Ep. 70: Report Card Time! Listener Call-Ins with Dirk

everybody to call in to our super secret hotline. I guess it's not that secret. Had them call in and leave a message and let me know how did there's how did their season go? Did they kick ass or did they suck ass? And we had a few people call in leave messages, So I'm gonna play those in a little bit and kind of go over their thoughts and maybe put a couple of my two cents in as well. But in the meantime, I'm gonna kind of go over my season and let you know how I did,

if I kicked ass or if I sucked ass. And I'm gonna go ahead and just hey, I'm gonna raise my head out right now. I'm the first guy to admit I kind of sucked ass last year. Man, it was a tough, tough September for me, and and uh, you know, I was like, well, you know, maybe it's not an Elk year, maybe it'll be a deer year. You know, maybe Elk season wasn't very robust, but deer season would be would be awesome, and I would make

up for it. Deer season a little bit soft too, so, but anyway, I was gonna go ahead and kind of go over some of these thoughts I had on my on my report card from twenty twenty three, and I would probably give myself maybe maybe a C. I've always been kind of a C student. But anyway, did you guys kick ass or did you suck ass? I sucked ass, And I'm just gonna dive in on kind of some

of my screw ups here. My screw up number one, I didn't do my research on the unit to see how many hunters I could expect to see here in Idaho. There's a whole new unit for me. It was a unit that was close to where my son could come and join me for the hunt. Spend a few days would be easy with his work shift, and I thought, yeah, this will work great. I did all my summer scouting, learned the area, put out trail cameras, lots of nice

bowls on trail cam. And then fast forward to September and I got to go up for a little bit early. I got to go up a few days before Austin could come up and hunt, before Dusty could come up and film. And I had the first three days a season before the big Labor Day season or the Labor Day weekend rush. Got there and bulls were pretty quiet. I did hear some bugles, and I was able to get right on them and get in there and spend some time with them. But they were not aggressive at all.

And if I if I pushed up on him and eased up on him very much, they would just kind of be quiet or just move just move off. So anyway that that kind of set the stage. I'm like, Okay, I know where these bulls are at. This is going to be great.

You have the recreationalist, then you have the hunters. And one thing I found when the last day I was there before the big weekend was a whole bunch of guys and gals running around and pickups hunting hounds. So a lot of the roads hadn't been closed yet, so I was kind of banking on some of these roads being closed. Well, I should have dug in a little bit deeper in my off season scouting and looked at when road closures happened. And a lot of these road

closures didn't happen until in October. And here we are in September and got folks, you know, everywhere on every road that they can get a machine on. And there was folks, you know, hound hunting for bears. We had folks just out elk hunting and just you know, covering every little piece of ground. So of course, if you've elk hunted very very much in your life. You understand

what disturbance is all about. Once people start penetrating the forest more than they have all summer, start making a lot of stink just by walking around out there, a lot of people calling, a lot of people running dogs, chasing bears. You know, that gets I guess the animals on edge, and they know it's like, well, put a big old X on the calendar. It's hunting season time. So anyway, when we got back, when I went got back there with the guys after the big weekend, it

didn't look like we'd lost a lot of people. A lot of the recreationalists had gone home, but a lot of the hunting camps were still there. And we're getting more on the daily. Every day, more hunters showed up. So all the places that I had had been that I had found early had now other hunters had found

those as well. And we're in there. So we start turning over rocks, you know, we got to leave no stone unturned and find a spot we can get in on and hunt some undisturbed milk relatively speaking, So every time we'd find a bowl that would bugle, maybe he wasn't real hot, like we'd find him mid morning or so we wouldn't find you know, as luck would have it, we wouldn't find him right at the break of dawn, you know, we would where we were out at first light,

there was no action. So we go to the next place. In the next place, you know, go from A plans, A, B, C, D E all the way down the line, and you know, we'd find a bowl mid morning or almost at noon, and the bowl wasn't going to be very reactive to calling. So we would be like, all right, cool, Well tomorrow morning, we'll be here at first light and we'll be on him. So the next we'd be there ready to go. Well, somebody else would be there too, so you can't blame

anybody else there. You know, it's public land. Everybody out there trying to have fun doing the same thing we are. But it does get a little frustrating. So then we decided to broaden our horizons. We branched out, and there's a huge, really big unit. There's several units within this elk hunting zone here in Idaho, and so it's time to just start canvassing the zone. So we spread out, drove all over the zone, just trying to find areas where the people weren't and we just could not find

anywhere there wasn't a lot of people. And every time we'd find a bowl that would talk, then we'd have company within no time at all. So we called the hunt a couple days early because I had a Montana Elk tag and I thought, well, you know what, why burn up time here just beating her head against the wall, wasting a bunch of gas trying to drive from one spot to the neck trying to get the good spot. So we bailed. And this was early season. I don't think the rutt was nowhere close to being heated up

where we kind of wanted to be. So we went home. Austin was like, that's fine, I got to do some chores anyway. So Dusty and I headed out. We stopped in southeast Idaho and hunted for a few days for him where he had had a tag, and it was kind of the same thing. There was a lot of folks over there hunting and the same reaction from Elk. Elk were just not very vocal. They were they would bugled just a little bit, but if you got close to them, they would just be quiet. They would just

clam up or just move off. So then we're like, okay, well let's get head on up to Montana. So that is where my screw up number two kind of took place. Typically, I like to hunt kind of in a I'd like to camp and kind of central spot to the hunting area. That way I'm allowed to canvas the area really easily. I don't want to camp on one far end of the hunting area. I want to kind of camp right in the middle. That way I can go out like a spoke from the center. I can try all the

different places I want to hunt from the center. So we started out kind of like that. But what we found is the first couple places we want to hunt, there was just nothing. We weren't getting into any elk sign, we weren't seeing any wed glass, and we were calling from dung till dusk. We just weren't turning any elk up. So and then we had a huge storm, roll in a lot of high winds, a lot of rain, and we got this crappy little tent that we're using for September.

