Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Dirk Durham and guess what it is report card time.
Speaker 1: Last week I put a post out on Instagram asking
Speaker 1: for everybody's two cents on how they did in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. It's a really great way to kind of
Speaker 1: self assess, look back, analyze, think about it. I had
Speaker 1: to think about it a lot myself. In fact, I'm
Speaker 1: probably harder on myself than anyone. Punish myself. For the
Speaker 1: next few months until we hit September again, I ask
Speaker 1: everybody to call in to our super secret hotline. I
Speaker 1: guess it's not that secret. Had them call in and
Speaker 1: leave a message and let me know how did there's
Speaker 1: how did their season go? Did they kick ass or
Speaker 1: did they suck ass? And we had a few people
Speaker 1: call in leave messages, So I'm gonna play those in
Speaker 1: a little bit and kind of go over their thoughts
Speaker 1: and maybe put a couple of my two cents in
Speaker 1: as well. But in the meantime, I'm gonna kind of
Speaker 1: go over my season and let you know how I did,
Speaker 1: if I kicked ass or if I sucked ass. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and just hey, I'm gonna raise
Speaker 1: my head out right now. I'm the first guy to
Speaker 1: admit I kind of sucked ass last year. Man, it
Speaker 1: was a tough, tough September for me, and and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I was like, well, you know, maybe it's
Speaker 1: not an Elk year, maybe it'll be a deer year.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe Elk season wasn't very robust, but deer
Speaker 1: season would be would be awesome, and I would make
Speaker 1: up for it. Deer season a little bit soft too, so,
Speaker 1: but anyway, I was gonna go ahead and kind of
Speaker 1: go over some of these thoughts I had on my
Speaker 1: on my report card from twenty twenty three, and I
Speaker 1: would probably give myself maybe maybe a C. I've always
Speaker 1: been kind of a C student. But anyway, did you
Speaker 1: guys kick ass or did you suck ass? I sucked ass,
Speaker 1: And I'm just gonna dive in on kind of some
Speaker 1: of my screw ups here. My screw up number one,
Speaker 1: I didn't do my research on the unit to see
Speaker 1: how many hunters I could expect to see here in Idaho.
Speaker 1: There's a whole new unit for me. It was a
Speaker 1: unit that was close to where my son could come
Speaker 1: and join me for the hunt. Spend a few days
Speaker 1: would be easy with his work shift, and I thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: this will work great. I did all my summer scouting,
Speaker 1: learned the area, put out trail cameras, lots of nice
Speaker 1: bowls on trail cam. And then fast forward to September
Speaker 1: and I got to go up for a little bit early.
Speaker 1: I got to go up a few days before Austin
Speaker 1: could come up and hunt, before Dusty could come up
Speaker 1: and film. And I had the first three days a
Speaker 1: season before the big Labor Day season or the Labor
Speaker 1: Day weekend rush. Got there and bulls were pretty quiet.
Speaker 1: I did hear some bugles, and I was able to
Speaker 1: get right on them and get in there and spend
Speaker 1: some time with them. But they were not aggressive at all.
Speaker 1: And if I if I pushed up on him and
Speaker 1: eased up on him very much, they would just kind
Speaker 1: of be quiet or just move just move off. So
Speaker 1: anyway that that kind of set the stage. I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I know where these bulls are at. This is going
Speaker 1: to be great.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: In a few days when Austin can come up, him
Speaker 1: and Dusty he'll be up there and we're going to
Speaker 1: dive in and call some bulls in it's going to
Speaker 1: be awesome. Fast forward a few days. I left the
Speaker 1: woods for the Big Weekend because I knew it was
Speaker 1: just going to be a rat race. You know, lots
Speaker 1: of people out and enjoy them the world woods, right,
Speaker 1: and there's cybersides and four wheelers and dirt bikes around.
Speaker 1: You have the recreationalist, then you have the hunters. And
Speaker 1: one thing I found when the last day I was
Speaker 1: there before the big weekend was a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: guys and gals running around and pickups hunting hounds. So
Speaker 1: a lot of the roads hadn't been closed yet, so
Speaker 1: I was kind of banking on some of these roads
Speaker 1: being closed. Well, I should have dug in a little
Speaker 1: bit deeper in my off season scouting and looked at
Speaker 1: when road closures happened. And a lot of these road
Speaker 1: closures didn't happen until in October. And here we are
Speaker 1: in September and got folks, you know, everywhere on every
Speaker 1: road that they can get a machine on. And there
Speaker 1: was folks, you know, hound hunting for bears. We had
Speaker 1: folks just out elk hunting and just you know, covering
Speaker 1: every little piece of ground. So of course, if you've
Speaker 1: elk hunted very very much in your life. You understand
Speaker 1: what disturbance is all about. Once people start penetrating the
Speaker 1: forest more than they have all summer, start making a
Speaker 1: lot of stink just by walking around out there, a
Speaker 1: lot of people calling, a lot of people running dogs,
Speaker 1: chasing bears. You know, that gets I guess the animals
Speaker 1: on edge, and they know it's like, well, put a
Speaker 1: big old X on the calendar. It's hunting season time.
Speaker 1: So anyway, when we got back, when I went got
Speaker 1: back there with the guys after the big weekend, it
Speaker 1: didn't look like we'd lost a lot of people. A
Speaker 1: lot of the recreationalists had gone home, but a lot
Speaker 1: of the hunting camps were still there. And we're getting
Speaker 1: more on the daily. Every day, more hunters showed up.
Speaker 1: So all the places that I had had been that
Speaker 1: I had found early had now other hunters had found
Speaker 1: those as well. And we're in there. So we start
Speaker 1: turning over rocks, you know, we got to leave no
Speaker 1: stone unturned and find a spot we can get in
Speaker 1: on and hunt some undisturbed milk relatively speaking, So every
Speaker 1: time we'd find a bowl that would bugle, maybe he
Speaker 1: wasn't real hot, like we'd find him mid morning or
Speaker 1: so we wouldn't find you know, as luck would have it,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't find him right at the break of dawn,
Speaker 1: you know, we would where we were out at first light,
Speaker 1: there was no action. So we go to the next place.
Speaker 1: In the next place, you know, go from A plans, A, B, C,
Speaker 1: D E all the way down the line, and you know,
Speaker 1: we'd find a bowl mid morning or almost at noon,
Speaker 1: and the bowl wasn't going to be very reactive to calling.
Speaker 1: So we would be like, all right, cool, Well tomorrow morning,
Speaker 1: we'll be here at first light and we'll be on him.
Speaker 1: So the next we'd be there ready to go. Well,
Speaker 1: somebody else would be there too, so you can't blame
Speaker 1: anybody else there. You know, it's public land. Everybody out
Speaker 1: there trying to have fun doing the same thing we are.
Speaker 1: But it does get a little frustrating. So then we
Speaker 1: decided to broaden our horizons. We branched out, and there's
Speaker 1: a huge, really big unit. There's several units within this
Speaker 1: elk hunting zone here in Idaho, and so it's time
Speaker 1: to just start canvassing the zone. So we spread out,
Speaker 1: drove all over the zone, just trying to find areas
Speaker 1: where the people weren't and we just could not find
Speaker 1: anywhere there wasn't a lot of people. And every time
Speaker 1: we'd find a bowl that would talk, then we'd have
Speaker 1: company within no time at all. So we called the
Speaker 1: hunt a couple days early because I had a Montana
Speaker 1: Elk tag and I thought, well, you know what, why
Speaker 1: burn up time here just beating her head against the wall,
Speaker 1: wasting a bunch of gas trying to drive from one
Speaker 1: spot to the neck trying to get the good spot.
Speaker 1: So we bailed. And this was early season. I don't
Speaker 1: think the rutt was nowhere close to being heated up
Speaker 1: where we kind of wanted to be. So we went home.
Speaker 1: Austin was like, that's fine, I got to do some
Speaker 1: chores anyway. So Dusty and I headed out. We stopped
Speaker 1: in southeast Idaho and hunted for a few days for
Speaker 1: him where he had had a tag, and it was
Speaker 1: kind of the same thing. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: folks over there hunting and the same reaction from Elk.
Speaker 1: Elk were just not very vocal. They were they would
Speaker 1: bugled just a little bit, but if you got close
Speaker 1: to them, they would just be quiet. They would just
Speaker 1: clam up or just move off. So then we're like, okay,
Speaker 1: well let's get head on up to Montana. So that
Speaker 1: is where my screw up number two kind of took place. Typically,
Speaker 1: I like to hunt kind of in a I'd like
Speaker 1: to camp and kind of central spot to the hunting area.
Speaker 1: That way I'm allowed to canvas the area really easily.
Speaker 1: I don't want to camp on one far end of
Speaker 1: the hunting area. I want to kind of camp right
Speaker 1: in the middle. That way I can go out like
Speaker 1: a spoke from the center. I can try all the
Speaker 1: different places I want to hunt from the center. So
Speaker 1: we started out kind of like that. But what we
Speaker 1: found is the first couple places we want to hunt,
Speaker 1: there was just nothing. We weren't getting into any elk sign,
Speaker 1: we weren't seeing any wed glass, and we were calling
Speaker 1: from dung till dusk. We just weren't turning any elk up.
Speaker 1: So and then we had a huge storm, roll in
Speaker 1: a lot of high winds, a lot of rain, and
Speaker 1: we got this crappy little tent that we're using for September.
Speaker 1: I like to have a pretty lightweight mobile camp, so
Speaker 1: camera Mandusty and I we packed up her stuff and
Speaker 1: we went back to town to a friend's house and
Speaker 1: we camped in his big shop. And so he's within
Speaker 1: striking distance of a lot of good elk hunting from
Speaker 1: is placed there. So I'm like, well, during this crappy
Speaker 1: weather period, we'll just camp here and buzz up every day.
