Ep. 94: Non-Typical Elk Calling

did cut the trip short. We came home on July fourth, the day and we got back to town probably ten o'clock at night, so it's just getting pretty dark. And we live in the Treasure Valley here, the Boise whole area if you don't know where the Treasure Valley is. And as we're coming into town and driving to our house, it was crazy how many people were letting off fireworks. It was probably the most money I've ever seen people

spend on fireworks. And I don't know if this is normal for every year down here, because we're normally in the mountains. On the Fourth of July, my black lab Jocko. He's not a big fan of him. He gets pretty scared of him, but we're always in the mountains camping and doing our due diligence for summer, summer elk scouting and stuff. But anyway, there was man, there was some big, impressive displays of fireworks all over town. It didn't matter where you were out in the valley. They're just huge,

huge fireworks going off everywhere. In fact, it looked like the whole town was on fire. Burning as far as much as how much smoke was in the air, it was crazy. It just the smoke was ever driving down the freeway, it was just it was just a fog. In fact, you can even smell it. You can just smell that that that sulfurry, pungent smell. Fireworks make you all know that smell. It almost smells like gunpowder. Almost

my favorite smell I smell. I let my I think my favorite smell might be pine sap and elk p But anyway, it's forty four days till September. But I don't know who's counting besides me, A few of you are counting out there. But I will say I do love September. It's my favorite time of year. But I am pumping the brakes a little bit. I do love my summertime. I love camping, I love checking trail cameras, like setting trail cameras. I love being to the mountains.

I love dirt bike riding. I got me a dirt bike. I'm I don't know if it's a midlife crisis purchase or what, but I got a new dirt bike this year. It's a KTM three point fifty ex excd F for you dirt bikers out there, it's a pretty badass bike. I've been enjoying it. My son bought a new bike and we've been riding those around. It's been super fun. But anyway, this week, I want to talk about non typical elk calling. Now, when I say non typical, I'm not saying I'm trying to call it a non typical

bull elk. I mean that I would love to call it a non tippical bull elk. They're just so uncommon. But what I'm talking about is using vocalizations that aren't maybe your cookie cutter type vocalizations. Per se. We all know that that three note bugle that that we've all grown accustomed to love. But I will say, over the years, I've found that helk don't always are They're not always making that same bugle over and over. They have a

pretty big repertoire in their vocabulary. Now, I'm not going to sit here and try to say I'm Doctor Doolittle and I know exactly what these elk are saying. I'm not saying that, but usually I can tell by the way they sound, with the intensity, the temperature, if you will, if it's hot, if they if they sound mad, you know you can tell it's it's it's an aggressive type sound. But some of these sounds are non aggressive, but they're still talking. And that's what I want to want to

go over today. Maybe you guys watched my film called Ghost Bowls of the North on YouTube that was released earlier this year. If you haven't check it out, it's on the Phelps Game Calls YouTube channel. Anyway, if you notice in there, I don't go straight to a lot of those cookie cutter three no bugles, just your typical elk calling sounds that maybe you've grown accustomed to hearing. While someone's calling elk now locating, I kind of go

through those just to try to get an answer. But once I make contact with the bull, then I'm going to assess his disposition, his temperament, and I'm going to assess what he responds to and kind of go from there. So as that conversation builds with that bull, I'm going to figure out what he's responding to best. Now, sometimes we'll get this conversation going, we'll get two or three bugles out of him, and then I will make a

bugle that he won't reply to. And I almost feel like it's the same as having a conversation with a person when you say something to them that make them that maybe takes them back a little better. Maybe they kind of they don't respond because it made them uncomfortable. I kind of in my mind, I kind of use that same thought process. So if I've made a bugle or a certain call and he stops responding, I have to analyze did he not like that sound? Was I

too aggressive? Was I not aggressive enough? How had the conversation been going before? Maybe he'd been giving me those kind of lackluster mony type bugles, and I tried to escalate a little bit by giving him a three note bugle with a little bit of a little bit of gusto behind it. I'll demonstrate the gusto behind it. Maybe I gave him one of those, and that just shut him down all of a sudden, he don't want to talk anymore. So in my mind, I think, well, maybe

