Ep. 84: Dirk and Jason Answer Listener Elk Hunting Questions

in a bad way. He can't he can't keep up with me on his followers. And you know that's not that's kind of a humble brag at my part, but you know, I'm just trying to try to give him some love. And so if you guys are on Instagram and you like like Jason Phelps, give him a give him a follow and uh, and you might even send him a DM and just let him know what you think about the podcast.

take advantage of those times to record some podcasts. We're gonna knock out a handful of them here while we're together, and hopefully you guys enjoy them. And today we're taking we're talking elk hunting, and we've taken some questions, some

listener questions from the Super Secret Hotline. And if you guys ever want to call in and leave a message, you can let me know, you know, any criticisms or instructions for Jason Phelps to you know, be a better podcast or maybe just a better human being, then you can always call in and call in The Super Secret Hotline number is to await two one nine seven to seven zero one and leave a message. It can't be longer than three minutes, I think, so he'll have to

be mindful of your time. Your make your question about hunting, elk hunting, deer hunting, turkey hunting, whatever, make a brief question or a comment about, you know, Jason and his lack of hair on his head.

kind of episodes we can do. But anyhow, did you have any other criticisms? Jason?

or so years left in my legs. And yeah, I've done your ELK Collective and quite a few online modules and yeah, I got some questions for you, So to give you some context, Yeah, I'm hunting North Idaho, Fick train, panhandle general tags, so you know, you know what I'm talking about there. So your mission, should you choose to accept it. I think you could do an entire podcast on these questions. Basically two questions. The first one has

three subparts. So the first one I'll just fire away here basically trying to formulate more robust day hunt plan. And so I think a day hunt plan would would generally be kind of like three categories that could be broken down into your morning hunt plan, the midday madness so that I think you coined, and then the evening strategy. And so just some specific questions on those three categories.

Morning strategy, you know, would would you prefer to be you know, high elevation above them in the morning and kind of descend down on them and negotiate the thermals in the wind or would you rather kind of start at access point low and come high. So that'd kind of be my morning question. Midday I think you could spend a lot of time and if you kind of break down your strategy for for midday Basically the assumption is you know where some elk are at and you've

got to get them to talk. Kind of running through that, calling seasonal tendencies to biography, you know, when to be patient, do you just hang out for another couple hours, so on and so forth? And then the evening strategy, you know, is that basically kind of just the reverse of the morning strategy. So kind of breaking down your day hunt plan into those three categories. Last question just kind of for a guy like me's going two hours or so.

To my side, I can do h you know, would you rather type deal three four day hunts or would you rather do go all in for a ten day stint? So those are my questions. I hope you can tackle it again. Appreciate your podcast, thanks to.

work possible. Anybody that's listened to me talk elk hunting, I'd always prefer to spot elk without half in the bugle, without halving to see him, just so I can observe and do some of that. So my morning is always to usually get on a high point if possible, let my glassing work. Now I'm gonna, you know, recognize that we're in North Idaho and that's probably not going to happen. So then what I want to do if I have to use audible method, I'm going to try to get

the high ground. I want to be on a ridge top typically and then just work work those areas, you know, be high. I want to locate elk. You know, whether it's through glassing or audible, get high, lokate elk and then and now some may say, and he talked about it, there are times that if I know elk are going to be in the similar areas day after day, I will start low and just take my chances that I know they're there. I don't need to be high anymore

to do that. I'm gonna go get the thermals right because I feel my best play is to try to take advantage before those thermals switch in the morning. And so it's really just, you know, I do a lot of these, you know, being a math nerd, being an engineer, I equate everything too well. If I stay high, spot them and then have to go low, my percentage is seventeen percent chance and I'm gonna kill it. But if I go low, can't see them, but they're there now, my odds are up to thirty.

get the wind. If I have to be patient, which I'm not good at, I'll sit and kind of shadow it and tell the thermal switch whatever it needs to be. But number one, in the morning, I'm always trying to find Elk first and foremost, and then I have to deal with the wind that's presented the train vegetation from there mid day and a lot of the mid day

is going to depend on how my morning went. So sometimes, especially in New Mexico, we seem to get stuck in the cat and mouse game, and we'll do that and a lot of other places, but more so so, you may follow Elk to bed and then sit there and like figure out the winds and thermals, and you're like, ah, these things are pretty dang smart craters. They betted it in a spot that I can't get to. So we start to think, like, well, if we sit on these all day, is there a bowl in there I want

to go after? And I want do I want to go find something else? So sometimes we'll just sit on elk all afternoon, as frustrating as it is, you take a nap, you're in a safe spot, you can observe, you can hear them do their midday bugles. Now, if these elk decide to go to bed and you're waiting for a thermal switch or it's going you're gonna have to methodically and slowly get in there. With the wind.

