Ep. 54: Calling in Big Bulls: The Art of Bugle Escalation

incite a brawl. I'm gonna give you the secrets to getting elk to play ball and a good formula for firing up a bull and playing out a bugle sequence from the location all the way to drawing that bowl into your lap. Calling elk can be one of the most exciting and honestly interactive forms of hunting there is. There's nothing like a direct challenge vocally to that big herd bowl or the elk running around the mountain. I'm gonna walk you through a cadence of calling to help

you build momentum in a calling sequence. But first i want to share the story of a bowl that went from not wanting to play to getting Piste off and in my lap after I called him every name in the book. This story takes place in Montana during the middle of September. Now, this should be perfect rut time, and and it really was. But the trouble this particular week, it was really hot and there was a full moon, so I really believe that a lot of the elk

activity was taking place at night. I had a few days before I had to start guiding again, and like I always do, I'm out there hunting for myself when I use it as Hey, I'm out hunting chasing bulls and too now i'll know where the bulls are when it's time to guide. So killing two birds with one stone the day before, I think I had two days left before the hunters came in. So I'm out and I just I really me personally the way I like

to hunt. I like the bugle in elk, and I just was not getting in a response to those cruising spots, checking spots, going to a lot of different places and just couldn't really get anything to fire up. But I did spot a group of elk the day before in this one particular area. It's really timbered, kind of like steep. I would say it's almost about three quarters away up the mountain below the alpine, just in this like steep

dark timber basin. But there's one side that had like some more openings and sparse and I saw some elk moving through that with a nice bull in it. So I thought, Okay, the next day, I'm gonna go in here and see if I can't get them to fire up. But instead of going in right at first light, I decided I'm gonna go in there like a few hours early in the dark and see if I can hear

anything calling. So I get to the point it's quite a while before daylight, but I'm just trying to locate where those elk are so I can kind of get it myself into position before daylight, or even just have an idea of if I'm in the right basin, if they're still here. So I throw out a locator bugle, just a long bugle and get a good echo so I know that I'm in a good spot where they might be able to hear it. Don't really hear anything, but I'm just sitting there. I've got nothing to do

but wait. And about thirty minutes after that, bugle. I hear a bugle, Okay, cool, those elk or at least here, So I wait and I just what I do is like I hit my time around my watch and just see how long between the bugles they're going and this, you know, bugle back, and it's just like nothing I was. I was hoping for one of those days where I bugle and then the just valley lights up with bugles everywhere, and it's just was not was not in the cards for me. So I wait waiting in no bugles and

just kind of wondering, Okay, did they move off? Do they hear me? Do they just not give the rats what's going on? So we wait a little bit longer. Now we're getting a little bit closer to daylight, and I hear another bugle again, okay cool. So he's still in here, and it sounds like Bull hadn't moved. So I'm trying to analyze what might be going on. But I'm thinking now that bulls in here, he's just I

don't know if he maybe he can't hear me. Well, so I'm gonna move out to this point, get a little closer now, and maybe start closing some of that distance. And see if I can start getting him escalated, gett him fired up. But he just did not sound like a bowl that really wanted any action, wanted to play. So I give him another bugle as it's getting closer to daylight, and now he's starting to bugle back. This was maybe after five minutes. He decides to bugle and normally, okay,

at least he's still making a sound. It's like, as soon as I think maybe he's not going to respond, maybe he's gone, he bugles back. Okay, Now we're getting pretty close to daylight, so I'm gonna just close in on that spot. He hasn't really moved, so I go, I get a little bit closer. I throw out a bugle, but now I'm down a little bit lower and he's up higher and I don't think that he can hear it as well, but he bugles back. Now I'm building

a report with this bull. This bull that I originally thought I really didn't care and wasn't going to start anything, now is starting to get a little bit fired up. He responds, but he's just not that interested in me. Okay, well I'm gonna start building up. I'm gonna see if I can get him piste off, because I'm at this point fairly piste off, like it's peak rut. There's elk in the area, and this bull should be responding to these bugles almost immediately. It's like the best time of day.

There's no better time of day where this can happen. I'm thinking, what the heck is going on? So I start to get aggressive, and then the bull kind of he still isn't getting aggressive, but he's calling back, so I give him a challenge call and he just kind of gives me like a we're over here, dude, you know, do whatever you want. This is not acceptable. So I start running in that direction to start closing the distance.

