Ep. 13: A Montana Elk Hail Mary and Getting Steady with Your Rifle

shot is he gonna go where it's supposed to. I'm gonna think about it like this. You've spent the entire week elk hunting, You've stalked in, you're within range, the bulls out in the open, but as you show up, he starts to move off. You've got your pack and nothing else. You throw the pack down. Can you get that rifle steady for that one split second he's gonna

stop before disappearing in the timber? Because I honestly think that being able to steady that rifle fast in the field makes a lot of difference between going home empty or just having another elk hunting story where the one got away. This week I want to tell you a few of those stories where it just didn't work out right, But I also want to give you some tips so when you're in the field you can just learn from experience and be so much faster getting that rifle steady instantly.

Now I feel very fortunate because of the guiding that I've done, I get to see a lot of the mistakes that are most hunters make. Now, a lot of the people that I take out I would consider pretty decent hunters. They spend time hunting, especially where they live. They get a lot of practice hunting there. But when they come out West or they're on in elk hunt.

Some of these people even live around here. Yet one of the things that I see as a little bit of a tactical error or not practiced enough is when it comes the setting up a rifle. Now, I had a client that I guided a lot over the years, and we first started hunting with me was completely different than when we finished hunting with me. And I think I'll tell a few of the stories where it just didn't work out right, and we did everything right up until the point where it came time to shoot, And that,

honestly is the most important time. So we'll take it back to the beginning of the elk season, the end of October, about six years ago in the Montana Wilds. It's day four of the hunt. We've seen bulls, but just no real good opportunities. The guy was unning with was a little bit older, and so it's a little bit mobility restricted, but he definitely gave it as all.

Now on this morning, the temperatures seem to drop. I'm in a spot that I've hunted quite a bit, and I'm glassing off one direction and then I hear it the best sound in the elk woods late October. I call it a late October bugle off in the distance in the valley below me. I hear a bugle rip out, and I think to myself, this is it. And when a bull starts firing up that time of year, you know that you're probably going to get a chance of

that elk. We work our way down the hill and it's pretty well timbered, but I know this area really well, and I know that there's an opening in the bottom. I'm throwing out some cow calls and I hear just a bunch of noise down in the bottom and another

bugle I hear cow is talking. Now what it is is as we work down, we get a out a third of the way from the bottom, and it's clear cut at this point, and then it's just an old clear cut, so it's maybe eight foot conifers, really dense pine trees in the bottom that opens up into this little marshy meadow, and then the other side's big, darker timber. After that, I find a good log. Now, one thing I should mention is before I take a guy hunting,

I always have them shoot. It's not because I don't trust that their guns on, but that is one thing. But I also study the way that that person shoots. I have them shoot, not from a bench, just off of shooting sticks or whatever they've got that they're planning on hunting with. And the reason is because I like to know how comfortable someone is with a rifle. So I know at this point he's gonna have to get

pretty steady. And there are a few stumps and logs around, and I'm like, perfect, this will be a great rest. We get set up and I can hear cows just me you ing down below us in a lot of racket. There's a bull that just for some reason. He's all fired up. Right now, he's pushing cows around. They're moving around, and now the lead cow is decided she's had enough, and they're moving single file out of the small pines, up through this little meadow and into the timber. This

is perfect, We've got time. I get him set up. I put the pack on top of a cut stump. He's sitting down and the elk are starting to file out single file. I'm assuming if the bull is going to be in the back. Tell him, look, put your crosshairs right where those elk ares filing through. They're pretty much gonna be right there. Now. I look over and he just does not look steady, like you stayble know. He's like, I can't get steady. He's like, give me

my shooting sticks. Okay, sweet. So I grabbed just the bipod type shooting sticks, but the sitting kind, you can think of it, where it's just two crossed legs with a place at the top to put your rifle. So I get him set up on that so you can get a little bit higher. Her up and look, I'm like, hey, man, get your right elbow on your knee. Steady that rifle a little bit better. Okay, So he gets it and he set up y' on the elk. Yeah, so he's on the cows that are walking out. Look, none of

these are stopping. But as soon as that bull walks out, I'm gonna rip a really loud bugle and it should get him to stop and turn and look our way, and that will give you your chance to take a shot. He's like, yeah, got it, elker filing through. I see antler tips coming through the small pines. This is about to happen. Yard shot. It should be good. He's got his sticks. We have a very small window to stop him in. So I gotta do it just as he steps out, because by the time that sound travels to him,

