2: and just see what I can turn up. But then
Speaker 2: after but be willing to change after a couple of days,
Speaker 2: if you're not seeing in any an almost or anything,
Speaker 2: be be willing to start covering country. Yeah, but I
Speaker 2: like to initially try to try to anchor myself to
Speaker 2: one spot and learn it a little bit, and then
Speaker 2: and then go out from there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think going into a hunt if if
Speaker 1: you're new to this area, if you don't have any
Speaker 1: tips on where to go, you do a lot of
Speaker 1: e scouting. Right, you go on with us a one, two, three, four,
Speaker 1: five list where you think looks good. You know, you
Speaker 1: go there first, you scout it. If you know, you
Speaker 1: give it an evening and then maybe even a morning,
Speaker 1: like make sure you've given it a good time. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming you can go scout now. If this is hunting,
Speaker 1: you're doing the same thing, like you go to that
Speaker 1: spot first. If your Spot A just isn't going to
Speaker 1: pan out, you need to move very quickly to spot
Speaker 1: B and go see if it pans out. And what
Speaker 1: I like to do is my spot A may be
Speaker 1: a little bit easier to get to, but I think
Speaker 1: it's got the right things for ELK. I think it's
Speaker 1: in the right spot b C. Because the season goes on,
Speaker 1: I'm starting to get maybe a little deeper, a little
Speaker 1: bit harder hike in, you know, and I'm I'm trying
Speaker 1: because these other easy spots are going to be hit.
Speaker 1: So I'm progressively going too harder to reach spots and
Speaker 1: checking them out. And you just keep going down the
Speaker 1: line until you figure out where the dang elk are
Speaker 1: at and and you know, be able to hunt him.
Speaker 1: Will elk be bugling around the first rifle in Colorado?
Speaker 1: We touch on that a little bit. It's really hit
Speaker 1: or miss from year to year. You know, you had
Speaker 1: mentioned you you have one hundred first season Colorado. I've
Speaker 1: been around in that time and and they could be bigling,
Speaker 1: they may not be bugling. It's just really hit or miss.
Speaker 1: But I would say for the most part, you're gonna
Speaker 1: hear bugles that time of year.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: So it's always a good idea to carry, you know,
Speaker 1: a beagle at least for the first part. Now, if
Speaker 1: the elk aren't hammering, but you see him, like, if
Speaker 1: you know for sure the rut's not going, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be you know, the odd bowl out out there just
Speaker 1: cranking beagles off everywhere. I'd kind of try to fit
Speaker 1: in with what nature's doing, for sure. And we touch
Speaker 1: on this a little bit. But his last question of
Speaker 1: the of his four how long should he glass in
Speaker 1: one area before he moves on?
Speaker 2: Man, Yeah, that depends on a lot of factors. I
Speaker 2: think weather and temperatures and and just what you're seeing.
Speaker 2: But I'd definitely like to at least give a spot
Speaker 2: a morning and evening is where I would start, and
Speaker 2: then just see see how you're feeling about it. If
Speaker 2: if you're seeing critters, then you might want to stay
Speaker 2: stay there longer. If you're not, then then start thinking
Speaker 2: about those B and C options.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really hit or miss. It's how much time.
Speaker 1: You know, if you've got the scout, you may want
Speaker 1: hit a whole bunch of spots and only give it
Speaker 1: a morning or an evening, you know, hunting, And it
Speaker 1: really depends on the sign. Like we all want to
Speaker 1: be active hunter, active participants in the game. Right Like
Speaker 1: we're you know, we're we're walking on Oregon right now.
Speaker 1: We haven't had a chance to scout a whole lot
Speaker 1: and things have moved since we've got good information. But
Speaker 1: we as we hike, we're like, oh, there's fresh elk
Speaker 1: tracks here, there's fresh rubs. The same thing happens in
Speaker 1: rifle season, like where the rubs at? Where where are
Speaker 1: the tracks at? Scat And then you eventually just put
Speaker 1: it all together and and it's one of those games.
Speaker 1: You know, we all played it when we were younger
Speaker 1: with our parents answer friends. It's like warmer colder game,
Speaker 1: Like all right, you eventually keep following fresh tracks until
Speaker 1: it gets better and better, or is it starts to
Speaker 1: get worse. You're like, all right, I'm gonna back up
Speaker 1: into that zone. I'm gonna try to figure out where
Speaker 1: the heck those things went, because it's obvious they were here,
Speaker 1: you know, within the last twenty four hours, forty eight hours.
Speaker 1: It's the best information we've got, and so use that
Speaker 1: to add into some of these things what you're seeing, like, hey,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of elk hent aroun here. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: just not picking them up, whatever it may be. But
Speaker 1: be an active participant on the landscape and use any
Speaker 1: information you've got. You know, some people may frown at this,
Speaker 1: but it's just it's adding information to your your tool
Speaker 1: your toolbox is you're going through a hunt, is another
Speaker 1: thing that you look at is where are other hunters?
Speaker 1: Like or I mean even if you're just using it
Speaker 1: for like elevations type of areas, pockets basins, Like if
Speaker 1: there's twenty hunters stacked at a trailhead, I'm probably not
Speaker 1: going to go in there, but it lets me think,
Speaker 1: like what does that look like? What other spots in
Speaker 1: the unit are kind of like that, what elevations do
Speaker 1: I get to use that sort of stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: to your advance.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and like on this hunt even or or
Speaker 2: kind of checking spots off. But I never like to
Speaker 2: completely erase them off the whiteboard. I like to I
Speaker 2: like to keep them in the back pocket still and Okay,
Speaker 2: two days later we might come through here and see
Speaker 2: what there is.
Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah, you elk move in and out of spots.
Speaker 1: They're not necessarily just just gonna stay there. As they
Speaker 1: get pressure, they move, they move in, or you might
Speaker 1: go in there the day after somebody else was in
Speaker 1: there they got pressured, so they're not talking or they're
Speaker 1: not there, but that may be where they want to be,
Speaker 1: and they're going to be back in another day. So
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a weird balance. It's a i'd say weird.
Speaker 1: It's a delicate balance of burning up time chasing ghosts
Speaker 1: versus is it a good area that should hold elk
Speaker 1: because they're print you know, they're they're annually there during
Speaker 1: the rut, you know, and there's evidence of that, versus
Speaker 1: they're just gone. So you're you're trying to always balance,
Speaker 1: you know, that that equation on using up precious time
Speaker 1: that we have out here versus trying to find elk
Speaker 1: that may or may not be in an area at
Speaker 1: all that year. So well, thank you all for the questions.
Speaker 1: Once again, if you have questions for me or my listeners,
Speaker 1: feel free to email them to us at CTD at
Speaker 1: Phelps game Calls dot com, or send us a social
Speaker 1: media message. We'll do our best to get those questions
Speaker 1: on here for for me and my guest to answer,
Speaker 1: so we really appreciate those. Now we're gonna dive into
Speaker 1: some of our past hunts Dave and go over a
Speaker 1: few things that have worked in those situations as well
Speaker 1: as what didn't work. So we went I think our
Speaker 1: very first hunt was kind of our trial around. You're like,
Speaker 1: I think you're like, I'll do it, because you were
Speaker 1: what fifteen minutes from yeah yeah to Dave. I think
Speaker 1: he was. He's like, if this doesn't pan out, I
Speaker 1: can just leave these jokers up on the mountain and
Speaker 1: not have to ever talk to him again. So we
Speaker 1: were in his backyard on a spring bear hunt with
Speaker 1: my good buddy Charlie Smith, and it worked out good.
