Ep. 63: Opening Day Elk Tips for Rifle Hunters

there's elk in here. You saw him just a couple of days before, and you're pretty sure that at sunrise this canyon is going to be filled with some bulls. You saw a nice bull. You're in a general area and you're just excited with anticipation. As the sun comes up it starts to get light, you look around and

what do you see. Well, in actuality, you're probably gonna see blaze orange everywhere around you, just dudes galore, blaze orange on the trail, blaze orange up at the head of the base, and blaze orange popping out of the trees. Why Because you're in a general unit and that's just how Opening day is. Welcome to the pumpkin patch now, While opening day can be the busiest day in the woods, I think there's a few tactics that you can take

with you to be very successful. It might not seem like a good day to hunt, but there are is a lot of success that first day because it's the first crack at these animals with a rifle. So I've developed a fourth step plan to help you be successful on the busiest day and hunting season. That includes scouting, planning, adapting, and intercepting. But before we get there, I want to tell you a story of an opening day where we

got a double by following the specific plan. Now, for me, opening day general rifles season, I've had a pretty good track record. I'm always guiding those opening days because it is a good day. It's it's the day that we get to chase all these elk that we've been chasing archery season, first time with a rifle. The very downside of it is there is a lot of people out that first day. Everybody's excited, everybody wants to get out.

Everybody's got their spot that they want to go to, and so it's not necessarily about figuring out where the elk are, but it's also figuring out, what are these elk gonna do once they get highly pressured. So I found this herd of elk that I've been watching earlier in the year, and I thought I saw a couple of maybe three or four bulls in there, a couple of nice ones and some smaller bulls, and I thought, all right, this is where I'm gonna go tomorrow morning.

I put them to bed the night before and figured, all right, we're gonna get up there. We're gonna get in early. This will be great. So me and my two hunters get up well before daylight. We park of the trailhead. We're like, sweet, there's actually a couple of trucks down lower in the canyon. But go, okay, we were going to go in here, but let's just go up and we'll plan on kind of going where once those get spooked, where they're gonna end up going. So

we're gonna go to the top of the mountain. We're gonna hike in a little bit further. But we got a lot of time. The trucks that were down lower were like actually camping at that trail, so I knew that they actually weren't even out of their vehicles or anything. They were just in there camping, but I didn't want to walk in on anyone. So we went up highre

got parked, started hiking in. We hike up in the dark, gain a lot of elevation, get up into this nice base, and like, all right, now we've got a long time before daylight, but that's all right, rather just be up here. So we're sitting there waiting. I'm trying to listen in glass if I can, but obviously it's just dark, and I'm just anticipating daylight getting here so we can start hunting. Fairly cold, We're just tucked into this little timber pocket

and I hear something behind us. I'm like, well, that is definitely a dude. So a guy. He's walking ridge and I just kind of whistle, you know, just to let him know, hey, we're here. Okay, cool, you know, he's far enough away, stops I can tell that he pretty much hears me, and then he just like walks around us and goes and gets set up like I don't even know, maybe five yards away from where we're at. I'm like, okay, So now I'm like, well this is great.

I mean, he's essentially going to try to be just ahead of where we are looking. Well, whatever that happens, let's just go to a completely different spot down the mountain. So I'm like, all right, I tell my guys, we're just gonna move down this. This is not I want to be further down when it starts to get light. So just I just I don't like being around people that close. And it was just kind of a weird move. So that's how it's gonna be. So we decided to

walk down. We have to walk around, so you just take like a really wide track around, and we've got our headlights on and we're like walking down the ridge across from now, I mean a good good ways away, and the guy starts flashing his headlight at us head lamp. It's like it's like we're outing the marsh duck hunting. You know, you're letting, you're blowing off your duck call, letting everybody know where you're at, pre light, flashing your head lamp. Like, oh, this is how it's gonna be. Alright,

got you, Well, let's just get down further. I mean it's gonna be a long trudge up, but I know that the elk like to move, so I had a plan, and it was just like, all right, there's people in the first spot, not even out of the vehicles, but there camp there. Let's move up the mountain. Okay, Now, some dude walk parks right behind our truck, clearly walks up right behind us. But hey, it's opening day. I expect that percent of the time. So we just adapt.

