Welcome back to Cutting the Distance. Today, I'm joined by Dirk Durham, better known as the Bugler. He's been the Phelps Game Calls marketing manager for three plus years. We've been working with him for five plus years. He does more than just marketing, though he's marketing, he's kind of our community manager. Great Elk color, great Elk Hunter. Proud to call him a buddy. But God Dirk here, except for his roles are changing. Sad to see him go
as the Phelps marketing guy. But he's gonna be transitioning into a content creator for the Meat Eater content team. But it's still gonna have a very heavy focus on Phelps Game Calls brand and making sure that that's you know, we've got good quality content. And another exciting announcement is part of this new position is you're gonna be the
co host of Cutting the Distance. So the way it's gonna work, I'll have an episode every other week, Dirk will have episode in between those, and so I we're excited to be bringing twice as many Cutting Distance episodes to all of you. So with that said, I'm now going to take the guest seat and Derek is gonna host cutting the distance here.
Oh hey, there, I got some big shoes to fill.
Well, well only only literally because the size fourteen.
That's what I meant, your size fourteen. I'm eleven and a half wide. Yeah, wide shoes. How many people do you know that has to wear a wide?
Shoot? Not me. I got fourteen's but they're normal.
Well well I'm one of them, so I just found out. But anyway, Yeah, man, I'm happy to be here, super excited, uh taking on this new role. If I didn't have a dream job before, I feel like this is even more of a dream job. So I don't know all the details yet. This is kind of a rapidly moving transition change. But everything that that's kind of been set forth seems to be pretty pretty awesome. Seah, it should be pretty fun.
I'm a little jealous of your your duties, your position, but I mean, don't, don't get me wrong. There's a lot of work there, a lot of I mean editing is sometimes painstaking, and you know, planning all of our content and travel to the shoots and whatnot. But it seems to be pretty dang cool.
Yeah, especially if I have to edit like a mule deer film, Right, if it was an Elk film, it'd be exciting, but Mule Deer is like watching pain trying not to.
Put him asleep. Is it should be good. I'm excited because I know my strengths and weaknesses on a podcast like very. I mean, anybody listens to Cutting the Distance tactical, technical, and Dirk brings a different level of excitement, So I think it'll be a great compare contrast. We'll have similar ideas, but then you're gonna get you know, more entertainment from
Dirk and more technical for me probably. So I'm excited to see the podcast evolve into a little bit of a you know, Jacqueline Hyde or whatever you want to call it. Just pretty contrasting I think from week to week, and it'll be a good mix up.
Yeah, I'll have a lot of on my own podcast, but really I would. My goal is I really want to continue to like touch base with you and do some collab podcast too, because number one, I like to give you a hard time in front of everybody. Thanks, I appreciate it, take you out of your comfort zone a little bit, make funn of you know, kind of what I do best. But those are the things that we both love and everybody else does so so but that's the reason why I'm over here, you know, to
cut this podcast with you. And then also spoiler alert, we may or may not be working on some new cool stuff for a Bugle Tube. But you know film and Jason, you know, he dressed up like a nerd tried to, you know, explain, explain what is airflow and what not to the lay person, you know, dummies like me. So I don't know. I just kind of glossed over and just kept running the camera while you were talking. But I tried not to laugh because you're the nerd glasses you're Oh.
Yeah, That's why I love when Dirk has a great idea. Is it involves me dressing up into something that uncomfortable for me, talking in a voice that's uncomfortable for me, and then trying to get through what I have to But no, I think it's it's good. We'll more more to come later, but we're working on a YouTube that we hope to have out pretty soon.
Yeah, I'll talk about it. Hey, And as always, if you guys have listener questions, you can email those two c t D at phelps Calls dot com. And then I want to do something really cool where I have listeners call in. We're gonna get a phone number set up here real soon, but I want listeners to call in if they have a question, call in, leave a message. I won't probably pick up the phone, you know, especially if you call it two in the morning, Hello, but
call in with your question. I will play your question on the air, and then I will do my best to answer it. So I think that that would be really fun and in a better way to kind of get your question across. But if you don't feel like call in and feel weird about leaving a message, then by all means, please please send an email. Because I feel like there's lots of questions out there that sometimes, you know, being experienced hunters, we kind of take for granted.
But but if you're a new hunter, or maybe you're experience hunter but you're seeing something weird every year you're just like, hey, I just hey, you got any you any feedback on this, then we'd love to hear those kind of questions.
Yeah. Yeah, it's it's tough at times to to, you know,
think about everything that we think about out in the woods. Right, sometimes it just kind of comes natural and we don't think about it, but some of you out there may you still have questions on and it's always great for me, Like I love any question at any level because it gets me to think, It gets me to like boil back, you know, situations that I've had to think about that and yeah, every any question, every question will be accepted and where we're excited to get those from you.