Speaker 1: I think you know you you joked right with the
Speaker 1: crew you were, it didn't take long to integrate in,
Speaker 1: you know. We Charlie ended up being able to kill
Speaker 1: a pretty little cinnamon blonde on that hunt, and from
Speaker 1: then on that was kind of our was that our
Speaker 1: only hunt we had you on that year was kind
Speaker 1: of just a trial run.
Speaker 2: We weren't filming a think so yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2: It's hard to all the all the hunts blend together,
Speaker 2: but I think so.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then eighteen we had kind of a busy
Speaker 1: schedule with multiple guys on multiple state trips, and we
Speaker 1: started to utilize you a lot more on our hunts.
Speaker 1: You know, everything you did was great and turned out
Speaker 1: for us. I think that year you filmed John and
Speaker 1: Charlie on an Idaho l hunt yep, and John was
Speaker 1: able to kill I think Charlie called in a pretty
Speaker 1: big five point for John pretty early in the hunt.
Speaker 1: There were some other bowls around, so you hunted with
Speaker 1: those guys. And then later that year you ended up
Speaker 1: going to Nevada with us on my Dad's meal to
Speaker 1: your hunt, where he killed a pretty good buck on
Speaker 1: the second day of that hunt. And then we then
Speaker 1: we kind of started el hunting together. We had kind
Speaker 1: of just you know, it had hunted together when it fit,
Speaker 1: and in twenty nineteen, we had a pretty big plan together.
Speaker 1: I think you stayed with me for almost all September.
Speaker 1: I think we started here in Oregon at the end
Speaker 1: of August. I think you had some stuff going on,
Speaker 1: or maybe you were doing your own hunt then. I
Speaker 1: can't remember, but we went to Wyoming shortly thereafter, beginning
Speaker 1: of September, to the Big Horns, and then we came
Speaker 1: back to Oregon. So let's kind of let's relive that
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen Wyoming hunt. You know, we were in the
Speaker 1: Big Horns, and leading into that hunt, we had got
Speaker 1: a bunch of information that and I don't ever trust
Speaker 1: this information, but everybody's like, you don't have to scout
Speaker 1: a lot, like there are elk literally everywhere. And I
Speaker 1: remember we got there, we got camp unloaded, got everything set,
Speaker 1: and I think we were there. Were we only there
Speaker 1: the night before? Did we show up a day and
Speaker 1: a half before? I think it was a day and
Speaker 1: a half.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it was the day and a half.
Speaker 2: So we did quite a bit of scout.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we we went in and we scouted and
Speaker 1: found some elk the first night, and then the next
Speaker 1: night we found like a you know, if you haven't
Speaker 1: been to the Big Horns, there are these crazy cliffs
Speaker 1: that separate the tops and then like the mid slopes,
Speaker 1: and so we were able to find a way through
Speaker 1: that to get a lot closer to where we had
Speaker 1: spotted those elk. And it was unbelievable. The night before season, like,
Speaker 1: I could not move my spotter to a meadow or
Speaker 1: an area that didn't seem to have elk in it.
Speaker 1: So that's it sounds super cliche and extremely obvious, but
Speaker 1: you can't kill an elk without having elk there. But
Speaker 1: this place seemed to be unreal. You couldn't move without
Speaker 1: being an elk, which was every elk hunter's dream, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the most elk I've ever seen, still still today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the night before I think if anybody goes back
Speaker 1: and watches the video, I'm all grind because I'm just
Speaker 1: like you, even I can't screw this up. You know,
Speaker 1: we were going to have elk no matter which basin
Speaker 1: which ridge, and then you actually have a little bit
Speaker 1: of a problem because you're like, well, I don't know
Speaker 1: where to go. This ridge had an elk on it
Speaker 1: this ridge, you know that I really like that bowl
Speaker 1: and you're kind of looking through bowls and you really
Speaker 1: kind of picked that way. We ultimately found a ridge
Speaker 1: that we thought would be a little bit harder for
Speaker 1: people to get to, and so we elected to go
Speaker 1: down in their opening day. That was I don't know
Speaker 1: if everybody remembers. I had lost a bet with my
Speaker 1: buddy Dirt Durham that year who would sell more diaphragms,
Speaker 1: my personal signature diaphragm or his, and I think he
Speaker 1: ended up beating me by a couple thousand diaphragms, and
Speaker 1: my for me to pay up on that bet, Dirt
Speaker 1: got to pick out a whole Cogain outfit that I
Speaker 1: got to hunt in, which was real humbling. And so
Speaker 1: my intention going up on the mountain was to not
Speaker 1: see anybody, and we were just gonna get through the
Speaker 1: first day. We're gonna film it, and then I was
Speaker 1: gonna edit this film, so I was gonna put very
Speaker 1: very little of that in. We had, We had a
Speaker 1: pretty good morning. We ended up bumping the herd that
Speaker 1: we wanted to have about I think it was still
Speaker 1: one hundred head plus or minus. We got him into
Speaker 1: some thick stuff and ended up seeing legs and never
Speaker 1: did see him. We chased another little bugle for while
Speaker 1: and then everything everything quieted down quite a bit that day.
Speaker 1: I think we sat for what five six hours that
Speaker 1: day up on the mountain, taken a nap, we did.
Speaker 1: We were, as we mentioned, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: elk elk rich environment. We did not want to keep
Speaker 1: bumping things until they started biggling again. You know, you
Speaker 1: want of those shadows they get long. You wanted to
Speaker 1: get up out of their beds at four thirty five,
Speaker 1: you know, somewhere in there and start biggling. So we
Speaker 1: we hung out there and started to work our way
Speaker 1: down the mountain where we saw maybe the next best
Speaker 1: bowls that morning, and uh, I think we we finally
Speaker 1: it was pretty close to dark, we were able to
Speaker 1: get a bowl to locate and he was high. He
Speaker 1: was actually in I don't even know what the name
Speaker 1: is where those cliffs kind of fall out and make
Speaker 1: a flat bench blow him and you know, and they're
Speaker 1: kind of scattered with rocks. He was in kind of
Speaker 1: a shelf below the cliff, but he wasn't cover he
Speaker 1: wasn't covering any distance I think we had tried to
Speaker 1: call in a couple of different setups and and when
Speaker 1: we when we talked talk about this over and over.
Speaker 1: If a bull will not move his location or doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be moving his location over a said amount
Speaker 1: of time, that seems like he's going to close the distance,
Speaker 1: you need to move yourself. And we had set up
Speaker 1: a couple of times and and he was very responsive.
Speaker 1: He would be agle back, but he would never move locations.
Speaker 1: And so ultimately we looked at each other and like,
Speaker 1: we got to go. We're running out of time. Both
Speaker 1: we were. We had the clock ticking against us, and
Speaker 1: uh so we were trying to move fairly quickly. We
Speaker 1: were very aggressive. We we crossed a little rock ravine.
Speaker 1: He was bigl and kind of as we were still running,
Speaker 1: we were kind of picking up on that. But we
Speaker 1: had I had this spruce tree kind of that we
Speaker 1: needed to get to. That was going to be the
Speaker 1: one where you know, I could shoot through the limbs,
Speaker 1: I could kind of see through him, I can get
Speaker 1: a better feel for what was going on. That was
Speaker 1: one of those times where we were just talking about earlier.
Speaker 1: I think we showed up about fifty five yards away
Speaker 1: from the bowl. Yeah, so we had to. We had to.