that was too aggressive. I need to tone it down a little bit. So I need to go back to where we kind of started, back to where what he was answering with and responding with. And a lot of times it's the same groany bugle. So I'm doing kind of a copycat bugle, and it's going to be that low, mony, groany type bugle. It could mean the bulls just not looking for a fight, but he wants to talk and say, hey man, how's it going. Or I'm over here too, if there's any ladies around, but I'm not trying to

fight anybody. Or maybe it's in the middle of the day and you've heard that same mony bugle from that same little spot, that same little north facing patch. Little there's a steep ridge with a little saddle or a little bench on it, and you keep hearing that same old mony bugle, and I say, mony bugle, it's gonna sound kind of like this, and it's not gonna sound exactly right. Course I'm not an elk, but this is my this is my rendition of it, just a kind

of low bugle. It almost kind of sounds like an elk who don't even really know how to bugle. That's the kind of sound it is. So if he's making a lot of those, then I'm going to be making a lot of those, because I'm not going to try to I don't want to push him away too quickly. So it's no different than a conversation. When you walk up to someone, you start having a conversation and you start, you know, raising your voice and getting aggressive with them.

A lot of times people just back off and just like, what's wrong with this guy? And then they leave. I don't want to do that to the elk. I want to have him. I want to engage him in this conversation with the same amount of same amount of attitude, right, and as we talk back and forth after a while,

if you just keep it up, keep it up. A lot of times they will escalate because finally they're just like, I'm kind of tired of talking to you, and they may give you a little bit more of an aggressive bugle, which is what I'm really after. So I'm trying to trick him into getting mad so if he does a

grony bugle, I'm gonna do a grony bugle something like that. Now, I may even I don't know if I've talked about this before on this podcast, I talked about a lot a lot of different podcasts out there I've been the guest on. But a lot of times when I'm having these grony bugles, they don't reply back and forth real quickly. You know, it may be four or five minutes in between from the time I call to the time he replies.

So what a lot of times I'll do as I'll set my stopwatch on my phone, and as soon as I bugle, I push go and I time how long it takes him to reply. Now, this may take, you know, an hour or two of back and forth with this bowl depending maybe maybe not, But I'm timing how long it takes in between him and I for him to reply to me. And as soon as he replies, I push stop and look at it, and then I push it again and I wait that same amount of time

before I reply again. So I'm giving him space. So then I just keep in my head, like, how long did it take him three minutes? Five minutes and after thirty minutes, maybe even an hour, I'll start seeing that time decrease. So instead of waiting five minutes between his reply and mind, it's now three minutes and two minutes, so I can see things are progressing. Right. By doing this,

it's it's easy to get distracted. You know, you may want to take a nap, or you may want to sit there and watch the squirrels or eat lunch or whatever. But if you keep track of the time on it, you can say, man, things are just starting to pick up here, so you can kind of ready yourself and start making the game plan of what to do next. And once things pick up, and especially once he makes that more aggressive type call, then that's when you want to escalate your calls. Okay, now I want to move

on to the next. Thing is bark chuckles and bark screams. What's a bark chuckle? I'll demonstrate what's a bark scream? Why in the world would you bark at a bull? Elk Isn't the bark like a sound of alarm? Yes it is, but also it's a sound that elk u's bull elk U's when they're coming in to another bull. See you have two bulls exchanging bugles. They both go towards each other, and at some point the bull hangs up like this happens to real elk two. That's not

just for hunters. Elk hang up on elk. Elk are very visual. They want to size up their opponent, so they get in there pretty close, and typically it's about that fifty yard marker. So a lot of times they hang up about fifty yards in between them, and the bull that I'm trying to call will come in and hang up and then display he'll start. He'll start rubbing a tree, start ripping the crap out of the ground. He'll rub, you know, he's like, Hey, I'm the big man, this is my spot.

a lot of bark. They'd been doing a lot of chuckling on the way in. They've been doing a lot of chuckling during this exchange. Or if it's a bark scream, they'd been doing a lot of bark and screaming. Excuse me, they've been doing a lot of screaming on the way in. So either one's great, because at that point when he barks, I know he's like, well, he's he thinks I'm an elk, but he just wants to see his adversary, right. He's trying to call me out. He wants to see me.