Yeah, And it's so weird. Sometimes folks will ask me a question and immediately I'm just like, I don't know what I why I do what I do, And so it takes it kind of a minute to kind of mull it over sometimes to like break down that process in my head, because you know, once you've you've hunted for a long time, sometimes you just kind of go with your gut real quick and you don't even think about the real the real reason why you do something
until somebody actually asked that question and it really breaks it down. And so so those questions are great. So some of the stuff, like you said, that we don't even think about. It's great to get those questions and then have us you know, break it down and and make it to some usable some usable content. Well hopefully
I don't know you'll be thinking that anyway. I kind of want to talk about elk season plans a little bit, you know, it seems like that's part of the fun of elk hunting is and in any kind of deer and deer hunting and any kind of hunting is making your plans to go. And I always look forward to the plans, like, Okay, where are we gonna apply for tags? Okay,
now I got my tag. Now scout, you know, HIT and E scouting, and that's super fun, you know, getting on on on your on your computer and doing all your scouting and then you know, talking to your buddies and making plans. So, Phelps, where did you get an elk tag? Did you get like a bunch of elk tags? Or like you got one elk tag? What do you got?
So your beautiful state of Idaho decided to keep me locked out? I don't know if if you set that up, if you have when this, when this Jason Phelps guy gets on here, make sure he doesn't get in the waiting room.
So I've been listening to my emails like don't let Phelps get attacked, right, hope we got too many non residents.
So I didn't get Idaho kind of was like, oh, this is fucking real bleak, right, And I ended up in Colorado really didn't. You know, some of the points game is is all random luck. I didn't feel like quite burning Utah Colorado points and so I'm like, dang, what am I gonna do? So uh, I had an opportunity again to get an organ tag, so I was able to gather that one up. And sometimes good decisions
come because they're forced. You know, the last few years, I've been very fortunate, blessed to have multiple tags and multiple states across the West, which is a blessing and a curse. Right, You can't you spend six seven, eight days traveling between these hunts, which is in my opinion, We've said it time and time again. Time on the ground is the most important thing to find in success. Well, I'm losing two three days between each hunt trying to
get there, figure things out, change crews, move around. So this year, only having one tag in my pocket, I'm like, this is actually maybe a better thing. Let's just focus on that tag all September. So I've got an Oregon ELK tag. I plan to be there for twenty plus days or whatever it takes, or shoot, maybe get it done in a day or two. You just never know.
But on the on the schedule, I plan to be there, you know, between twenty day eighteen to twenty days, and then put all of my energy and effort into that tag. And the other thing that I've by dancing all over the country is sometimes we show up in new units and you just start getting comfortable on day three, four five. You know, it takes us a while to figure out these ELK and where they want to go and and just the general general patterns and whatnot, and you have
to take off. So I'm excited to just go finding out, you know, go find ELK, sit on them, learn them, figure out what's going on in an area, start to take all those details. So yeah, and then I'm gonna I gotta just gonna hunt. I haven't hunted my home state of Washington for ELK. Not we should back up. I did draw special tag last year in Washington, so I did hunt at Washington ELK, but I haven't hunted over the counter ELK in Washington since twenty thirteen. So
I'm gonna come back with a muzzleoader. It's been a ten year break, So as confident as I'd like to be. It is western Washington elk hunting, and it's gonna be a tough one there. There's no guarantees in western Washington, so it'd be a good challenge. But it'll be nice to be able to hunt, hunt from home and hunt some old, familiar grounds and see if I can still figure out how to kill a raghorn around here.
Yeah, that's awesome to be able to hunt some of that old ground. It's it's like, oh, you're kind of rekindle an old love or something. It's, oh, man, I love this this little viewpoint here. Oh I bet there's some milk down in this little basin or whatever. And then then then you don't hear anything and you get heartbroken.
Again, or or you remember how much you love the Devil's Club in the bottom of this canyon and you have the BlackBerry briars in this cant Yeah, it's uh. Now, I I do a lot of hunting because of the brush and the understory nowadays coming from Usterer Wasing like I grew up just in a jungle, and so yeah, I won't I won't necessarily enjoy that coming home but yeah, we'll be fun to come back and go explore the haunts that used to hold Elk all the time and see what's still around.
Yeah, And to your point back to having that one September tag is like you said, you know, you lose a lot of time to travel into but you know, if you haven't had two or three Elk tags in your pocket each fall and you try to hit you try to hit timing just right. There's there's been times where you go to a unit and uh, there's Elk there, but they're just not talking, or they're talking but they're not coming to calls. I mean, every stage of the rut. Every every day is a little different.
Man.
If you're not there in the right days, in the timeframe, you can have a really tough hunt, you know, or maybe it's inclement weather. You know it's hot and dry, and you know the day you leave it starts raining a little bit and things get freshened up and bam, elkor on fires. So that's that's tough.
Yeah. And so by being in one place, you can take advantages of the highs and lows. But you versus you may miss you may be in a low the entire time. If you only have six or seven days in an area and we've all been there where it's like just even the same unit, is this the same Elka? You know, it's like somebody just flip the light switch on that morning and it's nuts, versus you've been hunting it for ten days prior to that and just been lackluster.
So I'm excited to be able to catch that. The other big change in Oregon this year is they've always started the I'm gonna probably get this wrong, but it's it'll be mostly right. Like the last Saturday in August was always their start or some some form of that. They always would start that season in late August, but typically the Oregon seasons would close up twenty first twenty second.