Speaker 1: We had to call him very little. But this is
Speaker 1: what happens. I believe this bull hurt us coming. He
Speaker 1: didn't hear us biggling because we stopped biggling. This was
Speaker 1: one of those times where I knew he was there.
Speaker 1: We knew we didn't need the bugle because he was
Speaker 1: biggling on his own, so we went silent. We closed
Speaker 1: out last two hundred hundred and fifty yards without making
Speaker 1: a peep. But I elk can hear very good. We've
Speaker 1: even seen it on this trip. We've had elk bugle
Speaker 1: at us just walking down a road or down a trail.
Speaker 1: They hear us and rip off, you know, so they
Speaker 1: will bugle just at the sound of your feet. This
Speaker 1: bowl started biggling and biggling more, and we I think
Speaker 1: we did start finally biggling back and forth at him,
Speaker 1: but he would not budge. I could see bits and
Speaker 1: pieces of him through the tree, but he would not move.
Speaker 1: And on this one, a lot of people talk, you know,
Speaker 1: we talk about all of the different sounds that bowl
Speaker 1: elk make. One of the sounds is an alarm bark
Speaker 1: or a nervous bark. He knew that we were there.
Speaker 1: But basically, when when a bull barks, he asked you
Speaker 1: to show yourself. Right, I everybody always ask me how
Speaker 1: we hold our bagle tubes. I typically, during a shooting situation,
Speaker 1: keep my bugle tube. If I'm on my knees, I'll
Speaker 1: keep it between my legs. If I'm standing up, I
Speaker 1: pinched my bugle tube between my legs. That's just how
Speaker 1: well he barked at me. And I was all because
Speaker 1: he's kind of in view, kind of not in view.
Speaker 1: And I can't remember if I picked my two Do
Speaker 1: you remember if I picked my tube up, if I
Speaker 1: just barked with my voice or just like barked without
Speaker 1: a tube as focused on the view fan, So Dave
Speaker 1: was focused on getting the shot. But I think I
Speaker 1: barked with a diaphragm, but I didn't lift my tube up.
Speaker 1: So basically he said show yourself, and I said, no,
Speaker 1: show yourself. And just like clockwork on that call in
Speaker 1: that bowl, as soon as I barked, we had been
Speaker 1: in a ten to fifteen minute stalemate, stand off, whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call it. That bowl walks fifteen yards
Speaker 1: to the right and plane site, very good bow range.
Speaker 1: I think it was thirty yards and made a great shot.
Speaker 1: And this is one of those times where sometimes people
Speaker 1: can celebrate and maybe get two loud after a shot.
Speaker 1: We kind of kept our composure a little bit. I
Speaker 1: he as he was running back behind the spruce tree
Speaker 1: where I was gonna lose sight. I had actually stepped
Speaker 1: to the right. I didn't spook him. He never saw me,
Speaker 1: but I was trying to watch and I realized he stops.
Speaker 1: I think I cow called or we called right after. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the bull was lethally wounded. He was hit perfect. I was,
Speaker 1: but I'm I was taught, I was raised, and I
Speaker 1: will do it probably till the day I die, until
Speaker 1: some bad experience or some other some other studies show
Speaker 1: that you should never shoot him twice. I was able
Speaker 1: to call that bowl back in. He didn't come all
Speaker 1: the way to the same spot, but he came out
Speaker 1: in the open a little bit more and I had
Speaker 1: a little bit of a of a of a not
Speaker 1: decent angle. He was a little bit quartered too, but
Speaker 1: I put it just on the back side of the
Speaker 1: shoulder and shot him again. Now some people may say,
Speaker 1: you know you don't want to alarm or to spook
Speaker 1: a bull that's lethally wounded. But I'm of I'm of
Speaker 1: the sense like, even though I know that SHOT's perfect,
Speaker 1: I would assume his lungs have another hole in him.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And that bowl was good evidence of it.
Speaker 1: He tipped over forty yards down the hill from where
Speaker 1: I shot the second time, or where he got hit
Speaker 1: the second time. One of the most you know, I
Speaker 1: don't say disgusting, one of the dirtiest breakdowns ever. That
Speaker 1: bowl had found himself a wallow during the ninety degree
Speaker 1: you know, early September heat, and he.
Speaker 2: Was completely covered head to toe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we tried. For those of you that that I
Speaker 1: haven't talked about, like my dad and uncles were all
Speaker 1: raised in a butcher shop and it's been passed down
Speaker 1: to us, like your meat's kept very clean, no hair,
Speaker 1: no dirt. And I looked at Dave. I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: I cannot keep my hands under the hide. It's just
Speaker 1: going to be a disaster. And we looked at each
Speaker 1: other and we were both running pretty low on water
Speaker 1: because it was so hot that day, and we had
Speaker 1: a we had a river about a mile down below us.
Speaker 1: We decided that it was worth dropping everything but our water,
Speaker 1: water bags or bottles or whatever we had, and we
Speaker 1: went down there and filled every one of those up.
Speaker 1: It took us about an hour to drop in film
Speaker 1: up and come back up. But we had to keep
Speaker 1: our hands clean, keep the meat clean, and it worked out.
Speaker 1: It was gonna be a disaster without it. So in
Speaker 1: that time, you know field care. You know, sometimes it's
Speaker 1: nice to have water hand you know, back then we
Speaker 1: didn't pack like the hand wipes, the wet wipes around.
Speaker 1: Now we would have had those we could have helped
Speaker 1: out with. You know, this was an instance where he
Speaker 1: was so muddy, like rubber gloves weren't gonna help at all,
Speaker 1: and everything was slick. I think rubber gloves would actually
Speaker 1: hurt in that situation. But you know, we did everything
Speaker 1: we could, you know, on that one, and on on
Speaker 1: that calin I think we were we were very aggressive.
Speaker 1: You know, some people would have been like we were
Speaker 1: too aggressive.
Speaker 2: But yeah, when I was, when I was running after you,
Speaker 2: chasing you down, I was thinking we were on the
Speaker 2: edge of too aggressive.
Speaker 1: When it worked out. Yeah, So this I'm glad you
Speaker 1: said that because if there would have been a spruce
Speaker 1: tree or a good tree. The vegetation. We talk about
Speaker 1: it maybe too much, but this this is another idea.
Speaker 1: Like I knew that was the tree. I could see
Speaker 1: it from one hundred yards out, because everything else was
Speaker 1: going to put me behind a little teeny green, you know,
Speaker 1: a piece of brush out in the wide open, and
Speaker 1: that was a tree that was going to allow me
Speaker 1: to be concealed, get my bow drawn, everything that was
Speaker 1: going to need to do. And so we probably were
Speaker 1: about you know, if you want to say we were
Speaker 1: thirty yards too aggressive, but I needed to be at
Speaker 1: that tree. Otherwise it didn't matter how far we stayed
Speaker 1: back or where we played it cautious, we weren't going
Speaker 1: to get to the right spot. Yeah, we didn't know
Speaker 1: if it was a herd bowl or a satellite at
Speaker 1: that point, you know, herd bowl. We were going to
Speaker 1: have to get that close. So yeah, we literally ran
Speaker 1: the last three hundred yards, got very very tight to
Speaker 1: this bowl. And it was still a pain in the
Speaker 1: neck to call him out from behind that tree. You know.
Speaker 1: It took us twenty minutes of back and forth, and
Speaker 1: finally a bark was what was able to pull him,
Speaker 1: pull him away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's what's school about El Kinnie? You can
Speaker 2: chase him around and yeah.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep. And then we finished up on that hunt
Speaker 1: we hunted, so that was day one I was fortunate
Speaker 1: enough to kill. We hunted with our buddy Corey for
Speaker 1: another eight days and we called in a few bulls.