You can go after those elk at times midday. So let's say they're in an area you're not very confident in, Sit and listen, Sit and wait for thermals to change. If I'm presented with that, I love hunting elk in the middle of the day. If I feel I've got an advantage, or the wind isn't an issue and visibilities low and there's no threat of me bumping those things out, I'll make my play and move in very, very slow. If you have the wind right, hopefully you'll smell them

before you get too close. And if that bowl continues to bugle from his bed or bugle occasionally throughout the midday, you'll have a very good low you know, a pin on his location. One thing I'd like to caution people with though a lot of times as you approach elk, especially if it's a herd bowl bedded with cows, you know. Maybe not so much on satellites. Is the satellites, if they are there or around, typically will be on that down wind side. Almost is lookouts or you know, scouts

for these things. So I would say the majority of the time on bigger herds that I know, herd, bulls and satellites are together, you will somewhere along the way bump or potentially run into those satellites on your way to that herd bowl that may be bugling, So keep that in mind as well. So midday, let's say we didn't get on something right away, midday is going to turn into an ELK finding mission. Right if I'm not on Elk, I'm always trying to find elk. So I'm

looking at the train, am I running ridges? Am I looking at like low passes where ELK may have went through that morning. I'm also going to continue to bugle into areas with with some you know, just to see if I can get a response from that bowl in his bed. I'm just looking to find elk that once again, either I can go after right away or two save

for the night hunt. So now as we're rolling through on the evening, I'm once again, if I don't have elk found still from the morning or the afternoon, I'm going I'm going back to finding elk one either to hunt them that night or two to find them in which a lot of time, especially if you can use glass,

which you can't North Idaho. Specific to this question, you can save them for the morning if the thermals aren't right or you know, let's say you're high on a ridge again, you get bowls to people down to the basin unless the thermals you know, or the thermals won't allow you to make a play unless you can get way below them or or whatnot. So we'll typically leave you know, those things alone and come back in the

morning where we've got a different plan. But yeah, I don't want to oversimplify this question, but I also don't want to take up the whole podcast on it. If you oversimplify this, it's find elk and hunt elk or you find out to wait on elk to hunt the elk later, and it's it kind of goes through those three you know, morning, midday, afternoon. Like I said, I'm pretty pretty vanilla on this, get high, locate or locate either glassing or audible find out and go hunt them.

towards those longer hunts. It lets me kind of start to figure things out, make a plan, no where pressure's at right then, Versus if you're going in and out, you don't know what's happening during the week, you don't know what happened on the weekends. I prefer that that ten day hunt just because of my mind. I feel like I've I know a little more about what's going on, and maybe I have a little more control over the situation.

Versus if I keep showing up and leaving, Yeah, you may hit the rut better or the timing may be better. Versus pressure versus not pressure. Yeah, I it's I would prefer that longer trip.

Mondays and Tuesdays. There are a lot of times there's less people, you know, people have gone home, there's less of those weekend warriors out there. But anytime I've had those smaller like long weekends I've hunted, it seemed like about the time I got into Elk really good and had them nailed down in perfect like Okay, I got them going, and then I have to go to work

the next day. So I would always kind of like it would always just kind of like shorten or just like I'd have to just leave bugling Elk when I should be staying longer. So I always kind of felt like, man if I could have those ten day hunts to put it all together, find and put it all together, and then actually hunt those elk that I'd found. It seems to work better. So I kind of agree with you, Jason.

But I know some people, you know, just scheduling and maybe it's really hard to get ten consecutive days off, you know, with work schedules and stuff. I can understand that, so, you know, I take advantage of any time off you can.

But or maybe you know it's an area you haven't really hunted before and you don't want to commit to a ten day hunt, but this, you know, four day hunts work better for you, you know, you know, three four day hunts or whatever that might just so that way you can hunt every every you know, stage of that September rut and be like, Okay, well these a rut during this week better than they do these other weeks, and maybe next year I'll take my ten day ten

days off during this specific week that you found that they seem to be rutting better or or maybe there's less hunting pressure, depending on how you want to hunt it, whether you're calling elk or spot in stock so, but since it's North Idaho, you're probably going to be on to call them rather than spot in stock. There's just

not a lot of spot in stock opportunities. I mean there's a lot of country that's you know, it's private tip, private timber country, company ground, also state lands that are logged off, and man, some of these clearcuts are getting savagely large, so you could potentially, you know, glass them up and and make moves off that kind of like what Jason alluded to. There's some big country where you can glass you know, a mile or two away at elk,

cannot disturb them and start making plans. Oh, they're they're feeding out in this big block of stuff that's cut and then there's a there's a big block of timber over there. They're going in there into there every morning. So you can then maybe shift your your midday plan to go hunt those elk once you've got them located first thing in the morning. But uh my might go to morning plan for for North Idaho or wherever is

cover country. Right, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna check as soon as I get out of the truck, I'm gonna I'm gonna check for bugles. You know, it's crazy. There's a lot of people who will get out of their truck they'll throw their pack on there, they'll throw their bow on their pack, and they'll just start hiking

a trail. You know, if you're a park to the trailhead and there's fifteen pickups spark there and it doesn't look like there's any gonna be any elk around close by, you know, it would make sense to probably do that. But sometimes by checking, like if you're the only one there, I would definitely check you're as soon as you get out of the truck and bugle, because sometimes you know elk are not too far away from the road. And then once you you try to check that low hanging fruit,

I'm gonna hike out. Whether it's a trail, maybe it's a ridge, maybe it's down off into some steep hell hole, I'm gonna hike down in there. And I typically, uh, the key thing is hike down or whoever I'm gonna I'm gonna stay high but looking for elk. They're probably gonna be below me. So I'm gonna hike around and try to try to find those elk from a high point. And the reason is for me in the country, I hunt.

