Ep. 22: The Phelps Field Report - Idaho Bulls with Garrett Bowen

Bulls were biggling, and one thing we did notice right out of the gate is that these bulls weren't necessarily locating from across canyons, or they weren't locating UM from long distances. So as we kind of developed a schudge, we would hear them biggle. But they were biggling, I would say, kind of lackluster, a little bit on their own, UM, weren't necessarily interested in responding UM to location vehicles, to

cal calls, UM, anything like that. So we realized early on we were going to have to definitely, you know, no pun intended, cut the distance, get very very close UM in order for them to respond to our beetles. But what we did find, which was a little surprising, is when we did cut the distance to you know, under three yards, the bulls were very collable. Um. So that's kind of the quick summary of the hunt. So one day one, you're right out of the gate. We

we climbed some distance. Um. One thing about these Idaho bowls, they any any stand of dark timber um surrounded by quake ees seemed to hold elk, so that that wasn't necessarily a problem. Maybe not in large numbers, but we were always able to be an elk every morning and every evening. The frustrating part was then getting them to do what we wanted to do. So back to opening morning.

We climb up. We don't hear a lot opening morning when we're on the south side of a ridge, climb up, and as soon as we drop over the north side, we get there by eight thirty, Um, the canyons lighting up. Um, we've got what we assumed to be the herd bowl straight across from us. And we're assuming herd bowl only because of um, you know, the size of the beagle, the rast, the depth, all of those things. We he bagles three or four times on his own. We haven't

even made a call to this point. And why we're making our approach based on the wind. We're trying to get down and under him. Um, so we can get across another bowl beagles at a hundred and fifty yards down the ridge. Um. We we've got good enough wind on him that he won't win. This set up to start caw calling. We set Garrett up, uh, you know, fifty six yards ahead of me. Start the cow call, just like so many times on this trip, never to

hear the elk again. And as I had mentioned earlier, we had multiple bowls going in this area, you know, a satellite near the herd bowl, plus this bowl of bagle on our side of the ridge. Um. Once we caw called, we didn't hear anymore else from that point on. We didn't hear the elk with a fifty yards of us. We didn't hear the elk across the canyon from us. We didn't hear the satellite across the canyon from us. So a little bit of a frustrating start to to

how are we going to approach these elk? So we you kind of go back the drawing board and to piggyback onto Oregon. You know, I'm really starting to question is our system going to work. Are we going to locate elk? Are we going to get close? Are we going to cal call or bigle them in um? Or We're gonna have to continue to just spot and stock and moving on these things. And it's it's not the the why, it's not the reason why I'm out there UM in September. I want to call to bugling bulls

that are interested in being tricked. So UM, I may have or may not have forgotten my elk tag um in my office desk. You know. So Garrett hunted that first day, we jumped off the mountain, drove back into town, got that all taken care of. UM, kind of sacrificed a night to just scouting. UM. You know, where are they all gonna be? Where? What should we do? And so we made the decision, uh, you know, after looking on x UM, we're gonna we're gonna go in for

for two days or three days and two nights. We're gonna spike in UM. So next morning, you know, we all loaded up, we take off of the trail at five, we get up there. Once again, we can hear bagles as we're hiking up the trail through some great out country. But nothing. You know, you hear a bugle, you stop and listen for it. The bugle againning we would wait

and we wouldn't hear a second or a third vehicle. Um, and you kind of start to lose confidence or faith in that vegle, and so we would leave it and move up. And so by time we finally get to where we want to set spike camp, we drop our camp. And we've had a bowl vegle across the drainage a couple of times, and we decided it's close enough to go after. So we we you know, jumping on that one.

And and this is kind of where it all all starts to come together, is as we got close at bull is very very collable, very very interactive, and so it kind of at that point had set the stage for all right, these bulls are at least callable. Um. And and you know, so we just learned at that point these elk are gonna be workable. Um, we just

have to get close. So to fast forward, another thing kind of an underlying theme of this whole hunt or you know, back to back days, is it gets closer to the end of September, Um, we expect the rut to start to pick up UM, and we would get a day, you know, we would get a day that was extremely UM good, you know, multiple bowls calling on their own, UM, responsive to calls, and for one reason or another, UM we could or couldn't, you know, we

we were able to make it work. But then we would show up in the same area, put all those eggs in the basket UM on the next day, and for one reason or another, the the area was dead, even though we could still you know, spot the elk with our with our binos or we would get enough responses UM. You know throughout the day that we knew the elk were still there, they just weren't anything like they were the day before. UM. And you know, me wanting to break that down and under stand why. I

believe a lot of it is UM. You know, cows in the area, whether they're coming into Ester's versus maybe they were taken care of, or you know, maybe that that bold pushed her off. UM. I don't know what the reason is, but it was definitely UM, you know, kind of very cyclical and very quick. You know, you wouldn't expect it to be on fire one day and dead the next day and then back on fire. UM, so it's very frustrating too. You know, maybe go in

with certain expectations. Um, but but it's hunting, it's elk cutting. Um. We've learned to just accept that. You know, the only thing that certain is uncertainty when it comes to el cutting, and you just had to deal with it. You still have to work hard. We still had to, um, you know, go find the elk and once you did get close that they were definitely playable. One thing, um, you know on some call ins that is very very hard for