I like to have a pretty lightweight mobile camp, so camera Mandusty and I we packed up her stuff and we went back to town to a friend's house and we camped in his big shop. And so he's within striking distance of a lot of good elk hunting from is placed there. So I'm like, well, during this crappy weather period, we'll just camp here and buzz up every day. So the storm passed, but you know, we kind of got lulled into the niceties and the comfort of stay,

staying somewhere where you can shower every night. You know, typically we're out in the woods and we don't get a shower every night. We don't get a shower till maybe the hunt's over. Sometimes I think the longest we've gone is like nine or ten days without a shower. Man, it's gross, I'm here to tell you. I mean, I'm sure there's folks out there that have done the same

thing we have. And you get out there and maybe you're in an area there's just no good, clean running water or lakes or ponds or anything to get into to get yourself clean, or maybe there's not any you know, there's no civilization nearby where you can find a place to go pay and take a shower. So anyway, we were kind of we were kind of liking that, and I think we kind of liked that too much. We I feel like as soon as the stormy weather pass,

we should have probably moved camp and moved closer. Here's the here's the screw up. We should have been closer to our camp or hunting area. So we were spending way too much time driving every morning to get there, and then in the evening we're you know, socked out, tired from hunting. Then we're driving all the way back

into town. So that was a big mistake. I think we should have found somewhere to compromise on the mountains, somewhere to where we could have still kind of hunted some of the places we wanted to go without having to drive so far. So I think that was a really big screw up. And I knew better, and I typically do it different, but you know how it is. Sometimes sometimes the you know comforts or you know things. Sometimes I feel like I can talk myself into things.

If you can justify something, does it logically makes sense to do something? Sometimes maybe it's easy to talk yourself to doing the wrong thing. So I hope I'm not the only one out there that does that. So and then screw up number three. I've you know, and I'm not going to just limit these screw ups. I mean, I've who knows how many screw ups I have every every fall. But these were the three good takeaways I had that I thought, you know, I could have done better.

But number three is I should have practiced more in the off season with my bow. And when I mean practicing, like not just you know, going out and shooting in your backyard, just getting reps. You know, that's really good. You know, you're building muscle memory, You're you're developing familiarity with your bow, you're getting your reps in. But sometimes you and maybe not sometimes a lot of times you should be practicing from uncomfortable shooting positions. For instance, maybe

shooting from your knees at a wonky angle. You know, maybe you start out at a bad angle and then you have to position yourself and to where you can shoot accurately, or maybe sit on the ground and then slowly kneel, get up to a kneeling or a standing position, fighting your feet underneath you to where you're still standing in a improper shooting form. That way, you can execute a good shop and here's why. So I can't remember

what day of the hunt was. In Montana. We Dusty and I were walking along this area and there was a fence line and we weren't too far from the fence. We're probably twenty thirty yards from the fence, and on the other side of the fence was all private is a huge piece of private lad and behind that there were some bolls bugling. So I thought, you know, we will kind of walk along, just trying to see if we could find something that was going to come close to the fence and maybe come over on our side.

So we were calling along there and I heard something. I'm like, oh, man, something's running. Get ready, Dusty, and this this spike bull jumps the fence and runs right over to us and almost commits suicide. Well, there you were hunting. Spikes were not legal to shoot, and I wasn't sure. I was like, some of these units you can shoot a spike, some you can't. And I wasn't one hundred percent sure. And at that point we were I think we were. Oh, it was September twenty ninth,

so we were well within the season. I hadn't even drawn my bow back yet, and I thought, man, I would shoot that spike, but I'm like, I wasn't sure, so I didn't want to, you know, do anything anything

wrong there legally. So we passed on the spike and he ran off, and so we walked a little further and I bugled, and a bullet bugled from kind of up where he went, and the bowl kind of sounded wimpy, just kind of this wimpy little urder, kind of sound like a bull that or a kid that's going through puberty, you know. His voice was all wobbly and cracked a little bit and kind of kind of had that funny sound to it. And I called back and forth a little bit, and he was starting to call a little more,

but he just would not come. He would not come and break and show himself. He wouldn't cross that fence. So I said, Dusty, we're gonna try something. You know what they say, carry usity killed the cat, so we're gonna see if it'll kill the bowl. So we moved away from the fence. We got one hundred and fifty yards or more away from that fence, and as we moved away, I called like we were a bowl with some cows, and we were leaving, and I was following

the cows down the hill. And then once we got down there one hundred and fifty yards, two hundred yards whatever, then I even I even made my calls even more quiet. I muffled into my tube a little bit. I called into my into my gloved hand to kind of kind of make it sound give the illusion that these elk were further down the hill than two hundred yards, because it's really really open timber, and a bowl would be able to see along, you know, one hundred yards and

be able to see you if there were elk. So we got down there, we did that weird, you know, kind of fade away type calling, and then we just sat down and we've got quiet. And I probably should have just stood up. But earlier that morning I'd been standing for hours in one spot watching this bowl. I was in some really big open timber, pretty exposed, and I was been just inching up, inching up on this

really nice six point, trying to get close. So anyway, all morning i'd been standing off on one foot this way or one foot that way, on steep drowded man. My legs and ankle were shot, and I thought, well, well since we're kind of playing the long game here. We're doing this slow play. I'm gonna I'm just gonna go really slow and take my time, and I'm gonna just sit down, and you know, all i'll hear that bowl, He'll he'll make a noise, or I'll hear him jump

that fence or something. I'll hear there'll be a tell tale for me to know that he's on my side of the fence. So anyhow, we sat there, and we'd sat there for quite a while, probably forty five minutes or longer, maybe in even an hour, And pretty soon I looked up and I could see the glint on some antlers coming. That bowl was coming. He jumped over the fence. I didn't hear him. He got over that fence quietly, and it was coming down looking for us.