If you're down low, you're a lot of times you're at the bottom of the mountain, you're a lot of times you're in the bottom of a crick drainage and there's a lot of noise from from the water. First off, it's really hard to bugle up into these places without contending with the noise from a creek running, and which makes it really difficult to hear bugles distant bugles. And also if you're trying to cover the same amount of country.

Let's say you're trying to cover a certain drainage, and if you're trying to do it from the bottom side, especially North Idaho, you're gonna have way more nooks and crannies that you'll cover more miles walking from the traveling the bottom end of a drainage versus running ridge tops. There's just way more contours at the bottom, you know, ins and outs and gullies and stuff that you're gonna

have to you're gonna have to walk through. And then also the creek bottoms are always full of blowdowns, they are always thicker, there's more vegetation just because there's more water there, and it can be super difficult to navigate. So I like to stay on top and a lot of the North Idaho roads limb themselves to that kind of hunting. Most of the roads, a lot of the roads are on top. You know, there are roads in the bottoms and stuff, but a lot of the roads

are on ridgetops, it seems like. So that's what I would do for my morning. And then I'm just gonna hunt.

You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna cover country until I can hear a bugle, and then I'll get the wind right, I'll i'll, I'll dive in and and try to drop down to their level and try to get get the wind right, and then you know, set up for my calling cereal, and then as far as midday goes there again kind of like what Jason said, whatever the whatever intel I've got from that morning will kind of dictate how I hunt that afternoon. So maybe I didn't hear anything.

Maybe I walked out there where I thought I was gonna hear stuff and I didn't hear a dang thing. So I'll use that afternoon time to just cover country. You know, I'm just walking, I'm walking, I'm bugling, and I'm just checking every little pocket, every little drainage, every little let's say, I'm on a great, big ridge system. I may walk back and forth the top of the ridge and bugle from one drainage and down into another drainage,

just kind of leaven every stone unturned. Now, let's say I've I've found elk in the morning, and this happens a lot. Let's say you hear distant bugles and they're it's it's massively hard country to hunt, very steep, big deep canyon and lots of you know, blowdowns and thick trees and brush. It just takes a long time to get there. So sometimes you locate them in the morning and then you kind of figure out where they kind of slow down and bed down. You hear their last bugles,

and they their bugles kind of get lazy sounding. It's like, okay, those those elk are going to bed up on that and that saddle or on that little bench or whatever. So a lot of times I'll use that mid day to navigate to that spot. It may take half the day to hike into some of those places, just because you know, as the crow flies are, you know, distance wise, it's not that far. But I always say North Idaho like three to five miles is like ten hiking ten

miles in Wyoming or Colorado. It's just it's so thick and so difficult to traverse. So sometimes you spend most of your midday just closing that gap in some of those kind of places, or if or if the elk are on your side of the mountains, like, Okay, I've located the elk in the morning, I've because of wind or whatever, I just didn't want to or maybe how fast they were moving, I just didn't want to make a move and try to set up on them as

they were moving that morning. Then I'll I'll you still use that time to get close in the midday and wait till those midday winds stabilize, and it you have to kind of sit because you can get kind of fooled.

What I do, My rule is like once the winds kind of stabilize, what I do is I get as close as I can where I can be safe from the winds filling it up, and I'll sit down and I'll kind of watch my clock for about thirty minutes, and if the winds remain stable for about thirty minutes, then at that point it's like, Okay, I think I think we're good to make a move and try to get in there, and so then strategically I'm gonna I'm gonna be very calculated and make sure I move in

when the winds are right. If the winds never do get right, you know, some days are just like that, you got winds swirling every witch away because you got

big puffy clouds overhead or whatever. Then some days I'll just spend sitting there waiting until evening time to make my move, and then the evening time it's It's the same way if I've committed to a big, a big day hike where I'm a long waist from the truck, you know, I'll I'll continue to hunt till dark, and then that's in the dark is when I start hiking out, and you know, it may take a while, but usually I'm trying to hit my a trail or a way to get back to the truck easily in the dark,

because sometimes at North Iidahoa it just is so brushy it's hard to navigate in the in the dark with a head lamp. A lot of trips and falls and stuff. But there again, I'm continuing to search for bugles all the way to dark, and then i head back to the truck and head back to camp. I will most of the time. I won't see camp in the daytime. I leave before the first light, and I get back at nine ten o'clock at night, eat something, go to bed, do it all again the next day. So that's that's

how I do it. Do you have anything else to.

herd of cows? Do they not even go solo? You know, because it seems like it seems like such a small window you maybe have like a day or two, But it seems like with me every time I swear, sometimes I'm like, I think I'm out early enough, and I find them big bulls and they're already heard it up.

have bulls biggling. You'll start to have bulls with the herd. But typically happens is the smaller, smaller, more immature bulls will round up the herd and run with them, and then they will get replaced by the more mature bulls, and then ultimately it's like the pecking order from the bottom up. You'll have small bulls with the herd biegl in pretending like that thing, and then they'll get maybe a semi mature bowl, and then you'll ultimately get the

big bowl that comes in at the end. The weill ultimately ends up being the herd Bowl throughout throughout the season will end up being that herd Bowl. So it's almost like a reverse pecking order. August twenty fifth, you'll start to hear these bulls.

bouchered up after last year's rep. Potentially, you know a lot of the big big bulls will go solo for a while and then they'll join back up, you know, as they start to put velvet on and and you know April May, they'll become buddies, and they'll be buddies all summer and then they become you know, their their rivals.