We decided we're gonna drop down. I'm like, all right, I know that the elk like to move up this direction. They're probably gonna get spooked by the guys coming up a little bit later. If not, then they'll actually be feeding up. Anyways, there's the guy at the top of the hill. We're just gonna get ourselves into a good position to intercept things that get bumped by other people

when they mess up. I love to be the guy that gets the first crack, but if I can't, I'm gonna try to figure out a way to adapt my plan and just use what I know of elk behavior and their travel patterns to get into position where things are moving. We start getting down there and starts getting a little bit later. We haven't seen anything. It's actually a pretty slow morning. I thought we'd hear a few more shots. Heard a couple of shots off in the distance,

but nothing like you'd normally hear war zone action. Opening day, glassing around through the valleys, different locations, and there's definitely a lot of people out, a lot of orange pumpkins out there. But the one thing that was good was we started to get some weather, some some snow, some bad visibility, which isn't great for glassing, but it's good for if you're kind of setting up an bush. So

we're going down the mountain. I had spotted what looked like a deer and we kind of started moving down that direction. There's this one spot where I know it's just you can't really see it from anywhere. So we're moving down and we're like, nothing, nothing, nothing. I start working around the hill. I smell elk. I'm like elk. Start to creep, super steep, and it's just one little open. As we move, I feel the wind shift. Just as we spot a group of cows like maybe two hundred

yards away, they run off. I'm like, oh no, that was our opportunity, kicking myself like damn, this sucks, but I get on the cow call. I start following those elk. We moved down and we're just standing there above and I can see like a guy off in the distance few ridges away. I'm like, man, I think you either bumped something or I don't know what's going on, but we should just I should just like look here and

be patient. We're sitting there for a little bit. All of a sudden, I see this bull antler tips right below us, like boo boo boa. We get down. One of the hunters loads up, alright, sweet, he gets set up. The bull walks out, Boom shoots and just drops him. This bull ended up walking right to us at about I don't even know. I had to be less than a hundred yards very close. This was like an offhand shot because the pitch of the hill was pretty steep.

I can't really remember if we got to a tree or if he just stood up and shot the thing. It was like fifty yards away. He shoots the bull, were like stoked, celebrating, and I looked down. There's another bull. I was like Joe, one of the other guys. There was something Joe, Joe another bull. Joe lignes up, gets

the shot, Boom shoots drops. That bowl opening day, we just intercepted two bulls within the first I don't know, half a day, even though our plans were completely messed up, just by adapting a little bit, changing our plan and going to where we could intercept elk that other people had bumped, we were successful. The one really cool thing about this day was, although I've taken a lot of doubles, you can go back and you can listen to the podcast of the the Accidental Double or how to Get

a double. This double was one of the first elk doubles where the elk dropped close enough to each other that we could get them both in the same picture, which for me, having been on a lot of hunts where we got doubles, that was pretty cool and it kind of broke the seal because later that season we also got another double where we could get both bulls

in the same picture. Just a great opening day and one of the reasons that I love being out the first day of the season because you just really never know what's going to happen. Scout plan, adapt intercept full proof method for opening day hunting success. Now, when I'm talking about this form of opening day tactics, I think you first have to catch your eyes opening day into two things general tag limited entry tags, because my approach

is completely different on those. This is the reason limited entry tags. You are granted limited entry. There's very few tags, there's a limited number of people, and because of that, you can hunt differently. While there will be pressure, it might be pressure for specific animals, but there's often a lot less pressure so you can target the animal that you're hunting. There's a lot more scouting involved and pre planning, but there's not as much of this having to intercept

or running into so many people. While it does happen, it's kind of one of the nice things about having one of those limited entry tags, or maybe hunting private land. Now what I'm going to break down today would be a general type tag hunt. Although I'm kind of talking about elk hunting or deer hunting out west. This works

really well with pretty much any form of hunting. I mean, if you think about Eastern US, midwestern U S there's a lot of people and I touched a little bit about this on a Q and A earlier this season, but there's a lot of people that are maybe hunting smaller tracks of private and getting those animals moving around causes a lot of action on those particular pieces. Most animals and a lot of states are shot on opening Day, but it also has to do with that's when most

