Ep. 51: Jason and David Frame

a young age. David has been very fortunate to film hunts to take pictures all across the US. He may be behind the camera most of the time, but what he knows about hunting is second to none. He knows what he's doing out there. I love being able to bounce ideas off of him during a hunt, not to mention once something is down. He's pretty handy with a heavy pack. Welcome to the show, Dave.

hunts together. That's what we're going to kind of cover today is what we've you know, some of the hunts we've been on together and what's what you know where we found the success and we're gonna go over some of those hunts. I think we've got four or five hunts we've been successful on since we've started working together back in eighteen or nineteen. So, like we start all Cutting the Distance episodes, though, we're gonna start with some

listener questions. These all came in from email. We got three questions today, and if you have questions of your own for us here at Cutting the Distance, feel free to email all them to us at CTD at phelpsgame Calls dot com, or send us a message on social media and we'll do our best to get those on here for me and my listeners to answer. So the first question today is from Brian Rosen from Butte, Montana.

He was hunting last week in southwest Montana, and he was able to randomly hear two bulls biggling on a neighboring ridge. Everything had been pretty quiet up until that point. He exchanged some calls back and forth for about a half an hour, but they never seemed to actually move towards him. He eventually attempted a spot in stock since they were still responding but not getting drawn in. Once he was within eighty eight yards of what he says is a big six point, he continued to grunt and bark.

The bull continued to grunt and bark in his direction, but simply would not close the distance with bull or cow calls from him. The bowl eventually casually walked off into the timber. Brian did not pursue him, is he didn't want to blow him out of the area, and it was almost the end of the day anyways. So his question for us is, how do I get a

bull that will respond to biggling only? How do you get how do you get that bull within shooting range given that he will not respond to cow calls, raking, any of that stuff.

would think. The first thing I would be trying is maybe maybe even just get the wind right, figure out where the where the rest of the herd is, figure out where some of the cows might be betted or hanging out, and try to stock in on some of those cows and get get within bow range or rifle range and just hang out, sit down, try to be there as long as long as you can, and hopefully the herd bowl will come circling around eventually and might get a shot.

bowl left. But depending on what you're after, how picky you're being, and what you're looking for, you could have just sat down with heavy cow calls and it may take a while. Like bulls coming into a cow call, a lot of times they're not as vocal. They take their time a little bit more so it may be a long game. Yeah, you may hear that bigger bull responding and he's not coming in, but you may be

able to switch tactics. Now, if you're going after that herd bowl, sometimes you have to be very aggressive, you know, try to find a way to approach pretty quietly. And as Dave said, if you can get to within shooting distance or the edge of his cows, typically he will come between you and them. But he won't leave those cows to come all the way to He's not gonna leave his for sure thing to come find some cow that's calling him or a bowl that's challenging him. But

the bowl. You know, now, if you were able to, if the vegetation and train allowed, and you kept bugling your way right into him, he's either got two responses, right, he can leave or he can stay and fight you. And so it just depends on how that terrain and

vegetation laid out on that ridge. The other thing you can you know, if it allowed, you know, we don't have enough information here, but with that you could have used that ridge dear advantage, like if you knew which side they were on, you could have stayed concealed on the opposite side and then popped up. Is you know, as close as you can. Maybe he did. It's hard to speculate exactly what happened here without all the information, but we use that a lot, you know, we kind

of call it the shock in awe. You're just the tighter. You can get to that bull and leave him no other choice but to come. In a lot of times we have great success. Like I wish I could say it's skill all the time, but there are many times we're moving through the woods and we catch a glimpse of a bull. We might be thirty forty fifty yards away,

Like we got way too close. We didn't exactly know he was there, and we were able to call those bulls and like my that bull that dirt called in for me and New Mexico in twenty twenty, we only called that bowl in ten yards before I shot him. He was already at fifty yards as soon as we sat down. He just didn't pick us out, you know, So you can use that ridge get real close, and

you know, it may have helped. And I think everybody's you know, and I'm not saying Brian's searching for like a guaranteed answer because a lot of times we're still out there. You know, how many times do we on any given setup, like should we approach this way? Should we go this way? Should we you know, we're always questioning what we're doing. And you got the plan kind of evolves multiple times. You start out with the plan. Yeah, you know the old quote for Mike Tyson, everybody has

a plan to punched in the face. Well, the wind's hitting the you know, right now, the wind's hammering us, and so we go a different direction. And we realized we wasted forty five minutes because by time we get to where we want, the wind was actually right, you know. And so you just every all these plans evolve and you're always you're always changing as you go. But getting close to a herd, bulls, cows, or to him is is going to be to your your best bet.