From from about August fifteenth on, they'll start to establish that pecking order, so we I honestly don't have a lot of hunting experience hunting them in that time where they're not with the herd or at least thinking about being with the herd, you know, most of the seasons. Utah has a very early opener. I think Nevada has a couple of early openers. I don't even know when they can start hunting in Wyoming, isn't it typically September first?

So yeah, which you may like the very first five days of September may be able to find that big bull off the herd. And typically what he will do is he'll come in and check during the the you know, at night, check on the cows, and then he'll typically leave in the morning. So he may not hang with that herd until some of these cows start coming you know into Estris uh, and then he'll start to hang

with that herd full time. But I do know when it comes to I'm still gonna describe strategy when when those bulls are solo or staging off is it comes down to just the pattern you have to pattern those elk. You can use cow calls, you can use you know,

calling to your advantag in that late August timeframe. But you know, talking with Ryan Carter and some of the guys that you know, I've got to got to know and talk about, you know, these this early season l hunting almost pre rut even sooner than that, is you

got a pattern these these big bulls. When I used to go out in Washington and just scout, you know, you could almost you know, some of these bulls, you could set your watch to them where they were going to be, what clear cut they were going to feed, and what patch of timber they were going to go bed in. So you know, what I've seen, what I've heard of people that actually get to hunt them is

you need to kill them early. You need to kill them why they're patternable, and you need to kill him before pressure from these hunting seasons starts to move them. So that's the best answer I got. I would say, unless you're able to hunt somewhere from or excuse me, August twenty fifth, about that September second or third range, you're probably not going to catch these big bulls that

you're talking about by themselves for too long. At some point, you know, after that, as soon as that first Estra cow comes into estrous. He's gonna now join the herd and hang out. So that's that's what I got for you on those those early season tactics prior to those bulls hurding up.

least been my experience. So with that in mind, some of the things I've noticed, like I feel like once those bulls kind of separate their bachelor groups, they they shed their velvet, they kind of move away from each other. Then they go to these little places I kind of like to call them a little like a bowl bedroom or a little Heidi hole or something. They'll kind of go be by themselves and they'll kind of space out from each other, and maybe they'll probably sometimes they'll stand

in the same drainage. Sometimes they just completely move out of the country, just depending on where those cows are living. So if you can kind of identify where those cows are living, then those bulls are probably going to stage up pretty close, but maybe not with them, so they'll be close enough to where when things start happening, they'll start smelling the smells, but they're not actively living day to day with the cows. They're still in those little

bull bedrooms. And you'll find those places. You'll have like a drainage with all these little finger ridges in them, and like almost every if there's a lot of elk there, almost every little finger ridge, you'll have a bowl on that on that ridge, and he'll have a little like a little flat spot or a little bench or somewhere where he can feel safe, and you'll find a little bedding area there, typically be on like a north face where then you'll find them where they've been they've been

rubbing their horns in there. You'll see rubs that from mid to late August all the way up until like the first week of September there and then once it was cows start coming in heat, they'll disappear from those places and go go be with the cows. But if you can find that, if you can find those elk, you know, I would hunt the opener through the very you know opener season. If did he say it was from Wyoming, I can't remember, Yeah, So I'd hunt the

Wyoming opener that I take that first ten days. And you know, year to year may be different on what you're going to find as far as behavior and where the elk are at and how they are receptive to calling. But early I found and I've hunted Wyoming early several times. And if bulls will bugle sometimes bugles. Sometimes you can't hardly get a bold of bugle on that early first

part of the season. Sometimes they they can, but if you can get them to bugle and you can get in their little on their little their little Heidi hole there, if you can kind of get in there, bulls a lot of times will come and they'll be defensive of that spot, and some of the bugling all here in

that period of time won't be super aggressive bugles. They'll be more they'll they'll they'll bugle, but you won't hear them give you that really nasty, mean bugle like you'd get later in the month when they have cow's, like I'm gonna come kill you type of bugle, don't. I don't think they bugle as much like that, though it is a possibility. I mean, you never say never when you're calling oak, but a lot of times will come out of curiosity, like who the heck is this trying

to come into my spot here? This is my spot. I want you to leave, and they'll want to come push you out of that. So that's worked really well for me, But I find in those places is pretty critical. And how to do that you just got to It's covering tons of country, right, and you know where that maybe the cows are, So probably the ridges in the mountains above them or very close by are probably gonna

be where those bulls are at. And I've found and this, like I said, this isn't always always the case, but I found more often than not, balls in that early season, that opening opening week are more receptive to bugles than the cow calls. I'm testing both, right, I'm gonna get put out caw calls, I'm gonna put out bugles, But a lot of times the replies I'm getting are to the bugles. So once I kind of find that they're only applying to bugle, I kind of cut cut the

cow calls way back. I might still throw out one or two here and there, but I'm gonna keep giving him what he really likes. And and I think it's still you know, I think you're in that tail end of that pecking order period where they're still you know, like, hey, you know I I don't want you in my spot or I'm the toughest guy around or whatever. I think they're still you know, assuring or continue with that that

who's the most dominant BWL around. So if you can get get close into those little areas and and get them fooled into coming in, you know, you know, get them get them worked up. I don't I don't typically go at him hard out and typically just start cutting them off and stuff. I just let things kind of