He just kind of walking along slowly. He'd pause and he'd look walking along slow, pause and look, and I was like, oh man, I'm I'm in trouble. I'm kind of facing because it's kind of a steep hill. I've got I'm facing downhill and kind of got my I'm kind of pivoting at my knees and my ways. So I'm kind of over on, sitting on one cheek, kind of turned looking up the hill, and I'm like, I don't know how many drop my bow and shoot this sucker.

So I was like he went by a cluster of two or three trees, and as he went behind those, I just start slowly rising. And if anybody's done squats, to do to go from sitting on the ground to like to raising yourself so slow that you can't be detected. That was hard. And I was just like, oh, man, don't screw this up. Just go molasses slow. If this is the only time you squat this year, then do

it right. So I'm moving up really really slowly, and I'm kind of keeping on the bowl, and I got about halfway up, and then you know, he'd I could see his eyes again, and then he'd walk and he'd get beyond another tree, and I'd go up again, just real slow, and finally he's getting pretty close. And I was standing all the way up and as I earlier, as I had sat there, I had arranged all the trees.

So it's kind of these there's a big standard dug firs, and you know they're all evenly spaced out, and sometimes it's kind of hard to judge yardage in those kind of places. If if you've been around those kind of areas, you know, it looks like this far looks like that far as like. But I'd ranged all these trees and

they all kind of look the same. But there was one that was just a little bit of an odd color and it looked like he was heading towards that, and I'm like, oh yeah, I remember that that tree right there was fifty yards. So as he gets close to that tree, he goes behind another tree and I draw my boat super slow, just like molasses, and he doesn't spot me, and he comes out from behind that fifty yard tree and stops, or because I cal call,

he stops. I put my fifty yard pin on him, and I just start pulling, pulling, pulling the bow brakes, the shot brakes, and my arrow goes flying and I'm like, oh yeah. And as the arrow flew I could see it was high. I'm like, what the heck? And it went right over his back and I'm like, what the heck? It went right over his back and he kind of

ran off and then stopped. So I bugled at him, and I thought, well, maybe maybe maybe I did hit him, because sometimes in the flight of the arrow you'll catch it on the way there, and with the arc, you know, especially at fifty yards, you know, at some point between you and the bowl, that arrow is going to be higher than the bowl's back. So I thought, well, maybe that was just the arc I saw, and maybe it just you know, dropped right in. And then he kind

of he took off after I bugled. I thought, man, maybe I did hit him. So we made sure he wasn't looking and stuff and calcool like things kind of quiet down. So Dusty and I snuck up there and looked where he was standing. You could see where his feet kind of tore up the dirt when he took off, and we're looking and we're looking, and we're looking, and

I'm like, man, I cannot find the arrow. And I shooting light at knocks too, but the sun was kind of in our eyes, so he had the sun at his back, so it wasn't ideal for seeing the flight of the arrow or like where even the lighted knock my hit, you know, with that much sun in my eyes, I didn't get to see it good. But now we're over there and there's a you know, it's a kind of a steep hill, so that arrow should be just

sticking right in the dirt right there. If I missed and I'm not finding the arrow, I'm like, Dusty, I think I might have got him, but I don't think it did, but I might have. I said, Okay, Dusty, I'll have you stay here and look for the arrow, and I'm going to just follow quietly. I'm not followings footprints quietly, and I'm going to keep following them until i find blood. Maybe i'll get over hairways and i'll, you know, because it's not uncommon after a shot to

not find blood for sometimes one hundred yards. I've you know, over the years, I've I've experienced that. Sometimes I've seen blood right at the shot. Sometimes I don't see it for a hundred yards or so, just depending on where the arrow hits the hits the bowl, you know. So as I'm falling along, I'm just like looking looking, no blood, no blood. I'm following footprints pretty good, because he was trotting and turning up quite a bit of grass and

pine needles and stuff with his with his hoofs. And I get probably three four hundred yards and they're just not slowing down and there's no blood whatsoever. And then I hear a bugle off in the distance. So if you're to go out another couple hundred yards in front and then back up up back on the other sid the fence, I'm like, I bet that sucker went back to his side of the fence so confident on not finding any blood there. I'm like, well, we got to find this arrow because I have to be one hundred

percent sure. Right, this was September twenty ninth. I'd been I'd been hoting elk since the thirtieth of August. I hadn't drawn my bow back until the thirtieth or the twenty ninth of September, so you know, all the cards were on the line right then and there. So not only you know, we owe it to the animal to do our due diligence to make sure he's not hit. But man, this was a hard earned shot and I wanted to be one hundred and ten percent sure I

hadn't hit him. So I get back and to my dismay, Dusty's standing there holding my arrow and there's no blood on it.

shooting from awkward position. But I get back down there and I arrange it, and the tree is forty yards, it's not fifty yards. So and at that distance, yeah, there's definitely enough enough difference in my forty yard pin and my fifty yard pin where I would shoot over

his back. Som So, I didn't beat myself up too much for not making an accurate shot, but I did beat myself up for not making better mental notes and keeping track, like you know, carving stone, like these are the yardages I need to you know, I need to know I had I had probably transposed one of the trees, you know, one of the other was fifty and that one was forty, you know, which, maybe I'm just getting old, my old age. I'm sure some folks out there can relate.