This year they moved that ahead a week, so it will now I'll be able to hunt into the very end of September, which I'm excited about because I'm one of those guys that really likes the peak of the rut. I don't necessarily need to be like, well, you might have more success on the front end or the back end, like I want bulls biegel and ripping their heads off more so than what my percentages of killing them, and I've always had great success, you know, from the thirteenth on.
So it's like I'd rather just be in that more peak of the rut than outside of it.
Yeah, even if you know, let's say the bulls are cowed up and they're not coming to calls real good, it's still just fun. You know you're doing it, you're out, you're out participating in the rut, right, Whereas if they're not talking at all, you're just like, oh my god, does this will even work anymore? I don't know what I'm doing. It's not a fun hunt compared to like, at least if you get to see them interact and interact with them, that's a lot funner.
I've never twenty nineteen Idaho hot as heck. Everything was dry up top, and I had never been more defeated on an elk hunt than that one, because we were looking at bulls every day. There's a bowl, there's a herd in that canyon, and you'd be glad them nothing. You'd walk up the there's elk, you'd be agle at
them nothing. I'm like, there's nothing more defeating before you start, Like these are the ones I can see they're not making a peep, Like I don't even know if I'm buggling to like big Timber, and it was just like you're just you're worthless out there, like if they're not gonna bugle, Yeah, we can go stalk, you know, spot and stalk these elk because we know they're there and
nothing else is talking. But it's just really defeating to So yeah, I'd much give me bugling bulls all day, and I'll take that over, you know, maybe more elk or elk that aren't bugling.
Yeah. Yeah, Well like last year in New Mexico, for instance, we we had the opportunity to hunt the same unit, but you were we were hunting two different seasons. You were for season, I was second season, and you kind of saw a little different different performance of the rat than I did. Talk about that a little bit.
Yeah, So when we showed up and we actually even have better or more data than that because me and Maranella got to hunt the unit the year be prior, so we got these and me and Steve hunted first season. You ANDed second season. But within that first season, it's a fifteen day season, so me and Steve hunted the last six days me and col hunted the first seven days or whatever it was, and it was it was
a lot different. And there were still elk there. Don't get me wrong, there were elk, but you could tell that they weren't quite settled into where they wanted to be. For September, we were watching, you know, the same bowls days apart. One time one would have cows, one times he wouldn't, one time he would have a few cows, and you could just like tell that the pecking order was being established and these bulls really didn't want to
play the game the way we wanted to. But the year before, I'm like, man, we ran the same system, did the same thing like we normally did, and we had bulls, you know, these big bulls just going crazy coming into calls. Last year was very You almost felt like you were walking on eggshells in the in the mountains with the call in your mouth. Right, you were just as much as we always preached the hammer at them, locate them, move in aggressively. You were like, this isn't
working right. You knew on day one or two you tried to run that system and things were going the other way, and you didn't get winded so it was just very you had to play very reserved and very similar to the Idaho scenario. I was just talking about where you knew they were out There were elk everywhere. You get up in the morning, elk feeding out above. But you move in tight, try cow calls, nothing, try, you know, you just couldn't work these bulls. And I
think it had to do with the timing. They just weren't receptive to kind of some of those systems. But yet, so the other question in my mind is like, well, you know, if your your buggling is not working, let's go run caw calls, let's let's change. But it wasn't working.
I think we were in this time where they had they were, you know, breaking down the hierarchy, they were establishing herds, they were going through this process and they didn't really care about this cow elk that they couldn't see. And so I almost felt helpless. There was nothing we
could do to really get things going very well. Multiple call ins where things would kind of half ass commit and then they would lose interest halfway on a call in, where before you could almost hang your hat on this cal and like all this bulls committed, you know, you can see it when they break and you know, they might have to go into a little rise or and you're like, where did that go? But just a lot different than when you were there just the ten days after we left.
Right, And then you say, the bulls that you've seen with the cows were like younger bulls, like younger five points, like two and a half three and a half year old bulls.
Yeah, for the most part, as we got like we're hunting the first of the eighth or something like that. Early in the hunt, there were a lot of small bulls, and the bigger bulls seemed to be running, you know, by themselves, kind of checking on these herds, checking these cows, you know, doing what they do prior to you know, estris or whatever they're waiting on. They leave those younger, more immature bulls to run the herds and they just
kind of spot checking. Then towards the end you started to see the bigger bulls picking up cows, you know, or groups of cows, smaller groups. I think it was it was just timing. We were ahead, right for sure.
So then fast forward to whenever Dusty and I showed up, it was a little it was quite a bit different scenario. You know. There were the bulls were very vocal, big bulls now are taking cows, but those those younger bulls were kind of, you know, playing the Satellite Bowl.
Role.
And it was it was still like with those bulls being cowed up so much, they seem to kind of still want to want to keep those cows. So you start calling to them and they're like, yeah, I don't think so. Then they'd move off, and they'd move off, and it seemed like they were moving over to an area away from where we were at. Like it almost seemed like all the elk where I was hunting was kind of moving over to this other area, you know.