He wants to see how big I am. He wants to see who I am. So at that time I will bark and chuckle to him, or bark and scream at him. And this may have to take place maybe once, maybe three or four times, and a lot of times. If I bark, chuckle or bark and scream and move up you know, ten yards, five yards, just make noise,

moving towards him a little bit. That's all it's going to take, and he will, really he'll reveal himself and he'll come out and a lot of times it's going to come out in more of a broadside fashion, sometimes straight on, but a lot of times they'll they'll come towards you and then get broadside because they want to look big, they want to show they want to show off, they want to show you what they brought. Right, I'm a big animal. Look at me. I'm going to show

you my antlers from the side. Who are you? And if you're ready, you can capitalize on that with a shot. Now here's a now here's a really non typical elk vocalization that I've been using. Now, I can't say that it has worked for the good or worked for the bad, but it's it's silly and I always kind of kind of giggled myself when I'm doing it. And cameraman Dusty the first time I did, he made a funny face. But it's lip licking, So why I do the lip licking? Is one of my trail cameras. I had video of

a bowl. Well, first, a cow walked by the camera. You know, she's good, just having a day, and just a few steps behind her was in a really nice bowl and he kind of stopped right right in mid camera and let out a bugle, and then he followed on to her. But as he did it he went, he was licking his lips, making a little lick licking, popping noise with his his lips or his with his tongue. Now it's not to be confused with a glunk. Now, the glunk is a more of that hollow the dunk noise.

This was literally lick lipping, you can see it, or lip licking. And he's more licking his nose right, so his his tongue's going up and it's hitting his nose and he's licking pretty fast. I hope that picks up that sound. And you look like an idiot doing it, well, I do, and people are gonna say, what are you doing? You're so weird? But I thought, you know, I saw that that's that's real elk sounds. I'm gonna try it.

Maybe that's the proverbial silver bullet everybody's been looking for. Right, Like, man, I'm gonna do this the first time I do this to a bowl, and he's close, he just won't kind of commit. He's gonna hear that. He's gonna come boiling in here. To fight because he knows there's a cow ready to go. So I did it to no reaction, and I find that's the same reaction from elk I get with glunking. You know, people will attempt to glunk with their mouth, some people will attempt to glunk with

a diaphragm into their tube. Some people just do it with their tube. I'll demonstrate with the tube. Now, the cadence may sound like a glunk, and some of the little almost a little boing noise almost sounds like a glunk, but honestly it doesn't really out like a real elt plunking. I've done it a lot over the years. Did it work? No? Did it? Did it make them run away? No? I didn't make them run away either. So I'm pretty on the fence on the glunking thing and the lick lipping

thing or the lip licking thing. So take it or leave it. So the next portion of the podcast is the Q and A section, So we have some listeners call in with some questions I'm gonna answer right here on the air. This portion of the podcast is brought to you by Pendleton Whiskey, letter Buck all right, color number one, Hey.

my Maverick Elk diaphragm people out there. I love it so much. I don't think they're gonna let that stand. But we may have to figure out some other contests, or maybe I'm just gonna go and shoot you know, go hunting with a traditional bow. I do have one. I do have a recurve. I love shooting it. It's fun. It reminds me of being a kid shooting sling shots and and my old recurved bows and stuff. It just

takes you different a different time. It just it's so fun, it's so free, it's it's definitely a different experience than than shooting a compound. So anyway, thanks for calling Blake. All right, caller number two.

that a guy needs to be more prepared for. Elevations aren't too different. We're ranging up here anywhere from three thousand upwards to seven thousand, so the elevation is not a factor, But what are some other types of think the guy needs to take into consideration before jumping down south.

of the lot of the units in southern Idaho. Or let's say, if you cut this the skinny part of the state off and everything in that rectangular box in the bottom, a lot of those places you're south facing slopes won't have much for vegetation. Now, there may be some trees, depend on the company country. You know, the further north you get in that box, you'll have more more timber and a little bit of brush on those hillsides.

But the further south you get, especially if there's a lot of sagebrush present those south facing slopes, you'll have sagebrush and grass and virtually no other kind of brush, and sometimes no sagebrush, depending on how how dry the hillside is. And then on the north face will have timber of some kind. Now some places will have sparse timber, some places will have heavy timber with tons of brush. So, for instance, some of the places I've been in the

southeast Idaho, they're great. I thought North Idaho was brushy. It's just a different kind of brush. Those north faces can be just as brushy, if not brushier. Also you'll find stands of aspens. So growing up up north, I always thought, oh, man, I would love to be able to hunt in the aspens. Man, some of them places here down south, these aspen stands, big beautiful aspen stands. You look at them from a far you're like, oh, yeah, oh,