hunters are out. I would say out West, in a lot of general areas, opening day is going to be hands down the busiest day of the season. Maybe that day in the Saturday of the last day of the season if it falls around a holiday, especially, but outside of that opening days because that's when everybody who lives around there has been itching to go out. Most people during general rifle seasons, a lot of people go out for different reasons. Some people are die hard hunters, some

people just go out because it's family traditions. Some people just it's a fun weekend get away, something to do. Everybody takes things a little bit differently, but you have all those different types of user groups out there on the same day because the first day you can do it, it's a weekend generally, and it just sounds like a

lot of fun. Maybe we'll just go tryer luck, see if we can get into some animals, and it tends to be very successful because the amount of hunters that are out there often get the animals stirred up enough where they're bumping things back and forth. General tag. We call it the pumpkin patch a lot because many states require hunters orange, and it's just there's gonna be a bunch of orange vests pumpkins everywhere, So you have to

include this in your plan. Now, my fourth step plan, scout plan adapt intercept really takes root in creating an actionable plan that's going to help lend yourself to success. The first one, let's just jump into scouting. If you were to ask me, remy, if you had five days, would you rather go four days scouting, one day hunting, two days scouting, three days hunting, or just all five days hunting. I would pretty much hands down, say go

all five days hunting. You're in the field, you've got a tag in your pocket, you have more chance for success. The have yacht to that would be if you're planning on hunting opening day, Because if you're planning on hunting opening day, you really get the first crack at these animals that haven't necessarily seen pressure, but things are going to change very very rapidly once the sun rises on

that opening morning. They're going to get an immense amount of pressure and they're immediately going to know, oh, crap, it's hunting season. Things are going to change quickly. The reason that pre scouting comes into effect is because you can have an idea of where the animals are at in order to form your plan on that busy day. Now, there's gonna be some things that are gonna happen that

are gonna cause those animals to behave very differently. Unfortunately, opening day you rarely get to hunt elk or deer or anything that are behaving like unpressured animals. That's what you want, but that's not often what you get, So the scouting portion is really important. What I'm looking for when I'm scouting is three things, and first looking for animals.

I'm second looking for where those animals might go if they're pressured, what might be a good escape route, where's the nearest really good cover, where's a good corridor or trail that they seem to be using if they get pressured, And then try to make notes of where they might go when that pressure happens. Another thing I like to look for Number two would be looking for animals that other people might not know about. The ideal situation is getting into opening day where you don't run into other

hunters or other pressure. So finding those little off the trail, off the map, kind of little pockets where maybe other people haven't found what you found, And that really comes with a lot of scouting. And then the third thing that I'm looking for with scouting is just gonna be backup plans where if something happens, I've got too many hunters at a particular trailhead, I've got multiple animals that I know about that I can then immediately change my plan.

So now that rolls into step number two, the plan. When I'm planning for an opening day hunt, I'm thinking about not only where are the animals at, but what's the way that other hunters are going to access this? I kind of anticipate, Okay, how are other hunters gonna hunt this? Should I get in there first? Should I get in there maybe try to be the first one to the elk, or should I try to intercept the

elk or deer or whatever? Later? What am I going to do if I don't find them right away first thing in the morning, Where's a good area where maybe I can be far enough away from other people, or where are the animals going to go? Later on? Based on my scouting, so understanding those safety zones, those really thick pockets, maybe those patches of timber, or those travel corridors. Where are all these at? And then how am I going to plan out my day based on those things

that I know? So generally, what I like to do I find elk or deer or whatever that I'm planning on going after. If I'm not the first one there, maybe some dudes camped right in the middle of the basin that I'm planning on hunting. That happens a lot, or maybe the night before you you pull up and there's seven trucks where you were thinking there was gonna be no one. Now I may not be the guy that's going to get to those up first, or maybe I am only the guy that gets those up first,

but we don't get them. What's gonna happen after that? Well, what I like to do is just pick a place where okay, maybe other hunters I'm anticipating where other hunters are going to be, and then maybe just sit for a while, maybe see where the movements are at, see where shots are coming from, seeing where things are going on, and then maybe go hunt some more covered areas, maybe still hunt through an area that's okay, this would be a good place that the elk can get you, or