And I don't know we should even say it, but it was right next to this we're hunting, the kind of a line of a border line of another unit. So they were moving over into their their running mecca, which was on the other side of the line. Though, So we're kind of like you're helpless. You're like standing at the fence line, which is the border. You're like, man, I wish I could go over there. Yeah, I mean you could like just over the rise. I could just
hear chaos. It sounded like something off off of some of those old old Primos videos, you know, just just twenty five different bulls screaming their guts out. Oh my god, I wish I could even see into it, just to witness what's going on over there. But it seemed like every day we got like less elk on my side, and they were moving into that other unit, and we were just about ready to like, Okay, we're gonna completely move in the unit because the unit is fairly good size.
We're gonna move areas here. But on the third day then and it was the same thing, like if I bugled a lot, it seemed like we're gonna, we're gonna leave, you know that the big bulls would move off, and then the satellite bulls they didn't seem to be want want much confrontation, but uh, the satellite bulls weren't super super vocal. Though. It seemed like the big bulls googled more, and then the satellites would kind of come in quiet.
So I started kind of start doing some cow and calf calls, and uh, we're just about ready to leave this area. I'm like, you know what, Dusty, let's uh, let's wrap it up here. Let's hike back to the truck. Let's grab our camp and we're gonna just move move our camp. I like to I like to kind of travel light, you know, I don't set up a big laborcat. Let's move our camp over the other part of the unit and try it over there. And but there was
this one bull. They just kept on like Laney sounded like he was laying's bed and he did this really crappy moany bugle. He sounded like a moo cow. And there was a bunch of moo cows in the area too, you know, moving around like that stupid thing sounds like beef cow moving in its bed over there. But it's an elk. So I'm like, let's go. It's on the way to the truck. Let's go on the way to the truck. Let's go over there and just kill that
bowl and we'll just go home. Yeah, you know, I kind of said that, you know, kind of being funny, like there's no way in heck we're going to kill this bowl. But anyway, we get over there, super super close and get danger close, like I thought, Okay, if I take one more step, this bowl is going to see us or detect us. So that's how close we want to get. So I stopped and I let out the most quiet little calf call you've ever heard, and the bowl answers, and I'm like, and I can see movement,
and we're like sixty eighty yards from this bowl. I can see antlers through the trees. He's laying there, and I gave a few more and he stands up, and then over the next five ten minutes, he just kind of slowly feeds over to us, and they'd give this real weird moany move out bugle every little better. It was a well you'll be able to watch the video. The video is gonna drop here pretty soon. But anyway, came over, came in close enough I was able to
shoot him, you know. And I don't want to give too much away, but anyway, it was an interesting It was a definitely an interesting hunt from what Phelps had described. And then the biggest, the biggest, the biggest grind I actually have with New Mexico and Jason Phelps is that's dirty sucker didn't tell me about chiggers. Like like, on day two, I woke up and I've got this weird rash all over the inside of my elbow? Is that like the ween No, the weennus is the actually the
loose skin on your elbow. This is like the the elbow inside your your elbow pit. I was like, oh my god, a spider must have just ate me up last night. So I'm like checking my sleeping bag for spiders. I'm checking the dent for spiders, and I'm like, Dusty, look at these spider bites, and and that the next morning, the third day, i wake up and I've got him on both side and then up on my chest. I'm like, what is going on? And then we get this elk killed.
And then we're driving home and as we drive, they're getting worse, like we hadn't showered, of course, and I'm like, it looks like somebody shot me with bird shot. I've got him so bad. I'm like, oh my god. And they itch so bad. And it was a different kind of itch that I'd ever experienced. It was like it was like a mosquito bite times one hundred, and you couldn't quit itching, and every time you'd itch, it was so satisfying the way it felt, but then it made
it itch more. Yeah, it was horrible, and I was like Phelps and I sent him a picture. I'm like, what's something something got me? And he's like, oh, yeah, those are chiggers. I'm like what to.
The best of my knowledge, because the year before me and Steve both got lit up and then I forgot to tell you just ten days prior to you being there. Cow got it worse than anybody I'd ever seen, Like along your belt line, your armpits, neckline, like they anywhere they could just get in and there they hurt. It's it's weird, like centerpoint feels like there's some sort of stinger or something. You still so when you itch him it actually hurts a little bit. Yeah, they're they're nasty
to the best. If you know what they are, let us know about it. So the best of what we could check is they were like some sort of tigger on steroids.
Well, when we got home, Dusty took a piece of tape. He started reading about it and he's like, okay, he thinks they could be tiggers. And so he got a piece of like duct tape and put on one of the bites and then peeled it off. And then he's got a he's got a microscope, right, you guys are probably hit it off real good. You just get a nerd out about you know, nerd stuff. It's science, yeah, basically science. You could probably explain it, but we wouldn't
understand it. Yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it. But so he looks at it through a microscope and then takes a picture and sends it to me, and literally, it's a it's a tigger. It's like just like the picture online. And they're nasty, like they burrow in. They don't they lay eggs or something.
That little thing grows and you have basically fists on you until it's ready to get gone. Yeah, and then they weep out. It's disgusting.