build slowly. When I start bugling too a bull in those situations, I kind of match his intensity and then I kind of let him escalate little by little, and then pretty soon he gets wound up enough to where here he comes. But you got to be close to you can't. You typically can't get him to bugle and

come in and Claire crossed the canyon. In those situations, it's it's like you have to be right on his little ridge, right on his little little Heidi hole, you know, within one hundred and two hundred yards of him, because he wants to be defensive of that space. So that that's my my recommendations. I'd go early the first week of season, and some years it'll be like, Wow, this was great at work, like a charm, and the next

year you're like, these zelk aren't here. They've they've already moved off and they've they've got cows, and then you're just gonna have to hunt them like that too, and herd bulls again. If they got cows, I'm gonna try to try to call them out of the bedding area. That's usually the best best time they're done running for the day. They got those cows in a safe place.

Now they're gonna be very defensive of that spot. And you get close and start start calling to them and start start challenging them, they're gonna want to come out of there and push you out to keep you from taking their cows. So that's my that's my take on it, all right. Question number three, Hey Derek, this.

do you take into effect with that? And also on calling for yourself, how much when if you're bugling with a back and forth with a bull, is it a good idea to stay put or should you move a little bit once the boat moves in a close a little bit closer and tries a pinion on your location, that should be it. Appreciate it.

at night, early in the morning. But as far as planning your hunt, like I would pick a hunt, a hunt with a full moon in the peak of the rut, so I can experience that or be involved in that then, you know, similar to question number two, be you know way early in the season or way way late in the season with without a full moon. I now, if I had my preference, I would try to pick peak of the rut on on the backside of a new moon. But uh, you know you can't pick and choose. There's

only so many days in September. You know, I've got the fortune, you know, there to be out there the majority of September. But I I wouldn't put too much, too much weight in the moon. I actually went back. This is every reason I think I'm a huge nerd. I'd went back. I think it was twenty seventeen or eighteen.

I had tallied up like all the bulls I had killed her and went back and found all my tags and looked at it, and I'm like, dang, you've killed like I think it was like seventy five percent of my bulls, like within three days of the full moon on the front side of it. So it's like, well, either it's a coincidence, you got really really lucky or it just doesn't matter, And so I went and looked

at that. We also had did it my buddy Trevor that you know I used to hunt with the ten twelve years ago, like in the early Angry Mountain days or the primetime outdoors days. He actually did it on trail cameras and there wasn't even that huge of a difference. We did it on three or four trail cameras, put it in a big Excel spreadsheet and tried to like,

look at you know, or they showing earlier later. I think we did see that there was a little bit of a shift later in the day on full moon, but for the most part, during the rut and pre rut, the full moon didn't really seem to affect anything that much. So that's always been my take on the full moon. Yes, it will have an effect, Yes, the rut may seem to be a little less intense. Everything else, you know, considered, But that's my take on that.

I just you know, run as the caller. One thing I do like about being a solo caller is we talk about getting close and being a threat, and when we talk about who the caller is, if you have a buddy that's twenty yards back, he's not as much a threat as I am being twenty yards forward. But you also have to give up your location a little bit more by making audible noises from it. But I've always found get tight aggressive is the terrain and vegetation

will allow me. And I just called just like I would whether I was calling for somebody else or you know. And then one thing that I like to do. We talk about using the wind as the steering wheel to make sure I get a decent shot. You know, everybody wants to set up with the wind perfectly on their nose, and I would rather the wind hit me a little bit, you know, even up to ninety degrees on the cheek.

You know, if it's hitting me in my right ear or off my right cheek, that gives me a little predictability that I will have a shot somewhere to my left of that area that the bull's coming into. Because bulls that we call in will typically start to circle to get wind on the elk that's calling them to them, especially if they can't make a visual confirmation or see the elks position. So I will as a solo caller, I want to give them the wind a little bit.

When I say give them the wind, like very very conservative, They're not actually going to get the wind, but I'm going to give them, you know, ninety degrees of wind or forty five degrees of win somewhere in there, and that will give me a little more predictability on where my shot lanes are most likely going to be based on the direction the bull's currently coming in from. So yeah, I don't. I don't change anything on my calling. You know,

there's a little bit more to do. You got a bugle tube to deal with if you are bugling, you know, you have to do something with that bugle tube, you know, to stick it between your legs, set it down the

movement it may take. But aside from that, being able to run a diaphragm really well, if if you can't, may make being a solo caller a little more difficult as you have to go back and forth with calls in your hand, or you know, if you're using something like the easy sucker, would give you the ability to be hands free and have the ability to make calls. But now I don't. I don't know if I answered

the question correctly. But as far as like guidance on calling, you know, kind of the same system we always run. You take the temperature of the bull, try to work them up. If you can't, you try to use like the what I would say, like the least aggressive route. You know, so you start with cow calls, start with, you know, and then you know, escalate to bugles and let that bull kind of tell us how we're gonna call. But solo is no different than a partner.