Every time that bowl bugles. Now I'm just cutting it in half, cutting in half, but keeping an eye out because I did see quite a few cows in there the day before, so I don't want to blow him out of there. But I'm also just getting closer and closer. And now that bowl is bugl ng, and now I've got that bull to a point where i'll bugle hill bugle almost immediately right back. So I'm okay, this is good. But I'm pacing my bugles out where he's not losing interest,

but I still got him on the hook. I also don't want him to know exactly where I am every time, because I don't want to start pushing the cows away. So I get to a point where it's no longer that sound way across the canyon in the distance, but I'm on the same hillside as that bowl. So the last bugle I made was a fairly aggressive bugle with some chuckles right across the canyon. Now he chuckled back. I'm like, okay, now I marked that spot in my mind.

I'm I'm hustling to get there. I get into position, and now it's not me starting the bugle off, but it's him. Because it seemed like it was always I would call, he would respond, and then it would be dead. So by the time I get now to where I thought he was, he bugles back. He rips out, now a meaner bugle. I cut him off, start chuckling, give him a challenge, and that was enough to send him running my direction. At this point, I'm actually trying to

film myself, so I've got the camera set up. I see the antler tips of this bull and a really good like mature heavy, five by five, probably the herd bull in the area, just like a solid, solid bull, and I just it's like super thick. It's not really like fern thick. But it's the wet side of the hill, so there's just all this growth, all this crap, and I've got this one lane. I'm half through the dead full I've got my camera set up, and I just

see the antler tips coming down. Sweet drawback. The bull steps out in the open. I give him and he stops and looks my direction and I look at my camera and I see that he just walked out of the frame and I'm full draw. I don't I don't know what my problem is. I'm I'm like, man, you

should just shoot this bull. But now I'm trying to, like at full draw, slightly move the camera over with my elbow, and as I do that, the camera just starts to like tip over, like oh no, So I catch it then with my elbow, I'm trying to just get him in the frame while at full draw because he's standing there twenty yards and I finally somehow, I don't even know how I did it. I'm like finangling the camera with my elbow at full draw the bulls

standing there looking in my direction. I'm like, perfect, I think I get it close, and I'm like, screw it at this point settle in, and then the bowl just like walks through the opening, and I'm thinking damn. So I let down and I keep calling. The bull calls back, and he's just right there now, and all I have is bushes. He didn't run off yet, he didn't do anything. He's just right there now bugling. I'm bugling like he's

twenty yards away, and I have no shop. My one opportunity he walked off, So we're just bugling back and forth. I start raking a tree, thinking maybe I could get him to come back in this direction. I know I can't move because I'm stuck between all this dead full and then I hear some cows up on the ridge where he came from, and he just turns around and goes off to the cows, and that was the last

I saw him. So then I keep following him, and he ended up pushing the cows up and over, and then it just went quiet, got hot for the day, and I figured they just went down to bed or whatever and never got a response. But I thought to myself. Okay, well this is my last day to hunt for myself. I'll come right back in here tomorrow with a hunter and we'll see if we can't do the same thing.

So the next morning, I essentially started out doing the exact same thing, but I started a little bit later because I thought there was a long period of time I was just sitting there in the dark with nothing, no noise, nothing, and just see if he ends up being kind of doing a similar pattern to what he did that day. So the hunter comes in, I kind of told him, yeah, we got some bulls located, let's go see if we can get one. So the next day we go in there. Sure enough, kind of like

the same deal. I fire off bull like sponds. A while later. It's just kind of like that point where you call and he calls back in that just as when you think there's nothing there and then he decides to call back. So I start cutting the time in half where I keep calling and then I get those responses. He starts building up. Now we've got that bull. But unfortunately this next day I started where I was. He was down below me. The day before. He was a

lot higher than next day. So we're hiking and hustling up hill, and like this bull is gonna shut up pretty quick, so we gotta get in there. We've got a very small window of opportunity. Now I pretty much do the same thing I did the day before. It was like hard to get him fired up. But then we did the same exact thing across the canyon. Then I cut off his bigle. I pretty much did the same way of talking to him. I was just like by that point I'd call him every name in the book.