Speaker 1: So the storm passed, but you know, we kind of
Speaker 1: got lulled into the niceties and the comfort of stay,
Speaker 1: staying somewhere where you can shower every night. You know,
Speaker 1: typically we're out in the woods and we don't get
Speaker 1: a shower every night. We don't get a shower till
Speaker 1: maybe the hunt's over. Sometimes I think the longest we've
Speaker 1: gone is like nine or ten days without a shower. Man,
Speaker 1: it's gross, I'm here to tell you. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's folks out there that have done the same
Speaker 1: thing we have. And you get out there and maybe
Speaker 1: you're in an area there's just no good, clean running
Speaker 1: water or lakes or ponds or anything to get into
Speaker 1: to get yourself clean, or maybe there's not any you know,
Speaker 1: there's no civilization nearby where you can find a place
Speaker 1: to go pay and take a shower. So anyway, we
Speaker 1: were kind of we were kind of liking that, and
Speaker 1: I think we kind of liked that too much. We
Speaker 1: I feel like as soon as the stormy weather pass,
Speaker 1: we should have probably moved camp and moved closer. Here's
Speaker 1: the here's the screw up. We should have been closer
Speaker 1: to our camp or hunting area. So we were spending
Speaker 1: way too much time driving every morning to get there,
Speaker 1: and then in the evening we're you know, socked out,
Speaker 1: tired from hunting. Then we're driving all the way back
Speaker 1: into town. So that was a big mistake. I think
Speaker 1: we should have found somewhere to compromise on the mountains,
Speaker 1: somewhere to where we could have still kind of hunted
Speaker 1: some of the places we wanted to go without having
Speaker 1: to drive so far. So I think that was a
Speaker 1: really big screw up. And I knew better, and I
Speaker 1: typically do it different, but you know how it is.
Speaker 1: Sometimes sometimes the you know comforts or you know things.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I feel like I can talk myself into things.
Speaker 1: If you can justify something, does it logically makes sense
Speaker 1: to do something? Sometimes maybe it's easy to talk yourself
Speaker 1: to doing the wrong thing. So I hope I'm not
Speaker 1: the only one out there that does that. So and
Speaker 1: then screw up number three. I've you know, and I'm
Speaker 1: not going to just limit these screw ups. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've who knows how many screw ups I have every
Speaker 1: every fall. But these were the three good takeaways I
Speaker 1: had that I thought, you know, I could have done better.
Speaker 1: But number three is I should have practiced more in
Speaker 1: the off season with my bow. And when I mean practicing,
Speaker 1: like not just you know, going out and shooting in
Speaker 1: your backyard, just getting reps. You know, that's really good.
Speaker 1: You know, you're building muscle memory, You're you're developing familiarity
Speaker 1: with your bow, you're getting your reps in. But sometimes
Speaker 1: you and maybe not sometimes a lot of times you
Speaker 1: should be practicing from uncomfortable shooting positions. For instance, maybe
Speaker 1: shooting from your knees at a wonky angle. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe you start out at a bad angle and then
Speaker 1: you have to position yourself and to where you can
Speaker 1: shoot accurately, or maybe sit on the ground and then
Speaker 1: slowly kneel, get up to a kneeling or a standing position,
Speaker 1: fighting your feet underneath you to where you're still standing
Speaker 1: in a improper shooting form. That way, you can execute
Speaker 1: a good shop and here's why. So I can't remember
Speaker 1: what day of the hunt was. In Montana. We Dusty
Speaker 1: and I were walking along this area and there was
Speaker 1: a fence line and we weren't too far from the fence.
Speaker 1: We're probably twenty thirty yards from the fence, and on
Speaker 1: the other side of the fence was all private is
Speaker 1: a huge piece of private lad and behind that there
Speaker 1: were some bolls bugling. So I thought, you know, we
Speaker 1: will kind of walk along, just trying to see if
Speaker 1: we could find something that was going to come close
Speaker 1: to the fence and maybe come over on our side.
Speaker 1: So we were calling along there and I heard something.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, man, something's running. Get ready, Dusty, and
Speaker 1: this this spike bull jumps the fence and runs right
Speaker 1: over to us and almost commits suicide. Well, there you
Speaker 1: were hunting. Spikes were not legal to shoot, and I
Speaker 1: wasn't sure. I was like, some of these units you
Speaker 1: can shoot a spike, some you can't. And I wasn't
Speaker 1: one hundred percent sure. And at that point we were
Speaker 1: I think we were. Oh, it was September twenty ninth,
Speaker 1: so we were well within the season. I hadn't even
Speaker 1: drawn my bow back yet, and I thought, man, I
Speaker 1: would shoot that spike, but I'm like, I wasn't sure,
Speaker 1: so I didn't want to, you know, do anything anything
Speaker 1: wrong there legally. So we passed on the spike and
Speaker 1: he ran off, and so we walked a little further
Speaker 1: and I bugled, and a bullet bugled from kind of
Speaker 1: up where he went, and the bowl kind of sounded wimpy,
Speaker 1: just kind of this wimpy little urder, kind of sound
Speaker 1: like a bull that or a kid that's going through puberty,
Speaker 1: you know. His voice was all wobbly and cracked a
Speaker 1: little bit and kind of kind of had that funny
Speaker 1: sound to it. And I called back and forth a
Speaker 1: little bit, and he was starting to call a little more,
Speaker 1: but he just would not come. He would not come
Speaker 1: and break and show himself. He wouldn't cross that fence.
Speaker 1: So I said, Dusty, we're gonna try something. You know
Speaker 1: what they say, carry usity killed the cat, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna see if it'll kill the bowl. So we moved
Speaker 1: away from the fence. We got one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: yards or more away from that fence, and as we
Speaker 1: moved away, I called like we were a bowl with
Speaker 1: some cows, and we were leaving, and I was following
Speaker 1: the cows down the hill. And then once we got
Speaker 1: down there one hundred and fifty yards, two hundred yards whatever,
Speaker 1: then I even I even made my calls even more quiet.
Speaker 1: I muffled into my tube a little bit. I called
Speaker 1: into my into my gloved hand to kind of kind
Speaker 1: of make it sound give the illusion that these elk
Speaker 1: were further down the hill than two hundred yards, because
Speaker 1: it's really really open timber, and a bowl would be
Speaker 1: able to see along, you know, one hundred yards and
Speaker 1: be able to see you if there were elk. So
Speaker 1: we got down there, we did that weird, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of fade away type calling, and then we just
Speaker 1: sat down and we've got quiet. And I probably should
Speaker 1: have just stood up. But earlier that morning I'd been
Speaker 1: standing for hours in one spot watching this bowl. I
Speaker 1: was in some really big open timber, pretty exposed, and
Speaker 1: I was been just inching up, inching up on this
Speaker 1: really nice six point, trying to get close. So anyway,
Speaker 1: all morning i'd been standing off on one foot this
Speaker 1: way or one foot that way, on steep drowded man.
Speaker 1: My legs and ankle were shot, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: well since we're kind of playing the long game here.
Speaker 1: We're doing this slow play. I'm gonna I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: go really slow and take my time, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: just sit down, and you know, all i'll hear that bowl,
Speaker 1: He'll he'll make a noise, or I'll hear him jump
Speaker 1: that fence or something. I'll hear there'll be a tell
Speaker 1: tale for me to know that he's on my side
Speaker 1: of the fence. So anyhow, we sat there, and we'd
Speaker 1: sat there for quite a while, probably forty five minutes
Speaker 1: or longer, maybe in even an hour, And pretty soon
Speaker 1: I looked up and I could see the glint on
Speaker 1: some antlers coming. That bowl was coming. He jumped over
Speaker 1: the fence. I didn't hear him. He got over that
Speaker 1: fence quietly, and it was coming down looking for us.
Speaker 1: He just kind of walking along slowly. He'd pause and
Speaker 1: he'd look walking along slow, pause and look, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh man, I'm I'm in trouble. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of facing because it's kind of a steep hill. I've
Speaker 1: got I'm facing downhill and kind of got my I'm
Speaker 1: kind of pivoting at my knees and my ways. So
Speaker 1: I'm kind of over on, sitting on one cheek, kind
Speaker 1: of turned looking up the hill, and I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't know how many drop my bow and shoot this sucker.
Speaker 1: So I was like he went by a cluster of
Speaker 1: two or three trees, and as he went behind those,
Speaker 1: I just start slowly rising. And if anybody's done squats,
Speaker 1: to do to go from sitting on the ground to
Speaker 1: like to raising yourself so slow that you can't be detected.
Speaker 1: That was hard. And I was just like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: don't screw this up. Just go molasses slow. If this
Speaker 1: is the only time you squat this year, then do
Speaker 1: it right. So I'm moving up really really slowly, and
Speaker 1: I'm kind of keeping on the bowl, and I got
Speaker 1: about halfway up, and then you know, he'd I could
Speaker 1: see his eyes again, and then he'd walk and he'd
Speaker 1: get beyond another tree, and I'd go up again, just
Speaker 1: real slow, and finally he's getting pretty close. And I
Speaker 1: was standing all the way up and as I earlier,
Speaker 1: as I had sat there, I had arranged all the trees.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of these there's a big standard dug firs,
Speaker 1: and you know they're all evenly spaced out, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to judge yardage in those kind
Speaker 1: of places. If if you've been around those kind of areas,
Speaker 1: you know, it looks like this far looks like that
Speaker 1: far as like. But I'd ranged all these trees and
Speaker 1: they all kind of look the same. But there was
Speaker 1: one that was just a little bit of an odd
Speaker 1: color and it looked like he was heading towards that,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh yeah, I remember that that tree
Speaker 1: right there was fifty yards. So as he gets close
Speaker 1: to that tree, he goes behind another tree and I
Speaker 1: draw my boat super slow, just like molasses, and he
Speaker 1: doesn't spot me, and he comes out from behind that
Speaker 1: fifty yard tree and stops, or because I cal call,
Speaker 1: he stops. I put my fifty yard pin on him,
Speaker 1: and I just start pulling, pulling, pulling the bow brakes,
Speaker 1: the shot brakes, and my arrow goes flying and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah. And as the arrow flew I could see
Speaker 1: it was high. I'm like, what the heck? And it
Speaker 1: went right over his back and I'm like, what the heck?