he's gonna hear that he's gonna stop. He's already quartering away. So even if he just takes one half step toward us, perfect shot, be great. The bull breaks through the trees, A rip a bugle. He doesn't textbook, slow turn step. I'm looking at the bull. I look at the guy and he's just messing with the shooting sticks. Like, you gotta get on him. You gotta get on him. He's like, it's it's it's moved. I can't. I can't get steady. So he grabs both shooting sticks and he's trying to

readjust the shooting sticks. At this time, we're losing critical time when it should have just been a small adjustment. He's messing with the sticks. The bull then starts to walk again. As soon as he gets as steadiest, starts to walking, and now he's grabbing the sticks and moving the sticks. The bull walks off. I stopped at a bugle again. The bull stops, He gets impatient, fires when I think maybe only one leg of the bipod is even on the ground, shoots right over the elks back

all the elk runaway. We were so close to having a bull, yet his lack of being able to steady that rifle fast cost him an elk. So growing up hunt I've wanted pretty much my entire life, and because of that, I really take for granted my ability to stabilize a rifle in a field. And I think a lot of that I attribute because I practiced getting a rifle steady while I was a kid growing up in

the field. I would constantly throw the gun up, practice putting it on inanimate targets or out in the field, shooting, shooting a small game with a light caliber rifle, just being extremely familiar with a rifle, having one in my hand all the time, using it all the time. Now, if you don't have the time or the background in that getting steady when the actions coming down, you've got to split second. It can be hard to do because your mechanics, the way that you operate, the way that

your brain functions, isn't smooth. A lot of fast action is smooth action, doing a task in its simplest form, smooth as fast, fast as smooth. You want to be able to steady at rifle in a way that it makes sense, you have the fewest amount of movements and is natural. So when you think about steadying rifle, there's four major ways. There's there's prone where you're laying down,

there's kneeling, they're sitting, and then they're standing. Obviously, prone is the most stable because you've got the most on the ground you can you can really steady that rifle. And then standing is the least stable. While those are all good shooting positions that you need to know, I'm going to talk about ways to use what's around you

for those adaptations. Of shooting positions. What I really want to talk about is just in the field experience simple things to readjust and reacquire whatever the target is quickly and to get steady fast with what's around you. So it's more of a critical thinking and how to set up as opposed to just going through the basic type of shop positions that you might learn and hunter safety.

Let's start with shooting sticks. A ton of people bring shooting sticks, and I think they are an extremely easy way to stabilize your gun, but a lot of people their brains in action. You just mess up and adjust them in the most inefficient ways possible. I think about a double stick or a bipod style shooting stick. When you get it set up, I think the best way would be saying and elks coming out. You're able to sit down on the ground. You're a right handed shooter.

Therefore your right knee goes up and you can rest your right elbow on your right knee. Now the gun is between the shooting sticks. Now the animals moving up, and you need the rifle barrel to move up as well to get closer. You've set them up, the guns in there, but the animals moving you need to follow with it. A lot of people I see make the mistake because your brain says it's two sticks. They grab both sides and then try to readjust and then set

the rifle back in there. Take your left hand, your off gun hand, keep that on the left side of the stick. Now, to move it higher, you just pick the ones side up and move it closer to the other side. To move the gun lower, you pick it up and move the leg out. That raises and lowers the gun. It's one easy movement to raise and lower the gun, to move the stick with just a single hand while you're still on the animal and still steady. If you're going to take a shooting stick, practice with

that shooting stick. If you don't even have the ability to get range time in, you can still practice getting those sticks out in an efficient way and adjusting. At home, take the bolt out of your rifle, obviously, make sure that it is completely unloaded. That just goes without saying common sense, but I have to say it. And then on the floor of wherever in your bedroom, get your shooting sticks out, get down fast, set the rifle in there,

and practice moving and adjusting higher and lower. Another way to Readjust think about anything you're using to stabilize the front end of your rifles. Say it's a pack to ray, is the barrel of the rifle. Whatever your guns resting on. Move it closer towards your body, that lifts the barrel up. As you move it further away, that lowers the barrel.

