Ep. 69: Late Season Elk Tips

this year. Me I personally like to go with a nice venison roast, but I would probably say most of my Thanksgiving dinners have been mountain house type peals because I'm always hunting on Thanksgiving. It's like a family tradition that we generally shoot something. Um, if we make it back,

we make it back. But if not. There's been a few times where I've just been out on my own hunting and uh camping and enjoying the last part of the season, which is often cold, but it's a it's a great day to be hunting, and it's got me thinking. You know, I got a lot of questions about some late season hunts, primarily late season cow hunts, but you know any of those tags that go a little bit later into the year. So today I want to go

through my three best late season elk hunting tips. But before we do that, I'm gonna share one of my favorite elk hunting stories that just so happens to be on a Thanksgiving Day quite a few years ago. This is really the story that started a great Thanksgiving tradition of essentially being successful on Thanksgiving Day, and it just so happens to be my first six point bull and one of my better public land bulls I've I've really taken in a general area that season, and I was

out and hunting a lot. I spent a lot of time during the archery season, but then it was taking other people during rifle and I had that last week of Thanksgiving off to kind of hunt for myself. Now, I passed up a ton of nice bulls with my bow because I really wanted to get a good six by six. It was just kind of a goal that I had. But you know, it was now or never. It was the Thursday of Thanksgiving and I only had until Sunday to fill my tag. So my dad and I went out and we went to a place where

I'd been hunting quite a bit. Started the morning early my favorite glassing spot. It was just freezing cold that day, a little bit of snow on the ground, and we glassed across the canyon and I happened to see a pretty good bull in like a larger group on this finger ridge in this burn that I've been watching kind of all years. So I knew that there was a lot of elk there. There's a long ways away from where we were glassing, but we thought, okay, let's give

it everything we've got now. Of course, we did have Thanksgiving plans for dinner at a friend's house with my mom and some other family a little earlier that afternoon. We didn't make any promises that we'd be back, but we kind of hinted that we were just going out to look around and uh and go for a hunt. So we start our trek over there. It's a it's a nice bowl, and obviously we aren't going to turn

away from a good bowl. So we start getting over there and it's about I don't know, maybe a six mile hike, and we've got to climb up this one mountain and then down the other side. And as we're hiking over there, or maybe a mile away. I hear a gunshot kind of in that general area. And there was a couple of groups elk, and there're one group that was a little closer to the way that we're going,

had a bigger bowl. And then there's another six point in that or for at least what I could tell through the spotting scope with the distance in that other group. So I'm going down the ridge and sure enough, here's a six point that somebody else had shot. Like dang, well, it's still a ways from that other group. Let's go to that backup group and see if we can't find him.

So we keep working down the ridge. We get the wind right and there's all these like finger ridges that dropped down, so we get out the elevation of where the elk are, and the sun's out now, but there's kind of clouds moving back and forth. So we just kind of figured, okay, well, the bulls will probably still be in that group stunning on that side. They've got no reason to move, you know, there's no other tracks

going down there from hunters. So we started working in working in sure enough, I spot some cows like sweet So now at this point in the day, it's it's starting to get evening time. It's like maybe forty five minutes before shooting time in something like that. So they heard starts feeding out into the timber across the ridge, like all right there within range. Cow, cow, Cow. I'm

just watching through my rifle scope. I'm set up my dad. Um. I knew that we had to hustle to get into position, and my dad at that time wasn't as good as shape as he is now. So I kind of just kind of left him in the dust a little bit and just to try to get into position for a shot. So I'm in position by myself and the elk are

just kind of starting to filter through, filter through. We're moving up, and then they're moving through the trees, moving through the trees, and here comes to the six point. Well I see him. I'm like, okay, sweet, I see him walking walking, He's in the trees and there's like very few openings, and I think there's this one opening.

So I get my call and I I'm set up, and I called and he takes a couple more steps and stops and I'm like, sweet, perfect line up the shot, shoot, boom, and all I see is the branch like between me and the elk with a pine cone on it, like a fairly large branch fall out of the sky. And I knew that i'd hit that tree and not hit the elk. I did not hear a solid thump whatever. I'm like, crap, this sucks. All the elk runoff. I'm pretty mad at myself for not noticing that tree in

that trajectory. It was only maybe a three yard shot, but I just was so focused on that elk. I just I center punched that branch in that bullet flight, and it just fell could have this big pine cone and just seem like it fell forever, as in a giant ponderosa. And I'm like, damn it, this didn't work out.