up just following them. They didn't have my wind at all and ended up bugling, and that bowl just whipped around and came right in. You have big herd bull, and.

if you're too aggressive. And that's that's how I grew up hunt Roosevelts. I didn't really know what I was doing. I was very aggressive and we would bump cows but still be able to call the bowl.

anytime he heard a beagle. He said he was able to call two mature bulls into about one hundred and fifty yards, but when they crested the ridge across the canyon or the little ravine from him and his brother, they were interested, but he couldn't pull them any clear two hundred and fifty yards. He's asking what should he have done in that situation. He said, they hadn't spotted them, they were for sure of that, and they had good wind, but

they weren't able to close the distance anymore. So what would what would you have done in that scenario?

get your set up a little bit better. You don't get that vegetation, get that terrain, whatever you're using to your advantage there, you need to be within bow range when you start calling, you know. And and you know, one thing, like I said, we're speculating on this question, like was there a way you could have backed out and made a big circle, Like you know, as much as I always wanted to be point A to point B to get to get to these elk, like is

there an alternate route? You know that that revolt you know involves a big circle or a big loop that keeps your wind right, you know, and maybe that was your chance to move in closer.

life came as far as I'm gonna come. If you're really here, like they've announced their position, they're up on the ridge like you come the rest of the way, and that just seems that, you know, it's how nature works anyways, and we're trying to interact with it. But when we set up things, you know, maybe I would say wrong, But if we set things up a little bit different than than nature's intended to work, we'll get those hang ups quite a bit. Yep. So our last

question comes from Michael Blanchard. I believe I didn't write down where he's from. I thought he said he was from Arkansas. But he's going on his first elk hunt in Colorado this year. It's a first rifle season, which I did a little bit of research. Looks like it opens on October fourteenth this year. He has What tips do you have for a first time elk hunter?

their food? You know, these bulls come off of the rut, they're going back to replenish. They're going to eat a lot. Are they going to be in secluded timber pockets? Are they going to be in these you know, hidden meadows? Are they going to be in rough, nasty country. I'm looking around where I may find them, you know, leading up to the opener or you know, day one or two. But where are they going to go right after that?

So not only might like you said, I'm gonna get up high in glass and just try to figure out the country, figure out where I could maybe shoot from or where you know, those stocks are all going to work but then where am I going to go once once those bulls start to break off. I'm paying a lot of attention to down on X as well as when I'm on the ground, like where am I going

to find those elks? So, you know, his second question kind of rolls into this that do I recommend just pounding the dirt and covering a lot of ground?

and just see what I can turn up. But then after but be willing to change after a couple of days, if you're not seeing in any an almost or anything, be be willing to start covering country. Yeah, but I like to initially try to try to anchor myself to one spot and learn it a little bit, and then and then go out from there.

spot first. If your Spot A just isn't going to pan out, you need to move very quickly to spot B and go see if it pans out. And what I like to do is my spot A may be a little bit easier to get to, but I think it's got the right things for ELK. I think it's in the right spot b C. Because the season goes on, I'm starting to get maybe a little deeper, a little bit harder hike in, you know, and I'm I'm trying because these other easy spots are going to be hit.

So I'm progressively going too harder to reach spots and checking them out. And you just keep going down the line until you figure out where the dang elk are at and and you know, be able to hunt him. Will elk be bugling around the first rifle in Colorado? We touch on that a little bit. It's really hit or miss from year to year. You know, you had mentioned you you have one hundred first season Colorado. I've been around in that time and and they could be bigling,

they may not be bugling. It's just really hit or miss. But I would say for the most part, you're gonna hear bugles that time of year.

and things have moved since we've got good information. But we as we hike, we're like, oh, there's fresh elk tracks here, there's fresh rubs. The same thing happens in rifle season, like where the rubs at? Where where are the tracks at? Scat And then you eventually just put it all together and and it's one of those games. You know, we all played it when we were younger

with our parents answer friends. It's like warmer colder game, Like all right, you eventually keep following fresh tracks until it gets better and better, or is it starts to get worse. You're like, all right, I'm gonna back up into that zone. I'm gonna try to figure out where the heck those things went, because it's obvious they were here, you know, within the last twenty four hours, forty eight hours.

It's the best information we've got, and so use that to add into some of these things what you're seeing, like, hey, there's a lot of elk hent aroun here. Maybe I'm just not picking them up, whatever it may be. But be an active participant on the landscape and use any information you've got. You know, some people may frown at this, but it's just it's adding information to your your tool your toolbox is you're going through a hunt, is another thing that you look at is where are other hunters?