I heard some bugling up there. Let's go. And you get up there, and underneath the canopy of the large mature aspens is brush, and a lot of it is immature aspens and all. So this brush it's called service berry, service berry. I've heard different people call it different things for where I'm from. But it's a thick brush, very stiff branches. It can grow pretty tall, can grow ten feet tall. And it has a little blueberry on it, which looks like a huckleberry, or it's kind of like

a huckleberry, but more like a blueberry. Doesn't taste anything like a blueberry huckleberry. You can hey, knock yourself out, pick a bunch, eat them, make a pie, put them in your pancakes, full of buddy whatever. But you know, they don't taste bad. They just don't taste like much of anything. They're kind of just kind of green, not a lot of flavor there. But anyway, that brush is almost in printed, impenetrable. But if you can get through it,

find your way through it. You know, you can chase bugles all day and you have bowls five ten yards away and not have a shot while the leaves are still on now, once the leaves fall off of those later in September, the leaves will fall off the sarvice berry or service berry bushes, they're almost like a small tree. But once those leaves fall off, you can see you can see probably forty fifty yards ahead of you, but

you can't shoot five yards. You shoot thirty yards. A lot of that stuff, so you can chase bugles around all day in those kind of places and never ever get close enough to even lay eyes on a bowl. He'll just stay right outside. He'll stay at the edge of the one of those, you know, just fifty sixty yards out to where he's just like, oh, he sees some movement coming, now he goes away again. So that's super challenging. That's one of the things about southern Idaho

that's different. Water is a big deal too. You know, down down here in southern Idaho, elk will travel a long distance to get water. Now, some places that look dry as can be, and you think, oh, man, there's not any water anywhere in here, But there's really good springs and little little ponds or a lake or something. There's some pretty good water in some of these places.

But other places there's just hardly any water. So they have to go down from the top of the mountain down to the bottom, down to the crick bottom, you know, a large drainage to get water every day. And sometimes those are close to road. Sometimes they're close to people's camps and they don't seem to mind it because it's nighttime they go down there. So those guys that run generators all night in their campers. They're not hearing those bugles.

That's a pro tip. Don't run your generator all night. Maybe you need it for your seapap. I don't know, but anyhow, or even first thing in the morning, I've I've been around people's camps. I've been up on the hill and here a generator running first thing in the morning, and I got bulls bugling everywhere around me. I was like, I've bet those guys don't have a clue. There's elk

bugling up here. And because they're you know, running their generators, maybe they get up, run their generators, get there, put their heaters on, get their their daste, bar, brew some coffee, get ready to go hunting, and maybe leave them running a morning to to charge their batteries or something. I don't know, but elk will travel a long distance for food and for or excuse me, for water and for food.

Some areas that have a lot of agriculture, you know there there's irrigation down here where you know, North Idaho, it's all all dry country farming. You know. They don't irrigate hay fields, they don't irrigate wheat fields, they don't irrigate their agriculture up north Idaho. Down south, they have to, so you know, they'll you'll have irrigation pivots and irrigation

lines down there everywhere in the valley floor. So those elk, they can travel five six miles from the peak of a mountain all the way down at night to eat alfalfa and then turn around before first light and get halfway up the mountain before the sun ever rises. So that's a that's that's something to keep in mind. So if you're you know, you're hearing bugles at night down by those fields, probably not. It's in on all that private land. It's probably not the best place to think.

I'm gonna try to hunt down here in the morning. Now you want to kind of try to figure out where those elk are going to go during the daytime. So they're going to climb up, but probably a pretty barren hillside until they find a nice, nice north face two three four thousand feet above the valley floor to

bed down for the day. And also maybe you know, of course, using your calls a lot works good down south, but a lot of times, you know, maybe that the first few the first hour of light every morning would be better served getting on a high point with binoculars with a spotter and just find an elk finding animals, and it's like, you know, a lot of time. It's

really big country. You know, you can you can cover a lot of big country because it's pretty open, and you'll be able to see those animals right at that first light moving from food source. You know, maybe there's no agg around, but you'll see them from the south side of the mountain over to the north sides. You you'll catch them lingering in some of the edges and stuff. And then now you have a game plan. It's like, Okay,