somebody that's elk calling. And and I definitely had to test my patients a little bit more is in some of these timber patches you can see along ways, and we would get bulls pretty fired up, you know, answering vehicles, UM, answering cal calls or the combination thereof, and getting that bull worked up, and you know, stomping on his vehicles, mimicking him, making sure that that you know, we're kind

of setting the tempo. And then these bulls, when they got two yards would come in silent um, which makes

it very very difficult, especially as we're trying to break brush. Um, we're trying to you know, fake fake breaking a tree, um, you know, do some of those things that that requires us to move um, and and then the bull to come in silent was a little bit difficult, and so we had kind of, you know, we were setting the shooter up a little bit further, you know, fifty sixty yards in front of whoever was calling and doing the raking, just so it would kind of um, you know, we

would avoid drawing any attention to the shooter. But even then there were multiple times where as as the raker and color, I could see that bowl play in this day and I would have to almost freeze, um, which I think could be a little confusing to an elk.

You know, you've been raking and calling from a certain location for for a set amount of time, and then all of a sudden you have to go completely you know, silent, and that is due to one Um, you know, you don't want to be seen a number two that bowl can now see where he expects that bowl or cow to be, and and things just don't add up. So UM, I think that could have been a little bit of a detriment. UM. You know, I would have loved to

set up in different locations or or different um. You know spots, so that we could have prevented that that visual um, you know, visual location, you know, visual identity from that bowl to where he expects a coward bowl to be. But um, some of these you know, big big timbered slopes, the elk are where they are and

you have to make do with what you can. But ideally we would have set up you know, near terrain breaks, near vegetation brakes where we would have forced that bowl to pull through and then be it in an archery range. So um, yeah, silent bowls are are very tough to deal with, especially when we're making decisions UM on that. And then um, the other thing we struggled with a lot, which you know we I've experienced more so in the Mexico where it gets very very hot during the middle

of the day. It was very hot in Idaho, um this past week. And so what we're getting is some good action from maybe you know, seven to nine in the morning and then the elker in bed there. You know, you could tell when those bulls were on their feet baggling versus when they were now in their bed baggling you know, by by nine, which makes it very difficult to hunt. You now, um. You know, having to get

within you know, shooting distance of their bed. You've got multiple eyes looking at you, even if it's satellite bowls. You know, there's noise, there's brush, very very dry. UM. Tough to stalk in without everything looking at you. UM. Added some level of difficulty to this hunt. The other thing that we experienced on this hunt, which really kind of played out towards the end of the hunt, is

the high country in this unit, it was very very dry. UM. You know, what I would consider main creeks and main draws coming out of the high country were completely avoid of water. UM. Which you know, my normal thinking is if an elk can't if I can't live here, and elk is gonna have trouble living here. You know, we weren't able to find wallows. We went and looked at springs, you know, some of these things. We just weren't coming

up with any way for these things to drink. What we noticed is that these elk we're coming, you know, three to four miles down the water. UM, they would water at night and then in the morning they would reverse that and it would be like a chase back up to the bedding. UM. So after a couple of days of of doing that. Um. You know, at nighttime they would get out of bed, they would hang up

on the mountain, they would do their feeding. But in the morning, if you wanted to chase these elk, it was more of a cat and mouse game as they went three to four miles back to where they wanted a bed. UM. So I think if we would have figured that out earlier and identified that, we could have intercepted them, you know, further up the mountain. But you know, these elk are good at climbing mountains. You know they're they're they're climbing fifteen hundred to two thousand feet um

every morning. And it's a definite that chase and it's a definite um. You know, we've always got to win in our favorite these elk or or working into the wind. They're walking into the wind, but we're also chasing them. Um. So it's just kind of that cat and mouse game that can get very very difficult. Like I said, I if we could have identified that earlier, maybe went back to spiking out above them and intercepted them, it would

have been a better play. Now there would always be the issue of as they're walking up the hill in the morning. How do we keep our wind off to the side and make sure we don't you know, get winded. But um, that's something we could have definitely dealt with with, you know, just staying far enough off to the side or or figuring out the right ridge to to kind of intercept them. So yeah, I think in my opinion, Um, the rut is just starting to kick in. It's it's

late September right now. Um, things are just starting to get cranking there, and I think they're gonna in Idaho they're gonna experience, uh a better rut into the first part of October. And uh, you know one thing, I'm never one to say, oh the ruts super late or use as an excuse to to justify you know, maybe maybe a hunting season that didn't go as I planned.

But I'm pretty confident that over the last four or five years, um, with with some of the later springs, some of the later winners and everything being set back, I am starting to to maybe you know, come to terms with or or settle on the idea that the rut is getting a little bit later. Um, you know,

at least over the last four or five years. Um, you know where we used to experience you know, great red action starting September tenth on and and there are spots in the country, um, you know where the rut is on fire by September ten. So, like I said, I just feel like the the overall consensus is that it's moving back a little bit um where we're getting a real, real strong peak of the rut you know, September thirty, October t versus you know, some of the

areas I've hunted being you know September. So it's it's a very very small reset. But from what I've seen in Idaho, UM, the rut is just getting going. It's it's more consistent, you know, day to day is more action and h yeah, I think that's gonna be strong into the middle of October this year. But that's kind of our field report from Idaho. Um, it was it was a good hunt. I had a lot of action, um, quite a few bowls in it close range. So yeah,

overall a good hunt Idaho. And yeah, I appreciate you tune into cutting this and so hopefully wherever you're at, the olkroat was going good and you found some success