Speaker 1: One lesson And I'm not picking on my buddy Corey
Speaker 1: at all. And when we talked to a guy on
Speaker 1: this hunt, what was his what was his line about
Speaker 1: drawing his bow? I don't remember he was. The guy's like,
Speaker 1: I can't. He's like, these bulls won't let you draw
Speaker 1: your bow. I'm gonna have to draw before he ever
Speaker 1: sees me. And I'm not talking anything bad about like
Speaker 1: I said, this guy, not Corey didn't say this, but
Speaker 1: the other guy. And we're like, yeah, drawing your bow
Speaker 1: is and when to draw your bow is maybe the
Speaker 1: most important decision you're gonna make on a call in.
Speaker 1: You need to you need to be very in tune
Speaker 1: with the bulls movement. How much has he stopped on
Speaker 1: the way in, how quick is he moving, how aggressive
Speaker 1: is he been if he's coming in tiptoeing really quiet?
Speaker 1: Like man, you depending on if you how long you
Speaker 1: can hold your bow, but you might want to draw
Speaker 1: the very last second, Like find a tree that you
Speaker 1: can draw on.
Speaker 2: A tree picked down beforehand, I'm gonna draw there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if the bulls like just hammering through brush and
Speaker 1: like storming in, you get a little more lead. Way,
Speaker 1: you can draw a little bit earlier because you're not
Speaker 1: gonna probably get stuck hold in as long. It's a
Speaker 1: fine art. But you know, back to the Big Horn Hut, Wyoming,
Speaker 1: we had a pretty good six with a real good
Speaker 1: front end, maybe not super strong up top, but this
Speaker 1: bull got out into a meadow and he actually did
Speaker 1: what we say doesn't work very often. We didn't have
Speaker 1: a whole lot of vegetation in front of us, but
Speaker 1: we kind of got pinned down because he we were calling,
Speaker 1: and I think we all kind of looked up and
Speaker 1: we're like, oh, he's on the edge of the meadow.
Speaker 1: We called a little bit more and this bull sprints
Speaker 1: across the meadow and that was one of those times
Speaker 1: where if I and I think Corey was a little
Speaker 1: bit on the edge whether he wanted that bowl or not.
Speaker 1: So maybe he wasn't super interested in and drawing at
Speaker 1: that time, but within about twenty seconds. That bowl covered
Speaker 1: two hundred yards, oh yeah, and he was right on
Speaker 1: top of us at twenty yards broadside. But you know,
Speaker 1: once again Corey wasn't able to draw his bow because
Speaker 1: now the bull was locked on you know, me and him,
Speaker 1: the caller and the shooter, and we were kind of
Speaker 1: just pinned down. So we chased a lot of bulls.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of fun, just you know, a
Speaker 1: little bit later in the hunt, we had a bigger
Speaker 1: five point that you know, came in in a kind
Speaker 1: of a weird direction, and then he started his frontel
Speaker 1: walk at about seventy yards coming up an old cat trail,
Speaker 1: and Heinstein's always twenty twenty if you know, we talk
Speaker 1: about this when you set up, you should be able
Speaker 1: to guess where a bull is gonna want to come up,
Speaker 1: and if he's going to come up like an old
Speaker 1: grade or an old like a very clear path, you
Speaker 1: should maybe set yourself fifteen to twenty yards up on
Speaker 1: it and not be in a straight line with that path,
Speaker 1: you know, because I think if we were just ten
Speaker 1: to fifteen yards off number one, that bowl wouldn't have
Speaker 1: finally seen us in the road being set up or
Speaker 1: Corey in the road set up, but he would have
Speaker 1: walked past us or at least up that road enough
Speaker 1: to get a shot, and so we would have avoided
Speaker 1: the eye to eye contact and been able to get
Speaker 1: a closer broadside shot. Yeah. So yeah, think about all
Speaker 1: that stuff when you when you set up. We finished
Speaker 1: that hunt up, we came back to Oregon. I think
Speaker 1: we were September eleventh or twelfth we showed up here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds right.
Speaker 1: And that year this unit just seemed to be somewhat dead.
Speaker 1: I mean, we were getting on bulls every day, but
Speaker 1: it just wasn't going. They weren't interested in being called
Speaker 1: in real reluctant to be you know, even cow called
Speaker 1: to bugle. Just we would see bulls, they weren't bugling
Speaker 1: a whole lot. And so we were still kind of
Speaker 1: early in the rut. We chas we chased some smaller
Speaker 1: bulls seemed to be rutting a little bit more. We
Speaker 1: chased some bulls pretty deep, you know, on a few days.
Speaker 1: It was very weird to me for the unit when
Speaker 1: we were hunting that year that we ran into a
Speaker 1: herd with a bigger five point and a very small
Speaker 1: six point. Is the herd bulls and a deep spot
Speaker 1: that should have had something special in it. So on
Speaker 1: hunts like those, I think you need to you just
Speaker 1: need to wait your time. But that year, that season
Speaker 1: I believe closed off on September nineteenth. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: you're balancing being patient and letting the rut kick in
Speaker 1: versus you need to get it done now. Even that
Speaker 1: pre run. So with that said, we were still pounding
Speaker 1: a lot of ground. We were just trying to find
Speaker 1: a bull that was either with the herd, you know,
Speaker 1: that that had a cow that was in and they
Speaker 1: were excited. And the other thing that was real weird
Speaker 1: about this unit is all the big bulls like to
Speaker 1: hang out together. So we had found a couple of herds.
Speaker 1: We spent a lot of days chasing bulls that just
Speaker 1: they were outsmarting us, outrunning us. And we invested a
Speaker 1: lot of time, you know, on some very very good bulls.
Speaker 1: And then finally we had to make the decision all
Speaker 1: of us after being beat what four days in a row,
Speaker 1: three days.
Speaker 2: In a row, I think it was four, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And similar routines, different routines. He could do whatever he
Speaker 1: wanted and beat us. It seemed like we just were
Speaker 1: at a disadvantage. We just had to pull the plug
Speaker 1: on him, like, yeah, it was a great bowl, was
Speaker 1: one that we wanted to go after, but we had
Speaker 1: to change plans. And so you know, fast forward, you're
Speaker 1: like September fifteenth or sixteenth, you don't only have four
Speaker 1: or five days left. So that's where you have to
Speaker 1: make that decision on do you stay with them potentially
Speaker 1: burn up all your season getting beat, or do you
Speaker 1: need to go find one that's more callable or in
Speaker 1: a more callable area. Yeah, that hunt we had, we
Speaker 1: were we had got soaking wet the one day we
Speaker 1: chased the five and the six point out and you
Speaker 1: had wear your I think you'd worn your socks two
Speaker 1: or three days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one too many days in a row.
Speaker 1: So they've had hoof rot ye or a foot disease.
Speaker 2: As on the bench for twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Dave, da've sat September sixteenth out seventeenth sixteenth, and uh,
Speaker 1: I went out with my other buddies and that was
Speaker 1: the day. It was literally like somebody had hit the
Speaker 1: light switch and told those elk that day that you
Speaker 1: need to start bigeling. We had called in three different
Speaker 1: bowls to under sixty yards, just didn't have any shots.
Speaker 1: We were watching a three twenty bowl that day and
Speaker 1: one of Brian's one of his I think it was
Speaker 1: his brother, one of his buddies, came up and found
Speaker 1: us on the mountain and said, hey, you guys got there.