I know where the elk are at. We'll make a mark mark on our on X map and then and then go after them. So that's my my, uh my take on South versus North. And oh, one more thing I will say, there there are more elk and south South Idaho, North Idaho it's there. You know, there's some patches, there's some pretty decent elk, but for the most part it's it's a little barn up there. There's a lot you can if you don't know where you're going, you can spend a lot of time even trying to find

an elk track let alone an ELK. So I will say there there are more more better units down south, better easier winters, less wolves, and a lot of the units down south are managed for for for better uh, better numbers, better trophy quality. A lot of a lot of the rifle hunts are controlled. That means you have to apply, you have to to apply for a lottery to see if your name gets drawn for an ELK tag to cut with a rifle. But some of them

are over the counter archery. Some are a cap zone that's where they only sell a very limited number of these these tags in that zone. So there can be several different reasons why there's more ELK in that part of Idaho. But I probably shouldn't have said that. I just let the cat out of the bag, all right, Onto caller number three.

deer whatever. And my question is, when you're out there doing that kind of hunt and you don't I mean, we're flying in so we're kind of stuck in this spot.

be other people there. I know certain certain times of the year, like mule their season, for instance, later on in November, those places can be very busy without other hunters. So I would plan on bivvy hunting. I would care, I would have my camp in my backpack. Right I'm not gonna hunt right there from the landing strip and just kind of hunt within a mile or two of

the landing Strip. I feel like it's going to take the type of effort you're gonna have to get at least two three miles away from that landing strip to get away from a lot of people, and maybe even beyond that. Now, I'm not familiar with the area. I haven't really even looked at the Frank Church. I've never been there myself. I don't know if there's any if there's good trail systems there from those from those landing strips.

But maybe if you can find a good trail and just get some miles between you and that landing strip and other people distance yourself, then once you get a ways on that trail, then I would go cross country. I would climb, I would climb elevation. I would get out of there. I would imagine if it's September, if it's early season, elk a going to be higher. If it's in November, elk are probably going to be lower. You know, there'll probably be in that bottom third of

the canyon. Versus September, they're probably going to be upper in upper elevations, and that probably in that from right in the middle maybe. But that being said that those drain the drainages there are so huge and so vast, you know, it could be four thousand feet maybe further so, several miles from the river clear to the top. It's not a small undertaking by any means. So I would have a bavy camp ready to go on your pack, prepared to camp out for three to five days depending.

I would leave camp with plenty of water and have a water bladder completely full. I would probably have a couple now jeans full of water. That's just me. I like to carry them in those now jeens or some kind of other water carrying bladder, something that you maybe have another sixty four ounces of water at least. That way, if you can, if you get away, you hike out, you can get away from the people for at least a day or two. And let's say you run out of water and it's like, well, gee whiz, I wish

you know we had some water to filter there. There should be some water to filter in certain places, but expected to be a pretty dry country for the most part. Elk are probably not going to be right at the river during September, then it would be my guess. So and you may have to like branch out, like you know, you may have to go out this direction for two or three or four days and and see if you find any elk. You may have to go the complete

opposite direction the next go around. You just kind of have to kind of use that landing strip is your base as your base, and then go out for a few days, come back, replenish your supplies, go a different direction, or go back. Maybe you did find elk, then go back and load up heavy with with more supplies to where you can stay for a little longer. It's like, well, we know there's a bunch of elk over here, we can hunt for several days. We'll go ahead and take

extra food. We found lots of water, so we don't have to weigh ourselves down with a bunch of water. You kind of It's one of those things you kind of don't know until you go. But I feel like the best practice here is going to be get away from that landing strip because it's it's ugly, it's ugly, intimidating country, and it's going to be it's gonna be an undertaking. It's gonna be an undertaking. But be in the best shape you're life, and have a positive mindset.

Just get after it, all right. Color number four, Hey Derek on.

his bear tag. So if if I were in his shoes, I do know if some friends at certain parts of Colorado have tons of bears, and they run into bears a lot during the hunt, so you just may just shoot one just out of the blue. You'd be walking along, Oh there's a really nice bear, you shoot it. Or maybe the bear comes to your calling, set up and shoot it then. But maybe you're having a slow day el hunting. But dang it, there's a dandy bear over on the hillside and you want to take after him.