Yeah, it was. It was horrible. I like literally I and I was a dusty didn't get it as bad as I did. I think my my body makeup, you know, fat guy. They I got a lot of a lot of good stuff coming through my pores evidently, you know, if Krispy Kreme don't at Greece, I don't know what else. But they loved me and to literally two months later, I was still scratching them things like a crackhead. I mean, it was, it was bad.
Yeah, I did want to rewind just a little bit since we did have that first experience, you know, me not being able to make hardly any calls, you not necessarily being able to make aggressive beagles. But like when me and Steve were there, we were actually there before you in this maybe just to lay out that you can expect different things on different years in the same spots. We were there five six days ahead of you, and it was really good because I had pre scout prior
to Steve and the team getting there. We could not not make the right call. I could get tight Bugle, I could get tight calcol and we had bulls just like running the ret Fest, you know, five hundred. It's like it's like they were on a poker run. They needed to come check out this bowl. They need to go check out that bowl. And every bowl was like making this crazy loop and it was like nothing I
had ever seen before. So yeah, it's just weird from you know, three three different trips of the same unit anywhere from about fifteen sixteen days apart, and the elk acted completely different at different times.
Yeah, And you know, honestly, if you if you hunt elk for very long, you kind of you notice that, like it's not every year. You know, every year's not a ten. There's a lot of fives out there, you know, and every day is not a ten. Definitely within you you're alloted time, you know, whether you're a weekend warrior in it, which you know I used to do that a lot back in the day, or you know, if it's five ten days whatever, you got to hunt in year to year. Just there's some years just line up
good and they hit and some some they don't. And I think that's year to year. The ruts ruts more intense or less intense in certain areas. I mean, you look at New Mexico when we hunted before in another area. You know, we hunted there two years in a row, and it was it was a little lackluster until that one day and it was like the flip of a switch man and big nasty bugles. If I if I blew a big nasty bugle, man, it really got the bulls going. You know, they didn't care about cow calls.
Whereas you know the next year when we went there with lampers, then, man, I don't know that I ever got. I had one day that was maybe half as good as the previous year, but we still didn't go with those big rut fests that that we loved. But in the area had hardly any cows. So if there's hardly any cows in my mind, and there are quite a bit of bulls, like the bull crowd ratio is pretty tight in my mind, like blow a cow call and them things are gonna beat your door down. But they
didn't really care about cow calls much either. There. It's just I don't know. I think there's a lot that go along with the timing and all. You know, we don't know what happened the first season. We weren't there the first season. Maybe they were running around like crazy, you know, coming to bugles and cow calls.
And they're I mean, you hunted that flat country quite a bit. I just feel like that other area that we hunted first was they were just more nomadic, right, There was no pattern to them. Those elk may have came from three miles away and joined up, or it just seemed like lots of movement. It wasn't so much like local elk. And yeah, it was like one day on fire, one day nothing. It was just they were
It's just weird, right, versus a normal mountain unit. It's like, well, they're going to bed in this patch of timber, they're going to feed this, and like you get that same action. But yeah, New Mexico is interesting, you know, not where we grew up hunting elk, and so I still feel like I'm trying to figure it out or apply what I think I know. And and that that spot where
you know we hunted first. Yeah, it was just like a light switch, I my gut tells me because there were bulls we'd never seen before all of a sudden just show up. And then some there were some guys hunting the same unit that ended up killing the bowl later that we had seen four miles three miles away. They had crossed two roads and crossed the Big Ridge line and they ended up killing. So these elk are just and he had heard of what seventy eight cows
and that bowl traveled a long long way. So it's like, man, I don't know if we can like necessarily figure out these things or if you're trying to hunt a specific boy, better stay with them every day and you know, and try to figure them out, because they were just moving so much.
Yeah, you know, they would never like bed in the same place, and they wouldn't bed long too, like you know, typically like in the Northwest, you know, you bed down some milco. It's like, okay, they went to bed right over there. They're gonna stay there for most of the day, right until it gets the shadows get long in the evening and things cool off and the thermals change, and it's like, okay, it's time to get up and eat.
Typically you're like, okay, I'm going to close the gap and get over there, sit on them a while, and start calling once, you know, about the middle of the day, about twelve one o'clock. But New Mexico, I don't know how many times I did that. It was like Houdini. You'd get over there, get super close, and then it's like, okay, they ought to be settled, let's start calling nothing. And then you like slowly creep in those elk are gone.
Yep.