Speaker 1: The big bulls are down low, and so we adjusted
Speaker 1: our hunt. We came down out of the mountains, we
Speaker 1: got we had some permission on some pre it there
Speaker 1: and we chased. You know, I love hunting the mountains
Speaker 1: more than anybody. It's where I'd rather be. These bulls
Speaker 1: down low or uncullable when they're out in the fields
Speaker 1: like that, because you can't hide. You you're basically trying
Speaker 1: to ambush them, get in front of them and wait.
Speaker 1: But it's hard not to go hunt a group of
Speaker 1: elk with three or four bowls that are all big,
Speaker 1: mature bulls. So we made the decision to do that,
Speaker 1: and then we got to hunt elk like I don't
Speaker 1: like to hunt elk for three days, just trying to
Speaker 1: get in front of them all the time, you know,
Speaker 1: ducking down drainage ditches, you know, running around. But ultimately
Speaker 1: was able to kill a really good bull down there
Speaker 1: and and the low stuff. But you know, all of
Speaker 1: those bulls had dropped out of the mountains, you know,
Speaker 1: and went down there, and then you had you have
Speaker 1: to hunt them where they're at, right we we just
Speaker 1: mentioned the whole, the whole. It's it's very obvious, but
Speaker 1: you have to kill bulls, big bulls where they're at,
Speaker 1: and that's where they all were at that time. So
Speaker 1: we made the decision to drop down. I'm not ashamed,
Speaker 1: Like it was pretty nice to be able to get
Speaker 1: a tractor to the first bowl of my life and
Speaker 1: not have to quarter it up and pack it out
Speaker 1: on my back. But it's one of those things I'd
Speaker 1: like to reserve or save for my wife and kids,
Speaker 1: and I just assume put that thing on my pack
Speaker 1: and get it out. But it was pretty nice. One time.
Speaker 2: I had a blast down there on the fields because
Speaker 2: I mean, you're you're getting to see them out in
Speaker 2: the open and get and getting close to them and
Speaker 2: seeing how bulls heard cows around and it was it
Speaker 2: was still fun hunt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was, it was. It's it I think it
Speaker 1: makes you a more rounded elk hunter, like trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what you can get away with being seen,
Speaker 1: you know, multiple eyes. You know, we took a few risks,
Speaker 1: you know at some points getting into these you know,
Speaker 1: different tree rows, into these like Christmas tree type patch.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like what can we get away with?
Speaker 1: How close can we get? And it was a fun hunt.
Speaker 1: It was great for viewing Elk and like you said,
Speaker 1: just being a student of the game. We're always trying
Speaker 1: to learn, but just getting to watch them and how
Speaker 1: you know, when these three or four bowls all come
Speaker 1: together and what would be like a rut fest quote
Speaker 1: Mega heard kind of a situation like how the pecking
Speaker 1: order was established and why they maybe let it each
Speaker 1: to get away with a little bit when I think
Speaker 1: like normally a big herd bow would run them all out. Yea,
Speaker 1: It's just it was interesting to watch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fun as a cameraman getting to film that stuff too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it was. It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: The next year, you came with us and filmed our
Speaker 1: Wyoming Elk hunt. Tyson, Drevnock, Daniel Duncan, myself all drew
Speaker 1: Wyoming tags and we showed up there those guys. I
Speaker 1: was on a different hunt that year. Oh, I was
Speaker 1: in New Mexico with with Dirk and and I finished
Speaker 1: up a little bit late. You guys were there early
Speaker 1: archery hunting, and I showed up late. And then we
Speaker 1: had found some bulls. Two days of archery season left,
Speaker 1: and this was one of the tags that turns into
Speaker 1: a rifle shortly there after, you know, after archery, and
Speaker 1: we decided not to necessarily, as much as I love
Speaker 1: archery el hunting, there was too many elk, too many eyes,
Speaker 1: and too much open ground for us to like get
Speaker 1: in without risking busting them. So we had made the decision,
Speaker 1: let's leave him here, let's just keep tabs on them
Speaker 1: until the rifle opens up. Went back in there and
Speaker 1: everything you could have set your watch to these elk
Speaker 1: right when they were fighting, when they were coming out
Speaker 1: to the meadows where the big bull was gonna go,
Speaker 1: where the you know the they were also very big
Speaker 1: satellites where they were going to go. Well, guess what
Speaker 1: also correlates with the opening day of there was a
Speaker 1: deer season that started in there on the same day,
Speaker 1: and so hunters showed up. We've seen hunters that we
Speaker 1: hadn't seen the whole time, and other people coming in
Speaker 1: different trails. Well long, and I'll blame myself, you know,
Speaker 1: I use my range finder a lot to figure out, like,
Speaker 1: all right, these elk are at eighteen hundred yards away
Speaker 1: from me, that little noles at fourteen hundred yards away
Speaker 1: from me. If we're comfortable with a four hunder yard shot,
Speaker 1: we can get there well somewhere. In opening day calculations,
Speaker 1: we were way too far and we couldn't make a shot.
Speaker 1: The bowl was there early, and so we ended up
Speaker 1: playing a cat and mouse game. We pushed them way
Speaker 1: high into a basin, way high in the mountain and
Speaker 1: ended up having to kind of sit there. We watched
Speaker 1: the bulls walk in. We were able to We knew
Speaker 1: where they were at, We knew what patcha timber they
Speaker 1: went in, because they couldn't have got out. It was
Speaker 1: an isolated pocket. And we did a little bit of
Speaker 1: a you know, a western, a western move where me
Speaker 1: and Tyson decided we would just still hunt through the
Speaker 1: patch of timber and then Daniel was gonna be where
Speaker 1: we thought they may kind of release out of there,
Speaker 1: and so we did a little bit of a dry
Speaker 1: you know, I went It wasn't a drive we were hunting,
Speaker 1: but we we came down through that piece and I
Speaker 1: remember early we were about halfway through the patch of
Speaker 1: timber when I had one of the medium six is
Speaker 1: run through me, you know, like a three hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty at six and I couldn't get a shot, like
Speaker 1: it flashed in front of me, but it let me
Speaker 1: know which direction they were coming from. I wasn't on
Speaker 1: the right ridge. The elk were on Tyson's ridge. Tyson
Speaker 1: had either bumped him or was pushing them. So I
Speaker 1: ran down and all of a sudden I heard a gunshot,
Speaker 1: which I couldn't tell if it was Tyson or Daniel.
Speaker 1: And then it was it was almost self defense because
Speaker 1: the entire herd like came running by where I was
Speaker 1: at and I was trying to, you know, find horns
Speaker 1: and trying to just trying to figure out what was
Speaker 1: going on, and the pant you know, it was just chaos.
Speaker 1: And I figured you can hear when a rifle hits
Speaker 1: a cavity, right, it's you get the big thump at
Speaker 1: the end. So I knew we already had to pack
Speaker 1: one bowl out of way. Well, I had a little
Speaker 1: five point stop by it like seven yards. He didn't
Speaker 1: know I was there, and like, well that's close enough,
Speaker 1: and we already got to pack one out of here.
Speaker 1: We're going to bring horses and mules in. So I
Speaker 1: was able to get a shot on that bowl. And
Speaker 1: then it was the longest I think, most miles, most
Speaker 1: elevations I've put on in a single day. I think
Speaker 1: we ended up doing twenty two miles and three hundred
Speaker 1: and forty feet elevation three and forty yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: thirty five hundred, yeah somewhere in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds right.