Speaker 1: It went right over his back and he kind of
Speaker 1: ran off and then stopped. So I bugled at him,
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, maybe maybe maybe I did hit him,
Speaker 1: because sometimes in the flight of the arrow you'll catch
Speaker 1: it on the way there, and with the arc, you know,
Speaker 1: especially at fifty yards, you know, at some point between
Speaker 1: you and the bowl, that arrow is going to be
Speaker 1: higher than the bowl's back. So I thought, well, maybe
Speaker 1: that was just the arc I saw, and maybe it
Speaker 1: just you know, dropped right in. And then he kind
Speaker 1: of he took off after I bugled. I thought, man,
Speaker 1: maybe I did hit him. So we made sure he
Speaker 1: wasn't looking and stuff and calcool like things kind of
Speaker 1: quiet down. So Dusty and I snuck up there and
Speaker 1: looked where he was standing. You could see where his
Speaker 1: feet kind of tore up the dirt when he took off,
Speaker 1: and we're looking and we're looking, and we're looking, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, I cannot find the arrow. And I
Speaker 1: shooting light at knocks too, but the sun was kind
Speaker 1: of in our eyes, so he had the sun at
Speaker 1: his back, so it wasn't ideal for seeing the flight
Speaker 1: of the arrow or like where even the lighted knock
Speaker 1: my hit, you know, with that much sun in my eyes,
Speaker 1: I didn't get to see it good. But now we're
Speaker 1: over there and there's a you know, it's a kind
Speaker 1: of a steep hill, so that arrow should be just
Speaker 1: sticking right in the dirt right there. If I missed
Speaker 1: and I'm not finding the arrow, I'm like, Dusty, I
Speaker 1: think I might have got him, but I don't think
Speaker 1: it did, but I might have. I said, Okay, Dusty,
Speaker 1: I'll have you stay here and look for the arrow,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to just follow quietly. I'm not followings
Speaker 1: footprints quietly, and I'm going to keep following them until
Speaker 1: i find blood. Maybe i'll get over hairways and i'll,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's not uncommon after a shot to
Speaker 1: not find blood for sometimes one hundred yards. I've you know,
Speaker 1: over the years, I've I've experienced that. Sometimes I've seen
Speaker 1: blood right at the shot. Sometimes I don't see it
Speaker 1: for a hundred yards or so, just depending on where
Speaker 1: the arrow hits the hits the bowl, you know. So
Speaker 1: as I'm falling along, I'm just like looking looking, no blood,
Speaker 1: no blood. I'm following footprints pretty good, because he was
Speaker 1: trotting and turning up quite a bit of grass and
Speaker 1: pine needles and stuff with his with his hoofs. And
Speaker 1: I get probably three four hundred yards and they're just
Speaker 1: not slowing down and there's no blood whatsoever. And then
Speaker 1: I hear a bugle off in the distance. So if
Speaker 1: you're to go out another couple hundred yards in front
Speaker 1: and then back up up back on the other sid
Speaker 1: the fence, I'm like, I bet that sucker went back
Speaker 1: to his side of the fence so confident on not
Speaker 1: finding any blood there. I'm like, well, we got to
Speaker 1: find this arrow because I have to be one hundred
Speaker 1: percent sure. Right, this was September twenty ninth. I'd been
Speaker 1: I'd been hoting elk since the thirtieth of August. I
Speaker 1: hadn't drawn my bow back until the thirtieth or the
Speaker 1: twenty ninth of September, so you know, all the cards
Speaker 1: were on the line right then and there. So not
Speaker 1: only you know, we owe it to the animal to
Speaker 1: do our due diligence to make sure he's not hit.
Speaker 1: But man, this was a hard earned shot and I
Speaker 1: wanted to be one hundred and ten percent sure I
Speaker 1: hadn't hit him. So I get back and to my dismay,
Speaker 1: Dusty's standing there holding my arrow and there's no blood
Speaker 1: on it.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: I was heartbroken. I'm like, man, I thought for sure
Speaker 1: you know, there're maybe some lucky chance I got him
Speaker 1: and now it flew right over his back. So anyway, uh,
Speaker 1: I said, Dusty, I'm gonna go back and stand down
Speaker 1: there where I shot from. I'll have you stand right
Speaker 1: here in these tracks, and I'm gonna range it because
Speaker 1: I don't know why I missed it. Maybe I just
Speaker 1: shanked it. Maybe you know, anything's possible, is kind of
Speaker 1: shooting from awkward position. But I get back down there
Speaker 1: and I arrange it, and the tree is forty yards,
Speaker 1: it's not fifty yards. So and at that distance, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's definitely enough enough difference in my forty yard pin
Speaker 1: and my fifty yard pin where I would shoot over
Speaker 1: his back. Som So, I didn't beat myself up too
Speaker 1: much for not making an accurate shot, but I did
Speaker 1: beat myself up for not making better mental notes and
Speaker 1: keeping track, like you know, carving stone, like these are
Speaker 1: the yardages I need to you know, I need to
Speaker 1: know I had I had probably transposed one of the trees,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the other was fifty and that
Speaker 1: one was forty, you know, which, maybe I'm just getting old,
Speaker 1: my old age. I'm sure some folks out there can relate.
Speaker 1: So anyhow that was that wasn't screw up number three,
Speaker 1: well number three, and then there was one that kind
Speaker 1: of continues on that same lines. In Kansas, Dusty and
Speaker 1: I were hunting, and we were hunting out of a
Speaker 1: redneck blind. I'm not sure if you guys know what
Speaker 1: a red neck blind is. It's it's an elevated blind.
Speaker 1: It's about this one is about fifteen feet in the air,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of a big fiberglass enclosed blind and
Speaker 1: it's got windows and stuff. It's kind of like the
Speaker 1: taj Mahal of blinds, if you will. Our buddy Randy
Speaker 1: Milligan out there put this up and had it ready
Speaker 1: to go, and it was on the last evening of
Speaker 1: the of the hunt, literally the last fifteen minutes in
Speaker 1: the last evening in the hunt. And this we see
Speaker 1: a buck moving down this fence ro next to the
Speaker 1: timber and he's on a mission, you know, But he
Speaker 1: don't have his head down. He has his head up
Speaker 1: and he's kind of walking real proud, real real dominant looking.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, man, I don't know, we got to
Speaker 1: get that deer to us. And he's a couple hundred
Speaker 1: yards away I'm like, I don't know how I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do it, because I'd been calling a deer earlier in
Speaker 1: the hunt and I just wasn't having much luck. And
Speaker 1: I you know, had at a distance, you know, a
Speaker 1: couple hundred yards, I'd seen some bucks. I had snort weezed,
Speaker 1: and then I'd grunt and stuff, and that didn't really
Speaker 1: seem to help. I'm honestly, I'm pretty new at this
Speaker 1: snort weeze world. But I thought, okay, well I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna snort weez because I hadn't had any luck with
Speaker 1: it so far. So I'm like, I'm gonna grunt at
Speaker 1: this thing until he looks over here. So we had
Speaker 1: I have this new sweet ass prototype Philips deer grunt call,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm like, man, I gotta get I got
Speaker 1: to get this thing's attention. So I started ripping some
Speaker 1: grunts on this thing. And these weren't your tending, your
Speaker 1: normal tending, just you know, shortened runts. These were big, loud,
Speaker 1: aggressive grunts. They were brah, brah, just ripping, and I
Speaker 1: did of like six or seven of them. I'm like it,
Speaker 1: this is it, this is it, this is this is
Speaker 1: the end. Of the game, right, So if it doesn't work,
Speaker 1: I guess it didn't work, and we go home and
Speaker 1: he handed it. But for some reason, if it works,
Speaker 1: then we're back in the game. And after like the
Speaker 1: sixth grunt, he stops in his tracks and he looks
Speaker 1: over at us, and I'm like, oh, man, I got
Speaker 1: his attention, yes and no. Sooner than that I thought that,
Speaker 1: he turned his head and started walking, continuing on his path.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, no, it didn't work, And I thought,
Speaker 1: all right, so this call also has a bleat call,
Speaker 1: so a doe bleat feature. So you blow in one
Speaker 1: side it's it grunts, you suck in on the other
Speaker 1: side it bleats. I'm like, okay, maybe I can give
Speaker 1: him some dough bleaeds and that'll be like, oh, I
Speaker 1: got to go over there. So I ripped I don't know,
Speaker 1: three or four big dough bleats, and these things were
Speaker 1: pretty loud, and I'm just it almost sounds like when
Speaker 1: you spine a deer and they make that terrible noise.
Speaker 1: It was almost that intensity. And he didn't look our
Speaker 1: way at all. But what he did was it almost
Speaker 1: reminded me of like a big ship in the ocean.
Speaker 1: Where you don't really know what's happening, but you just
Speaker 1: started you've seen it slowly start changing course. He just
Speaker 1: kind of slowly changed course. He made kind of a
Speaker 1: big circle, and now he's heading right to us. And
Speaker 1: I'm just like, oh man, it's like a countdown on
Speaker 1: the on the stopwatch of like is he gonna get
Speaker 1: here within shooting light or not? Oh man? And then
Speaker 1: he was aimed. He was aimed right at us, like
Speaker 1: he's gonna come. Well at this point, I remember that
Speaker 1: every other night we've sat in this blind, I've had
Speaker 1: a Dave Smith decoy, running buck decoy out there by us,
Speaker 1: just for a situation just like this. Well, that night
Speaker 1: Jason Phelps, good old Jason. He had the pickup and
Speaker 1: I had that decoy in the pickup. Well, he left
Speaker 1: camp before I did, so he took the He took
Speaker 1: the pickup and the decoy unknowing unbeknownst to him, he
Speaker 1: didn't even know he had the decoy in the back.
Speaker 1: He wasn't paying attention. Well, we used an ATV to
Speaker 1: get to this spot, so anyway we were without the decoy. Well,
Speaker 1: as this buck is coming, I was just like, damn it.
Speaker 1: I wish I had that freaking decoy right now, because
Speaker 1: you know, surely that would have been you know, it
Speaker 1: was strategically strategically placed. He would have come in well
Speaker 1: within yardage. He would have been, you know, checking out
Speaker 1: the buck, getting ready to fight. You know he'd been
Speaker 1: he wouldn't have been paying attention to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you should have would have cut her right well.
Speaker 1: He starts coming to us through this cornfield, partially cut cornfield,
Speaker 1: and he's getting closer and getting closer and getting closer.
Speaker 1: But then at about fifty yards he hits this this
Speaker 1: cut in the corn and then he kind of straightens
Speaker 1: his line out. He quits coming towards us, and I
Speaker 1: can see now he's not coming to us. Now, he's
Speaker 1: he's going to bypass us and keep on going on
Speaker 1: that straight line. So I'd already arranged everything, arranged it again.
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, it's fifty yards, I can be this shot.
Speaker 1: But there again, back to that that screw up practicing
Speaker 1: uncomfortable tricky shots. This was a tricky shot. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you guys have ever shot out of a
Speaker 1: redneck blind. They're not made for big guys. They're made
Speaker 1: for people who are about five foot four. So they
Speaker 1: have these these vertical windows on the front of the blind,
Speaker 1: one in each corner. So I had that one open.