Like or I mean even if you're just using it for like elevations type of areas, pockets basins, Like if there's twenty hunters stacked at a trailhead, I'm probably not going to go in there, but it lets me think, like what does that look like? What other spots in the unit are kind of like that, what elevations do I get to use that sort of stuff, you know, to your advance.

It's a delicate balance of burning up time chasing ghosts versus is it a good area that should hold elk because they're print you know, they're they're annually there during the rut, you know, and there's evidence of that, versus they're just gone. So you're you're trying to always balance, you know, that that equation on using up precious time that we have out here versus trying to find elk that may or may not be in an area at all that year. So well, thank you all for the questions.

Once again, if you have questions for me or my listeners, feel free to email them to us at CTD at Phelps game Calls dot com, or send us a social media message. We'll do our best to get those questions on here for for me and my guest to answer, so we really appreciate those. Now we're gonna dive into some of our past hunts Dave and go over a few things that have worked in those situations as well as what didn't work. So we went I think our

very first hunt was kind of our trial around. You're like, I think you're like, I'll do it, because you were what fifteen minutes from yeah yeah to Dave. I think he was. He's like, if this doesn't pan out, I can just leave these jokers up on the mountain and not have to ever talk to him again. So we were in his backyard on a spring bear hunt with my good buddy Charlie Smith, and it worked out good. I think you know you you joked right with the crew you were, it didn't take long to integrate in,

you know. We Charlie ended up being able to kill a pretty little cinnamon blonde on that hunt, and from then on that was kind of our was that our only hunt we had you on that year was kind of just a trial run.

those guys. And then later that year you ended up going to Nevada with us on my Dad's meal to your hunt, where he killed a pretty good buck on the second day of that hunt. And then we then we kind of started el hunting together. We had kind of just you know, it had hunted together when it fit, and in twenty nineteen, we had a pretty big plan together. I think you stayed with me for almost all September. I think we started here in Oregon at the end of August. I think you had some stuff going on,

or maybe you were doing your own hunt then. I can't remember, but we went to Wyoming shortly thereafter, beginning of September, to the Big Horns, and then we came back to Oregon. So let's kind of let's relive that twenty nineteen Wyoming hunt. You know, we were in the Big Horns, and leading into that hunt, we had got a bunch of information that and I don't ever trust this information, but everybody's like, you don't have to scout

a lot, like there are elk literally everywhere. And I remember we got there, we got camp unloaded, got everything set, and I think we were there. Were we only there the night before? Did we show up a day and a half before? I think it was a day and a half.

So that's it sounds super cliche and extremely obvious, but you can't kill an elk without having elk there. But this place seemed to be unreal. You couldn't move without being an elk, which was every elk hunter's dream, right.

kind of picked that way. We ultimately found a ridge that we thought would be a little bit harder for people to get to, and so we elected to go down in their opening day. That was I don't know if everybody remembers. I had lost a bet with my buddy Dirt Durham that year who would sell more diaphragms, my personal signature diaphragm or his, and I think he ended up beating me by a couple thousand diaphragms, and my for me to pay up on that bet, Dirt got to pick out a whole Cogain outfit that I

got to hunt in, which was real humbling. And so my intention going up on the mountain was to not see anybody, and we were just gonna get through the first day. We're gonna film it, and then I was gonna edit this film, so I was gonna put very very little of that in. We had, We had a pretty good morning. We ended up bumping the herd that we wanted to have about I think it was still one hundred head plus or minus. We got him into some thick stuff and ended up seeing legs and never

did see him. We chased another little bugle for while and then everything everything quieted down quite a bit that day. I think we sat for what five six hours that day up on the mountain, taken a nap, we did. We were, as we mentioned, there was a lot of elk elk rich environment. We did not want to keep bumping things until they started biggling again. You know, you want of those shadows they get long. You wanted to get up out of their beds at four thirty five,

you know, somewhere in there and start biggling. So we we hung out there and started to work our way down the mountain where we saw maybe the next best bowls that morning, and uh, I think we we finally it was pretty close to dark, we were able to get a bowl to locate and he was high. He was actually in I don't even know what the name is where those cliffs kind of fall out and make a flat bench blow him and you know, and they're

kind of scattered with rocks. He was in kind of a shelf below the cliff, but he wasn't cover he wasn't covering any distance I think we had tried to call in a couple of different setups and and when we when we talked talk about this over and over. If a bull will not move his location or doesn't seem to be moving his location over a said amount of time, that seems like he's going to close the distance, you need to move yourself. And we had set up a couple of times and and he was very responsive.