Speaker 1: It was a long day, and we kept getting turned
Speaker 1: around on the way back and that are yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a disaster. And then we were
Speaker 1: all pretty beat. But we had one day left where
Speaker 1: we had to go home, and Tyson still had his tag.
Speaker 1: He was unable to get a shot that night. The
Speaker 1: next day, lokate Elk right off the bat we here
Speaker 1: in bigland, not very far out of camp. We'd climbed
Speaker 1: up and this is one of those times where we
Speaker 1: almost called the bowl in too fast. We located the bowl.
Speaker 1: He was on an adjacent ridge, but on our slope
Speaker 1: that we were on, we had some of that dead timber.
Speaker 1: It wasn't burnt, but just dead beetle killed timber below us,
Speaker 1: and we thought we needed to get that bull's attention
Speaker 1: and keep it. But just like the bowl with Corey,
Speaker 1: that bull decided he was going to sprint to us. Well,
Speaker 1: Tyson and Daniel and I believe you already had walked.
Speaker 1: We were walking down there, but you guys weren't gonna
Speaker 1: walk as fast as that bull was going to get there.
Speaker 1: And Cody couldn't see. But Cody Wilson was in a
Speaker 1: spot where he could not see how fat. So he
Speaker 1: was still a calling and I'm over there giving him
Speaker 1: like all the you know, throat symbol, like stop, cut
Speaker 1: it off, knock it off. You know, he finally stops.
Speaker 1: But I think when you guys popped out of the timber,
Speaker 1: Tyson said, he looked up in the bowls like it
Speaker 1: forty or fifty yards away, like we had called too fast.
Speaker 1: So in that scenario, until you know exactly how that
Speaker 1: bull is going to react, I guess what would we did? Though,
Speaker 1: if you guys would have waited with us, you guys
Speaker 1: would have been even further behind. So it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where it was just it was fortunate that
Speaker 1: you guys were able to get there just in time.
Speaker 1: And Tyson was able to make a good shot on
Speaker 1: that bowl. But that was one of those things I
Speaker 1: think about that if you've got to get to a
Speaker 1: spot and you've got a secondary caller, use use call signals.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of times if a guy's ahead,
Speaker 1: when he's ready to set up, he'll give like three
Speaker 1: quick cow calls or one, or he'll say, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna cow call when i'm ready and then I'm going
Speaker 1: to be quiet. Right, give yourself some signals so that
Speaker 1: the guy that's maybe calling, or if you're not ideally
Speaker 1: you're always within, you know, seeing distance of each other,
Speaker 1: so you can give each other signals like what's going on,
Speaker 1: beagle cow call, whatever. But if you can't, you gotta
Speaker 1: have some sort of idea what's going on, So make
Speaker 1: sure you can communicate without communicating. We almost called that
Speaker 1: bowling a little too fast. Yeah, what other hunts? I
Speaker 1: think twenty one rifle. Yeah, you were with us on
Speaker 1: that one, Yep, that bowl. The whole story is if
Speaker 1: you know he's around, he's around, right. We spent We
Speaker 1: had some guys. You know, my good buddy Brian was
Speaker 1: watching him for a couple of days. Knew he was
Speaker 1: in the area, But the night before season he had
Speaker 1: dropped over from a south facing slope to a north
Speaker 1: facing slope, So it went from where he could see
Speaker 1: really good to where you couldn't hardly see anything. We
Speaker 1: knew he was there. Opening morning, we found all the
Speaker 1: satellite bowls that was with him, but him, all his cows,
Speaker 1: And then you start to wonder how far as he went.
Speaker 1: Did he cross the entire canyon? Did he, you know,
Speaker 1: go up the ridge? Did he go down the ridge?
Speaker 1: You're you're really starting to question. We get all the
Speaker 1: way through that day nothing, We go look at a
Speaker 1: different bowl that just wasn't quite what we were after,
Speaker 1: and then the next day we spot a big heavy
Speaker 1: seven that we didn't think was quite what we wanted,
Speaker 1: but we deserved the closer look. So me, you, Dirk,
Speaker 1: and Brian I believe walked way out, way down this
Speaker 1: finger ridge, way down in there, the biggest rookie mistake
Speaker 1: of ever. I don't Brian blames me. I blame him,
Speaker 1: but I know who was on the spotter at that time,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't me. But no Brian, Brian's an awesome hunter.
Speaker 1: I'm just giving him a hard time, but I still
Speaker 1: give him crap about this one, because you know when
Speaker 1: you're when you're looking through a spotter, and we could
Speaker 1: see just like a piece of the elk in a
Speaker 1: little bit of horn, like he was tucked away in
Speaker 1: some brush, and I was getting kind of tired, and
Speaker 1: Brian was looking well about I don't know, a minute
Speaker 1: or two went by, and I think he puts his
Speaker 1: eyeback in her. I actually finally duck down into my
Speaker 1: spot and we're both like, he's gone. Never seen him move,
Speaker 1: never seen him come out to where it was no
Speaker 1: side of this thing at all. And we're kind of like, oh,
Speaker 1: that was That was as bad as it gets. Like
Speaker 1: we screwed up big time. You know, we shouldn't have
Speaker 1: let that happen. We're fairly experienced, we're pretty good at
Speaker 1: this thing, but completely botched it. And we decided, all right,
Speaker 1: it's the walk of shame. We're just gonna walk out this.
Speaker 1: We were probably fifteen hundred feet down in there, maybe
Speaker 1: a little more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at least we're like.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, the walk of shame back up and about
Speaker 1: halfway and I I'd been hunting a lot already. We're
Speaker 1: we're in the end of October, maybe early November. I
Speaker 1: don't remember it was it was. I had already had
Speaker 1: a lot of hunts that year and I got this.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was a migraine or what
Speaker 1: tech was going on, but I got a crazy headache
Speaker 1: that I did. I don't you know, hadn't had to
Speaker 1: deal with too much. And we had took my pack
Speaker 1: off and I think I'd had some talel in there
Speaker 1: and some might beprofen or something. Took it and about
Speaker 1: the time I had dropped one of those like jail caps,
Speaker 1: I think Adville jail caps, and when they get wet
Speaker 1: or any moisture, they puff up in they're no good.
Speaker 1: So I had just picked it up and threw it
Speaker 1: off the ridge, and I think Brian or Dirk or
Speaker 1: somebody think, Brian yell, that's the bull, get ready to shoot. Well,
Speaker 1: I love my gun, but it's a it's a big,
Speaker 1: single fed three thirty eight edge. It doesn't have bullets
Speaker 1: in it. The bullets werell in my pocket. I had
Speaker 1: my scope cover on. I think I had about five
Speaker 1: seconds to figure out where my bull was, where to
Speaker 1: get it in the gun, and then that bowl came
Speaker 1: through the opening. But he came through it too fast,
Speaker 1: and we all gave our war cries just to stop him.
Speaker 1: Like that's one thing that will sometimes work. It's not
Speaker 1: a hunting sound, it's nothing, but you yelled a bull when,
Speaker 1: you know, right prior to where you need him to
Speaker 1: because it's gonna take a while for the sound to
Speaker 1: get there. We've stopped animals a lot right just by
Speaker 1: a you know, a big yelt across the across the canyon,
Speaker 1: and that bull did not stop. And it was just like, ah,
Speaker 1: that was him right. He had been there the whole time.
Speaker 1: We just never laid eyes on him in the canyon
Speaker 1: we were in, yeah, a pretty tight you know side canyon.