We get onto the same hillside of the bull. We hear him up above us, get in a position, set my hunter up, cut him off. He beagles. I cut him off. I start raking a tree. I can hear him raking a tree. I'm chuckling, he's chuckling. I'm glucking. And then the bull starts I hear, and the bull starts walking down. All I see is the hunter at full draw, and that bull walked within six ft of him. He releases the arrow, the bull runs off and tips

over dead. And it's just one of those hunts where I remember it was very hard to get any bugles, but just by building an escalation of a bull that seemed like he didn't want to interact with me, building up an escalation in a way that got him going from I'm not really interested to fire it up and in our laps within the first half hour hour of daylight. I firmly believe that if you took some of the more successful elk callers every year, they'd be people that

are very proficient with bugling. And I really believe that's because bugl ing is what really incites the bulls to talk to one another as well as creates reactions between bulls to get them to come together and and fight for a harem. And so if you're able to mimic that, if you're able to copy that and insert yourself as a hunter into that where the elk thinks you're another bull, you're gonna be a lot more likely to get that

bull to come to you. Of course, cow calling can be successful, and there's times that you should use cow calling, but in my experience, bugling is actually what gets the bulls to commit and to come in. And the better you are with a bugle, the more successful you'll be during that rep period at calling elk. Now, you might be the type of person that maybe you've hunted elk a lot, and don't bugle a lot because you don't

really understand. Maybe you think you don't know what you're doing, or you're new to elk hunting and the bugle ing is intimidating where you don't know what sounds to make, and that's a fair assumption. But I think that one thing you will learn is when you're out, if you don't know what sound to make, just make the sound that that elks making At that point. It's a copycat kind of thing. Really helps build up and create or give you at least an idea of what sounds to make.

When now I think more so or at least more important in many ways than the sounds, is just this building or an escalation, the timing of when to call and the type of call that you might want to make. When I think of it like this, over the years of elk calling, I always have this idea in my head or I paint this visual picture of the escalation between two bulls fighting. So it's two bowls that there's no hunter involved, they're just in the woods do and

elk things. What's going to cause those two elk to come together to clash? Antlers or to take that one bull and bring him to another one, contrary to common belief. I think, at least when I was growing up, I would watch elk hunting videos and a guy, it just seemed like the way that it was edited, and I'll put together, you blow a bugle and an elk comes running in, and at least where I've hunted, that's not

my experience in any way, shape or form. It's very difficult, or can be very difficult to get the elk to commit to your setup. I mean, you might bugle and you hear another bugle and then that's it, and it's like,

well where does it go from there? But over the years, I've kind of developed this idea of creating an escalation where you're continually talking with his elk, but you're building up the momentum and the intensity where it creates almost a frenzy where the elk has to react in some way and you're hoping that you incite a reaction of the two of you coming together to fight. Now you're bringing a bow and he's bringing his antlers, so it

hopefully works out good for you. But if you're thinking about those two elk that are just calling the first bull is not just gonna go right, you mean, bugle and the other bull is just gonna go meet and bugle back, let's fight, and then they just run in and fight. I mean, maybe that happens sometimes. I mean, I've seen done enough where you can be surprised at things,

but rarely is that the case. So it normally starts off some kind of escalation of where the elk at, I'm calling for cows, and then the other bulls like, I've got cows over here, and he's they're kind of more or less talking to the cows where you kind of think they're talking to each other at first, So you're an elket or that other elkt's by itself calling out, hey, any cows over here. That other bull hears it, and he's telling the cows, no, I'm over here. These aren't

your cows. These are my cows. And other bulls like you sure, ladies, you don't want to hang out with me where you at? And that other bulls like, come on, ladies, stay with me, And at some point then that becomes the bull and with that herd saying leave me alone.

I've got the dominance, and he's kind of more displaying for the cows than that other bull, and then that other bulls like, no, I'm more dominant, and then at some point it becomes the challenging bull saying you're a pos and then starts escalating into a fight where it starts out he's just hollering at some ladies. He's just hollering at some ladies, and then at some point he's now saying, Okay, you know what, these ladies aren't listening. I'm just gonna beat you up and take your women.

And so that's kind of like the full escalation picture of what too elk are doing while they're bugling and understanding that kind of helps you build the cadence in your calling of when to call and how to create that escalation from hey ladies, Hey ladies too, I'm gonna beat you up, and if you don't come over here, I'm gonna come steal your ladies. Let's see, let's throw down. And that's what you want. You want to get that

bowl to come throw down with you. So I'm just gonna go through let's say a standard morning or a standard escalation of calling and what I like to do. I started doing this a long time ago. I mean as a teenager where I would bugle, and when I would bugle in an area, I would either like look at my clock, or I used to have like a watch that i'd wear a lot and just start a timer and see how long it took a bowl to bugle back, because I felt like the timing was really

important in building that escalation. If I bugled and I had a great area where I could project a lot of sound and knew that something was going to hear that sound, and then it took a half hour or an hour for a bowl to bugle back, maybe or ten minutes whatever, however long it was, it gave me an idea of how interested that bull is or maybe the threat that that bull saw me, as as well as maybe how willing that bowl was going to be to build up into that go from talking to fighting mode.