So I would go over there, get set up, get where the wind's good. And there's a call that I take with me everywhere, it doesn't matter if it's September, October, November, December. I have this little call I always have with me. It's called a fawn jack call that we say I'll hear at Phelps. And if you blow lightly on it, you can make the sound of a fawn in distress. If you blow hard on it, it sounds like a jack rabbit. So here's the fawn and then here's the jackrabbit.

Sounds awful. An noise everyone in the house, but bears, coyotes, mountain lions, wolves, everything that's a predator likes the sound of an animal in distress and it makes them think, oh, here's a free meal, here's an easy meal. So maybe the bear's not in a good stalkable spot, but you can get semi close and start blasting with one of these heretor calls or a preader call, whatever one you

have at home, and then just keep calling. So once you get the bear's attention, he starts coming towards you. Keep calling, keep calling, keep calling. If you have a buddy, let him get behind you a little ways. That way the bear walk right into you. It can be a hair raising experience. But the bears kind of get sidetracked a little bit as they're coming to that. So if you you call, call, call, and then you stop once he kind of disappears like you get, he may just

lose an interest and walk off. So just keep calling until he comes in, especially if you have a buddy that can back up and call for you. But that's how I do it, or maybe even just calf in distress calls, you know, like a calf elk that's lost its mama. Or it's it's hurt or something. You can make those calf and distress calls. And bears love those two, especially spring bears, they love those those calf elk that are in distress. I'll demonstrate what it sounds like. Very

high pitched, very needy, very scared. That's the kind of sound you're gonna want to bake with your diaphragm. So I was just using my Maverick Elk diaphragm just then. So whatever diaphragm that you like like to use, that's that you can achieve that really high pitch. That's the way to go. If you don't have one, you might try the Maverick because it is a very tight stretch, very thick like decks, and you can you can push real hard on it and apply a lot of air

pressure to get those high pitched sounds. All right, Color number five.

mountain bike an e bike if it's allowed. If you got one, they're kind of expensive, but even just a good old mountain bike and just cover some country. You know, you may have to push it up the hills and write it down the others, but it'll be faster than walking. But just covering a lot of country, that's how you find elk and pockets. You can't just kind of get hung up and say, well, I saw elk tracks here one time earlier in the summer, and I'm gonna just

hunt this one spot. Well that maybe those elk move out. But from what I hear now, I've never I've never hunted roosevelts, but I have a lot of friends that do, and they say roosevelts are pretty They stick pretty tight to their little home area. You know, it may be one or two mile miles in circumference or whatever. But if you run into them there one week, chances are and you blow it up the next week, they'll probably still be in there. Now early in August. And most

of the time, I wouldn't target cows with bugles. I would target cows with other cow calls. In fact, I would target them with calf calls. I would call like a lost calf. I kind of talked, I just demonstrated a calf in distress for the last caller, but I'm going to demonstrate just like a lost calf call here. Still that high pitched sound not quite as as needy or scared sounding as the calf in distress. But you can elevate it a little bit too, you can make

it a little bit more scared or whatever. But if there's cows close by, let's say you've seen a lot of tracks, you've seen them feeding in the clearcuts or feeding them on an open hell side, and then they go and get the timber. If you get pretty close, you get the wind right and you start you start running your calf calls. A lot of times, especially if the cows are up up moving still, if it's like in the morning, they haven't bedded down for the day.

A lot of times if you've if you've if you can get close to them and start making those lost calf cow sounds, those cows want to come over investigate. And if if you were hunting bulls, a lot of times that's a great way to get the bulls to come with. The cow will come and the bowl will be in tow, or maybe it's a mill of the day.

A lot of times the bulls will come over and investigate on their own, sometimes even in the in the morning, in the afternoon, they'll they'll they'll come investigate those calf calls, So that's probably how I'd hit it. I would cover lots and lots of ground. I would use binoculars as much as they could, you know, to see from a distance.

If if you're in kind of country that has some cletter cuts and stuff this summer leading up to that hunt, you know, August you said, leading up the weeks leading up to that, get out there on your mountain bike. Just cover ground and make a note where you're finding elk tracks. You know, if you have if you have onyx maps on your phone, make make little notes, you know, put a way mark or a waypoint where you're finding

elk tracks. You know, if it's early enough, it's if it's like right now you can see what those elk tracks. You could kind of follow them, follow the tracks into the timber, maybe learn their trails if there are trails, unless it's really a thick country where they don't really do make a trail once to enter the timber, but you could kind of familiarize or sell yourself with the area.