He would be agle back, but he would never move locations. And so ultimately we looked at each other and like, we got to go. We're running out of time. Both we were. We had the clock ticking against us, and uh so we were trying to move fairly quickly. We were very aggressive. We we crossed a little rock ravine. He was bigl and kind of as we were still running, we were kind of picking up on that. But we had I had this spruce tree kind of that we

needed to get to. That was going to be the one where you know, I could shoot through the limbs, I could kind of see through him, I can get a better feel for what was going on. That was one of those times where we were just talking about earlier. I think we showed up about fifty five yards away from the bowl. Yeah, so we had to. We had to. We had to call him very little. But this is what happens. I believe this bull hurt us coming. He

didn't hear us biggling because we stopped biggling. This was one of those times where I knew he was there. We knew we didn't need the bugle because he was biggling on his own, so we went silent. We closed out last two hundred hundred and fifty yards without making a peep. But I elk can hear very good. We've even seen it on this trip. We've had elk bugle at us just walking down a road or down a trail. They hear us and rip off, you know, so they

will bugle just at the sound of your feet. This bowl started biggling and biggling more, and we I think we did start finally biggling back and forth at him, but he would not budge. I could see bits and pieces of him through the tree, but he would not move. And on this one, a lot of people talk, you know, we talk about all of the different sounds that bowl elk make. One of the sounds is an alarm bark or a nervous bark. He knew that we were there.

But basically, when when a bull barks, he asked you to show yourself. Right, I everybody always ask me how we hold our bagle tubes. I typically, during a shooting situation, keep my bugle tube. If I'm on my knees, I'll keep it between my legs. If I'm standing up, I pinched my bugle tube between my legs. That's just how well he barked at me. And I was all because he's kind of in view, kind of not in view.

And I can't remember if I picked my two Do you remember if I picked my tube up, if I just barked with my voice or just like barked without a tube as focused on the view fan, So Dave was focused on getting the shot. But I think I barked with a diaphragm, but I didn't lift my tube up. So basically he said show yourself, and I said, no, show yourself. And just like clockwork on that call in that bowl, as soon as I barked, we had been in a ten to fifteen minute stalemate, stand off, whatever

you want to call it. That bowl walks fifteen yards to the right and plane site, very good bow range. I think it was thirty yards and made a great shot. And this is one of those times where sometimes people can celebrate and maybe get two loud after a shot. We kind of kept our composure a little bit. I he as he was running back behind the spruce tree where I was gonna lose sight. I had actually stepped

to the right. I didn't spook him. He never saw me, but I was trying to watch and I realized he stops. I think I cow called or we called right after. Yeah, the bull was lethally wounded. He was hit perfect. I was, but I'm I was taught, I was raised, and I will do it probably till the day I die, until some bad experience or some other some other studies show that you should never shoot him twice. I was able

to call that bowl back in. He didn't come all the way to the same spot, but he came out in the open a little bit more and I had a little bit of a of a of a not decent angle. He was a little bit quartered too, but I put it just on the back side of the shoulder and shot him again. Now some people may say, you know you don't want to alarm or to spook

a bull that's lethally wounded. But I'm of I'm of the sense like, even though I know that SHOT's perfect, I would assume his lungs have another hole in him. Oh yeah, And that bowl was good evidence of it. He tipped over forty yards down the hill from where I shot the second time, or where he got hit the second time. One of the most you know, I

don't say disgusting, one of the dirtiest breakdowns ever. That bowl had found himself a wallow during the ninety degree you know, early September heat, and he.

We decided that it was worth dropping everything but our water, water bags or bottles or whatever we had, and we went down there and filled every one of those up. It took us about an hour to drop in film up and come back up. But we had to keep our hands clean, keep the meat clean, and it worked out. It was gonna be a disaster without it. So in

that time, you know field care. You know, sometimes it's nice to have water hand you know, back then we didn't pack like the hand wipes, the wet wipes around. Now we would have had those we could have helped out with. You know, this was an instance where he was so muddy, like rubber gloves weren't gonna help at all, and everything was slick. I think rubber gloves would actually

hurt in that situation. But you know, we did everything we could, you know, on that one, and on on that calin I think we were we were very aggressive. You know, some people would have been like we were too aggressive.

going to need to do. And so we probably were about you know, if you want to say we were thirty yards too aggressive, but I needed to be at that tree. Otherwise it didn't matter how far we stayed back or where we played it cautious, we weren't going to get to the right spot. Yeah, we didn't know if it was a herd bowl or a satellite at that point, you know, herd bowl. We were going to have to get that close. So yeah, we literally ran the last three hundred yards, got very very tight to

this bowl. And it was still a pain in the neck to call him out from behind that tree. You know. It took us twenty minutes of back and forth, and finally a bark was what was able to pull him, pull him away.

sees me. And I'm not talking anything bad about like I said, this guy, not Corey didn't say this, but the other guy. And we're like, yeah, drawing your bow is and when to draw your bow is maybe the most important decision you're gonna make on a call in. You need to you need to be very in tune with the bulls movement. How much has he stopped on the way in, how quick is he moving, how aggressive is he been if he's coming in tiptoeing really quiet?