Speaker 1: It's about a i don't know, probably a foot wide
Speaker 1: so and probably four feet tall. So I had to
Speaker 1: get down on my knees. I'm like, man, Dusty, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but I hope you can get this. So he had
Speaker 1: to film through one of the windows, through the glass
Speaker 1: and one of the windows, and so we kind of
Speaker 1: changed positions. I got on my knees and I got
Speaker 1: scooched up and to where I could draw my bow
Speaker 1: and get a shot at this bucket. I drew my bow,
Speaker 1: put it on him, and I did the old classic
Speaker 1: you know, like you see on all the all the
Speaker 1: deer hunting videos. And it took about three of those
Speaker 1: to get him to stop. And finally he stops. I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, And I had my have my fifty yard
Speaker 1: pin on him and I let it eat and I
Speaker 1: I watched my my arrow arc and I'm shooting, like
Speaker 1: I said, I'm shooting lighted knocks and this this time
Speaker 1: we can see it. And it was like the longest
Speaker 1: It was like the longest airborne shot of my life.
Speaker 1: It was like slow motion when I released that shot
Speaker 1: and it arked out there and it just like shot
Speaker 1: out there, just slow, slow, slow lope, and I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's gonna get him. It's gonna get him. And then
Speaker 1: it didn't, and he kind of jumped and ran a
Speaker 1: little bit and then kind of circled back around and
Speaker 1: went back over and got all on that same fence
Speaker 1: row that where we first spotted him and then walked
Speaker 1: out of our lives forever. So went over checked for blood.
Speaker 1: Of course, no blood found my arrow. That's a cool
Speaker 1: thing about having those light and us when you can
Speaker 1: see that knock lit up is you can see, you know,
Speaker 1: it's easy to find your arrow, and it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: nothing but dirt on this thing. So anyway, it definitely
Speaker 1: shanked the shot. It was a difficult shot to make
Speaker 1: from that kneeling kneeling spot. I don't typically like to
Speaker 1: shoot an animals that far. I'm usually about a forty
Speaker 1: five got forty five yard guy, but I'm like a
Speaker 1: fifty yards I can make that shot. I can I
Speaker 1: can make the shot when I'm practicing. He didn't seem
Speaker 1: super jumpy I figured he wouldn't jump the string on me.
Speaker 1: So anyhow, I would have liked to say he ducked
Speaker 1: and that's why I missed. And that's kind of at
Speaker 1: first what I thought. But that's the that's the beauty
Speaker 1: of when you record your hunts with a with video
Speaker 1: is you get to go and review the video. No,
Speaker 1: I just shot right over him, damn it. So live
Speaker 1: and learn, right. So this year, what are we gonna
Speaker 1: do to fix these things? Well, I'm hunting new spot
Speaker 1: in Idaho again with a buddy, buddy, Cody Wilson from Wyoming.
Speaker 1: He's gonna come over and we're gonna go hunt. We did,
Speaker 1: we did some homework. There's quite a few people to
Speaker 1: hunt there, but there's a lot of rugged, backpack cut
Speaker 1: type hunting country. We're gonna hit it, you know, get
Speaker 1: away from people, get away from roads, and we should
Speaker 1: be in them number two and they should have camped
Speaker 1: closer to the areas hunting. Yeah, we're gonna definitely be
Speaker 1: more strategic. That's where this summer I'm gonna do a
Speaker 1: lot of summer work up there in this new area
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna hunt. I'm gonna figure it out right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna figure out the optimal places to camp, and
Speaker 1: if we have to move camp two or three times,
Speaker 1: you know, that's okay. But we're not gonna We're not
Speaker 1: gonna spend driving in a frickin hour from town every
Speaker 1: morning and every evening. That just soaks up too much
Speaker 1: time and energy and gas. And and then third, yeah,
Speaker 1: practicing practice. I'm gonna practice uncomfortable shots. I've been shooting
Speaker 1: out in the cold this winter. I'm gonna continue to
Speaker 1: do that through the winter, and I'm just gonna get
Speaker 1: used to shooting weird. I'm like, I've never really shot
Speaker 1: from sitting positions, like in a chair. I don't usually
Speaker 1: do a lot of kneeling shooting because I don't like
Speaker 1: setting up for elk. I never set up kneeling just
Speaker 1: because as a bowl comes in, if you're kneeling, he
Speaker 1: can come in from a different direction than you're anticipating,
Speaker 1: and then now you're screwed up. It's really hard to
Speaker 1: reposition yourself for a shot. If let's say you thought
Speaker 1: he was gonna come in off to your left and
Speaker 1: you're right handed, but he comes in off to your
Speaker 1: right in you're right handed, you know it's just really
Speaker 1: difficult to make that shot.
Speaker 4: So I do hope.
Speaker 1: Typically don't kneel. I usually let some brush and trees
Speaker 1: and stuff and my camouflage break up my outline. So
Speaker 1: but anyway, I'm gonna practice those tricky shots this year.
Speaker 1: But that's enough of me blabbing about myself.
Speaker 5: Here.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go over here to the super Secret hotline,
Speaker 1: and what we're gonna do is get some other people's
Speaker 1: opinions and their takes on the year and see how
Speaker 1: it goes. So color number one, let's let's take a listen.
Speaker 5: Hey, this is Shane Frederickson with bo's and bs on Instagram.
Speaker 5: And it seemed to me like the wind was always
Speaker 5: against me no matter which direction I was hiking. I
Speaker 5: could go from one drainage to the other, around a mountain,
Speaker 5: you know, come down up on top of the elk.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: However I wanted to approach it to make the wind
Speaker 5: in my favor, it seemed like it always switched or swirled.
Speaker 5: What are some of the methods that you used to
Speaker 5: try to beat that? And that feels like an impossible situation,
Speaker 5: But let me know some of your tips and tricks
Speaker 5: of how you beat the wind, thanks.
Speaker 1: Right, man, that can be really tough. I experienced that
Speaker 1: a lot over the years. In fact, last fall we
Speaker 1: had a lot of the same And a lot of
Speaker 1: times if I have bulls bugling in a spot and
Speaker 1: the wind just won't act right, sometimes we'll just sit
Speaker 1: down for an hour or two and kind of try
Speaker 1: to wait it out. And depending on time of day,
Speaker 1: you know that once you get past two o'clock one
Speaker 1: or two o'clock, winds can be kind of iffy, especially
Speaker 1: when I've found it's like the cloud cover a lot
Speaker 1: of times will really screw up. You'll get these big
Speaker 1: puffy clouds. It will go over and they'll cast a
Speaker 1: shadow on the terrain where you're standing, so you can
Speaker 1: kind of watch. You can look across a mountain and
Speaker 1: look over on the other side of the mountain. A
Speaker 1: lot of times you can see the shadow these clouds
Speaker 1: are casting upon the timber, so on your side of
Speaker 1: the mountain. Every time those shadows get cast to where
Speaker 1: you're trying to work a bowl or whatever. Earlier, you
Speaker 1: know you had let's say, bright sunshine on them spots.
Speaker 1: You have your thermals with that warm air rising. Well
Speaker 1: as soon as that shadow hits. Man, all hell breaks loose,
Speaker 1: that'll you'll get currents that'll just immediately switch and blow
Speaker 1: down hill. Sometimes if it's not real steep country, but
Speaker 1: you know it's kind of maybe more rolling country that's
Speaker 1: not that doesn't have a lot of real good steep
Speaker 1: pronounced tall ridges. You can get real swirly type wins
Speaker 1: in those places. And man, I I always try to
Speaker 1: just push pause, I push paws on the game and
Speaker 1: just wait. It's like, well, I don't I don't want
Speaker 1: to go in there and screw it up with my
Speaker 1: scent before I even you know, get a chance to
Speaker 1: to screw it up on getting them called in so
Speaker 1: very careful. And and some days, you know, I'll admit,
Speaker 1: there's been sometimes we've we've set there for an hour
Speaker 1: or two and maybe you can tell you can look
Speaker 1: at the clouds or whatever, and it's just like it's
Speaker 1: gotten from bad to worse and you just know it's
Speaker 1: not gonna happen today. So a lot of times we'll
Speaker 1: pull out, maybe go somewhere else, try to find somewhere
Speaker 1: else that has more favorable wins. But but I know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you know, folks that have limited time, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you're doing the weekend warrior thing, and it's just like, man,
Speaker 1: I gotta make it happen. The best advice I can
Speaker 1: do is, if you have the uphill thermals and down
Speaker 1: drafts from that kind of a situation, see if there's
Speaker 1: kind of a common ground to where maybe if you
Speaker 1: go in on that on that same contour line that
Speaker 1: the bowl is on, to where maybe you're you're using
Speaker 1: the crosswind advantage instead of you know, completely being down wind.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're coming in on a ross wind to where
Speaker 1: if it blows up or down, then you're good. But
Speaker 1: if it swirls, you know, like I say, it's game over.
Speaker 1: But that's that's my best advice. And you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: sometimes it just sucks. I've had it where you'll have
Speaker 1: three or four days in a row of that, and
Speaker 1: it's so frustrating. It's like, man, I hear bowls and
Speaker 1: we can't get close to them because we know we're
Speaker 1: going to blow them out of here. But you have
Speaker 1: a little bit of time to be patient a lot
Speaker 1: of times a little straighten up after a while. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I've had bluebird days, just like beautiful bluebird days, not
Speaker 1: a cloud in the sky, not and then the winds
Speaker 1: just get really weird, and I'm sure a meteorologist or
Speaker 1: somebody can tell me why that is. But even in
Speaker 1: those days, I'm just you know, we just play it safe,
Speaker 1: because that's the one thing you can't really, you can't
Speaker 1: really fool, is a bull's nose. So just play it
Speaker 1: safe on those That's what I'd recommend.
Speaker 4: All right, color two Listen to his message here.
Speaker 3: Hey, dirt, my name is James. Don't really have a question,
Speaker 3: just calling in to tell about the choke up, and
Speaker 3: I'd like to blame Phelps game calls for everything, not
Speaker 3: really just kidding. It was the last day of our
Speaker 3: hunt in Colorado. We're kind of sitting there twiddling our thumbs,
Speaker 3: and we'd located the elk the night before and gone
Speaker 3: in there early in the morning, and we were kind
Speaker 3: of just waiting for something to make some noise, and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, just laughing thinking about what all happened.
Speaker 3: But all of a sudden we heard a bugle and
Speaker 3: we took off after it and we got up above
Speaker 3: the elk. We were both huffing and puffing, catching our breath.
Speaker 3: I looked at my buddy and I said, well, what
Speaker 3: do you think we should do? And he's like, I
Speaker 3: don't know. I was like, well, I'm just going to
Speaker 3: bugle see if we can get him to pop off again.