So anyhow that was that wasn't screw up number three, well number three, and then there was one that kind of continues on that same lines. In Kansas, Dusty and I were hunting, and we were hunting out of a redneck blind. I'm not sure if you guys know what a red neck blind is. It's it's an elevated blind. It's about this one is about fifteen feet in the air, and it's kind of a big fiberglass enclosed blind and it's got windows and stuff. It's kind of like the

taj Mahal of blinds, if you will. Our buddy Randy Milligan out there put this up and had it ready to go, and it was on the last evening of the of the hunt, literally the last fifteen minutes in the last evening in the hunt. And this we see a buck moving down this fence ro next to the timber and he's on a mission, you know, But he don't have his head down. He has his head up and he's kind of walking real proud, real real dominant looking. And I'm like, man, I don't know, we got to

get that deer to us. And he's a couple hundred yards away I'm like, I don't know how I'm gonna do it, because I'd been calling a deer earlier in the hunt and I just wasn't having much luck. And I you know, had at a distance, you know, a couple hundred yards, I'd seen some bucks. I had snort weezed, and then I'd grunt and stuff, and that didn't really seem to help. I'm honestly, I'm pretty new at this

snort weeze world. But I thought, okay, well I'm not gonna snort weez because I hadn't had any luck with it so far. So I'm like, I'm gonna grunt at this thing until he looks over here. So we had I have this new sweet ass prototype Philips deer grunt call, and I'm I'm like, man, I gotta get I got to get this thing's attention. So I started ripping some grunts on this thing. And these weren't your tending, your normal tending, just you know, shortened runts. These were big, loud,

aggressive grunts. They were brah, brah, just ripping, and I did of like six or seven of them. I'm like it, this is it, this is it, this is this is the end. Of the game, right, So if it doesn't work, I guess it didn't work, and we go home and he handed it. But for some reason, if it works,

then we're back in the game. And after like the sixth grunt, he stops in his tracks and he looks over at us, and I'm like, oh, man, I got his attention, yes and no. Sooner than that I thought that, he turned his head and started walking, continuing on his path. I'm like, oh, no, it didn't work, And I thought, all right, so this call also has a bleat call, so a doe bleat feature. So you blow in one side it's it grunts, you suck in on the other

side it bleats. I'm like, okay, maybe I can give him some dough bleaeds and that'll be like, oh, I got to go over there. So I ripped I don't know, three or four big dough bleats, and these things were pretty loud, and I'm just it almost sounds like when you spine a deer and they make that terrible noise. It was almost that intensity. And he didn't look our way at all. But what he did was it almost reminded me of like a big ship in the ocean.

Where you don't really know what's happening, but you just started you've seen it slowly start changing course. He just kind of slowly changed course. He made kind of a big circle, and now he's heading right to us. And I'm just like, oh man, it's like a countdown on the on the stopwatch of like is he gonna get here within shooting light or not? Oh man? And then he was aimed. He was aimed right at us, like

he's gonna come. Well at this point, I remember that every other night we've sat in this blind, I've had a Dave Smith decoy, running buck decoy out there by us, just for a situation just like this. Well, that night Jason Phelps, good old Jason. He had the pickup and I had that decoy in the pickup. Well, he left camp before I did, so he took the He took the pickup and the decoy unknowing unbeknownst to him, he didn't even know he had the decoy in the back.

He wasn't paying attention. Well, we used an ATV to get to this spot, so anyway we were without the decoy. Well, as this buck is coming, I was just like, damn it. I wish I had that freaking decoy right now, because you know, surely that would have been you know, it was strategically strategically placed. He would have come in well within yardage. He would have been, you know, checking out the buck, getting ready to fight. You know he'd been

he wouldn't have been paying attention to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean you should have would have cut her right well. He starts coming to us through this cornfield, partially cut cornfield, and he's getting closer and getting closer and getting closer. But then at about fifty yards he hits this this cut in the corn and then he kind of straightens his line out. He quits coming towards us, and I can see now he's not coming to us. Now, he's he's going to bypass us and keep on going on

that straight line. So I'd already arranged everything, arranged it again. I'm like, okay, it's fifty yards, I can be this shot. But there again, back to that that screw up practicing uncomfortable tricky shots. This was a tricky shot. I don't know if you guys have ever shot out of a redneck blind. They're not made for big guys. They're made for people who are about five foot four. So they have these these vertical windows on the front of the blind, one in each corner. So I had that one open.

It's about a i don't know, probably a foot wide so and probably four feet tall. So I had to get down on my knees. I'm like, man, Dusty, I'm sorry, but I hope you can get this. So he had to film through one of the windows, through the glass and one of the windows, and so we kind of changed positions. I got on my knees and I got scooched up and to where I could draw my bow

and get a shot at this bucket. I drew my bow, put it on him, and I did the old classic you know, like you see on all the all the deer hunting videos. And it took about three of those to get him to stop. And finally he stops. I'm like, oh yeah, And I had my have my fifty yard pin on him and I let it eat and I I watched my my arrow arc and I'm shooting, like I said, I'm shooting lighted knocks and this this time

we can see it. And it was like the longest It was like the longest airborne shot of my life. It was like slow motion when I released that shot and it arked out there and it just like shot out there, just slow, slow, slow lope, and I'm like, oh, yeah, it's gonna get him. It's gonna get him. And then it didn't, and he kind of jumped and ran a little bit and then kind of circled back around and went back over and got all on that same fence row that where we first spotted him and then walked

out of our lives forever. So went over checked for blood. Of course, no blood found my arrow. That's a cool thing about having those light and us when you can see that knock lit up is you can see, you know, it's easy to find your arrow, and it's like, well, yeah, nothing but dirt on this thing. So anyway, it definitely shanked the shot. It was a difficult shot to make from that kneeling kneeling spot. I don't typically like to

shoot an animals that far. I'm usually about a forty five got forty five yard guy, but I'm like a fifty yards I can make that shot. I can I can make the shot when I'm practicing. He didn't seem super jumpy I figured he wouldn't jump the string on me. So anyhow, I would have liked to say he ducked and that's why I missed. And that's kind of at first what I thought. But that's the that's the beauty of when you record your hunts with a with video is you get to go and review the video. No,