picking a spot that is very difficult to get, maybe a lot of dead, full and just shitty conditions, places where animals can be very secure that most hunters will avoid. I like to make these plans and try to stay away from roads. A lot of hunters during opening season or just gonna be traveling roads. If I can just get a little bit further than the next guy, I'm

gonna limit a lot of the competition. And the further I get, the more I limit this competition, honestly, the better I'm probably gonna do, but also more of a chance of intercepting or getting into animals that aren't under that super pressure. Number three. Adapt during the planning phase. I'm gonna know that it's opening day and things are going to change. It's inevitable. Nothing ever goes to plan when you've got a lot of other people also making plans.

So it's really important to be flexible, to adapt, and to have a bunch of backup plans in order to be successful. Just because you found elk doesn't mean hey, this is a sure deal. Just because you found the pocketed deer that you want to hunt. Hey, be willing to adapt. If you see a lot of people at one spot, maybe spend a little bit more time in the morning moving to a spot where there's not people.

There's been times where I've hiked in first thing in the morning, hiked in three to five miles, get back there and there's people everywhere, don't find any animals, and I go ok let's hike back to the trail. Let's get on the road. Let's find a spot where there's not a lot of vehicles and not a lot of traffic. Hey, maybe we're gonna be a little late to the game, but let's find a spot where there's not a lot

of people at and then hunt there. You're probably gonna be a lot better off adapting to a situation and trying to get away from people in some instances, then sticking it out where there's a lot of people. Now, another option of adapting is be patient and maybe just still hunt or sit in an area where you think that other people have a really likely chance of bumping things to you. There have been many opening mornings, opening weekends where I go, Okay, there's been a lot of

elk here, this is a good travel area. Hey, we're just gonna sit here because we're just gonna wait it out. And I'll see hunters walking past us, and then fifteen minutes later and elk or deer or something gets bumped back the other direction. There's so many times where I try to anticipate the movements of the animals and the movements of hunters more than actually where those animals are currently.

And that brings us to step four intercept. If you think about most hunting scenarios, you're trying to match your wits against the animal at their own game. When you get into an opening day scenario, when the pumpkin patch army, when the Orange Army arrives on the crack of dawn on that first day of the season, those animals know they have on their calendars. Elk and deer have on their calendars when Opening Day starts. Yes they do. It's

because it's no coincidence. Because they see an immense amount of traffic that first couple of days and they go, oh, okay, things are different yesterday. We could just hang out in the open a lot longer. That's no longer going to be the case. From now until all this traffic stops, you be surprised at how much more successful you'll be. I would, instead of planning on out smarting animals, planning on out smarting animals that are trying to be outsmarted

by other hunters. What that means is thinking about the travel routes, the escape routes, where they like to go, where they're going to feel the most safe, and then putting yourself in those places. Let everybody else run around, let the animals run to you. While that still might involve a lot more legwork, like I wouldn't say that that's a lazy way of hunting. Many times I will go through the places that people don't want to go to.

I'll go through that really bad deadfall, in that really steep canyon, in that fairly dark timber, knowing that I will probably be able to hear smell or sea elk that other people have pushed in there, have moved around, have bumped around, and then setting myself up on those trails, maybe those pinch points between saddles and other areas where

it's like, okay, it's really easy hunting down here. There's gonna be people on the road, so that's gonna push the animals, I would say, a little bit away from the roads. They're ones that are there might get shot, but everything else might run a way. Then there's gonna be those hunters that walk a little bit of a distance from the road, but they're gonna be hunting the

easier trails and other things. And then there's those places that people just don't like, and that's the places where the animals are probably gonna go, and that's where I would like to set up and intercept. This can really be done with a lot of different species in a lot of different places. I would say most people are

fairly used to this type of hunting. Most of the people that I guide, or maybe from Midwest Minnesota, back east whatever, where they're hunting twenty two forty acres and opening days their day that they're probably gonna kill something because everybody's running stuff around, there's movement, there's people shooting, there's people missing. Things are are stirred up, and then there's this lull in the middle of the day and