It's like, oh, this is where those elk go. Learn the country now, where they where they like to feed at night and in the morning, and then where they go for those midday hours. Do your homework now, and then by August you don't want to You don't want to disturb them anymore. You just want to look at them from afar. You may jet rid the roads, you might walk the roads, whatever, make sure they're still there,

and then come the opener. Then you execute. You go in and I would make a list, say, okay, this is the place I really want to go, this is the best look and sign the most elk signed go there first, and then have plant A, B, C, D, E, FG on through the alphabet all your little different spots have a marked mapped out. Maybe even write it down and say this is my game plan that way, because a lot of times on opening day you get there and shoot, there's somebody else there, or maybe the elk

are just not behaving well. You'll have another plan immediately put into play and you're not spout out. So great question, all right. One last caller, caller number.

they're just not really interested in. I know some burns they get kind of taken over by a lot of noxious weeds. Now, like some places in North Idaho. In other places, like I've seen Washington and Oregon a big burn. They get this law that these tall plants that has a purple flower. I don't even I don't know what they're called. I should look it up. I should look it up. But man, at least in my hunting spots,

nothing really seemed to eat those things. I've had people say, oh, yeah, they eat those things that crazy where I'm at, But man, they don't eat them where I'm at. But then again, there's not a lot of elk where I'm at too, So maybe maybe that's why there's just no elk there to eat them. So but I will say my experience with burns, I've literally hunted elk in a burn the same year it burns. So let's say in July it burnt. I'm in there September and I'm chasing bowls around. There's ash,

there's even sometimes little smoky things around. You know, elk will go right back into where it burnt, right after the flames are gone. Sometimes there even be some smoke or some flames around and elk. They like that black burnt ash for some reason. I don't know if it tastes good to them. Maybe they liked to roll in it to keep the bugs off. I wish I knew, but they do like it, and that they'll get right

back in there right after the burn. And then the first two or three years after the burn, that's when the most delicate, good, yummy, little green things are going to really grow grow up and elk will really key into them. Then five ten years down the road that a lot of times that's when things can kind of get weird with a lot of noxious weeds or just

maybe just overgrown brush and little little sapling. Sometimes, you know, if you have an area where the jackfurs or the little the little pine trees they grow up, those things can grow thick as dog's hair and they'll choke out a lot of good things that elk like to eat and deer. So it just depends on what you're looking at as far as food and feed. So that could be why you're coming up short on some of the

places you've been checking out. Is maybe it's there's not enough food or the right kind of food that they're looking for. If there's burns that are happening this year, if they get them things put out and you're allowed to go in. That's another thing. Sometimes they don't lay you into these areas until the till the Forest Service or BLAM or whoever's property is till they release it to be opened back up the public. Look, because they'll shut it down for that fire because all the hazards.

You know, it could even be a week after there hasn't been a puff as with a foot of snow on the ground, But it can take a week or longer just to get through the paperwork and the stuff to release it to make sure it's okay for the public to go into these places. But I wouldn't be afraid to go into those places right after, especially if it didn't burn super hot and just nuke off the place.

If it has, you know, there's patches where it didn't burn, or maybe it just kind of slowly burned up through the understory, burning pine needles and low brush, but didn't just burn all the tops out of every tree. There's definitely gonna be some elkrod out in that country. So that's how I would That's how I would play the game. Well,

I appreciate everybody listening. I wanted to let you guys know in the upcoming weeks I'm going to have an Elk calling master class right here on cutting the distance. I'm gonna call it the September tune Up. Each episode, I will walk you guys through how I make the Elk vocalizations personally use each September so you're not gonna want to miss that. And also, I'm gonna be doing a seminar in Emmett, Idaho on July twenty fourth, seven pm at Low Mountain Archery, Emmett. It's a tiny little

town just north of the Boise area. I've been doing this for about five years out there for my good buddy Nick, who's the shop owner, and we always have a really good turnout. It's a little warm in his shop. There's there's usually plenty of seating, but create great place to go. I like the people there, and I love doing these kind of you know, these kind of seminars locally, so I don't have to travel very far. So if you're in the area, if you're in this area or

within short driving distance, we'd love to see you. And ps, there's no cover charge, so everyone's welcome. This is a free show. Well, thanks for listening. September is right around the corner so you know what that means. Monsters are coming.