So when you originally get set up, set up whatever you're resting a rifle on in the middle, if you have to raise it, you can push it closer, and to lower it, you can push whatever it's resting on further away. It's a more efficient, smooth way to steady for a shot. Now, I never take shooting sticks when I'm hunting. I do have a bipod for my rifle that I've started using, but I would say most of

the shots I take are off my pack. It's because my pack is always with me and I can pretty much use it from shooting prone all the way through standing. And I'll give you some examples that you may not have thought of before. But these are just the ways that I use my pack for the various shooting positions. So let's go with prone. We've got an animal out there, Say it's bedded at three hundred yards. It has no

clue we're there. We've got an area where the grass is low, We've got a hill or whatever in between us. So I can take a prone shot. That's always my first option. If I can lay down, I'll take that shot. Because a pack has a frame and then it also has a bag, you can use both the hard part of the frame or the soft part of the bag

to stabilize the front end of your rifle. When I'm laying down prone, I'll throw my rifle four stock on the pack itself, and then a lot of times the key is to stabilize the back end of the rifle. So most of the time I just use my binoculars or a range finder or even a rock around me to get the butt of the rifle stabilized on the ground. At that point, the gun is pretty much self standing, self sustaining. I'll move in, get steady, and take that shot.

That's the most accurate way I can shoot, not every situation that works like that. Now, with my pack kneeling or sitting, what I'll do is I'll sit on the ground. I'll put the pack in front of me. This is where I normally have the pack sitting upright, I'll rest the rifle on the top of the pack, with the

bottom of the pack on the ground. I'll rest my shooting hand or my trigger finger the elbow of my right arm because I'm right handed, on my right knee if possible, if I have to kneel, I'll use the pack as what's stabilizing the rifle, and then I'll sit up higher. Hopefully i can kneel with my right knee forward to rest my right arm on my knee because I'm trying to stabilize both the front and the back of the rifle at the same time. Now, cool one is there are those times where you do have to

shoot standing up. I remember a few years ago I was hunting mule deer in Idaho. I ended up having to stand on this log. The buck was probably only seventy yards, but there is no way to get a rest because the grass was so tall and the hill was so steep. So I just jump up on this

log and take a standing shot. Now, if you've got a pack on already, a lot of times, what I'll do is I'll reverse the pack to the front of my body and then i can push it out with the strap of the pack on my arm rest the front end of the rifle on the pack, and then have that pack come down to my hips. That's a great way to stabilize the rifle while standing. If you have a pack and you have to happen to take

a shot like that. There's just so many ways that you can use the things around you in a little bit different way for shooting. Now, let's say you don't even have a pack. Oftentimes you gotta keep an eye out for the things that are around you, say a crook of a tree where you can stabilize the rifle in the tree, or rocks or stumps, something that can use as a rest. There's so many rests out there.

But I think the way is to practice using what you see while you're in the woods, while you're in the mountains, getting comfortable using your pack before it's time to actually have to get down and take that shot when you're at the range. Don't just shoot off the bench, shoot with your pack. Practice different ways to get steady using what you have or you're gonna have with you.

Because in the field, that knowledge and that practice is gonna make everything smooth, everything steady, and it's gonna get you more comfortable and take a better shot in a less amount of time. Sometimes it's just a matter of seconds between success and going home empty. So having that knowledge in that practice, using the things around you is overall going to make you a more successful hunter when

the moment of truth arrives. If you're going to be out there rifle hunting this year and some tip or something that I've said has helped you, shoot me a message via social media. I would love to see your guys success stories. Hopefully you can learn a few things

here that just gets you thinking in a different way. Now, if that is the major takeaway from today, just getting you to see things in a different light, whether you've been hunting your entire life or you're new to it, I hope that it just really gets you to just kind of look at things that you have with you and said, Okay, how can I use this to be better? How can I be more stable? How can I get steady faster? That's the whole goal, just to make you

a better hunter. And then I want to just hear from you in ways that you've done something maybe a little bit different, that worked out and was successful for you because I'd love to share that with other people because I think that we can all learn from each other. Man, if you got how about this, If you end up getting an animal this year, whether it's an elk Ader or whatever, even take a picture of where you shot

from and give me just a little brief description. I'd love to share some of that with other people, like, oh, this is a way that I got steady, something that I didn't think about before. Because it's cool to share knowledge, share information. I can learn as much from you as you can learn from me. So I think it's a cool way in this day and age, to be able to just share with each other. I appreciate you guys listening until next week. Shoot straight, don't be shaking, man, you got this