So a lot of times what I do is I'll throw out a location call and that I've got actually some calls right here, So I used this location call, and it's more it's not really an aggressive tone. It's normally just a one note tone. You could do it one note, two notes, three notes, but something long where

you're just trying to carry the sound. So if it's a canyon where it's close quarters and I just try to throw that long sound out where I try to get it to echo and try travel in the area that I'm at, and I want that sound to just travel and hopefully entice the ears of whatever is around. So I just start out like this, You're just like a one note or maybe a couple of notes, and just a long, drawn out sound that's just meant to travel.

You can't really mess that up. Just a long note loud, loud enough to catch the ears of an elk in the area, and I'll set my timer and say, okay, am I gonna hear anything here? Listen. Maybe it's an area that I didn't get like a really good travel of the sound, so I might not wait as long there. But if scenario where the sound travels aways or it's before daylight, I'll sit and listen and see how long

it takes to get a bull to make noise. And generally, as I'm hunting, I'm I'm throwing out these location bugles sometimes just to get anything to respond back so I know where the elk or at, especially if I'm in a new area and don't know where they're at, so I do that time and now if it took a little bit longer for that bl to reply, instead of just bugling right back immediately, I try to kind of mirror what that elk is doing, and so use the

elk to understand how you're going to start calling, but also try to build that time frame closer and closer together. So what I'll do if it took fifteen minutes for that first bugle to go off, I'm just now going to reset my timer once I hear that bull, and I'm going to call back in about half the time. If it took him fifteen minutes, I'm gonna go about seven minutes. We'll call it. That's a little less than half seven and a half minutes, and bugle back, same

locator called. Just throwing that out there, not really escalating at this point, and just seeing if I can get him on the hook, just seeing if I can get a conversation going, seeing if I can maybe understand what that bull has going on where he is. Maybe that bowl is just another loan bull by himself, and he thought that I was talking cows that I have, or

maybe that bull has a bunch of cows. I don't know at this point, So I'm just trying to build up and escalate the time frame that I get this bull to go back, especially those ones that don't really necessarily have a need to start calling or to start fighting. Probably a bull that's got a bunch of cows and maybe there's not really a lot of other bulls around, he's not really going to be that interested in screaming back and starting to fight if he doesn't have to.

So I'm gonna set my timer and cut it in half half the time, and then I'm gonna reset it and see how long it takes him to come back again, if it takes him the same amount of time, or

if it takes him a closer time. What I'm looking for is building up that time where he calls back, and then I cut that time in half and I call back, And what I'm trying to do is keep it going where it's just long enough that he's interested, and slowly trying to shorten that time to where I can get it where I call and then he almost

calls back within a minute or two. Better yet, trying to get him to that point where I call and he calls back almost immediately, because as that happens, it's it's building intensity, it's getting him more fired up, and it's creating a situation where I now have this bull on the hook, where I know that this bull is a potential bull that I can call in, and I have got his location, and now we're communicating back and forth.

Depending on how far that bugle is and the type of train and everything, I might now decide once I've got him to a point where he's bugling back fairly readily, or even before that point where if I if I can see that escalation building, that's when I'm gonna take off and start cutting the distance to him. Most of the time, this will happen like these location bugles, will happen at probably a distance because it's not really going

to escalate into that fight over those long distances. But I'm also going to key into the type of bugles he's making now as I get closer, as I move in in between the calls, I'm just gonna start closing the distance every time between my calls, and at some point it's gonna build an escalation of the type of call, and it's gonna turn to what I would call it display call where he's just saying giving a good mean bugle to kind of assert his dominance whether he has cows.

If you hear that right away from a bull, it probably means that that bull has cows and he's telling those cows like, I'm dominant. I'm dominant. Don't listen to that guy over there. I'm dominant, but I will try to match that, or if he's not doing that, I'll do that and see if he starts to match that, because you'll notice that bulls will start to talk back and forth in the same tones. So if I'm just throwing out like a more of a long note bugle, you might get the a lot of those in response.

If you start hearing that more dominant style bugle, that that more aggressive bugle, that's what you're looking forward to. Say that bull probably has cows, but he's talking to those cows and saying that he's in charge. I'm gonna then start escalating from a timing thing to more of a type of call thing where I'm matching his intensity and his passion. One thing without calling, I think be a good olt call. You really have to feel that call.