They would lay there for like an hour or something and they'd get up and leave. But in my mind, it's because there's so damn much rocks and pokey stuff, I mean, and then there's not not a lot of good shade, you know, there's not a lot of tall trees. It was that kind of that low shade. The sun would move and they probably get hot and maybe they're laying on a rock in the wrong spot, so I guess, or maybe they just like they don't want to stay in one spot and let another bowl come along and
mess it up for him. But yeah, So anyway, back to the podcast, I'll be hosting a lot of these on my own type podcasts. Love to have Jason from time to time. I'm gonna start a series here leading up to September. We're gonna talk about preparations of what you can do to prep prepare for September. You know,
all the things that go through my mind. Whether we're talking about fitness, you know, since I'm a fitness model, that's not not at all that but uh, we're going to talk about fitness, We're going to talk about gear, We're going to talk about getting prepared, scout e scouting, we're going to talk about and then once September hits, we're going to talk about you know, all the all the tactics and and things to to use and to do once you get to your spot, you know, and
maybe you're hunting out of state, maybe you're maybe you're hunting your local area. But we're going to talk about all the stuff that it's going to take to put together an elk hunt for this fall and hopefully get you better prepared. I know, I know every year, you know, I've been doing this elk hunting with archery l hunting for thirty four years and I'm like, Okay, I got this figured out, and then the next year, I just totally get schooled again, right. So that and that's the
great part about elkhunting. It's fun. It feels like it's it's a craft that you can never master, and I feel like that's what the fun part is.
Yeah, And I think that's why I love archaill hunting so much, is that I'm one of those guys that's just wired. If I'm going to do something, I want to be the best at it, or feel like I'm the best at or have full control and so by never truly mastering any of it and and feeling like I'm always trying to hone that or get to that
accomplishment or that goal of like having this dialed. But I think the reality is it's just there's so many, so many variables, and there the elk or were so unpredictable that I think that the fun thing is that I'm never going to have it figured out completely. You're gonna have a pretty good idea and you're going to do some things that work a lot of the time.
But every year is a new learning experience. I go in with an open mind, try to figure out what's working, and you know, just add it to my my experience. You know, all my experiences go into a bag, and then you try to pull those out and hopefully it, you know, works. There's times where you know things can work perfectly ten times in a row, you think you got a slam dunk set up, and then you go to run at the next time and it fails right
off the bat. You just never know. And that's what I love about it.
Yeah, And like you know, I feel like a lot of people think, oh, man, you if I had that tag, I'd probably just kill this or that. And no matter what how good a tag is from what I've found, whether it's been on my own experience, I've had a couple of decent tags. I've been along with other people that have some really good tags. You still have to show up and you still have to work hard. Every day. Just because you've got a really good tag doesn't mean
there's three fifty bowls under every bush. I mean you still got to get up and do it and try hard. And and sometimes some of the better tags I've had, I've had to try as hard, if not harder than just good old over the counter units that I've had, you know, luck in before. So that's some some something that you know, you always had to kind of keep in mind in this fall. So I've got a tag for Montana, and I've got to well, I have a tag for Idaho. Sure whether it's over the counter, but
I'm in for a draw for a good unit. So you know, I'm probably more likely to get struck by like draw this tag. But but who knows, somebody's got to draw. There's always so But Montana, I mean Montana, I mean it's a it's a great place to hunt elk. It's a mecca. There's there's a lot of elk, there's some big bulls, there's some It kind of checks every box whether you want to hunt flat country or back
country or mountains or whatever. But there's definitely a learning curve and and I haven't cracked the coat on Montana yet so again, like I got to dig in on my et scouting and I'm gonna make a trip here in a few weeks over and just kind of learned that, like an go to an area that I kind of really want to check out and just go get boots on the ground and check it out and see in the past, I've I've just got my butt kicked in Montana. So I'm kind of looking forward to this year like
maybe I'll build it, Like I'll figure it out. Right, Oh, I got these Montana figured out, and then if I get a tag again, it'll probably be a completely different game.
I know where we left some really big bulls last time me and you were in Montana. Yeah, I want to get back there. I just haven't had an ELK
tag in my pocket for Montana lately. But I I I just find myself if I get bored at work or if I just need to check out from the mind numbing designs and stuff that I'm doing, I find myself like floating back to that area because I one of the biggest bulls I've ever seen on the hoof I think was on that trip, and I think that area can be good if you figure it out.
Yeah, well what I've been doing, if so I could go hunt that area again. I've been working on my track and field skills. I've been running hurdles, limbo and hurdles. Yeah, I've never been to such a place with so many blowdowns in my entire life.
All right, you could, you could. We've spent ten minutes at a time, never putting foot like on dirt. You're on a tree, over a tree, walking this tree to get to the next tree, because if you were to put your foot on dirt, going to take it ten times longer. It's just an incredible blowdown patch.
I'd like to say that was a fun hunt, but I can't really say that. I mean, it was a tough hunt. The camaraderie was awesome hunted with you and Yannis and the camera guys were great. I mean, we had a lot of laughs in a good time. But dude, it was brutal. Like we'd hear bulls bugling across these canyons and they weren't deep, nasty canyons. They're like, oh,
we'll be over there in fifteen twenty minutes. Now like two hours, three hours later, we finally get over there, will the elk are gone or done bugling for the day. It was. It was so challenging.
I like, I mean, I'm gonna tell on you a little bit. I think there was a point and I'd like to say we would have killed this bowl if Dirk had to go do some paperwork and the mountains and for god his release. He didn't realize, kid, for God, his release until we had I mean, in the size of the bull doesn't matter, but in this case, just to throw more at Dirk, like a very very healthy bowl, mature bowl we'd been watching all day, was coming down
the pipeline or down a meadow bottom at him. And at that time, when what was the one hundred and fifty yards away, when Dirk realized that his release should probably like make contact with his string, he realized he didn't have a release on his wrist, and we had the time when we called time. The elk didn't risk. They didn't respect our time out that we had called no.