Speaker 1: Never seen him and we're like, oh, shoot, and I
Speaker 1: think Dirk somebody said he's coming back for some crazy reason.
Speaker 1: His boldie sides. He didn't want to go up that
Speaker 1: ridge and come. I don't know if he caught our
Speaker 1: wind off of that, but he comes.
Speaker 2: Back down and switch backing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe he comes back down the trailley went up
Speaker 1: and stops at that gap at four hundred yards. I
Speaker 1: was able to make a shot and the rest was
Speaker 1: a long night with a migraine or whatever the heck
Speaker 1: I had going on. But that was one of those
Speaker 1: times you know that trust trust the latest knowledge you've got,
Speaker 1: until you've seen that bowl somewhere else or no, he's
Speaker 1: out of there, you have to assume he's in that country.
Speaker 1: You know, the same with the archery seasons like we're
Speaker 1: in right now. You know, if a bull was seen
Speaker 1: there somewhere during the rut with cows, you have to
Speaker 1: assume unless he just gets completely bumped out of the
Speaker 1: country or moved off somewhere, he's probably still there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And one thing that stands out to me
Speaker 2: is I remember literally like thirty forty five seconds before that,
Speaker 2: Brian is like that bull that we're looking for is
Speaker 2: going to be in a patch just like that, and
Speaker 2: that's where he was ended up being.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's just he's holed up there, right, he's super thick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: recoup from the rut. He's trying to feed without anything
Speaker 1: seeing him or laying eyes on him. He wants that security.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's it's a great A great point is
Speaker 1: that you know, look for those garbage holes. Just what
Speaker 1: we talked about the guy on the Colorado hunt. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you're these bulls don't want to be in the
Speaker 1: in the wide open anymore. Once they're done rutt and
Speaker 1: once they've kind of given up the pressures too much,
Speaker 1: they're gonna they're gonna drop those cows. And you know,
Speaker 1: they may still check on them at night, but they're
Speaker 1: gonna hide the rest of the day. They're not gonna
Speaker 1: hang out with that heard, you know, twenty four hours
Speaker 1: a day. Yep. You got to hunt with Dirk a
Speaker 1: little bit last year on his Utah hunt. Was a
Speaker 1: pretty special place. Yeah, tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: like the bold of cow ratios there and just how
Speaker 1: you guys, maybe maybe how he hunted it a little
Speaker 1: bit different than you would a spot where you're dealing
Speaker 1: with cows and and whatnot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, that was that was special place. I think
Speaker 2: the bold of cal ratios are like eighty eighty bowls
Speaker 2: to one cow or something something crazy in there. I
Speaker 2: think for the first three days all we saw were
Speaker 2: bulls and there. Yeah. I think I think Dirk stuck
Speaker 2: to his guns pretty much of just bugling a lot still,
Speaker 2: even though I mean, yeah, we we hardly had to
Speaker 2: get them bugling though, I mean you would they were
Speaker 2: they were, They were bugling everywhere we went, So just
Speaker 2: a lot easier, easier on us. There a lot of
Speaker 2: bugle and to do and but yeah, so then I
Speaker 2: think once we were dropping down into those holes and
Speaker 2: knowing where the bulls were, it was just a few
Speaker 2: cow calls and those bulls were headed our way. Again,
Speaker 2: just super special place. So it's it's not it's not
Speaker 2: your typical public land, yeah, hunt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think I don't want to make a
Speaker 1: correction if you were right, but I believe the whole
Speaker 1: unit is what eighty to one hundred?
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah for the but the area that you guys were in,
Speaker 1: it didn't seem to have a lot of cows in
Speaker 1: at all, so it might have been eighty to one.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, yeah, it seemed like eighty to one. But yeah,
Speaker 2: you're right, eighty to.
Speaker 1: One hundred for the whole the whole area, which ye,
Speaker 1: which is off the charge. You know, you're you want
Speaker 1: to be in units with their do you do one hundred?
Speaker 1: You know? And that's that's pretty dang good hunting you
Speaker 1: And what it really comes down to is like herd dynamics,
Speaker 1: and the reason those bulls were so callable is that
Speaker 1: none of them had opportunities at cows, and some of
Speaker 1: them are really good bulls, but they just don't have
Speaker 1: any cows around at that time, or the bigger bulls
Speaker 1: and they have all the cows. This unit is pretty
Speaker 1: special too, because a lot of the cows went to
Speaker 1: a certain part to rut, and so if you were
Speaker 1: in the higher mountains before those bulls decided they needed
Speaker 1: to drop down, you were hunting pretty much bulls still
Speaker 1: at that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it was. It was just a special
Speaker 2: part of that unit where where the bulls are all
Speaker 2: bachelored up and just figuring out, you know, figuring out
Speaker 2: who's the boss. And we were there early too, so
Speaker 2: that made a difference as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, well I wasn't on that hunt, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to touch on it a little bit with some
Speaker 1: different bowl of cow dynamics and and how a unit
Speaker 1: can change and where, you know, we preach a lot
Speaker 1: you know, bugle for aggressive you know aggressive bugling for
Speaker 1: herd bulls. I think in certain units in certain areas,
Speaker 1: you know, cal caul is all that's needed, or if
Speaker 1: you find the right bowl cal callings all it's needed.
Speaker 2: So yeah, no, it was. It was pretty easy just
Speaker 2: to let out of calcool and locate them and getting
Speaker 2: close to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And then aside from that, the hunt that
Speaker 1: we're on right now, the last time I got to
Speaker 1: n with you was on my Washington twenty two Bowl,
Speaker 1: which here's a here's a shameless plug. It will be
Speaker 1: on loopholed Optics's YouTube channel. It's actually airing today, which
Speaker 1: is September nineteenth. But uh, you know, by the time
Speaker 1: this this episode drops, you can go check that out.
Speaker 1: And it was a fun hunt. But I would say
Speaker 1: the lesson that we pulled away from that is the
Speaker 1: unit we were in was extremely rugged. It's it's some
Speaker 1: guys may be able to hunt that day in and
Speaker 1: day out and do it right, but a lot of
Speaker 1: guys aren't going to be able to go top to bottom,
Speaker 1: top to bottom multiple times in this unit without burning
Speaker 1: themselves out. So the game plan, which may seem like
Speaker 1: some is a lazy plan or a boring way to hunt.
Speaker 1: But we've been there before, we've hunted it before. We
Speaker 1: did not put a bunch of effort in. Aside from glassing,
Speaker 1: we did make a you know, we had a good
Speaker 1: idea on one decent bowl. We made a little hike
Speaker 1: in there, so we could see down in, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't a ton of work. We were trying to stay
Speaker 1: high and look. We spent a lot of time behind
Speaker 1: the glass trying to just find the bowl that you
Speaker 1: wanted to go after. You didn't want to waste energy on,
Speaker 1: you know, just getting into areas you can, you know,
Speaker 1: if you could hike to certain points in the unit
Speaker 1: so you could glass a lot of it. There was
Speaker 1: a you know, there were one to two mile hikes
Speaker 1: where you could get into and glass a lot of
Speaker 1: it without having to drop into it. You can see
Speaker 1: a lot of these faces. You may just have to
Speaker 1: change positions over time. And one thing about that unit
Speaker 1: is those bulls are for the most part, there were
Speaker 1: a few mature bowls with calstill, but the bigger bulls
Speaker 1: had moved off and then up in that steep stuff
Speaker 1: a lot of it. There was one herd of cows,
Speaker 1: but the majority of there are just bowls up there right,
Speaker 1: so you're most of the elk. You see your bulls
Speaker 1: up high. The cows are going to stay down low.