But I instead just started sprinting to where the elk we're running over and it was a pretty steep, slippery slope, and I just sprinted up to the ridge where they were, and there they are across the other side, filing up single file. The bull gets to the top. I locate the bull, throw the scope up over a log, throw the rifle over a log, squeeze the trigger, boom, hit the bull. He stops, turns a little bit or just kind of like stands there. Boom, one more and the

bull goes down. I'm like, sweet six point bull. My dad finally he hears the shooting. He's pretty excited. He makes it up to me. We're like, oh, this is awesome. Now, the canyon where they had gone across was a pretty rugged canyon, so I'm like, all right, let's uh, let's work our way over there. And we're excited. This is like the biggest bull either of us have ever killed.

It was just like an awesome, awesome day. Now, this was before we was obviously had no like cell phone service, or I don't even think I had a cell phone. But um, you know, we're expected to be back at dinner, maybe around dark or whatever. But we knew now, having just shot this bull just before dark, it was gonna be a long night. So we get up to the bull and we're kind of like, this is awesome. Okay, where are we gonna what are we How are we

going to take him out? Going back up is gonna be too long, But there's a way down that's you know, if we get to the bottom of the canyon, you know, we can go out that way and then climb one last a smaller mountain out and then maybe get picked up on the highway and kind of hit your ride back back to our vehicle. And so we're like, okay, that sounds good. We thought, oh man, it might not be bad to come back in this way tomorrow and

maybe in time saving. You know, we're way up here on the top, but if we could get this whole bowl down to the bottom, you know, we're gonna try to hustle back and make it back, you know, for our Thanksgiving dinner. So my dad has this idea. He's like, oh, it's a pretty steep hill. Maybe we could just slide the bull to the bottom. Now this this point, uh, it's it's a little bit darker. Well it's actually you know, dark by this point by the time we got to it.

So he's thinking, okay, we'll just slide the bull to the bottom. I'm like, okay, yeah, you know, but if it takes off, it's gonna be really difficult to control him, and who knows where he's gonna go. So my dad has this idea, you know, so we start dragging him and once we lift the head up, he goes too fast. So we kind of have to drop the head down, and we're trying to hold him, keep him from going super fast down the mountain, but also you know, within a normal range of speed to make it easier on

ourselves to get him down. So my dad has this brilliant idea. He's like, Okay, hold my stuff. I'm gonna just kind of like get on the back of this bull and lift his head up and try to just kind of like sled him down slow. And I think, okay, just be careful, don't kill yourself, please. He's like, yeah, okay.

So he's got his head lamp on, he's starting to he's like behind the elk so it doesn't go over the top of him, and he's lifting the elk's head up and the elks starting to slide, and he's kind of sliding with it, and he lifts the elk's head up and starting to slide. Well, somehow in this process, the bull starts to take off. My dad is still grabbing the bulls antler, and now my dad is on the bull sledding down this like super steep pitch slope in the dark. I just yell bail off bell, like

I'm I'm I don't know what's going on. I'm worried that he's gonna die. And all of a sudden, now I see headlamp, no headlamp, headlamp, no headlamp, headlamp, no headlamp. As my dad is just rolling down the mountain, the flashlights just like of his head lamp is flashing back at me, and I hear just a huge crash near the bottom, and like, oh crap, is my dad dead? So I run down. I'm following the trail and there's

my dad. He's like semi laughing, kind of like checking everything, make sure he's got all his arms and legs and everything. I've got his pack, my pack, both rifles, and uh We're like he's like whoa, okay, well that kind of work. That was scary. So we follow the trail down where the elk could slid down to the bottom of the mountain, and there was like these I don't know, I guess

they'd be like aspen little saplings on the hill. I mean probably, I don't know, like two or three inches thick, just completely sheared off by the force of the elks sliding through them. I mean, that's how fast that thing was going. So like, okay, cool. Well, let's get to the bottom. And so we get to the bottom. Now we're like, uh, let's get the elk. We'll come back with a bunch of people tomorrow and pack him out.

So we get the elk and gut him and whatever, and then leave everything, you know, leave a orange vest on him or an extra sparro orange vest on the antlers so we can see it, you know, because we're like, well, you know, we weren't exactly sure where in the canyon is, so if it's just hard to spot, you can maybe spot him from up above. And then we decided to

start walking out, so he followed the canyon down. The canyon was a lot more brushy than we were expecting, and we knew that there was like a very big river slash stream crossing at the bottom. So it's I don't even know how cold it is, maybe zero degrees out. We get to the bottom by this point it's pretty late. We climb up over the last rise down to the river bottom, and then we crossed the river. We've got just like we're thinking, okay, what are we gonna do.