I just shot right over him, damn it. So live and learn, right. So this year, what are we gonna do to fix these things? Well, I'm hunting new spot in Idaho again with a buddy, buddy, Cody Wilson from Wyoming. He's gonna come over and we're gonna go hunt. We did, we did some homework. There's quite a few people to hunt there, but there's a lot of rugged, backpack cut

type hunting country. We're gonna hit it, you know, get away from people, get away from roads, and we should be in them number two and they should have camped closer to the areas hunting. Yeah, we're gonna definitely be more strategic. That's where this summer I'm gonna do a lot of summer work up there in this new area that I'm gonna hunt. I'm gonna figure it out right, I'm gonna figure out the optimal places to camp, and if we have to move camp two or three times,

you know, that's okay. But we're not gonna We're not gonna spend driving in a frickin hour from town every morning and every evening. That just soaks up too much time and energy and gas. And and then third, yeah, practicing practice. I'm gonna practice uncomfortable shots. I've been shooting out in the cold this winter. I'm gonna continue to do that through the winter, and I'm just gonna get used to shooting weird. I'm like, I've never really shot

from sitting positions, like in a chair. I don't usually do a lot of kneeling shooting because I don't like setting up for elk. I never set up kneeling just because as a bowl comes in, if you're kneeling, he can come in from a different direction than you're anticipating, and then now you're screwed up. It's really hard to

reposition yourself for a shot. If let's say you thought he was gonna come in off to your left and you're right handed, but he comes in off to your right in you're right handed, you know it's just really difficult to make that shot.

of times will really screw up. You'll get these big puffy clouds. It will go over and they'll cast a shadow on the terrain where you're standing, so you can kind of watch. You can look across a mountain and look over on the other side of the mountain. A lot of times you can see the shadow these clouds are casting upon the timber, so on your side of the mountain. Every time those shadows get cast to where

you're trying to work a bowl or whatever. Earlier, you know you had let's say, bright sunshine on them spots. You have your thermals with that warm air rising. Well as soon as that shadow hits. Man, all hell breaks loose, that'll you'll get currents that'll just immediately switch and blow down hill. Sometimes if it's not real steep country, but you know it's kind of maybe more rolling country that's not that doesn't have a lot of real good steep

pronounced tall ridges. You can get real swirly type wins in those places. And man, I I always try to just push pause, I push paws on the game and just wait. It's like, well, I don't I don't want to go in there and screw it up with my scent before I even you know, get a chance to to screw it up on getting them called in so

very careful. And and some days, you know, I'll admit, there's been sometimes we've we've set there for an hour or two and maybe you can tell you can look at the clouds or whatever, and it's just like it's gotten from bad to worse and you just know it's not gonna happen today. So a lot of times we'll pull out, maybe go somewhere else, try to find somewhere

else that has more favorable wins. But but I know, sometimes you know, folks that have limited time, you know, maybe you're doing the weekend warrior thing, and it's just like, man,

I gotta make it happen. The best advice I can do is, if you have the uphill thermals and down drafts from that kind of a situation, see if there's kind of a common ground to where maybe if you go in on that on that same contour line that the bowl is on, to where maybe you're you're using the crosswind advantage instead of you know, completely being down wind. Maybe you're coming in on a ross wind to where

if it blows up or down, then you're good. But if it swirls, you know, like I say, it's game over. But that's that's my best advice. And you know, sometimes sometimes it just sucks. I've had it where you'll have three or four days in a row of that, and it's so frustrating. It's like, man, I hear bowls and we can't get close to them because we know we're going to blow them out of here. But you have a little bit of time to be patient a lot

of times a little straighten up after a while. Sometimes I've had bluebird days, just like beautiful bluebird days, not a cloud in the sky, not and then the winds just get really weird, and I'm sure a meteorologist or somebody can tell me why that is. But even in those days, I'm just you know, we just play it safe, because that's the one thing you can't really, you can't really fool, is a bull's nose. So just play it safe on those That's what I'd recommend.

But all of a sudden we heard a bugle and we took off after it and we got up above the elk. We were both huffing and puffing, catching our breath. I looked at my buddy and I said, well, what do you think we should do? And he's like, I don't know. I was like, well, I'm just going to bugle see if we can get him to pop off again. And so bugled and he chuckled right below us about

I don't know. I was sixty seventy yards, and we started working our way up to this little saddle a little bit closer, and then all of a sudden I caught a look of the bull. He'sing his way up the side of the ridge to where we were headed, and so I told my buddy to get down. And so I got down on my knees on the edge of the ridge. And there's probably like a real steep, real steep, like I don't know, thirty degree slow, forty five degrees.

on the string and pull it back again. But I couldn't because as I came to realize, my string of derailed and that was that was, that was the heartbreak. My bugle tube got in the way of the string and the cam and it the string hit the bugle tube and broke the bugle tube and the bull got away. And uh, there's a lot longer backstory to the troubles from that bugle tube. But I think y'all sent me a lemon just kidding.

kill the bowl. Right, there's just so many twists and turns and things that can go wrong. And Murphy and his law that it raises his damn head every time. Uh, it seems like and it. Man, I feel for you. That's a that's a tough deal. Yeah yeah, Well, I think only advice I got there is is just practice, you know, double checking your setup, your stance, your your equipment.