of where you're standing. So if I can if the bull hasn't come in all the way, if he's not committed to coming in yet, if he's still on his way, then I'll bugle, and then I'll move up thirty forty fifty yards, and then I'll be quiet for a little bit and kind of see assess where he's at. Sometimes I'll take my bugle tube and I'll point it directly behind me or off to my right or left, whichever

way I want that bowl maybe to come. Like if I want him to come pass me on my left or right a little bit, I might point it behind me and then up to their left or right, just I'm trying to throw my voice. It's almost like it's almost like a little bit of trickery, and and it

does work. I've had that happen several times where you bugle the opposite direction and kind of project your your calls over in a different area and the sound will kind of bounce off trees, vegetation, rocks or whatever, and it'll be a little harder to pinpoint your exact location. Although so sometimes I'll even I'll even cover my bugle tube with my hand, especially if I have a glove on. I'll cover into my tube with my hand and I'll allow enough air to come escape, so I can make

a bugle, but it's going to be very muffled. And you can make a full bugle. You just have to change your air pressure a little bit. You'll have to practice this in the off season so you kind of know how hard to blow. But you can do a full bugle. Grunts, everything, anything you want to do into that bugle, and I'll point it away from me and I'll do it with the tube covered a little bit, and it'll give the illusion that I'm further away. They may think I'm another one hundred yards behind me, and

I've had that workout really well before too. Also, sometimes I'll even same thing if I have especially if I have a glove, because a glove allows a little bit

of airflow to keep going through your hand. It's not such a sealed off sound, so i can cow call into my hand very quietly, and I'll muffle it with the glove a little bit so it'll it'll just give the illusion I'm fifty sixty eighty yards behind where I'm actually standing, and that'll just get that bowl to come in that last little bit for that for that shot.

You know, sometimes'll hang up and if you start calling like you've walked away, then they'll they'll have the confidence to come forward and maybe sniff where they they thought you were standing before. It's like, who is this this guy? Or maybe I heard that cow up there. I'm gonna go check and see if she was in heat, and they come forward and then you'll have your shot opportunity. As far as full moons go, Ah man, I used to geek out a lot about this. I would I

would fret. I would look at the moon calendar and I would fret over like Okay, I got have my one week, I can take off. I'm like going, I really don't want to beat on a full moon because I've had full moon times that have been really tough hunting. I've had other full moon times it didn't really seem to matter, but all accumulated. You know, in the moment when you're having a tough hunt on a full moon, you know you're looking whatever you can to blame. You know,

the bulls not bugling. Well, it's like, well, it's got to be the full moon. But what I've kind of found over the years is sometimes you just don't have the luxury of taken the time off that you want during the perfect moon, or the perfect moon doesn't fall right in the middle of the peakrette, like like Jason was talking about, So you just kind of have to play the cards you're dealt. And I've found over the years, like it hasn't it hasn't really changed my success. It

hasn't hurt my success at all. But what I've found is the times, the active periods during the day which I'm calling elk have changed. So rather than having more calling action, you know, the first two or three hours of light, you know, in the morning before they get bed down and be quiet. I found that I have found more success in the middle of the day and

then they'll and then early afternoon. So you have to think some of those times when, especially once it's pretty warm and dry, those those elk will go to bed. They'll be in bed at first light. Sometimes I've had that happen or within the first hour or two of the day, and they lay there cooped up for a long time, and by noon or even four o'clock in

the afternoon, they're ready to do something. Now they may not get up and move to their their nighttime feeding area, but they'll get up in their bedding area and like browse around, move around, maybe the bowl, slip off to a close by wallow or something and wallow around. But I found it by positioning myself close to those betting areas again and being able to take advantage of that when they get up and start moving around in those

those late afternoons. It's it's worked out great. I went from from calling in bowls and killing bowls mostly in the mornings because I avoided that full moon, but once I had to start kind of hunting that full moon just because of scheduling and stuff. I found. I started killing bowls in that afternoon period anywhere from middle of the day, and a lot of them in that four to six pm timeframe. So and I feel like they're more active in that four to six pm time frame

on a full moon. So yeah, if that's if that's what you're really looking for, you know, you know what you really want a certain week to hunt, then I wouldn't let that deter you. But you're probably gonna have to modify your tactics. All right, we got question. We got time for one more question.

a good herd bowl in there. There's multiple big bulls in there, so it's not just one herd bowl and a bunch of satellites. There's multiple big bulls in there, a bunch of satellites, bunch of cows. You go in on them every morning where they're feeding, but there's every morning they slowly feed off away from you, and for me, they're always heading on the private so it's a race to catch up with them every morning, and it seems like every step you take there are ten steps ahead.

And it's always hard because you don't want to get spotted by the cows.

bowls going crazy in there with cows. They're feeding away from you, and it doesn't even necessarily have to be them feeding away from you. Mainly, my main question is just how do you hunt something like that where I wouldn't say it's necessarily super sick timber, but there is timber in there, and there is you know, there is you know, just different different valleys in there where the elk can hide in and everything. So how would you

go about punting that? And I'm talking archery of course, So any tips and tactics you can give on that, I super appreciate it, Thank you very much.