Speaker 3: And so bugled and he chuckled right below us about
Speaker 3: I don't know. I was sixty seventy yards, and we
Speaker 3: started working our way up to this little saddle a
Speaker 3: little bit closer, and then all of a sudden I
Speaker 3: caught a look of the bull. He'sing his way up
Speaker 3: the side of the ridge to where we were headed,
Speaker 3: and so I told my buddy to get down. And
Speaker 3: so I got down on my knees on the edge
Speaker 3: of the ridge. And there's probably like a real steep,
Speaker 3: real steep, like I don't know, thirty degree slow, forty
Speaker 3: five degrees.
Speaker 5: Slow, just super steep.
Speaker 3: And I got on the edge of this little knife
Speaker 3: ridge and got drawn back on the bull. I was
Speaker 3: waiting for my pin to study from all the adrenaline
Speaker 3: touched the shot off and I heard a loud thing,
Speaker 3: and I saw this black mouthpiece go flying out of
Speaker 3: the corner of my vision and watched the arrow go
Speaker 3: to the left of the bull, and the bull just
Speaker 3: stood there, and I kept trying to put an arrow
Speaker 3: on the string and pull it back again. But I
Speaker 3: couldn't because as I came to realize, my string of
Speaker 3: derailed and that was that was, that was the heartbreak.
Speaker 3: My bugle tube got in the way of the string
Speaker 3: and the cam and it the string hit the bugle
Speaker 3: tube and broke the bugle tube and the bull got away.
Speaker 3: And uh, there's a lot longer backstory to the troubles
Speaker 3: from that bugle tube. But I think y'all sent me
Speaker 3: a lemon just kidding.
Speaker 1: Oh dang it. So we only have a three minute
Speaker 1: limit on the messages. So he got caught off. Sorry
Speaker 1: about that shit you call in, Dude, that that is
Speaker 1: a heartbreak right there. You work so hard to connect
Speaker 1: to get that opportunity to draw your bow back and
Speaker 1: shoot a ball, and then that happens. Oh, and I
Speaker 1: could I could see that happening just about anyone. I
Speaker 1: always say, like elk hunting, you have to navigate a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of a comedy of errors before you ever
Speaker 1: kill the bowl. Right, there's just so many twists and
Speaker 1: turns and things that can go wrong. And Murphy and
Speaker 1: his law that it raises his damn head every time. Uh,
Speaker 1: it seems like and it. Man, I feel for you.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a tough deal. Yeah yeah, Well, I
Speaker 1: think only advice I got there is is just practice,
Speaker 1: you know, double checking your setup, your stance, your your equipment.
Speaker 1: And I know that that's super hard because in the moment,
Speaker 1: you know, you're focused so focused on you know, not
Speaker 1: getting picked off and getting your bow drawn, you know,
Speaker 1: making sure you know the yardage, you know, holding your
Speaker 1: bow right, trying to have the right stance, And that's
Speaker 1: just one other thing, you know, making sure you don't
Speaker 1: have a have your bow or a call or binoculars
Speaker 1: or something that are going to interfere with your your string.
Speaker 1: And man, that's a heartbreak. And man, I'm sure that
Speaker 1: one's gonna hurt for a while. So I'm really sorry
Speaker 1: to hear that. Man, next next year, you'll make up
Speaker 1: this year, twenty twenty four, you'll make up for it.
Speaker 1: You'll you'll probably kill a monster up there in that
Speaker 1: same spot. So good luck this fall. All right, Caller three,
Speaker 1: let's hear what you got to say.
Speaker 2: Hey, Eric, it's Anthony Sipe from Annis, Montana. One great,
Speaker 2: I just want to pass it on to you. Scored
Speaker 2: my first ball with the bow first bull ever actually
Speaker 2: after eleven seasons of drying and finally made it happen.
Speaker 2: I have a good one.
Speaker 1: Take care awesome, So he definitely kicked ass this year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: after eleven seasons. Man, that's some staying power. That's hard.
Speaker 1: That's hard to do and hard to to to get
Speaker 1: that rejection every year and stick with it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's easy to give up on elk hunting and
Speaker 1: different you know, aspects of the hunt. But that shows
Speaker 1: some real staying power. And congratulations, I'm glad you got
Speaker 1: got one. And and when it happened, you probably thought, oh, geez,
Speaker 1: why didn't I do this all the other times? And
Speaker 1: I feel like every time I kill a bowl that
Speaker 1: I feel this that same way as like, oh, why
Speaker 1: didn't you do this before? But you know, all the
Speaker 1: other times leading up to this, this season has just
Speaker 1: been a disaster and then I finally I get one.
Speaker 1: But I think that that's that's probably one of the
Speaker 1: biggest takeaways is not giving up, you know, being persistent,
Speaker 1: hang out till last day to the last hour. You
Speaker 1: know that that buck this this fall, this last fall,
Speaker 1: had we called it and said, eh, you know, the
Speaker 1: weather's not great let's just let's just have dinner and
Speaker 1: go home tomorrow. You know, you know we're gonna hunt
Speaker 1: from the start bell to the finishing bell. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying I'm perfect. You know, I've had I had it.
Speaker 1: I've had a couple of times in the past where
Speaker 1: I didn't hunt to the final bell, like I threw
Speaker 1: in the towel a little bit short. I remember in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one in New Mexico, shared a camp with
Speaker 1: Ryan Lampers and Jason Phelps, and those two ganged up
Speaker 1: and went hunting all the time. We were there with
Speaker 1: their camera guy, and then Dusty and I we hunted
Speaker 1: together for the whole week, and we ran into him
Speaker 1: a couple of times on the on the mountain. But
Speaker 1: it was a tough hunt. It was a brutal hunt.
Speaker 1: Elk didn't act right. It seems like, you know, we say, yeah,
Speaker 1: they Elk ain't acting right. I think that's kind of
Speaker 1: how I Elk act. You know, we want them to
Speaker 1: act a certain way, and they just you know, they
Speaker 1: they have a difference of opinion on how they want
Speaker 1: to play their September. You know, it's not not like
Speaker 1: textbook all the time. Of course, so all week, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, we'd had some hot weather, but you would
Speaker 1: we'd have a kind of a thunderstorm roll in several
Speaker 1: times that week, and every time that year a thunderstorm
Speaker 1: and roll in. You know, it kind of get clouded
Speaker 1: up and you'd get a tiny, tiny little bit of
Speaker 1: rain and some thunder and whatever the elk we're doing,
Speaker 1: it would just clam them up.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Let's say we did hear a few bugles. As soon
Speaker 1: as that happened, the elk would just shut up. So
Speaker 1: it was our last day, last afternoon, and we'd climbed
Speaker 1: up this mountain. I'd seen this big bull we'd been chasing,
Speaker 1: the same big bull. I called him Grandpa Jones. And
Speaker 1: I don't normally, I don't normally name elk that I'm
Speaker 1: chasing unless there's unless there's something that's just remarkable about him.
Speaker 1: This bowl, I called him Grandpa Jones because he was
Speaker 1: definitely the most mature bowl in the area we're hunting,
Speaker 1: and he wouldn't have been any kind of big record
Speaker 1: book bowl. He had a weird ass rack. He had
Speaker 1: these He had one browtye that came kind of just
Speaker 1: straight out and then kind of dipped a little bit,
Speaker 1: and I'll swear to God, that thing was probably twenty
Speaker 1: seven inches long. It went out past his nose and
Speaker 1: it was an incredible length for a browtye. And then
Speaker 1: you know, the next two or three points were pretty long,
Speaker 1: you know, so he had real nice the bottom ends
Speaker 1: of his of his rack was good, but then it
Speaker 1: just petered out after the fourth point. Short beamed. One
Speaker 1: side it was a perfect five, but on the side
Speaker 1: he had that weird point. He had like seven or
Speaker 1: eight on that point on that side. But he was
Speaker 1: He was no record book bowl, but he had a
Speaker 1: He had a nice, heavy, big heavy rack, and the
Speaker 1: score might have surprised as you if you were into
Speaker 1: major and horns. Maybe maybe not. I still think he
Speaker 1: was no big record book bowl, but he had a
Speaker 1: giant body. And what overshadowed everything was he had this
Speaker 1: bugle that was just the most gnarly, nasty bugle.
Speaker 2: Just eh.
Speaker 1: You just I heard that bull up on the hill.
Speaker 1: It's like, man, I got to see what that thing is.
Speaker 1: And Dusty and I climbed up the mountain and I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: we got to be getting pretty close. And I walked
Speaker 1: around a bush and there he was this is no joke.
Speaker 1: This thing was probably four yards from me and had
Speaker 1: he had his head down facing me, eating, and he
Speaker 1: had his eyes down focused at the ground. As I
Speaker 1: came around that bush, and he didn't see me, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god. So I slowly started
Speaker 1: pulling an arrow out and getting it knocked because I
Speaker 1: wasn't ready. Of course, I thought he was up the
Speaker 1: hill a ways further. So I slowly trying to narrow knocked.
Speaker 1: And as I was putting my arrow down on the rest,
Speaker 1: I pushed it through the little retainer thing on the
Speaker 1: rest and I didn't have any moleskin on my on
Speaker 1: my on my riser and my bow rookie mistake, and
Speaker 1: my arrow went clanking. It accidentally clanked on the riser
Speaker 1: and the bow looked up. He looked right, he looked
Speaker 1: right through me, and he went and you let out
Speaker 1: this really soft guttural grolly bugle, and then he kind
Speaker 1: of put his head back down started eating again. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh man, man, I'm gonna get him. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get him. So I finally get my arrow on
Speaker 1: the string, I get my release on the string, and
Speaker 1: I'm just starting to put some tension on it, and
Speaker 1: he looks up again and looks at me, and then
Speaker 1: you could literally see the recognition in his eyes. He
Speaker 1: just like, that's a fricking guy standing there. And soon
Speaker 1: he as soon as he acknowledged that he was gone,
Speaker 1: he just whirled and took off, and then we ran
Speaker 1: over and grabbed his cows, and and uh. They bugled
Speaker 1: across the hillside, across the mountain, over and across the
Speaker 1: drainage to go over the other side, and there was
Speaker 1: bulls all around. There was probably eight different bulls there.
Speaker 1: It was an absolute rut fest. We hadn't had anything
Speaker 1: like that at all up unto that point. During that
Speaker 1: week had been pretty tough. And Uh, anyway, so two
Speaker 1: more I had two more encounters with that bull. Anyway,
Speaker 1: On the last encounter, he just who do he need?