And I know that that's super hard because in the moment, you know, you're focused so focused on you know, not getting picked off and getting your bow drawn, you know, making sure you know the yardage, you know, holding your bow right, trying to have the right stance, And that's just one other thing, you know, making sure you don't have a have your bow or a call or binoculars or something that are going to interfere with your your string. And man, that's a heartbreak. And man, I'm sure that

one's gonna hurt for a while. So I'm really sorry to hear that. Man, next next year, you'll make up this year, twenty twenty four, you'll make up for it. You'll you'll probably kill a monster up there in that same spot. So good luck this fall. All right, Caller three, let's hear what you got to say.

why didn't I do this all the other times? And I feel like every time I kill a bowl that I feel this that same way as like, oh, why didn't you do this before? But you know, all the other times leading up to this, this season has just been a disaster and then I finally I get one. But I think that that's that's probably one of the biggest takeaways is not giving up, you know, being persistent,

hang out till last day to the last hour. You know that that buck this this fall, this last fall, had we called it and said, eh, you know, the weather's not great let's just let's just have dinner and go home tomorrow. You know, you know we're gonna hunt from the start bell to the finishing bell. I'm not saying I'm perfect. You know, I've had I had it. I've had a couple of times in the past where I didn't hunt to the final bell, like I threw

in the towel a little bit short. I remember in twenty twenty one in New Mexico, shared a camp with Ryan Lampers and Jason Phelps, and those two ganged up and went hunting all the time. We were there with their camera guy, and then Dusty and I we hunted together for the whole week, and we ran into him a couple of times on the on the mountain. But it was a tough hunt. It was a brutal hunt. Elk didn't act right. It seems like, you know, we say, yeah,

they Elk ain't acting right. I think that's kind of how I Elk act. You know, we want them to act a certain way, and they just you know, they they have a difference of opinion on how they want to play their September. You know, it's not not like textbook all the time. Of course, so all week, you know, you know, we'd had some hot weather, but you would we'd have a kind of a thunderstorm roll in several times that week, and every time that year a thunderstorm

and roll in. You know, it kind of get clouded up and you'd get a tiny, tiny little bit of rain and some thunder and whatever the elk we're doing, it would just clam them up.

This bowl, I called him Grandpa Jones because he was definitely the most mature bowl in the area we're hunting, and he wouldn't have been any kind of big record book bowl. He had a weird ass rack. He had these He had one browtye that came kind of just straight out and then kind of dipped a little bit, and I'll swear to God, that thing was probably twenty seven inches long. It went out past his nose and

it was an incredible length for a browtye. And then you know, the next two or three points were pretty long, you know, so he had real nice the bottom ends of his of his rack was good, but then it just petered out after the fourth point. Short beamed. One side it was a perfect five, but on the side he had that weird point. He had like seven or

eight on that point on that side. But he was He was no record book bowl, but he had a He had a nice, heavy, big heavy rack, and the score might have surprised as you if you were into major and horns. Maybe maybe not. I still think he was no big record book bowl, but he had a giant body. And what overshadowed everything was he had this bugle that was just the most gnarly, nasty bugle.

I was like, oh my god. So I slowly started pulling an arrow out and getting it knocked because I wasn't ready. Of course, I thought he was up the hill a ways further. So I slowly trying to narrow knocked. And as I was putting my arrow down on the rest, I pushed it through the little retainer thing on the rest and I didn't have any moleskin on my on my on my riser and my bow rookie mistake, and my arrow went clanking. It accidentally clanked on the riser

and the bow looked up. He looked right, he looked right through me, and he went and you let out this really soft guttural grolly bugle, and then he kind of put his head back down started eating again. I was like, oh man, man, I'm gonna get him. I'm gonna get him. So I finally get my arrow on the string, I get my release on the string, and I'm just starting to put some tension on it, and he looks up again and looks at me, and then you could literally see the recognition in his eyes. He

just like, that's a fricking guy standing there. And soon he as soon as he acknowledged that he was gone, he just whirled and took off, and then we ran over and grabbed his cows, and and uh. They bugled across the hillside, across the mountain, over and across the drainage to go over the other side, and there was bulls all around. There was probably eight different bulls there. It was an absolute rut fest. We hadn't had anything like that at all up unto that point. During that

week had been pretty tough. And Uh, anyway, so two more I had two more encounters with that bull. Anyway, On the last encounter, he just who do he need? Is he? We were up on that same hill and I don't know where that thing would go bed down, but he would go bed somewhere and he would not make a peep. We'd follow these tracks and then we kind of lose them. They get through some thick stuff and they'd get into some rocky stuff and we would lose their tracks. And I don't know where the hell

the elk went? Is so frustrating. And about the time that we'd lost him again, I just we got our teeth kicked in morning, did a big thunderstorm rolls in. I'm just like, well, we haven't all week long every time a thunder storm rolled in, get a tiny little bit of rain, and the elk shut up. I'm like,

let's go. This is the last there was. You know, we had just a few hours, you know, four or five hours left of the hunt, and I'm like, let's go, let's go back pack our stuff up, Let's get in early, head start home, because we got a long ways to go home. And if we get if we get back with enough time on our hands, we could maybe hunt in Idaho a little bit. Well, Lampers and Phelps they were out there still, and they didn't they didn't throw

on the towel. They stuck into the inn, and Lampers shot his bowl right there at the ending bell, right at the last few minutes a light on the last day. They they'd kind of changed areas. They went a couple miles away from where we've been chasing Grandpa Jones and found a bunch more elk, and it was a melee. There was bullspugling everywhere and shooting shooting one. So anyway,

don't give up, don't give up. I mean that was stupid, you know, looking back, that was really stupid to me to you know, sacrifice a few hours early start to where it's like, you know, we should have just stuck it with it, you know, but you know, at the time I justified it, and looking back now is a fool to do that. So that won't happen again. I can guarantee you I'll get I'll get my teeth kicked in again. But I'm not going to give up early and go home, all right, Color number four.

of time, right. If you're out there, you know, it's just a game of odds. If you're out there, you put yourself out there enough times, you're gonna have a run in. Someday. I'll probably have a run in with a cat, wolf, bear, whatever we have you. Hopefully it's a black bear, not a grizzly. But here's an old story from back in my olden days as a young man.