they're going? If it sounds like this is a fairly routine patternable movement that they feed out in the public, beat you the private, or you don't know which bull to chase to. There's a lot of things to tackle here, Like only you can decide whether you should go after the herd bowl or the or the rag. You know, the satellite bulls. Do you care which one that you kill or hunt? Like that's completely up to you. I will say that typically satellite bowls are going to be

easier to call in most of the time. There have been some herd bowls if with all the if all the stars align, you get close enough to his herd and do all this. Like I would say that some herd bulls you know it could be just as easy as satellite bowl. So Number one, can you get there undetected by noise, visual smell prior to the morning starting. If so, work that system, you know, try to be

in front of them. I've always said it's way easier to call elk into or kill elk that you are just in their natural path without anything else going on Number two, which we didn't get enough. Do these elks stay on the private until after dark or you know, almost piggyback on what Dirk just said on the question with the evening sometimes being better. Can you are these all going to be back on that public with with good enough wind to be able to hunt them on

the night or the return? Is that is that an option? You know? So that would be two things I would look at. Can I get in there, which I don't know the answer to, can I hunt them at night? And then if not? Number three, which is tough to do, like I said, unless you're after a certain bowl, or you're just after any bowl. I've been in areas like this where there's great l cunting, But I just I've ran enough different programs. You know, I am going to

get there early. Well that doesn't work out, and it didn't work out the second or the third time, I'm gonna try to hunt them at night. That didn't work out the second or the third time. At some point you almost have to just like pull up the anchor and go to a new spot at times. So that's my three options. Get down there before dark, before daylight, and see if that'll work, if if the wind and everything allows you to do it, try to hunt them

at night. If that doesn't work, sometimes you might just look for their options.

and through the night. You know, maybe you're on the other side of a drainage. You know, you're you're in an area where the elk are just not going to smell you, but you'll be able to get up. You don't have to fight your way through them to you know, maybe cut them off at the pass per se before they go back onto that private I feel like these

are the situations you have to man. You just kind of got to like look at some really out of the box solutions and you know, try some off the wall tactics to to try to get it done and and and it may just work or you may not. You know, I know there's a lot of folks that the hunt elk like that, or you know, they got elk. The traveling from public to private a lot and if

you can if win the biggest problem is wind. If you can beat the wind on those elk that are going on onto private and back and forth, a lot of times you can capitalize is just getting that getting the wind in your favor and having the timing be right. But that's always that's always seems like for me, is always easier said than done. Okay, I've got two more questions.

I really want to get these on this podcast. I said that was the last one, but we're going to go just a little bit longer on this one than we normally do. But I really I want to make sure we answer everybody's question. So question number five, you know.

a small home range. Now where some of these areas where we hunt, you know, in the mountains or whether it's Colorado or Idaho or Montana, obviously those elk have to come down and to what you know, a winter migration. They're going to winter until that snow allows them to go back up. From my experience, these elk most of the time want to be as high as the snow will let them. Now, I'm gonna put an asterisk there. There are elk that absolutely love living on private land.

They want to be their year round. So I'm saying these elk that would prefer to be in the mountains, they come down. I'm assuming that's the question you're asking, because otherwise we would just be able to answer like, oh, the elk that are always on private land probably don't leave. So if we're looking at migratory elk spring calving, it's really going to be different based on snow levels and where and where those elk are at. They will have

their preferred calving grounds. They may revisit those, but a right, I don't got a good answer like where they're gonna drop calves every year. Dirk may have more on this. It's obviously going to be somewhere between where they winter and where they're gonna summer, you know, somewhere along that line. And I would say wherever that snow hits during that calving season for that area. You know some areas and in Utah have late calving due to you know, their

cows coming in later. You know, if they have early, it's going to be lower. So wherever that snow line is during the end, if you have an idea where that migration is going to be, so you know the information you're gonna get in the fall is where those elk.

Can you draw a line from where you think those elk winner or do you know where those elk winter so you know where they're at in the fall, you know where they're out in the winter, and then it's going to be somewhere along that line where the snow level is at or slightly below. Like I said, I'm just I'm speculating a little bit here because I haven't actually like went through that effort and looked at it and confirmed it. But maybe Dirk will have a better answer than I do.

that's where they're going to be. But so you may have to if you're wanting to, you know, optimize your bear hunting time, you may just have to dedicate some time into finding those areas, finding those elk herds. And the good thing about it in the springtime is elk are way more visible than than bears. Typically, you know, large groups of cows will be way more visible than

you know, single bears here and there. So I would I would find the find the elk in the springtime and then and then start hunting close by to that. And you know, typically around Memorial Day weekend you'll start seeing calves hit the ground. So there in the first week of June, you'll start seeing a lot of calves hit the ground, and that'd be a great time to go, you know, capitalize and start start looking.

they at now? And then as they kind of start disappearing, but you're still seeing some elk, you know here and there singles, you'll know that there's that's probably where they're gonna have their calves, and you could probably target those areas for bears. And then I would I wouldn't be afraid of doing some calling, you know, with calf and distress calls and even normal predator calls to work good

in those same areas. But and then if you're if you just don't have that luxury of having the time of getting out there and looking, you're just like, maybe you just have a limited amount of time. I would contact your local biologist, you know from the Idaho Fishing Game and or you know, maybe even better yet, because some biologists they don't leave the office, they're just their data crunchers, right, they're they're not a field biologist. They're

they're inside the doors of the of the office. Maybe talk to your local game warden in the area and say, hey, I'm this is what I'm trying to do. Where should I look for those calving areas and focus on bears because I think I think everybody you know is going to try to help you out, you know, notch a tag on a predator. So I feel like that kind of information would be easily accessed from the from like you know, game wardens and state officials that way.