Speaker 1: Is he? We were up on that same hill and
Speaker 1: I don't know where that thing would go bed down,
Speaker 1: but he would go bed somewhere and he would not
Speaker 1: make a peep. We'd follow these tracks and then we
Speaker 1: kind of lose them. They get through some thick stuff
Speaker 1: and they'd get into some rocky stuff and we would
Speaker 1: lose their tracks. And I don't know where the hell
Speaker 1: the elk went? Is so frustrating. And about the time
Speaker 1: that we'd lost him again, I just we got our
Speaker 1: teeth kicked in morning, did a big thunderstorm rolls in.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, well, we haven't all week long every
Speaker 1: time a thunder storm rolled in, get a tiny little
Speaker 1: bit of rain, and the elk shut up. I'm like,
Speaker 1: let's go. This is the last there was. You know,
Speaker 1: we had just a few hours, you know, four or
Speaker 1: five hours left of the hunt, and I'm like, let's go,
Speaker 1: let's go back pack our stuff up, Let's get in early,
Speaker 1: head start home, because we got a long ways to
Speaker 1: go home. And if we get if we get back
Speaker 1: with enough time on our hands, we could maybe hunt
Speaker 1: in Idaho a little bit. Well, Lampers and Phelps they
Speaker 1: were out there still, and they didn't they didn't throw
Speaker 1: on the towel. They stuck into the inn, and Lampers
Speaker 1: shot his bowl right there at the ending bell, right
Speaker 1: at the last few minutes a light on the last day.
Speaker 1: They they'd kind of changed areas. They went a couple
Speaker 1: miles away from where we've been chasing Grandpa Jones and
Speaker 1: found a bunch more elk, and it was a melee.
Speaker 1: There was bullspugling everywhere and shooting shooting one. So anyway,
Speaker 1: don't give up, don't give up. I mean that was stupid,
Speaker 1: you know, looking back, that was really stupid to me
Speaker 1: to you know, sacrifice a few hours early start to
Speaker 1: where it's like, you know, we should have just stuck
Speaker 1: it with it, you know, but you know, at the
Speaker 1: time I justified it, and looking back now is a
Speaker 1: fool to do that. So that won't happen again. I
Speaker 1: can guarantee you I'll get I'll get my teeth kicked
Speaker 1: in again. But I'm not going to give up early
Speaker 1: and go home, all right, Color number four.
Speaker 7: Sure, it's good to hear your voice.
Speaker 6: Always enjoy your videos and your advice input. Thanks man
Speaker 6: on ail Country twenty three was a successful year for myself.
Speaker 6: Got some excitement throwing in the deal. Being a brother Ryan.
Speaker 7: I needed to hike about a mile and a half
Speaker 7: to cert.
Speaker 6: Ridge, where we knew there was elk on either side.
Speaker 6: We got there the first morning just after daylight, and
Speaker 6: the elk busted us. The next morning, we were I
Speaker 6: had a schedule snuck into this ridge. It was dark yet,
Speaker 6: so we both laid down for a nap.
Speaker 7: By some bluffs on top of this ridge.
Speaker 6: Took our backs off, I took my release off, laid
Speaker 6: my bowl on the ground.
Speaker 7: After thirty minutes we woke up.
Speaker 6: Just starting to get light. Sure enough, there was elk,
Speaker 6: so we were. The wind was blown a little bit
Speaker 6: left to right, and we were watching these elks trying
Speaker 6: to figure out where they were going to try to
Speaker 6: cross this ridge, and our.
Speaker 7: Hoods were up and lo and.
Speaker 6: Behold, we heard a meow right behind us. We both
Speaker 6: would and there was a chat that had snuck up
Speaker 6: on us, and it was crouching. It was a few
Speaker 6: years back, maybe about seven yards from us, sitting at
Speaker 6: the base of a tree.
Speaker 7: Came in totally quiet.
Speaker 6: Wow, So that got our adrenaline growing. My brother, neither
Speaker 6: of us had.
Speaker 7: Handguns or anything.
Speaker 6: My bow was laying on the ground, I don't know,
Speaker 6: twenty feet away, and he yelled at it to get
Speaker 6: out of there, and it looked at us for a
Speaker 6: bit size the stuff, I guess, and decided it could
Speaker 6: have an easier meal somewhere else. But if it hadn't me.
Speaker 7: Out, we didn't know it was there, but focused our attention.
Speaker 6: Back on the elk and probably sixteen minutes later, a
Speaker 6: small six point he was busted off part way up
Speaker 6: one side.
Speaker 7: He was making his way towards us.
Speaker 6: And at sixty yards I drew my bow back.
Speaker 7: My brother was behind me.
Speaker 6: He let out a cow call, and that thing just wheeled,
Speaker 6: turned straight towards us, right on a string, come in
Speaker 6: eleven yards, whacked him and he did a thirty second
Speaker 6: death run.
Speaker 7: Anyways, good time. I was my younger brother.
Speaker 6: Last time I bow hunted elk with him and killed London.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that three minutes got him, cut him off.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry about that. I would like to hear the last,
Speaker 1: the tail end of your story there. Thank you for calling.
Speaker 1: Appreciate that. Man, what a wild story, having a mountain
Speaker 1: lion stalk you, spook it off and then call and
Speaker 1: then call in and kill a big bull. That's I
Speaker 1: don't think it gets any better than that. That's that's
Speaker 1: the ultimate. I've never had a mountain lion stalk me
Speaker 1: that I know of, or a bear or or a
Speaker 1: wolf for that matter. But it's a it's a matter
Speaker 1: of time, right. If you're out there, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just a game of odds. If you're out there, you
Speaker 1: put yourself out there enough times, you're gonna have a
Speaker 1: run in. Someday. I'll probably have a run in with
Speaker 1: a cat, wolf, bear, whatever we have you. Hopefully it's
Speaker 1: a black bear, not a grizzly. But here's an old
Speaker 1: story from back in my olden days as a young man.
Speaker 1: I remember I remember talking to a guy and he'd
Speaker 1: had a similar situation with a cat during September, and
Speaker 1: he was calling an elk and he got kind of
Speaker 1: got the willies, you know, he's just like, man, my
Speaker 1: hair stood up, and he's like, man, what the heck's
Speaker 1: going on? And he turned around and there's a mountain
Speaker 1: lion crouched just right behind him, just a few yards
Speaker 1: behind him. So he drew his bow. He had his
Speaker 1: arrow knocked, drew his bow, pulled back, shot, the cat jump, rolled,
Speaker 1: took off. Couldn't find it. Never found a blood some
Speaker 1: but it never could find it. Fast forward a few years,
Speaker 1: I can't remember how many years exactly, probably two or three,
Speaker 1: and in the in the newspaper, there was a picture
Speaker 1: of a guy with a mountain lion that he'd taken
Speaker 1: with dogs in the wintertime, and it only had one eye,
Speaker 1: and upon skinning, the cat out. They discovered he had
Speaker 1: a broadhead in his eye socket, and follow the story
Speaker 1: a little further. It was in that same area where
Speaker 1: that other hunter had shot that one that was stalking
Speaker 1: him and then it got away. So you know, had
Speaker 1: the had the broadheads to you know, match it up,
Speaker 1: and and the the little bit of the shaft of
Speaker 1: the arrow to confirm his story. So it is crazy.
Speaker 1: Crazy things can happen out there in the woods. You
Speaker 1: get predators stalking you, the hunter becomes the hunted. I
Speaker 1: hope I don't have a spooky run in with one,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure it's going to happen at some point.
Speaker 1: But thanks for the story, man, that's awesome. Congratulations, glad
Speaker 1: you guys kicked as this year. Before Let's see what
Speaker 1: the next caller, caller number five, I had to say.
Speaker 8: Oh, hey there it's Dusty. Yeah, your cameraman, you know,
Speaker 8: the guy that filmed you this past fall. Yeah, I
Speaker 8: thought to call in and let the listeners hear the
Speaker 8: real list of Dirk Durham's shortcomings. Oh, I will say,
Speaker 8: I actually wish more than anything that I could provide
Speaker 8: your listeners with some positive things that you did this
Speaker 8: past fall. But let's just be real. You did nothing
Speaker 8: positive this past fall. Well, being the nice guy that
Speaker 8: I am, I thought it still might be helpful. Provided
Speaker 8: a list for you, Dirt of a few things that
Speaker 8: you did wrong.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Susan, thank you.
Speaker 8: If you can share them, you know, talk it over
Speaker 8: with your listeners, let him get to know.
Speaker 2: The real jerk.
Speaker 8: Dream now. I'm only doing a few of them because
Speaker 8: if I do the whole list, you'd have to make
Speaker 8: two podcasts the first thing you did wrong. How many
Speaker 8: times does a man have to hit the snooze button
Speaker 8: before he gets up for someone who acts like they
Speaker 8: love help coming, I think I know what you really love.
Speaker 8: Sleep Well, maybe it's snoring good night. I don't know
Speaker 8: how the entire tent indicated. I was actually looking forward
Speaker 8: to getting up so I didn't have to hear that
Speaker 8: nine horsepower chainsaw with blunt edges trying to cut through
Speaker 8: a camerack tree on that.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, just get up for just a man, I'm
Speaker 1: just a man.
Speaker 8: Come on now, how about this one? How about we
Speaker 8: tell your listeners about how you pretend to be driving
Speaker 8: around looking the right canyon to bugle down into, when
Speaker 8: in reality you're just driving around to let all the
Speaker 8: other elk hunters or as you call them, your fans,
Speaker 8: that the bugler is here. I mean, we spent more
Speaker 8: time talking to the people than we did bugling for elk.
Speaker 8: I wonder why we didn't hear anything.
Speaker 1: Well, I have a pen sign autographs, you know.
Speaker 8: Oh, here's another thing you did wrong. Maybe if we
Speaker 8: just spent more time in the woods instead of going
Speaker 8: back to town for a huckleberry milkshake, you might have
Speaker 8: had more opportunities to find out. Now I'm all confused.
Speaker 8: Do you like sleep more or milkshake more?
Speaker 1: I really like you can.
Speaker 8: Talk about that on your little podcast. All right, you
Speaker 8: know what, that's all I'm going to give you. That
Speaker 8: should be enough to talk about on What's this called
Speaker 8: cutting the distance? Oh my goodness, there's no cutting the
Speaker 8: distance this past season except from mountain to milkshake. Maybe
Speaker 8: you know what, I actually might listen to this podcast.
Speaker 8: See how you're gonna weel yourself out of the.
Speaker 1: Later. Dusty got me good, He got me good? All right,
Speaker 1: that's why we camped in town so I could get
Speaker 1: my huckleberry milkshake every day.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 1: I don't know who who screens these phone calls anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to have a talk later. Uh you
Speaker 1: get uh screen these uh these these callers a little better.