I remember I remember talking to a guy and he'd had a similar situation with a cat during September, and he was calling an elk and he got kind of got the willies, you know, he's just like, man, my hair stood up, and he's like, man, what the heck's going on? And he turned around and there's a mountain lion crouched just right behind him, just a few yards behind him. So he drew his bow. He had his arrow knocked, drew his bow, pulled back, shot, the cat jump, rolled,

took off. Couldn't find it. Never found a blood some but it never could find it. Fast forward a few years, I can't remember how many years exactly, probably two or three, and in the in the newspaper, there was a picture of a guy with a mountain lion that he'd taken with dogs in the wintertime, and it only had one eye, and upon skinning, the cat out. They discovered he had a broadhead in his eye socket, and follow the story

a little further. It was in that same area where that other hunter had shot that one that was stalking him and then it got away. So you know, had the had the broadheads to you know, match it up, and and the the little bit of the shaft of the arrow to confirm his story. So it is crazy. Crazy things can happen out there in the woods. You get predators stalking you, the hunter becomes the hunted. I hope I don't have a spooky run in with one, but I'm sure it's going to happen at some point.

But thanks for the story, man, that's awesome. Congratulations, glad you guys kicked as this year. Before Let's see what the next caller, caller number five, I had to say.

I am, I thought it still might be helpful. Provided a list for you, Dirt of a few things that you did wrong.

how the entire tent indicated. I was actually looking forward to getting up so I didn't have to hear that nine horsepower chainsaw with blunt edges trying to cut through a camerack tree on that.

bad place. I needed to kill an elk. All right, all right, calling number six.

hard fought days, no questions at all. So something that I think would be good to get your feedback on is the elk here in Idaho never really seemed to go crazy repfest and it was tough, and there were two bulls in my mind that I can recall that I spent a lot of time facing because they just never fully went ready, but they were extremely vocal bulls

who just kept tugging me along. We actually named one of them the Big Boss Baby Bowl because he seemed to be a pretty nice six point but he always just kept his distance and he.

pulling the collar back and everything. But he's elsa smart and they don't get to be mature by being dumb. So it's something that we spent a lot of days is this September doing and I think it would be good to get your insight on so next year can be a better year and maybe we don't have to spend twenty one days in one state hunting out. So I appreciate the feedback and look forward to hearing your answer.

last fall too. It's like the elk were social distancing. They never got pissed off. They would talk, they would talk, but I could not. I never got to the point where they would just lose their mind and just get really aggressive. And I've kind of talked about this on some of the other podcasts where earlier on where I call it the Year the Huckleberry, Right, the Year the Huckleberry. The elk don't rut hard, they don't bugle like they normally do. And if we equate this to what do

you call it the year of the huckleberry? Well, on good huckleberry years. If you don't know what huckleberry is, it's kind of like a blueberry. But they're growing. They grow in the mountains as certain parts of Idaho, Montana, maybe some Wyoming. I haven't seen a lot of them in Wyoming, definitely Washington in Oregon. But they're delicious, man,

Huckleberry milkshakes, get out, huckleberry pie, huckleberry anything is amazing. Anyway, on the years there's a bumper crop of huckleberries that's attributed to a couple of things, maybe a really good snowpack and a really wet summer, maybe both, maybe one or the other one. But those huckleberries to do really well, they need a lot of moisture, and sometimes in the summer we have some pretty hot, dry summers in Idaho in the Northwest, and sometimes they don't do as good

as others. And this year we had a lot of We had a really good snowpack. We had a lot of rain this summer, more than that we have in the last few and the huggleberries were good. What the heck is elki huckleberries? Well, they do, but not on

the scale like bears do. But the biggest takeaway is if there's a lot of huckleberries, there's a lot of grass, there's a lot of feed normal the other stuff the elk like, you know, whether it's browse, you know, you're you're talking maples and mountain maples, and you're talking all sorts of other kind of little brush and browse and then grass. When there's there's a lot of water, there's a lot of that feed all over the mountains. So the elk doesn't seem to concentrate. And this is all theory.

This is my theory. You know, maybe you guys have a different one. Be cool to hear it. But when there's a lot of when there's a lot of grass everywhere, they don't seem to concentrate as much into those into those places like on a dry year, on a dry ear,

the feed is not quite so pronounced. It's in, it's in more focused spots, and those elk tend to go to those focused spots, and not only they compete for feed, but there can they they find they find each other, you know, there, and then there's more bulls competing for those females, and that creates a dynamic where they're a lot more rambunctious. You know, they're fighting or all the time,

or keeping those other bowls away all the time. So in like dry years too, you know, you see you see a lot of broken bulls, and part of me thinks, well, is because the're dry and the antlers are more brittle. Maybe they didn't have as good a feed that year, and there they didn't have as much to put into their horns to make them strong. But on the second half, I mean, maybe it's because they're so scrapy because all those elk are concentrated on those food sources. So anyway,

I kind of digressed there a little bit. But anyway, I kind of experienced that same thing this last fall. And but on the flip side, I did I did talk to some guys and gals that had really good luck, they had better than average luck and where they were hunting. So I'm not sure what the difference was. A lot of it's the same type of country, but not the same country where I was at. So elk are always

a head scratcher. You think, right when you think you got got them figured out, then they they let you know that you don't have figured out. So, but that's why I always say this is the theory. But what I like to do in those instances where the bulls just kind of social social distance themselves from me, it's imperative to have another caller. So you have a caller and a shooter. It's really difficult when you're just by

yourself solo. Last fall, I was solo, and it was really difficult for me to to to call and then get close enough to the bowl without him just kind of spooking off. So if you have a caller that can stay back one hundred and two hundred yards and just talk, you know, keep them talking, not get aggressive, just keep them talking, just like hey there, oh hey, you know, you're just you're just maintaining contact with your

calls to where you're just keeping that bulk talking. And that's when your shooter just gets quiet and gets over to that bowl and tries to sneak in on them. That's that's my best recommendation on that stuff, because I know exactly what you mean. Just you put it a little bit of pressure, or you get a little bit, you take a couple of steps towards them, You go one hundred yards towards them and they go four hundred yards away, and that is so frustrating. I've I've did this,

that whole scenario all last September. So maybe get your pops there to do to do the call in and let you put the sneak on them or vice versa. I know I watched your video. I've seen you guys kind of did some of that too, So maybe focus on that a little bit more. Of course, it's not a perfect science. It's it's difficult, especially in country. It's got a little bit of cover, it's hard to sneak up on them. There's hard to be quiet. Those balls will hear you coming if it's super brushy or thick.