Speaker 1: They can get out the nasty stuff. We were just
Speaker 1: picking through bulls. We were you know, the day before
Speaker 1: it was pretty wet and miserable and snowy up there,
Speaker 1: and we couldn't see great, but when we could, we
Speaker 1: were spotting lots of elk, you know, ten to twelve
Speaker 1: out all bowls, you know, fourteen bowls, whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: But you're really just picking through the bowl that you
Speaker 1: wanted to go after. And so I think what we
Speaker 1: got through all the wet the opening day was beautiful,
Speaker 1: we spotted. It was a little windy, but we spotted
Speaker 1: the bowl we wanted, and then basically halfway through opening morning,
Speaker 1: the snow and the rain and everything came back in.
Speaker 1: We spent two and a half days like barely getting
Speaker 1: looks in the little slivers of country. You know, the
Speaker 1: wind would blow it out maybe at midday and then
Speaker 1: it would fog back in. You wouldn't see the rest
Speaker 1: of the day. So we kind of spent our time.
Speaker 1: We had found a couple of bulls we kept checking on,
Speaker 1: like we couldn't tell how good they were, and then
Speaker 1: finally we're able to find my bowl. The third, fourth
Speaker 1: night and we were looking at to the spotter, a
Speaker 1: couple other guys had showed up just kind of like
Speaker 1: him and haw around, and this is one of those
Speaker 1: you know, a successful hunt is made up by a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of decisions that you make along the way.
Speaker 1: And we were sitting there contemplating whether that bowl would
Speaker 1: be in that spot in the morning or we had
Speaker 1: two hours a.
Speaker 2: Day light yeah left, I think, And we were sitting there,
Speaker 2: him and Han maybe not even two hours.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it wasn't a whole lot of time. And we
Speaker 1: were sitting there just trying to figure it out. And
Speaker 1: I heard I don't even remember which one of the
Speaker 1: guys said it, but somebody said, I know what I
Speaker 1: would be doing if I had to tag. And that
Speaker 1: was enough, Like I've got a very competitive spirit. And
Speaker 1: it's like, well, this guy thinks he could have got
Speaker 1: down there and shot it. Like, let's go. So we
Speaker 1: ran back. We all geared up. Our good buddies, Chris
Speaker 1: Cook and Hunter Cloak were with us, Me and and
Speaker 1: it was just me and you, right us four and Pete,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Pete with loopold Yep. We took off and
Speaker 1: it was as fast as I've ever dropped twenty five
Speaker 1: hundred feet as fast, and then we the other thing
Speaker 1: we had to do was keep track of the bowl
Speaker 1: for ourselves. Is we're going down right? Because we need
Speaker 1: to get ourselves to a spot where we can shoot
Speaker 1: where the face is going to be open. And we
Speaker 1: get we probably dropped fifteen hundred feet and you had
Speaker 1: your spotter as we're going down. We were able to
Speaker 1: relocate him. All right, we're good here, Like, get down
Speaker 1: another five six hundred feetle's relocate him, make sure we're
Speaker 1: still in the right path. And then we're also doing
Speaker 1: our thing, like if we get to this point, we
Speaker 1: should have a shot. But when you're not in a
Speaker 1: perfect line, there's a lot of guessing that goes on,
Speaker 1: Like I think it'll be this far of a shot,
Speaker 1: and then we're even pulling out on X right, if
Speaker 1: we get on this ridge where we think he is on,
Speaker 1: his face should be about this far of a shot.
Speaker 1: And I said, I think we made it down there
Speaker 1: in just a hair over an hour.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably it was.
Speaker 1: It was a fast, fast hike. Yeah, I'm I like
Speaker 1: to sweat a lot as I hunt anyways, but this
Speaker 1: was the most I've ever sweated on a down down hill. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's the ass I've ever lost elevation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that we we boogeyed on down. Ultimately, that bowl
Speaker 1: got a little bit tied up behind what I was
Speaker 1: calling the jack for I remember when in the spot
Speaker 1: or like he's behind the two jack first, because I
Speaker 1: just wanted to make sure everybody was on him, whether
Speaker 1: I could shoot or not. Like, once you're all on him,
Speaker 1: it just eases the situation, you know, because nobody's waiting,
Speaker 1: and we got we all got on him, and finally
Speaker 1: he took a step out to the right. I shot
Speaker 1: high and and this is crazy steep country and uh
Speaker 1: I had shot a whole bunch at home leading up
Speaker 1: to it, very very comfortable at the range, you know,
Speaker 1: not not a lot of work for my gun. But
Speaker 1: it was such a boxy straight up and down canyon that, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the wind was doing.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 1: And I took another shot and hit him and he dropped.
Speaker 1: And at that point, now you're committed, right shot again.
Speaker 1: I shot againner two more times and was able to finally,
Speaker 1: you know, hit him and kill him. But uh, man,
Speaker 1: it was one of those times where it was a
Speaker 1: little bit humbling, like no matter how good of a
Speaker 1: shot I think I am, and I thought the wind
Speaker 1: was right in our face. There was something crazy going
Speaker 1: on across the canyon and it was one of those
Speaker 1: times where I'm glad it worked out as quickly and
Speaker 1: as ethically as it is. But it really questions like,
Speaker 1: you know what, you know, what sort of conditions we
Speaker 1: should be you know, shooting in. But no, the everything
Speaker 1: worked out great. It was in a spot where the
Speaker 1: pack out was real, real bad. We did Hunter who
Speaker 1: you know, Hunter and Chris who grew up there hunt
Speaker 1: every year. They were a little unsure how we were
Speaker 1: going to get to him and finding like a trail across,
Speaker 1: so we decided it was real, real cool outside, so
Speaker 1: we decided to wait and uh, you know attack in
Speaker 1: the morning. We're able to find you know, some horses
Speaker 1: to bring it out, which was awesome. You know, just
Speaker 1: some of the greatest guys in the in the world
Speaker 1: just you know, drop what they're doing, you know, just
Speaker 1: as just as good guys like we just want to
Speaker 1: be involved. And I think, and this is this sounds
Speaker 1: super pretentious and it's not meant to be, but they say,
Speaker 1: guys that were willing to do it. You guys just
Speaker 1: did deserve to have a bull packed out, you know,
Speaker 1: And so I think they're like, we want in. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I was I was nervous because they were all heading
Speaker 1: to Cody Johnson concert. I think that next day they
Speaker 1: were they knew that their wives had one extra day
Speaker 1: they could they could haul haul on Elk out, but
Speaker 1: they needed to be on the road first thing that
Speaker 1: next morning. But super awesome guys. Really appreciate all their help,
Speaker 1: and you know, we've had some great Elk hunts together.
Speaker 1: We're we're all you know, I love your willing to
Speaker 1: go anywhere. How can people find out a little bit
Speaker 1: about your photography? Look at your prints, you know, your website,
Speaker 1: your Instagram and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my website's just David Frame Photography and all my infos.
Speaker 1: There gotcha Instagram, Uh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, David Frame Photo perfect on there as well.
Speaker 1: Well we're here Elk Camp. We're recording mid day. We're
Speaker 1: gonna get this wrapped up and then go out and
Speaker 1: start chasing bugles again. Perfect. All right, thanks thanks for
Speaker 1: filming following me around, and hopefully in the future we
Speaker 1: can talk about this episode or this hunts being another
Speaker 1: successful one we've got to share.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks Pelts, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Take care