Like man, you depending on if you how long you can hold your bow, but you might want to draw the very last second, Like find a tree that you can draw on.

what we say doesn't work very often. We didn't have a whole lot of vegetation in front of us, but we kind of got pinned down because he we were calling, and I think we all kind of looked up and we're like, oh, he's on the edge of the meadow. We called a little bit more and this bull sprints across the meadow and that was one of those times where if I and I think Corey was a little bit on the edge whether he wanted that bowl or not. So maybe he wasn't super interested in and drawing at

that time, but within about twenty seconds. That bowl covered two hundred yards, oh yeah, and he was right on top of us at twenty yards broadside. But you know, once again Corey wasn't able to draw his bow because now the bull was locked on you know, me and him, the caller and the shooter, and we were kind of just pinned down. So we chased a lot of bulls.

It was a lot of fun, just you know, a little bit later in the hunt, we had a bigger five point that you know, came in in a kind of a weird direction, and then he started his frontel walk at about seventy yards coming up an old cat trail, and Heinstein's always twenty twenty if you know, we talk about this when you set up, you should be able to guess where a bull is gonna want to come up, and if he's going to come up like an old grade or an old like a very clear path, you

should maybe set yourself fifteen to twenty yards up on it and not be in a straight line with that path, you know, because I think if we were just ten to fifteen yards off number one, that bowl wouldn't have finally seen us in the road being set up or Corey in the road set up, but he would have walked past us or at least up that road enough to get a shot, and so we would have avoided the eye to eye contact and been able to get a closer broadside shot. Yeah. So yeah, think about all

that stuff when you when you set up. We finished that hunt up, we came back to Oregon. I think we were September eleventh or twelfth we showed up here.

It was very weird to me for the unit when we were hunting that year that we ran into a herd with a bigger five point and a very small six point. Is the herd bulls and a deep spot that should have had something special in it. So on hunts like those, I think you need to you just need to wait your time. But that year, that season I believe closed off on September nineteenth. Yeah, And so you're balancing being patient and letting the rut kick in versus you need to get it done now. Even that

pre run. So with that said, we were still pounding a lot of ground. We were just trying to find a bull that was either with the herd, you know, that that had a cow that was in and they were excited. And the other thing that was real weird about this unit is all the big bulls like to hang out together. So we had found a couple of herds. We spent a lot of days chasing bulls that just they were outsmarting us, outrunning us. And we invested a lot of time, you know, on some very very good bulls.

And then finally we had to make the decision all of us after being beat what four days in a row, three days.

or five days left. So that's where you have to make that decision on do you stay with them potentially burn up all your season getting beat, or do you need to go find one that's more callable or in a more callable area. Yeah, that hunt we had, we were we had got soaking wet the one day we chased the five and the six point out and you had wear your I think you'd worn your socks two or three days.

We were watching a three twenty bowl that day and one of Brian's one of his I think it was his brother, one of his buddies, came up and found us on the mountain and said, hey, you guys got there. The big bulls are down low, and so we adjusted our hunt. We came down out of the mountains, we got we had some permission on some pre it there and we chased. You know, I love hunting the mountains

more than anybody. It's where I'd rather be. These bulls down low or uncullable when they're out in the fields like that, because you can't hide. You you're basically trying to ambush them, get in front of them and wait. But it's hard not to go hunt a group of elk with three or four bowls that are all big, mature bulls. So we made the decision to do that, and then we got to hunt elk like I don't like to hunt elk for three days, just trying to get in front of them all the time, you know,

ducking down drainage ditches, you know, running around. But ultimately was able to kill a really good bull down there and and the low stuff. But you know, all of those bulls had dropped out of the mountains, you know, and went down there, and then you had you have to hunt them where they're at, right we we just mentioned the whole, the whole. It's it's very obvious, but you have to kill bulls, big bulls where they're at, and that's where they all were at that time. So

we made the decision to drop down. I'm not ashamed, Like it was pretty nice to be able to get a tractor to the first bowl of my life and not have to quarter it up and pack it out on my back. But it's one of those things I'd like to reserve or save for my wife and kids, and I just assume put that thing on my pack and get it out. But it was pretty nice. One time.