then things get stirred up again. Those animals that didn't really figure it out first thing in the morning are

going to figure it out pretty quick. In the evening, that middle of the day part is a really good time to intercept the animals where they're hiding, where they're trying to avoid hunters, where they've maybe been pressured to and that's a really good time to still hunt, use still hunting tactics, or just using if it's more open country, using more glassing tactics, glassing into areas to try to find animals that might be bedded up, might be trying

to avoid pressure, animals that maybe are understanding the pressure based on the amount of vehicle traffic, the amount of hiking traffic, maybe not even being shot at or particularly hunted, but just the noticeable increase of traffic during that day, and then intercepting those animals in those spots where they're

most likely to be once that pressure goes. If you can understand animals escape routes, the places that are going to favor when they get pressured, in those places that other people don't really like to get into, having a little bit of time preseason to scout it out and make plans, backup plants, and adapt, you're gonna be a

lot more successful. You'll be one of the guys punching your tag on that first day, as opposed to one of the guys wishing that you'd punched your tag on the first day and the spending the next you days struggling to find animals that have been highly pressured. Maybe you've got a tag coming up and you know you're

gonna be out there opening day. I hope you kind of think about not only where you're gonna go, and maybe spending a little bit of time if you can't pre season, just scouting and figuring out what your plan is going to be, but also just understanding that there are going to be other hunters and maybe how to avoid those other hunters or use those other hunters to your benefit. I think next week what I really want to talk about is a little bit of open country

spot in stock white tail hunting. I think that's one topic that really probably doesn't get talked about enough. But for me personally, a lot of my general tags that I end up using end up being spot in stock white tail hunting, public land style white tail hunting. It can be a really fun hunt, especially for a lot of guys that are into white tail hunting. There's a lot of opportunity for it out West, and I think

it's a very underrated, under talked about topic. There are some really good white tail hunting spots in places from Wyoming through Colorado, Idaho, Montana. I mean, there's there's a lot of good white tail hunting that many people don't talk about. Or it might even be something that you can do where you live. Maybe you don't have a lot of access to private white tail hunting, but there

is some public land around where you're at. Maybe you live in some some hardwood countries, but there's some state forests around. So I want to just give you some tactics for those of you that might want to still hunt or open country hunt, a big mountain hunt white tails in a little bit different terrain. Maybe some pointers on that kind of stuff. I think it's a really

fun way to hunt white tail deer. It can be a little bit more exciting, especially if you're like me and you just aren't super patient or you don't have the time to invest into setting up stands and other things. Wow, that is a very very effective way to hunt white tails. There are other ways to hunt them and it can be just as exciting and maybe more exciting. So I say we cover that next week. Also, remember to send me in your questions for our que and a is

coming up. I really appreciate so many messages. Just a lot of really great stuff from Elk season. People stoked about that. Also last week we talked about some truck gear and some other things. People really enjoyed that. I'm really glad to hear. I love getting the feedback from everyone. So when you got that feedback, shoot me messages on Instagram at Remy Warren. Please feel free to tag me

in any stories where you get success. What I want to start doing is kind of like sharing a lot of that on my own social So if you listen to the podcast and you've been successful, or you try to tactic or whatever, tag me and your story at Remy Warren, and then a couple of times a week I'll try to get on there and reshare those so everybody else can see everyone's success. Kind of create a

cool community with other people. Just see what everybody's been doing, what tactics have been working, whether it was just earlier this year or something you're gonna try or whatever. I love checking that stuff out, and honestly I try to look at as much of it as as I can. So if you do that, that would be sweet. Also, you know, feel free to share this podcast with friends, family, whatever.

If you don't subscribe, check it out, subscribe if you if that's an option on your things, subscribe, download whatever. And then, if you've got an option for wherever you listen to the podcast to to rate the podcast. I really appreciate that, leave an awesome comment. You guys are awesome. So until next week, make sure to outfox the fox. I don't even know if that makes sense. What I'm trying to say is outsmart the ones trying to outsmart the ones that will outsmart you. If everybody does that,

that will allow smart each other. Crap