We've got like a couple of trash bags. We make like trash bag waiters were sledging across this there's ice in the river. We're like, all right, get to the road, and uh end up getting picked up and and getting a ride back to our truck really quick. We're like sweet. So then we go back and we're like, all right, that was great. You know, well, we're definitely late for Thanksgiving, so it's probably I don't even know, ten or eleven

PM at this point. We drive back and you know, we figured everyone would have eaten and whatever, but this was before we had this tradition of killing something on Thanksgiving and always being late. And we walked in and nobody had eaten because everyone was waiting for us. So

we're like like, oh crap. And then we found out that my mom actually that day earlier that morning, walked out of her cabin in her house to get something out of the car, and she was just in her pajamas or whatever, and goes back to get inside and somehow the door had locked and locked herself out at

zero degrees. Luckily, she had the car keys because she's getting something out of the car, so she had to get in the car, drive to a friend's house, and then stayed there pretty much all day, we ended up showing up very late, and I think everyone was disgruntled with the way that we celebrated Thanksgiving, But to this day, that was still the best Thanksgiving I ever had. And once they saw and heard the story, and everybody was

just excited for us and it was happy. And then from that moment on, Thanksgiving became just more of a tradition that we were pretty much always going to be late and we generally are going to kill something because if we have to be back by a certain time, you know that's never gonna happen. And over the years, we've kept that tradition up generally being successful with something, whether it's a dough tag, a cow elk tag, bull

tag on Thanksgiving Day. So Thanksgiving to me, it's just a special day that we get to go out and hunt with our families, and it always reminds me of that one Thanksgiving that we didn't make it back, but we did bring home a pretty good bowl. I personally really enjoy hunting late season. Elk. Now, the weather kind of sucks, it can be difficult, but I think that there's some behaviors that you can key in on. They can help you be very successful. When it comes to

late season hunting. If I think back of most of the elk that I've taken, a lot of them are during that last week of the season, end of November. Maybe you know, there's also across the US a lot of late season cow hunts, maybe into December or later, place like New Mecca, Mexico, Utah, Montana. There's there's quite a few different hunts that go into this late season.

I think for me, I probably have a lot of late season success because I generally will pass stuff up early or whatever, and then it comes down to the end of the sea season and I think, all right, time to put some meat in the freezer, and I just go out and really want to be successful and bring something home. And so these tactics are things that I've found help me find elk and will help you whether you've got a late season cow hunt, bull hunt, whatever.

So these three things generally involved figuring out where the elk are and then how to exploit them using a few tactics. Let's go with the first one. The first one is to hunt the herds on their winter range, and to do that, you're gonna look for feeding areas. Now elk as you know, or probably depending on the area, is very migratory, so they might be in one area early and then move throughout the season. If you have the option to hunt a more migration area or winter range,

I would say suggests looking into those areas. Now you can also intercept elk along that winter range. Maybe your area isn't a winter range, you're gonna start thinking about, Okay, where the elk maybe moving from into What you want to key into on this time of year is going to be those feeding areas. So anytime open type of open grass, south facing slope, something where the snow might burn off if there's snow or inclement weather. You know,

every year is different. Some years there is no snow late, but those south facing slopes, those really grassy areas, elk are gonna want to start bulking up for the winter. The more feed they have, the better it's going to be. So pull out your on X maps, look for those those nice south slopes that are going to get the

sun and burn off the snow. Look for those. If you're in a migration corridor or maybe not a winter range, look for those maybe higher areas where the wind will blow the snow off and might allow some available feed for the elk that are remaining are still traveling. Also, things like burns are a really good thing to look for in winter range, prime winter range habitat, something that can sustain the animals, has covered nearby, and then also

has really good access to feed. Once you locate those areas, glossom, keep concentrating on those areas, sooner or later you're gonna find elk in one of those spots. What I like to do is I like to find multiple potential feeding areas in winter range or in those travel corridors, and then continue to hit those late seasons. So that's where my primary focus is. I'm going to focus on burns, south slopes, and any areas that might provide good forage for elk that time of year. Now, the next tactic

is very very similar to that, because it's focusing on feed. Now, where's the best feed. Often the best feed late season might be in private land, in a field, in a pivot. You might be driving down in the bottoms and there's elk everywhere. A really good late season tactic can be to hunt the fringes of this private property. Now, when you think of elk hunting or you know, big country. It's really nice to be in the wilderness, to be way back there, But if the elk aren't back there,

you need to hunt where the elk are. That's how you be successful. So they might be in more of these private air is what I'll do is I'll use my Onyx maps to find those little pockets where I feel like there's enough feed and I'm seeing animals down low, but areas where they might have something missing in that particular private spot, Like Okay, they're bedded out in the pivots, they're bedded out in the open, but that's only gonna last so long. They're gonna want some kind of cover.