Speaker 1: I don't think we should be letting a guy named
Speaker 1: Dusty Rupe cameraman Dusty call in. Uh, he's something else.
Speaker 1: We have a great time hunting together, and he's a
Speaker 1: heck of a camera guy and a good friend. So
Speaker 1: thanks for calling in, Dusty. I hope you weren't serious.
Speaker 1: If so, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was in a
Speaker 1: bad place. I needed to kill an elk. All right,
Speaker 1: all right, calling number six.
Speaker 9: Hey Dirk, it's your friend Richard from each Country, and
Speaker 9: I'm calling the report from this last September and give
Speaker 9: you my report card. You know, I was fortunate enough
Speaker 9: this last archery season to shoot a bowl. However, that
Speaker 9: did not come without triumphs. I spent a total of
Speaker 9: twenty one days in the elk woods and they were
Speaker 9: hard fought days, no questions at all. So something that
Speaker 9: I think would be good to get your feedback on
Speaker 9: is the elk here in Idaho never really seemed to
Speaker 9: go crazy repfest and it was tough, and there were
Speaker 9: two bulls in my mind that I can recall that
Speaker 9: I spent a lot of time facing because they just
Speaker 9: never fully went ready, but they were extremely vocal bulls
Speaker 9: who just kept tugging me along. We actually named one
Speaker 9: of them the Big Boss Baby Bowl because he seemed
Speaker 9: to be a pretty nice six point but he always
Speaker 9: just kept his distance and he.
Speaker 2: Likes to talk to us.
Speaker 9: But we get to that eighty two one hundred yards
Speaker 9: and he just seemed to kind of get really leary
Speaker 9: and never really wanted to commit. So I guess the
Speaker 9: question is is what tactics calling or stocking do you
Speaker 9: prefer when it comes to bulls who are very vocal
Speaker 9: and will respond back to you even at close distances,
Speaker 9: but just decide themselves to never actually close the distance
Speaker 9: and come in. Tried a couple different tactics with shooter
Speaker 9: callar situations, you know, sending the shooter up and then
Speaker 9: pulling the collar back and everything. But he's elsa smart
Speaker 9: and they don't get to be mature by being dumb.
Speaker 9: So it's something that we spent a lot of days
Speaker 9: is this September doing and I think it would be
Speaker 9: good to get your insight on so next year can
Speaker 9: be a better year and maybe we don't have to
Speaker 9: spend twenty one days in one state hunting out. So
Speaker 9: I appreciate the feedback and look forward to hearing your answer.
Speaker 1: Thanks, Hey, thanks for calling in. Richard. Richard and his
Speaker 1: dad they do. They have a YouTube channel called Steep
Speaker 1: Country Outdoors. I watched that video of you shooting that
Speaker 1: bowl on YouTube. So cool film. So if you guys
Speaker 1: are bored and it's wintertime and you want to kind
Speaker 1: of beat the beat the winter blues, definitely check that out.
Speaker 1: It's a steep country country with a K U K
Speaker 1: K you and tr Anyway, anyway, thanks for the call
Speaker 1: and the question, man that that's exactly what I experienced
Speaker 1: last fall too. It's like the elk were social distancing.
Speaker 1: They never got pissed off. They would talk, they would talk,
Speaker 1: but I could not. I never got to the point
Speaker 1: where they would just lose their mind and just get
Speaker 1: really aggressive. And I've kind of talked about this on
Speaker 1: some of the other podcasts where earlier on where I
Speaker 1: call it the Year the Huckleberry, Right, the Year the Huckleberry.
Speaker 1: The elk don't rut hard, they don't bugle like they
Speaker 1: normally do. And if we equate this to what do
Speaker 1: you call it the year of the huckleberry? Well, on
Speaker 1: good huckleberry years. If you don't know what huckleberry is,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a blueberry. But they're growing. They
Speaker 1: grow in the mountains as certain parts of Idaho, Montana,
Speaker 1: maybe some Wyoming. I haven't seen a lot of them
Speaker 1: in Wyoming, definitely Washington in Oregon. But they're delicious, man,
Speaker 1: Huckleberry milkshakes, get out, huckleberry pie, huckleberry anything is amazing. Anyway,
Speaker 1: on the years there's a bumper crop of huckleberries that's
Speaker 1: attributed to a couple of things, maybe a really good
Speaker 1: snowpack and a really wet summer, maybe both, maybe one
Speaker 1: or the other one. But those huckleberries to do really well,
Speaker 1: they need a lot of moisture, and sometimes in the
Speaker 1: summer we have some pretty hot, dry summers in Idaho
Speaker 1: in the Northwest, and sometimes they don't do as good
Speaker 1: as others. And this year we had a lot of
Speaker 1: We had a really good snowpack. We had a lot
Speaker 1: of rain this summer, more than that we have in
Speaker 1: the last few and the huggleberries were good. What the
Speaker 1: heck is elki huckleberries? Well, they do, but not on
Speaker 1: the scale like bears do. But the biggest takeaway is
Speaker 1: if there's a lot of huckleberries, there's a lot of grass,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of feed normal the other stuff the
Speaker 1: elk like, you know, whether it's browse, you know, you're
Speaker 1: you're talking maples and mountain maples, and you're talking all
Speaker 1: sorts of other kind of little brush and browse and
Speaker 1: then grass. When there's there's a lot of water, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of that feed all over the mountains. So
Speaker 1: the elk doesn't seem to concentrate. And this is all theory.
Speaker 1: This is my theory. You know, maybe you guys have
Speaker 1: a different one. Be cool to hear it. But when
Speaker 1: there's a lot of when there's a lot of grass everywhere,
Speaker 1: they don't seem to concentrate as much into those into
Speaker 1: those places like on a dry year, on a dry ear,
Speaker 1: the feed is not quite so pronounced. It's in, it's
Speaker 1: in more focused spots, and those elk tend to go
Speaker 1: to those focused spots, and not only they compete for feed,
Speaker 1: but there can they they find they find each other,
Speaker 1: you know, there, and then there's more bulls competing for
Speaker 1: those females, and that creates a dynamic where they're a
Speaker 1: lot more rambunctious. You know, they're fighting or all the time,
Speaker 1: or keeping those other bowls away all the time. So
Speaker 1: in like dry years too, you know, you see you
Speaker 1: see a lot of broken bulls, and part of me thinks, well,
Speaker 1: is because the're dry and the antlers are more brittle.
Speaker 1: Maybe they didn't have as good a feed that year,
Speaker 1: and there they didn't have as much to put into
Speaker 1: their horns to make them strong. But on the second half,
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe it's because they're so scrapy because all
Speaker 1: those elk are concentrated on those food sources. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I kind of digressed there a little bit. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I kind of experienced that same thing this last fall.
Speaker 1: And but on the flip side, I did I did
Speaker 1: talk to some guys and gals that had really good luck,
Speaker 1: they had better than average luck and where they were hunting.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure what the difference was. A lot
Speaker 1: of it's the same type of country, but not the
Speaker 1: same country where I was at. So elk are always
Speaker 1: a head scratcher. You think, right when you think you
Speaker 1: got got them figured out, then they they let you
Speaker 1: know that you don't have figured out. So, but that's
Speaker 1: why I always say this is the theory. But what
Speaker 1: I like to do in those instances where the bulls
Speaker 1: just kind of social social distance themselves from me, it's
Speaker 1: imperative to have another caller. So you have a caller
Speaker 1: and a shooter. It's really difficult when you're just by
Speaker 1: yourself solo. Last fall, I was solo, and it was
Speaker 1: really difficult for me to to to call and then
Speaker 1: get close enough to the bowl without him just kind
Speaker 1: of spooking off. So if you have a caller that
Speaker 1: can stay back one hundred and two hundred yards and
Speaker 1: just talk, you know, keep them talking, not get aggressive,
Speaker 1: just keep them talking, just like hey there, oh hey,
Speaker 1: you know, you're just you're just maintaining contact with your
Speaker 1: calls to where you're just keeping that bulk talking. And
Speaker 1: that's when your shooter just gets quiet and gets over
Speaker 1: to that bowl and tries to sneak in on them.
Speaker 1: That's that's my best recommendation on that stuff, because I
Speaker 1: know exactly what you mean. Just you put it a
Speaker 1: little bit of pressure, or you get a little bit,
Speaker 1: you take a couple of steps towards them, You go
Speaker 1: one hundred yards towards them and they go four hundred
Speaker 1: yards away, and that is so frustrating. I've I've did this,
Speaker 1: that whole scenario all last September. So maybe get your
Speaker 1: pops there to do to do the call in and
Speaker 1: let you put the sneak on them or vice versa.
Speaker 1: I know I watched your video. I've seen you guys
Speaker 1: kind of did some of that too, So maybe focus
Speaker 1: on that a little bit more. Of course, it's not
Speaker 1: a perfect science. It's it's difficult, especially in country. It's
Speaker 1: got a little bit of cover, it's hard to sneak
Speaker 1: up on them. There's hard to be quiet. Those balls
Speaker 1: will hear you coming if it's super brushy or thick.
Speaker 1: But anyway, thanks for calling Richard, good luck this fall.
Speaker 1: Look forward to see what you and your dad doing
Speaker 1: this this fall of twenty twenty four. Caller seven, Hey, Dirk, Dave.
Speaker 10: Mccotter here, why I'm your resident. So what I came
Speaker 10: remember with the twenty twenty three season is do not
Speaker 10: ever I think you have it in the bad I
Speaker 10: get too confident or too cocky. I drew an area
Speaker 10: that is right next to my home, an area that
Speaker 10: I've been hunting for eight nine years. That I know
Speaker 10: like the back of my hand, that for the past
Speaker 10: four years padded out in Okay. So when I draw
Speaker 10: two tags for that unit, you know, two people in
Speaker 10: my family, I'm like, oh, easily, we'll.
Speaker 2: Have two bowls.
Speaker 10: You know, every time I killed a bull there the bolt,
Speaker 10: we've had it killed, you know, within the first couple
Speaker 10: hours of the first day. You know, we always have
Speaker 10: both killed in days. So I'm like, oh, okay, yeah,
Speaker 10: the first we'll have. We'll have two bowls down in
Speaker 10: the first week of September, and then you know we'll
Speaker 10: go on to go do this hunt over in western
Speaker 10: Wyoming and then Medible Glassy to do this hunt. Well,
Speaker 10: guess what, everything was completely different this year and threw
Speaker 10: us a curveball. I hunted that area for nineteen straight
Speaker 10: consecutive days and never killed a single didn't didn't feel
Speaker 10: a single.
Speaker 2: Tag this year.