just being a student of the game. We're always trying to learn, but just getting to watch them and how you know, when these three or four bowls all come together and what would be like a rut fest quote Mega heard kind of a situation like how the pecking order was established and why they maybe let it each to get away with a little bit when I think like normally a big herd bow would run them all out. Yea, It's just it was interesting to watch.

had found some bulls. Two days of archery season left, and this was one of the tags that turns into a rifle shortly there after, you know, after archery, and we decided not to necessarily, as much as I love archery el hunting, there was too many elk, too many eyes, and too much open ground for us to like get in without risking busting them. So we had made the decision, let's leave him here, let's just keep tabs on them

until the rifle opens up. Went back in there and everything you could have set your watch to these elk right when they were fighting, when they were coming out to the meadows where the big bull was gonna go, where the you know the they were also very big satellites where they were going to go. Well, guess what also correlates with the opening day of there was a deer season that started in there on the same day,

and so hunters showed up. We've seen hunters that we hadn't seen the whole time, and other people coming in different trails. Well long, and I'll blame myself, you know, I use my range finder a lot to figure out, like, all right, these elk are at eighteen hundred yards away from me, that little noles at fourteen hundred yards away from me. If we're comfortable with a four hunder yard shot,

we can get there well somewhere. In opening day calculations, we were way too far and we couldn't make a shot. The bowl was there early, and so we ended up playing a cat and mouse game. We pushed them way high into a basin, way high in the mountain and ended up having to kind of sit there. We watched the bulls walk in. We were able to We knew where they were at, We knew what patcha timber they went in, because they couldn't have got out. It was

an isolated pocket. And we did a little bit of a you know, a western, a western move where me and Tyson decided we would just still hunt through the patch of timber and then Daniel was gonna be where we thought they may kind of release out of there, and so we did a little bit of a dry you know, I went It wasn't a drive we were hunting, but we we came down through that piece and I remember early we were about halfway through the patch of timber when I had one of the medium six is

run through me, you know, like a three hundred and twenty at six and I couldn't get a shot, like it flashed in front of me, but it let me know which direction they were coming from. I wasn't on the right ridge. The elk were on Tyson's ridge. Tyson had either bumped him or was pushing them. So I ran down and all of a sudden I heard a gunshot, which I couldn't tell if it was Tyson or Daniel.

And then it was it was almost self defense because the entire herd like came running by where I was at and I was trying to, you know, find horns and trying to just trying to figure out what was going on, and the pant you know, it was just chaos. And I figured you can hear when a rifle hits a cavity, right, it's you get the big thump at the end. So I knew we already had to pack one bowl out of way. Well, I had a little

five point stop by it like seven yards. He didn't know I was there, and like, well that's close enough, and we already got to pack one out of here. We're going to bring horses and mules in. So I was able to get a shot on that bowl. And then it was the longest I think, most miles, most elevations I've put on in a single day. I think we ended up doing twenty two miles and three hundred and forty feet elevation three and forty yeah, yeah, so thirty five hundred, yeah somewhere in there.

He was on an adjacent ridge, but on our slope that we were on, we had some of that dead timber. It wasn't burnt, but just dead beetle killed timber below us, and we thought we needed to get that bull's attention and keep it. But just like the bowl with Corey, that bull decided he was going to sprint to us. Well, Tyson and Daniel and I believe you already had walked. We were walking down there, but you guys weren't gonna walk as fast as that bull was going to get there.

And Cody couldn't see. But Cody Wilson was in a spot where he could not see how fat. So he was still a calling and I'm over there giving him like all the you know, throat symbol, like stop, cut it off, knock it off. You know, he finally stops. But I think when you guys popped out of the timber, Tyson said, he looked up in the bowls like it forty or fifty yards away, like we had called too fast. So in that scenario, until you know exactly how that

bull is going to react, I guess what would we did? Though, if you guys would have waited with us, you guys would have been even further behind. So it's one of those things where it was just it was fortunate that you guys were able to get there just in time. And Tyson was able to make a good shot on that bowl. But that was one of those things I think about that if you've got to get to a spot and you've got a secondary caller, use use call signals.