If the weather sparks up, there might move in the mornings and evenings. So I look for areas on my map. So I pull up my Onyx, I put the property layers in there, and I figure out, Okay, where are the elk at and then what's potential area for those elk to move to? Where's some cover nearby, Where's a good place that they might go, Where's a piece of public that I can access that's not easy to access.

Maybe there's something that's kind of blocked off. But you gotta walk to three four miles around to get to it. I really focus in on those areas on those late season hunts. If you've got a late season cow hunt,

that's a great option. Another option is to even just potentially ask landowners for per mission to hunt some of that private Most of the hunting that I do I talk about public hunting, but late season cow tags, I've I got many many questions about that in the past couple of weeks, and so I think that one thing

to think about is, you know, ask for permission. A lot of people that farm and ranch and whatever, there gets to be too many elk in the winter, and that's why there are those late cow hunts, those late season hunts. So that might even be something to think about. Look for private land that's enrolled in some kind of access program for public hunting, or get some numbers, knock

on some doors. If you don't want to do that, use your maps to find areas where you can hunt outside on the public, but in those areas where it's very plausible that elk will move back and forth or move to and from the private to somewhere that you can hunt. Also think about it like this. I like to think of elk in the bottoms as a magnet. And sometimes these elk magnets just start attracting more and

more elk. So as the winter goes on, you'll see you might notice some elk down in some private somewhere and there's a handful of them, and then every day there just seems to be more and more and more elk. Try to extrapolate out where are these other elk coming from? Okay, what's a good plausible place where it's just funneling into,

and then try to cut them off in that. Generally you'll find some public or some hunting opportunities by kind of looking a little bit wider and saying, Okay, it's probably drawing other elk in, and over the course of the winter they'll be stacked in here, but before the season ends, I might have an opportunity to intercept them on the way to this particular spot. Now, the third and probably my favorite late season tactic is to go

where it sucks. That's that's because the elk are probably still there and there's gonna be a lot fewer hunters. I found over the years that if you have bad weather, the place that sucks to hunt with bad weather and lots of snow is going to be dead fall. Everybody hates dead fall. It's dangerous to walk over, it's slippery in the snow. Nobody likes it. I generally just find places with a lot of had fault and hunt those really late, because it's enough to to tur people out.

The elk feel very secure past places that are difficult like that. Everybody's looking for a trail or some other way to get in somewhere. If you find those places that suck and you're physically able to do it, go to those spots because there's a lot less pressure. The elk are gonna be relaxed, they're probably gonna be out feeding longer more, and it gives you a really good chance to spot elk and potentially take one. I also tend to hunt timber a lot more late because there's

generally snow later. I use that snow to cut a set of tracks and then follow tracks. One thing I always think about is if I'm walking late season and I and I come across a set of tracks, Okay, if I'm having trouble finding elk, I know that at some point this will lead me to elk and the

timber can be a really hard time to hunt. You can't really hunt it outside of the rut when it's really effective because the elk are making noise, and then when there's snow, because it's effective because you can cut the tracks and follow the tracks so you know where they are and you know where they're going, and that can really help you find those elk in a good habitat that can hold a lot of animals and be

very successful. But it is very difficult to hunt other parts of the year when there's no snow and you're just hunting timber, you know, you have to do a lot more still hunting, You have to cover a lot more ground and you don't know whether there's elk right there or not. So hunting those more timbered patches, those places that are hard to get into, that's a really

good way. And those areas that are hard to hunt is a really good way to turn up a bowl or turn up a cow or whatever you're looking for late season because you've got that weather most of the time and you can kind of hunt in a place that other people might not be hunting, unless, of course they're listening to this podcast too and decided to go that route, then we've kind of messed up the whole algorithm.