And then they then he moved to a position of you know, he had the advantage over us. But just you know, here's a pro tip. If you didn't go do some paperwork, don't take your your lease off and set it on the log, you know, put it in your pocket or in your pack. At least that way you can like dig in your pocket and get it. Man, that how frustrating it was.
You chuckle now, But in the moment you're like, oh, man, like that dir's a.
Really hideous No.
No, no, I wouldn't say that, but you're like, oh, I think because that bowl was big, it had been your best bowl ever. Probably, I think it was hard and just like to have just the the stint of bad luck that your release wasn't with you. And yeah, and.
It's really hard to time out those that paperwork time. I mean, especially when you're eating weird food. You know, you're eating you know, dehydrated meals and and uh high fiber stuff, and.
You always Yeah, I look back to that one, I'm like, man, we did everything right. That was one of those days where you just sit all day waiting for the wind to switch and and for those elk to get out of their beds and wake up, and it's like everything was right, but it was. It was still good. But now I one of these days I look forward to come back to Montana. I've got five or six points there looking to draw a tag the next time we
draw a big game combo. But yeah, I'm excited to see how you do there in Montana and then Idaho. You going back to your stomping grounds or.
Well, I don't know, I'm I'm torn. You know that my old stomping grounds, that the elk density is so low that you can spend a lot of days Like last year, I spent a bunch of days with hardly any bugling, any calling, and it's such stick country. It's like, well, people are like, well, why don't you just you know,
glass them up and spot and stuck. Well, there's very few areas you could actually spot an elk in the open, and you could probably spend two weeks looking at that opening and maybe never see a bird, let alone an elk just lower densities and then so the elk have to bugle if you really want to play the game with them. So it was pretty tough. But every now and then you'll turn up a giant, which I did on the last day. I had to I had to leave early. My wife got a pendicitis and I had
to had to head home. But I'm like, okay, we can hunt till twelve o'clock and then we got to go and turn up at just a monster and then you know, didn't come together for me. But but that I guess that's kind of the thing that kind of keeps you going back. You kind of fall in love with the country a little bit, the whole experience, and then you know, every now and then, you know, you turn up a pretty nice bowl and sometimes you can
capitalize it on it or not. But I'm not. I don't know if I'll go back to that spot this year. I'm thinking maybe trying something a little more local to where I live, less less hours of drive time instead of driving, you know, spending all my time driving. Maybe I can check out some area is they're a little closer to me to where I can have less drive time and maybe spend more time actually boots on the ground scouting.
Yeah, yeah, I think that spot you're looking at it's pretty good. I just have a hunch.
Yeah, Well, if you wouldn't have been a dummy and didn't get an ELK tag, you know, do I need to call the governor and say, hey, get my buddy Jason an ELK tag. You know what he likes to hunt? ELK?
Yeah, I think you have continued to I've been going back and looking at the leftovers just to see, and I think you still have control over me. There. You get like, hey, if this Jason Phelps guy logs in signed in, like there are no leftover tags or no turnbacks.
The Idaho Fishing Game is shadow banning you.
Yeah, you you. I think they're You're gonna have to call him back and tell him to take that off of my account.
Okay, well there is a chance.
So, I mean, because as much as I want to really focus on one hunt, we could do a little early early September run over there and we've had some great success in that area early September.
Yeah, yeah, especially if I can get in there this summer and put some boots on the ground and see, you know, if the elk still where you left them, you know last time you guys hunted there be like, yeah, there's still a bunch of elk in here or is it just wolf scat You never know?
Yeah, yeah, you never know.
But well that's fun, madam. I'm glad. I'm glad to join the team here on the Cutting the Distance podcast and the media group. Like I say, you know, I'm not sure where it's all going to head. And look like you know, on my day to day it's we're still figuring that stuff out, but but I know it's gonna be a good time. And And if you guys want to watch that Elk film that we talked about last twenty twenty two, new Mexico Elk film of mine, that'll be playing on the Phelps channel here pretty soon.
So keep an eye out, check us out on social media, Instagram, Phelps game calls, and you'll when we'll keep your breast on what's going on in our film launches. So and then you've got some films coming out too.
Yeah, I've got mile Counts from last year coming out on the Meat Eater YouTube channel. My My Quality Washington Bowl I think is going to come out late August early September on the Loophole channel, And uh, I think that's is that it? That's all I got those two?
Yeah, I believe yeah.
Oh yeah.
One other thing. One one thing we forgot about some tags we we didn't talk about our deer. I mean, we got so wrapped up in the most supreme species of animal on planet Earth. We forgot about about the second second best mule deer and white tail third best third best white Now that's pretty debatable. That's that's a fist fight amongst deer, dear loving people.
Oh, I know, I know.
You all know white tails are smarter than mule there.
Yeah, adaptable. I wouldn't say smarter, I'd say more adaptable. No, Yeah, we got we got a couple of good deer tags in our pockets too, for you know, November tag. So we'll get to chase some can of meal is around and then some Kansas whitetail around.