But anyway, thanks for calling Richard, good luck this fall. Look forward to see what you and your dad doing this this fall of twenty twenty four. Caller seven, Hey, Dirk, Dave.

us a curveball. I hunted that area for nineteen straight consecutive days and never killed a single didn't didn't feel a single.

not going to be the same every year. So don't ever think that you are so good that you got it in the back. That's all I got to say.

You might think you're gonna score, but you're not. Like it's easy to get that lulled into that that confidence of oh yeah, I've got this area figured out, or I've got these elk figured out, or I'm I'm I've got this I'm a pretty good hunter. And I'm just here to tell you winning streaks are made to be broken. I know some some really, really great hunters that are on some killer winning streaks, and man I got the most respect for him. But at some point you may

get that broken. Now, depending on there's factors to where Why did your winning screens winning streak get broken? Was it just a comedy of errors like we talked earlier, Like you know, you just can't catch a break, bad wind getting picked off elk, don't bugle, or you had opportunities, but maybe you know you were just really trying to get that one certain bowl and it just never happened. That's a pretty fulfilling way to break a winning streak.

It's frustrating as hell, but it's still fulfilling because you got a lot of had a lot of fun. You you could have taken a bowl, but you weren't. It wasn't you weren't your heart wasn't it. You just didn't want that one. You had your heart set on something else. You know, that's a that's a pretty fulfilling way. But sometimes try as hard as you want, you cannot connect the dots, and those are about the worst way to in their winning streak. It's very frustrating. So man I

feel you and I've been there. I'm I mean I've been I've had some pretty damn good winning streaks and be like, oh, yeah, I'm hunting this spot. I know it inside and out. I've done my due diligence. I've hunted there, I know what the elk do, and just get my teeth kicked in. So you're not alone, man,

And that's a very good point. So I think confidence kills, but you can't be so confident that you maybe overlook some of the just some little things you know that maybe contribute to success or just get you just get beat up, and it just you go home and you sit there in silence and stare at the wall for hours, like what just happened? I can't believe my season ended

like that? But anyway, the good thing is is twenty twenty four is a new season and it's a great time to start a new winning streak and not a losing streak. We don't want to get on like on a losing streak. My buddy Chuck Charlie, he's on a hell of a losing streak. Ah, Man, I feel for the guy, but he's gonna turn around one of these days because he's a heck of a hunter. He's a heck of a caller, But I know it's just you gotta he get bucked off. You gotta climb back in

the saddle again and just get after it. So anyway, thanks for that call. All right, here's the last caller, caller number eight. Let's hear what color eats guys to.

You know, good for you, man, that's that's awesome. So I'd like a fantastic here there you go a little different part of the state. Richard is beating his head against the wall because the elk won't rut hard and Tyler's up there. He killed two of them. So you just never know. And always, I always say, I always tell people to stay mobile, right, don't get stuck in a rut. And where you're hunting in that particular spot, maybe it's really easy to like, oh, I know there's

elk here, and I don't want to leave. But sometimes branching out and changing going from one side of the hunting unit over to the other one, you know, depend on how big the unit is you might be able to cover one hundred miles in between or something. And sometimes just changing those zip codes will produce big dividends because elk may not be doing squat where you've been hunting, but over on the other side of the unit, they're

on fire. I've had that. I don't know how many times work out for me that way, so I always recommend it. And this year I did that a lot. I jumped around all over the zip codes and I still got my teeth kicked in. So I'm just you know, it's it's.

So anyhow, Yeah, and you know what, if you guys want to call in anytime and leave a message with a question on elk hunting, deer hunting, turkey hunting, bear hunting, if you want to be a smart ass and say something funny about Jason Phelps and how his his pink diaphragms suck. Those are the best. Those are even better. I will play those all day long because you know, we know who Team Maverick is. If you know, you know. But anyway, if you want to call in, uh, call

the Super Secret hotline. It's two O eight two one nine seven seven zero one, leave a message. I have three minutes.

Calls page. So but then he started a personal one and it's just not don't going so well for him. So hey, if you guys are on there and you like the podcast, you like our calls, you like what we do. We like following our adventures. Go give Jason Phelps. It's Jason Glenn Phelps on Instagram a follow. Hit him up with a friend request on Facebook. He's probably got so many he can't accepting more friends on Facebook, though, I get I'll bet he's he's one of those guys.

But if if you, if you feel so inclined you want to give me a follow. It's the bugler one word on Instagram and Facebook and uh and and check out my YouTube channel. There's some some how to use elk call videos on there. They're really good, walk you through all the steps of how to use the elk calls. And there's some cool hunts on there too. Speaking of hunts, February fifth, I believe a new film is going to drop on the Phelps Game Calls channel YouTube channel, and

it's called Ghost Bowls of the North. Dusty Rupe and I cameraman Dusty. In twenty twenty two we were up in the North Country hunting bugling bowls and it's a pretty good film. Pretty good film. Go get a watch if you're bored and want to watch a little bit of elk hunting. Like I said, February fifth, it's going to come out if you follow us on social we'll make a big deal about it and put out some trailers and some teasers and some announcements to let you

know when that drops in case you forget. But anyway, that's coming up. Pretty excited about it. So until next time, guys, thanks for listening, and we'll catch you on the flip flop