But for the most part, I really enjoy hunting timber late because it's a lot more successful than hunting at other times a year, and you're gonna start finding animals that other people may not have pressured as much, and they're acting more like ELK. I will suggest this if you are following tracks, you know, pay attention to the way the tracks are going most of the time ELK. If they're moving, it's a very straight line, it's like a very straight pattern. Then you'll see they start to

swirl around, move and feed. Once you see them start making loops and wandering, that's when you want to start getting on you're ready because generally they'll go in bed most of the time. Late season, you're gonna want to look for those beds that are probably more in the shade. If it's really cold or if it's a if it's a really warm day and there's not a lot of snow,

then maybe those more shaded areas. So kind of think about the terrain and the topography where you're at, and then as you're following those tracks, keep an eye out, move slow, use your optics, and try to pick those elk out before they see you. One of the really good late season tactic I would say is just have an elk call on you. Elk herd back up again

in the winter. So if you think about the lifestyle cycle of elk, they heard up in the the rut, the bulls gather up these harems, they create these groups. They're very vocal, they make noise. There's a lot of noise going on. Then as the season progresses, the bulls start to split off. So they split off and they might go off on their own. They're going to recuperate and just not be annoyed, and all the bigger bulls at least and feed and regain that strength that they

lost during the rut. But the cows will start grouping up again. They might disperse a little bit into smaller bands, and then as that later season comes on, they start grouping up, grouping up, grouping up. What you get with those groups is you get a little bit more vocalization. Not necessarily going to call one in, but they're used to sounds. So if you're still hunting, if you bump an elk, having that cow call on the ready, I would say most of the time, cent time, especially late,

they're gonna stop. So if you're working through the timber, you spook a big bowl, hit that cow call, he's probably gonna stop and offer you a shot or give you a chance. So it's just a little tip to add in there for that. I like it all season, but actually late season it works really well to even stop those big groups. I mean, maybe you get in there's a lot more open, so you're hunting a feeding area, you've got a lot of eyes, a big group of cows, you bump them or something before you can get a

shot off. Try hitting that cow call. Because I've stopped a lot of those big groups late season, maybe a hundred two hundred cows by just really wrenching on that call. Wrenching on that call, they get it distracts them. They're like, what's going on over there. They've got that herd mentality of protect the herd. Figure out what's going on with the herd, and you might be able to get a shot that you wouldn't get otherwise. I hope this helps

you if you've got a late season hunt. If not, um, you know, let me know what you're thinking about, what questions you have for the types of hunts you might have coming up are things that you've heard this season or stories that you have that you've tried things and it didn't work out, But what should you do next time? Because next week I really want to do a Q and a podcast. I've got a lot of great stuff already, UM coming in the best way. Just shoot me a

message on Instagram at Remy warrant um. We also have the Remy at the meat Eator dot com. UM, but because it's hunting season, it's a little bit easier for me to just kind of go through screenshots some of those questions that I get and then answer them on there.

If you could, I'd love for you to put your name if you want your name in there, UM, and then where you're from, and and I try to you know, when I read the questions live, if you do put something like more information about where you're hunting or whatever, I always leave that out to protect your zone. But UM, I hope that if you've got questions, send them in. I've been really, really really enjoying all the success stuff

that everybody's been sending me. I say it pretty much every week, but it's so true, Like it's just very enjoyable for me to to see all the awesome comments and feedback and everything. And that's what keeps me doing this podcast. It's not how many people are listening or

anything like that. It's just me knowing that I'm helping people, especially people that are late getting into hunting, or people that have been hunting their whole life but just want to have a little more success when when I up their game. UM, I really really enjoy that kind of stuff. So thank you guys. And we're moving into December a

little bit of late season stuff. Me personally, UM, I've got a really cool late season archery deer tag and then you know when it when it becomes December, I'm focused, you know, September through November in just like big game, big game, elk, deer, antelope, all this stuff, and then December hits in my brain just switches to like small game. And I love duck hunting, I love upland hunting, I love even rabbit hunt. I just you know, switching to that like mode of in my mind, small game is

really fun for me. So I've got some duck hunts planned. Um, going to be headed up to Alaska to hunt some seed ducks and some cool stuff. Maybe I'll bring you guys along on some of these adventures and and share some of the stories of some of the stuff that

I've got going on. So if there's any suggestions you have for the podcast, or things that you'd like to hear, especially going into this next year and whatever, or things that you really liked this year, please please please let me know, because I want it to be about you guys and and what you enjoy. So thank you guys so much. As always, don't feel bad if you missed Turkey Day, or I should say this, killing a big bull elk on Thanksgiving is a legitimate excuse to miss dinner.

And if anybody gives you grief, send him my way. Happy Thanksgiving.