You know a lot of times if a guy's ahead, when he's ready to set up, he'll give like three quick cow calls or one, or he'll say, I'm just gonna cow call when i'm ready and then I'm going to be quiet. Right, give yourself some signals so that the guy that's maybe calling, or if you're not ideally you're always within, you know, seeing distance of each other, so you can give each other signals like what's going on,

beagle cow call, whatever. But if you can't, you gotta have some sort of idea what's going on, So make sure you can communicate without communicating. We almost called that bowling a little too fast. Yeah, what other hunts? I think twenty one rifle. Yeah, you were with us on that one, Yep, that bowl. The whole story is if you know he's around, he's around, right. We spent We had some guys. You know, my good buddy Brian was

watching him for a couple of days. Knew he was in the area, But the night before season he had dropped over from a south facing slope to a north facing slope, So it went from where he could see really good to where you couldn't hardly see anything. We knew he was there. Opening morning, we found all the satellite bowls that was with him, but him, all his cows, And then you start to wonder how far as he went. Did he cross the entire canyon? Did he, you know,

go up the ridge? Did he go down the ridge? You're you're really starting to question. We get all the way through that day nothing, We go look at a different bowl that just wasn't quite what we were after, and then the next day we spot a big heavy seven that we didn't think was quite what we wanted, but we deserved the closer look. So me, you, Dirk, and Brian I believe walked way out, way down this finger ridge, way down in there, the biggest rookie mistake

of ever. I don't Brian blames me. I blame him, but I know who was on the spotter at that time, and it wasn't me. But no Brian, Brian's an awesome hunter.

I'm just giving him a hard time, but I still give him crap about this one, because you know when you're when you're looking through a spotter, and we could see just like a piece of the elk in a little bit of horn, like he was tucked away in some brush, and I was getting kind of tired, and Brian was looking well about I don't know, a minute or two went by, and I think he puts his eyeback in her. I actually finally duck down into my

spot and we're both like, he's gone. Never seen him move, never seen him come out to where it was no side of this thing at all. And we're kind of like, oh, that was That was as bad as it gets. Like we screwed up big time. You know, we shouldn't have let that happen. We're fairly experienced, we're pretty good at this thing, but completely botched it. And we decided, all right, it's the walk of shame. We're just gonna walk out this.

We were probably fifteen hundred feet down in there, maybe a little more.

and some might beprofen or something. Took it and about the time I had dropped one of those like jail caps, I think Adville jail caps, and when they get wet or any moisture, they puff up in they're no good. So I had just picked it up and threw it off the ridge, and I think Brian or Dirk or somebody think, Brian yell, that's the bull, get ready to shoot. Well, I love my gun, but it's a it's a big, single fed three thirty eight edge. It doesn't have bullets

in it. The bullets werell in my pocket. I had my scope cover on. I think I had about five seconds to figure out where my bull was, where to get it in the gun, and then that bowl came through the opening. But he came through it too fast, and we all gave our war cries just to stop him. Like that's one thing that will sometimes work. It's not a hunting sound, it's nothing, but you yelled a bull when, you know, right prior to where you need him to because it's gonna take a while for the sound to

get there. We've stopped animals a lot right just by a you know, a big yelt across the across the canyon, and that bull did not stop. And it was just like, ah, that was him right. He had been there the whole time. We just never laid eyes on him in the canyon we were in, yeah, a pretty tight you know side canyon. Never seen him and we're like, oh, shoot, and I think Dirk somebody said he's coming back for some crazy reason. His boldie sides. He didn't want to go up that

ridge and come. I don't know if he caught our wind off of that, but he comes.

in right now. You know, if a bull was seen there somewhere during the rut with cows, you have to assume unless he just gets completely bumped out of the country or moved off somewhere, he's probably still there.

they're gonna they're gonna drop those cows. And you know, they may still check on them at night, but they're gonna hide the rest of the day. They're not gonna hang out with that heard, you know, twenty four hours a day. Yep. You got to hunt with Dirk a little bit last year on his Utah hunt. Was a

pretty special place. Yeah, tell us a little bit about like the bold of cow ratios there and just how you guys, maybe maybe how he hunted it a little bit different than you would a spot where you're dealing with cows and and whatnot.

a lot easier, easier on us. There a lot of bugle and to do and but yeah, so then I think once we were dropping down into those holes and knowing where the bulls were, it was just a few cow calls and those bulls were headed our way. Again, just super special place. So it's it's not it's not your typical public land, yeah, hunt.

and they have all the cows. This unit is pretty special too, because a lot of the cows went to a certain part to rut, and so if you were in the higher mountains before those bulls decided they needed to drop down, you were hunting pretty much bulls still at that point.