You have to feel like you got to get into the mindset of that bull and understand what is he saying. Is he pissed? If you get a bugle back, ors like, oh that feels strong, you want to reply in kind, you want to give him strong. I think there's a lot of misconception with people that here a strong bugle and they're like, well, I'm just gonna bugle week because I don't want to scare him away. If you have that mindset, I mean, that's that's fine. You know, different

strokes for different blokes. I just would rather be a bull that's like worth of damn worth of fight, where I'm the bull that's saying to those cows, No, that guy, you don't deserve that guy, you deserve me. I'm coming over there to kick his ass. Because if a bull rounds up his cows and moves away, it's probably that you're doing something right, not doing something wrong, and you can actually play off of that. So I start out meek.

But if that bull starts to escalate or I want to start escalating to a fight now, I'm going to switch that cadence to a more aggressive sound, and hopefully that bull will start that more aggressive sound. I'll start throwing in a little bit more chuckling. That's the you know, the like the and I'm gonna start building that chuckling, and you should start hearing that bull doing the same.

So we've gone from a cadence of throwing out a location bugle and maybe not getting a response right away to then cutting the time in half and getting that bull to start responding more regularly. Now we're gonna start asserting more dominance, and we're gonna hope that that bull starts doing the same. Now if that bull doesn't, so you throw out a more dominant sound where you're just talking to the cows and asserting your your presence, and that bowl just kind of keeps a more. He doesn't

kind of escalate to that level. You may find that it could just be a satellite bowl thinking out by himself looking for a cow, and he'll probably at that point be coming in quiet. So if you kind of go to that and you give it a show, a display show, and the other bowl doesn't respond that way, you may actually find that if you do that and

the bull shuts up, keep calling. Now, start throwing out cow calls and other things, because that bowl may actually be coming your way, and he may be more of a satellite bowl that's just going to come in quiet and investigate and see what's going on, so you can kind of build the escalation and then understand what that elk might be doing or what that elk might be thinking.

If you do that call, though you're more dominant, you throw out a call where you're just asserting that dominance the cows, and you keep getting that call in return. Now I'm going to start closing in that distance to that herd because I'm probably assuming that he probably has some cows or whatever, and I'm gonna start making that sound and now I'm going to get in there and

before I start to challenge him. Now, challenge calls more like a call where it's just a I pitch and then real fast, real aggressive chuckle, chuckle, chuckle, or you'll start hearing some growls and some other things. But that's when you really know, Okay, that bull wants to fight. That bull is probably gonna come in and I'll throw those calls out myself to see if I can incite that in whatever elk I'm calling to. Once I've escalated the calling, so I've gone, I've started cutting down the

time the bulls starting to react. Now, while all that's going on, I'm closing in. I'm closing in. I'm closing and I'm trying to close that gap between me and that elk. I'm never gonna assume that that elk is just gonna come straight to me. What I want to do is I want to get up in his business, and then when I get close enough, there's gonna be a point where I really want to piss that bull off. And I find one of the best ways is as

that bull starts bugling. Once he now is kind of initiating an angry bugle and challenging me or getting aggressive, I'm gonna throw my call out there, maybe start chuckling at him and cut his bugle off. That's a surefire way to really piss off a more dominant bull. And in the mixt of that, I might be breaking a tree or whatever, because he's probably fired up and now I'm fired up and I'm trying to match that fire level.

But also sometimes when I get in close cutting him off and saying, oh, you're gonna talk, No, I'm gonna talk. You can't talk to those cows. I'm gonna talk to those cows, and that is a really good way to try to get that bull to commit that last bit of distance. Now that you've got a little bit better idea of bugling and building the timing and the escalation to go from locating that elk to hopefully getting him

fired up and wanting to challenge you. Next week, we're gonna jump into what I like to call building an elk party. So it's adding in those cows sounds and creating this illusion that you are where the parties at. You're the bull, you're bugling, You've got all the cows, You've got the hot cows. So we're gonna throw in some cow calls and just help build out an allusion to a full calling setup of not just the bugles, but creating a party that all the other elk want

to join in on. If you're like me, I hope that you've got an elk tag this season, and these tips will help you come September. So it's plenty of time bust out your bugles start doing some of these practices. If you listen to this podcast while you're in the car, that's actually when I do most of my bugling practice or calling practice. Grab some calls, grab some bugles, keep

them in your truck. Generally when you're by yourself and you can cruise down the road making cow sounds, elk sounds, bull sounds, whatever, and be ready for September to go to roll off and challenge that elk. So until next time, keep escalating the challenge. We will Bugle Actulator