Yeah. Man, I'm love that. I love the Montana Muley. It's like usually you get over there and it's like a blizzard. It's cold and it's nasty, and sometimes you can't even see because your eyes are watering from all the wind and ice chunks blown into your eyeballs. But man, mule deer are so fun to hunt over there. And then last year we did that with that whitetail hunt with our good buddy Randy Milligan. And he's got a beautiful piece of property.
You know, it's the setup.
Yeah, yeah, he asked us to come over and hunt, and it's like, I mean, how lucky are we?
How do how do all the locals say, he's got the hole.
He's got the hole.
So everything that's a good deer spots the hole. But you talk to anybody that maybe that you know that we're just we're brushing by, or you tell them you're hunting Randy's or you're hunting with Randy, and that's all you get. Yeah, he's got the hole.
Yeah, Oh yeah, he's got a hole.
I'm taking that's a good thing.
Yeah, it's a good he's got a good buck hole. Yeah, deer hole. And then it was it was an It's super different than what we're used to. You know, I've hunted white tails for years in North Idaho. It's a different game, you know. I'd never set in a tree stand, you know, and it's more of a ground game. But we set in tree stands and ground blinds. And I'm gonna I'm gonna be honest with you. I was scared to death in the tree stand.
Oh. I was gonna ask you or have we been doing? Like have you been training? Because it sounds like Randy's gonna have us race up a tree, hook in and then race back. Randy couldn't get over, you couldn't put two guys in a more awkward position. I don't think to start with, is hey, get up this tree and clip yourself in. I'm like, Randy, couldn't we have did this in the daylight to start with? Like it's pitch black.
I've never been up a tree in my life, and here I am, like with a lifeline and trying to get my thing all hooked in, and we should have probably did this in the day daylight.
It's like trust falls, really, I mean, it's like because you weren't trusting that he put that those tree ladder steps strapped on tight and good with good good straps, aren't going to break?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you used to get climbing up like this one's real faded? Is it still good?
Yeah? They don't care it creaked a little bit, yeah yeah. And then then then you try to get in the stand and I look like he laughed. He started laughing when I was getting the stand trying to get in the stand because he didn't put his ladder to where you could like climb up a little above the.
Stand and then just kind of s your stands. The next step, the last step was.
Like where I needed to be standing on to step into the so I had to kind of hump the tree to get my feet on that that last step, and then he's like, just swing your leg over, just you're student wrong, just swing your leg over him, like I can't. So then I heard I'm like, I'm like, I swung the leg over and I'm trying to crawl in and he was dying laughing. I wish somebody had have been there to film it, because but then once I got in this down, it's like, okay, I'm and
we got we got our harnesses on. We're safe. You know, nothing would have happened if we had have fell out. But then I get sitting there and I'm like, I don't think I can draw my bow without being freaked out. So I'm like, okay, build up some some confidence there. Stand up. I'm like trying to draw my bus, like, oh my god, I feel like I'm just gonna follow the tree, stamp backwards, Okay, lean forward and shift weight a little bit. Okay, well, oh my god, I'm gonna
fall out frontwards now I was. It was not good. I'm like, I hope a big buck don't.
Come by this. I'm I'm not ready. I'm not ready yet.
I like the ground blind. It was a way better. You just have to shoot through these little tiny narrow slats.
Yeah, watch your stabilizer, watch your arrow, watch.
Watch you with your wheel, your limb.
I mean it'll be fun. I'm looking forward to that one. We were hoping that Steve was gonna go with us, but fortunate and he didn't draw, So it just be more dear for us, that's way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll scout it out for him, because you know, Steve would get the best stands and we'd get second rate stands.
This will work out better.
Right right, Well this way too, we can like scout out the places they have the smaller bucks and we can turn him onto those. Yeah, this is the this is the hole over here.
You don't want to be there. We should have a great fall looking forward it. Yeah, stoke to have you. You've you've co hosted a few times for me, usually when I'm like running to the mountains and I'm I don't have an episode that's ready for this. We hate dirt, so you've covered for me before. But this is going to be a permanent, full time gig. So we're excited
to have you here. On cutting the distance, I think you'll bring a you know, exciting, new entertaining fuel to the show where yeah, excited for our guest to be able to get that.
Yeah yeah, and guys, like I said, guys and gals, please do send in those questions that way, we got plenty of material. You know, sometimes you kind of get embedded into this stuff and it's like, man, what don't we even talk about? Because you take for granted, like you say, you know of all the things, but there's a world of questions and a world of topics we can cover, whether it's elk hunting, deer hunting, crappie fishing. No, just kidding, I like to eat croppy. You're delicious. Yeah, I wish
we had crappy where I love but they don't. Well maybe they do, and I don't even know right knows how smart what you know? But anyway, yeah, yeah, please do call in or and we'll get that number on my next podcast and episode and or you know, email c t D at Phelpsing Game Calls dot com. So uh, until next time, thanks for listening. And uh man, I wish I really a really cool tagline, like like get them, get.
Them, cut the distance you have to come up with one.
Monsters are dumming.
There you go, all right, Thanks everybody, everybody,