unit we were in was extremely rugged. It's it's some guys may be able to hunt that day in and day out and do it right, but a lot of guys aren't going to be able to go top to bottom, top to bottom multiple times in this unit without burning themselves out. So the game plan, which may seem like some is a lazy plan or a boring way to hunt. But we've been there before, we've hunted it before. We did not put a bunch of effort in. Aside from glassing, we did make a you know, we had a good

idea on one decent bowl. We made a little hike in there, so we could see down in, but it wasn't a ton of work. We were trying to stay high and look. We spent a lot of time behind the glass trying to just find the bowl that you wanted to go after. You didn't want to waste energy on, you know, just getting into areas you can, you know, if you could hike to certain points in the unit

so you could glass a lot of it. There was a you know, there were one to two mile hikes where you could get into and glass a lot of it without having to drop into it. You can see a lot of these faces. You may just have to change positions over time. And one thing about that unit is those bulls are for the most part, there were a few mature bowls with calstill, but the bigger bulls had moved off and then up in that steep stuff

a lot of it. There was one herd of cows, but the majority of there are just bowls up there right, so you're most of the elk. You see your bulls up high. The cows are going to stay down low. They can get out the nasty stuff. We were just

picking through bulls. We were you know, the day before it was pretty wet and miserable and snowy up there, and we couldn't see great, but when we could, we were spotting lots of elk, you know, ten to twelve out all bowls, you know, fourteen bowls, whatever it may be. But you're really just picking through the bowl that you wanted to go after. And so I think what we got through all the wet the opening day was beautiful,

we spotted. It was a little windy, but we spotted the bowl we wanted, and then basically halfway through opening morning, the snow and the rain and everything came back in. We spent two and a half days like barely getting looks in the little slivers of country. You know, the wind would blow it out maybe at midday and then it would fog back in. You wouldn't see the rest of the day. So we kind of spent our time.

We had found a couple of bulls we kept checking on, like we couldn't tell how good they were, and then finally we're able to find my bowl. The third, fourth night and we were looking at to the spotter, a couple other guys had showed up just kind of like him and haw around, and this is one of those you know, a successful hunt is made up by a whole bunch of decisions that you make along the way.

And we were sitting there contemplating whether that bowl would be in that spot in the morning or we had two hours a.

ran back. We all geared up. Our good buddies, Chris Cook and Hunter Cloak were with us, Me and and it was just me and you, right us four and Pete, Oh yeah, Pete with loopold Yep. We took off and it was as fast as I've ever dropped twenty five hundred feet as fast, and then we the other thing we had to do was keep track of the bowl for ourselves. Is we're going down right? Because we need to get ourselves to a spot where we can shoot

where the face is going to be open. And we get we probably dropped fifteen hundred feet and you had your spotter as we're going down. We were able to relocate him. All right, we're good here, Like, get down another five six hundred feetle's relocate him, make sure we're still in the right path. And then we're also doing our thing, like if we get to this point, we

should have a shot. But when you're not in a perfect line, there's a lot of guessing that goes on, Like I think it'll be this far of a shot, and then we're even pulling out on X right, if we get on this ridge where we think he is on, his face should be about this far of a shot. And I said, I think we made it down there in just a hair over an hour.

he took a step out to the right. I shot high and and this is crazy steep country and uh I had shot a whole bunch at home leading up to it, very very comfortable at the range, you know, not not a lot of work for my gun. But it was such a boxy straight up and down canyon that, uh, I don't know what the wind was doing.

as ethically as it is. But it really questions like, you know what, you know, what sort of conditions we should be you know, shooting in. But no, the everything worked out great. It was in a spot where the pack out was real, real bad. We did Hunter who you know, Hunter and Chris who grew up there hunt every year. They were a little unsure how we were going to get to him and finding like a trail across, so we decided it was real, real cool outside, so we decided to wait and uh, you know attack in

the morning. We're able to find you know, some horses to bring it out, which was awesome. You know, just some of the greatest guys in the in the world just you know, drop what they're doing, you know, just as just as good guys like we just want to be involved. And I think, and this is this sounds super pretentious and it's not meant to be, but they say, guys that were willing to do it. You guys just did deserve to have a bull packed out, you know,

And so I think they're like, we want in. Oh yeah, I was I was nervous because they were all heading to Cody Johnson concert. I think that next day they were they knew that their wives had one extra day they could they could haul haul on Elk out, but they needed to be on the road first thing that next morning. But super awesome guys. Really appreciate all their help, and you know, we've had some great Elk hunts together. We're we're all you know, I love your willing to

go anywhere. How can people find out a little bit about your photography? Look at your prints, you know, your website, your Instagram and all that stuff.