were different. They would drop down in the you know, for those that don't know the Blues area, these these elk would stay low and they would drop into these like calving groups. You know, the cows would obviously drop low some some small bowls, but they would drop and they would drop off into the brakes and drop their typically drop their calve down on the very steep brakes

where they could keep them. So they were more looking for the cover they needed to get that calf through the first you know, five to ten days, and then they would come up. So it was a little bit different than what the general you know, habitat and vegetation was around. They were dropping off going solo. Once they got that calf to five to ten days, they would come back and kind of join up with the bigger

herd again. So but they go on that little solo mission for five to ten days, which was typically a mile or two away from the rest of the elk that were in a bigger group.

to three days, bears can't catch a calf anymore. You have to rely on the cats and the wolves at that point.

then the same thing in the evening. Obviously I was gonna be checking a wind checker, but just looking for a generalized timeframe about when to start expecting those thermals to be changing a late morning and then early evening. Thanks guys.

kind of things in. So the time to say okay at eight seventeen that you know the winds are going to switch, it's going to be dependent on the light from the sun hitting the hillside. So, for instance, if you're hunting an east facing slope, as soon as the sun starts coming up, and depends on how big deep the ridges are. If it's fairly flat country, as soon as the sun comes up, you're gonna have winds changing pretty early in the morning. You know, it could be

within an hour or less after the first light. Now, if you're really steep and deep canyon country, as that as that sun comes over the horizon and starts hitting on the ridge that you're standing on. On that eastern ridge, you know it's gonna slowly come. You know that the sunlight's gonna slowly creep down towards the bottom, and then you know, by by eight point thirty, you know, the sun may may have hit that hillside and warmed it enough to where the wind's gonna all the winds are

gonna start going up now. They may might even get swirly as the time goes by, So you get all the the side of the hillside that's getting really warmed, and then you're done in the shadow line. Still things are going to be a little bit going downhill, and

you'll get some swirly stuff going on there too. But if you're on the back side of that same ridge, if you're on the on the west side of that ridge, you may not see a change in thermals until ten eleven o'clock, until that sun depends on the shape of the mountains and stuff, of course, but until that sun comes all the way up crosses you know, the center line of the ridge and starts casting sunlight down on the next on that east on that west facing slope,

you may not see that till a little later on the day, and then north and south facing slopes. North is going to keep keep keep the sun, you know, off of it as long as longer than anywhere else whereas the south it's gonna become exposed fairly soon too, So you just have to kind of watch watch the

hillside for that particular area. And as you start seeing you know, sun hitting the hillside and you're like, okay, man, it looks like we got about another thirty minutes before this this stuff is gonna change in our current position.

air and the more consistent day to day. So let's say you've got the same weather for five days in a row. You could start to you know, I'll start to note like I'm on a soyle slope, I'm in the same area, like, oh, yesterday the wind was switched about eight thirty, you know, so that may affect whether I'm going to approach an elk or whether I'm gonna

wait it out. But but as Dirk mentioned, you know, south, northwest, east aspects all gonna be different if you, I don't know if you ever experienced it, Dirk, like inversions, right you, It's a really hot day and all of a sudden, a bunch of cloud cover comes at night, but doesn't bring a bunch of cool with it. You'll wake up

in the morning You're like, what the heck? The wind's already blowing like hard uphill because the warm air got trapped and now there's colder air up and so it's basically pushing out.

there's an inversion in the upper slopes. There's an inversion on the ridges and the main ridge, but sometimes that creek bottom and that tight drainage will never lift. That air will always go down the creek, and we've used that to help our approaches. Right, You're like, well, I got to get in the crick so I can do this, or if I get low enough on this finger ridge down in this base and it's going to suck, and you're using that in order to make your approach. So

keep that in mind. Just because you know the thermals have switched, isn't necessarily mean you're gonna climb down in a canyon and it's gonna be up the whole day. You might get down and that's where you get some swirling where you're kind of on that area of you know, cooling creek or shade versus a heated up face. So keep all that in mind. But yeah, you you really can't, you know, set your watch to it, and you got to just kind of play it case by case. Day by day, you know, slope by slope.

you in? Are you on the edge? You got it? Like, let's say you're in Nevada and you've got miles of desert and then you're right on the front range there the you know, the the dang it phelps what do you call those? The the consistent winds that blow from one direct Yeah, prevailing winds can really affect that too.

If you're on the edge of those kind of places you go, you have a whole bunch of flat area, and then you're right on that front range somewhere, the prevailing winds are gonna perhaps change all of that.

comes in. Like that gets really really. You add those moving storm systems in with your thermals, in with flatter terrain, and you're just That's where some of these elk love to live because they just like, now we got you. You can't you can't approach you, you can't predict it, or as soon as you think you got away in, you're gonna get you know, swirled up. So all that stuff will add to wind as well as thermal.

in my favor. I got a bull screaming up here. I'll climb up that hillside one hundred and fifty yards and that bulk starts coming in and wouldn't you know it, the wind changes and those rolling type areas. Man, they're just really unpredictable, really swirly. I got to the point where I almost won't even go there, and I know, I know that I'm gonna hear a no bugle. But those things are as safe as they can be.

This Country Life. Brent is a natural storyteller and he will tell you stories that make it chuckle a little bit. But anyway, in case you guys aren't listening to that that podcast, check it out. Brent Reeves does a great job on This Country Life.