Speaker 10: So when you think if when you draw that, draw
Speaker 10: them tags and you think it's a home run based
Speaker 10: on previous seasons and previous experiences, yeah, don't do that.
Speaker 10: And I don't care about what anybody says, like, oh,
Speaker 10: I know a season like that, I know an area
Speaker 10: like the back of my hand. I can't you know,
Speaker 10: or with those people are saying, oh yeah, I consistently
Speaker 10: fill tags or consistent hunters. I don't care how good
Speaker 10: you are. An area can change year after year. It's
Speaker 10: not going to be the same every year. So don't
Speaker 10: ever think that you are so good that you got
Speaker 10: it in the back. That's all I got to say.
Speaker 1: Man, you hit the nail on the head so hard
Speaker 1: and so square right there. What is that movie?
Speaker 8: Is it?
Speaker 1: Dang it? It's the one with Ben Stiller and oh
Speaker 1: it's Dodgeball. And one of the lines, one of the
Speaker 1: quotes off there, and it's so stupid the quote. The
Speaker 1: quote is you don't score until you score. But every
Speaker 1: time I hear something like this, it reminds me of
Speaker 1: that quote, that quotation, like you don't score until you score.
Speaker 1: You might think you're gonna score, but you're not. Like
Speaker 1: it's easy to get that lulled into that that confidence
Speaker 1: of oh yeah, I've got this area figured out, or
Speaker 1: I've got these elk figured out, or I'm I'm I've
Speaker 1: got this I'm a pretty good hunter. And I'm just
Speaker 1: here to tell you winning streaks are made to be broken.
Speaker 1: I know some some really, really great hunters that are
Speaker 1: on some killer winning streaks, and man I got the
Speaker 1: most respect for him. But at some point you may
Speaker 1: get that broken. Now, depending on there's factors to where
Speaker 1: Why did your winning screens winning streak get broken? Was
Speaker 1: it just a comedy of errors like we talked earlier,
Speaker 1: Like you know, you just can't catch a break, bad
Speaker 1: wind getting picked off elk, don't bugle, or you had opportunities,
Speaker 1: but maybe you know you were just really trying to
Speaker 1: get that one certain bowl and it just never happened.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty fulfilling way to break a winning streak.
Speaker 1: It's frustrating as hell, but it's still fulfilling because you
Speaker 1: got a lot of had a lot of fun. You
Speaker 1: you could have taken a bowl, but you weren't. It
Speaker 1: wasn't you weren't your heart wasn't it. You just didn't
Speaker 1: want that one. You had your heart set on something else.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a that's a pretty fulfilling way. But
Speaker 1: sometimes try as hard as you want, you cannot connect
Speaker 1: the dots, and those are about the worst way to
Speaker 1: in their winning streak. It's very frustrating. So man I
Speaker 1: feel you and I've been there. I'm I mean I've
Speaker 1: been I've had some pretty damn good winning streaks and
Speaker 1: be like, oh, yeah, I'm hunting this spot. I know
Speaker 1: it inside and out. I've done my due diligence. I've
Speaker 1: hunted there, I know what the elk do, and just
Speaker 1: get my teeth kicked in. So you're not alone, man,
Speaker 1: And that's a very good point. So I think confidence kills,
Speaker 1: but you can't be so confident that you maybe overlook
Speaker 1: some of the just some little things you know that
Speaker 1: maybe contribute to success or just get you just get
Speaker 1: beat up, and it just you go home and you
Speaker 1: sit there in silence and stare at the wall for hours,
Speaker 1: like what just happened? I can't believe my season ended
Speaker 1: like that? But anyway, the good thing is is twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four is a new season and it's a great
Speaker 1: time to start a new winning streak and not a
Speaker 1: losing streak. We don't want to get on like on
Speaker 1: a losing streak. My buddy Chuck Charlie, he's on a
Speaker 1: hell of a losing streak. Ah, Man, I feel for
Speaker 1: the guy, but he's gonna turn around one of these
Speaker 1: days because he's a heck of a hunter. He's a
Speaker 1: heck of a caller, But I know it's just you
Speaker 1: gotta he get bucked off. You gotta climb back in
Speaker 1: the saddle again and just get after it. So anyway,
Speaker 1: thanks for that call. All right, here's the last caller,
Speaker 1: caller number eight. Let's hear what color eats guys to.
Speaker 5: Say, Hey, Dirk, this is Tyler Oaks with Timber Cruiser
Speaker 5: Outdoors up here in North Idaho. Our season, our twenty
Speaker 5: twenty three season actually went pretty.
Speaker 7: Dang good for us up here.
Speaker 9: I bought a resident tag and a.
Speaker 7: Non resident tag and managed to fill both tags with
Speaker 7: in about a week and a half of each other
Speaker 7: on bulls.
Speaker 9: And we ended up calling in about eight different bulls
Speaker 9: in a matter.
Speaker 7: Of a week and half up here in North Idaho.
Speaker 9: You know how hot in Idaho is.
Speaker 5: It's pretty well thick and nasty.
Speaker 7: But we were able to get it done.
Speaker 5: I mean, it was a pretty rad season for us.
Speaker 8: So we learned a whole bunch and I hope.
Speaker 9: You had a decent season and wait to listen to it.
Speaker 1: But Tyler Oaks, that guy's a That guy is an
Speaker 1: Elk killer. He's half elk. I think he I met him.
Speaker 1: I did a seminar in North Idaho. Here three years ago,
Speaker 1: Jim Huntsman, my buddy Jim and I did a put
Speaker 1: together a elk hunting seminar up there three years ago
Speaker 1: and met Tyler, and the guy's half elk. He's tough,
Speaker 1: he's fit, he lives it. He's a hell of an
Speaker 1: elk hunter and just a great guy. So, man, I
Speaker 1: can't I can't tell you how happy I am for
Speaker 1: for people like that, who who who get it done?
Speaker 1: You know, good for you, man, that's that's awesome. So
Speaker 1: I'd like a fantastic here there you go a little
Speaker 1: different part of the state. Richard is beating his head
Speaker 1: against the wall because the elk won't rut hard and
Speaker 1: Tyler's up there. He killed two of them. So you
Speaker 1: just never know. And always, I always say, I always
Speaker 1: tell people to stay mobile, right, don't get stuck in
Speaker 1: a rut. And where you're hunting in that particular spot,
Speaker 1: maybe it's really easy to like, oh, I know there's
Speaker 1: elk here, and I don't want to leave. But sometimes
Speaker 1: branching out and changing going from one side of the
Speaker 1: hunting unit over to the other one, you know, depend
Speaker 1: on how big the unit is you might be able
Speaker 1: to cover one hundred miles in between or something. And
Speaker 1: sometimes just changing those zip codes will produce big dividends
Speaker 1: because elk may not be doing squat where you've been hunting,
Speaker 1: but over on the other side of the unit, they're
Speaker 1: on fire. I've had that. I don't know how many
Speaker 1: times work out for me that way, so I always
Speaker 1: recommend it. And this year I did that a lot.
Speaker 1: I jumped around all over the zip codes and I
Speaker 1: still got my teeth kicked in. So I'm just you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's.
Speaker 4: It's a rebuilding year.
Speaker 1: I'd like to say we're rebuilding. We're gonna build back better.
Speaker 1: I hope this fall, so no, definitely is gonna be
Speaker 1: a better, better fall. I'm gonna new new slate, new canvas,
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna put in our summer work. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be awesome. We're gonna have a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: So anyhow, Yeah, and you know what, if you guys
Speaker 1: want to call in anytime and leave a message with
Speaker 1: a question on elk hunting, deer hunting, turkey hunting, bear hunting,
Speaker 1: if you want to be a smart ass and say
Speaker 1: something funny about Jason Phelps and how his his pink
Speaker 1: diaphragms suck. Those are the best. Those are even better.
Speaker 1: I will play those all day long because you know,
Speaker 1: we know who Team Maverick is. If you know, you know.
Speaker 1: But anyway, if you want to call in, uh, call
Speaker 1: the Super Secret hotline. It's two O eight two one
Speaker 1: nine seven seven zero one, leave a message. I have
Speaker 1: three minutes.
Speaker 8: I know.
Speaker 1: It's like, how do I fit it all into three minutes?
Speaker 1: Fit fit into three minutes. We'll read, we'll play it
Speaker 1: on the air, we'll uh, we'll kick it around, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about it, and we'll we'll go from there. If
Speaker 1: you guys follow and if you guys have Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 1: Jason Phelps, I mean he's struggling. His his Instagram sucks.
Speaker 1: He's got I don't know how many followers, hardly any
Speaker 1: on his personal one. Now, Phelps game Calls is huge, right,
Speaker 1: and that's where he started out on the Phelps Game
Speaker 1: Calls page. So but then he started a personal one
Speaker 1: and it's just not don't going so well for him.
Speaker 1: So hey, if you guys are on there and you
Speaker 1: like the podcast, you like our calls, you like what
Speaker 1: we do. We like following our adventures. Go give Jason Phelps.
Speaker 1: It's Jason Glenn Phelps on Instagram a follow. Hit him
Speaker 1: up with a friend request on Facebook. He's probably got
Speaker 1: so many he can't accepting more friends on Facebook, though,
Speaker 1: I get I'll bet he's he's one of those guys.
Speaker 1: But if if you, if you feel so inclined you
Speaker 1: want to give me a follow. It's the bugler one
Speaker 1: word on Instagram and Facebook and uh and and check
Speaker 1: out my YouTube channel. There's some some how to use
Speaker 1: elk call videos on there. They're really good, walk you
Speaker 1: through all the steps of how to use the elk calls.
Speaker 1: And there's some cool hunts on there too. Speaking of hunts,
Speaker 1: February fifth, I believe a new film is going to
Speaker 1: drop on the Phelps Game Calls channel YouTube channel, and
Speaker 1: it's called Ghost Bowls of the North. Dusty Rupe and
Speaker 1: I cameraman Dusty. In twenty twenty two we were up
Speaker 1: in the North Country hunting bugling bowls and it's a
Speaker 1: pretty good film. Pretty good film. Go get a watch
Speaker 1: if you're bored and want to watch a little bit
Speaker 1: of elk hunting. Like I said, February fifth, it's going
Speaker 1: to come out if you follow us on social we'll
Speaker 1: make a big deal about it and put out some
Speaker 1: trailers and some teasers and some announcements to let you
Speaker 1: know when that drops in case you forget. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that's coming up. Pretty excited about it. So until next time, guys,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening, and we'll catch you on the flip
Speaker 1: flop
Speaker 4: The bad time