Welcome back to cutting the distance. We are about a month and a half away from September, which means archery l cunting the rut some of us that love to hunt we live all year for. And today I'm gonna jump into a few listener questions, but I really wanted to go over some real life situations that I've been in some call ins, what has worked, how we've adapted,
and how we've made it, you know, happen. So I think I've got five or six different scenarios that I laid out and things that kind of stick out in my mind that really kind of helped make those situations work. And as I went through and built this list, I was kind of surprised that there's not a lot of repetition. So what it really kind of leads to is you need to be an elk hunter that can adapt. You need to be an elk hunter that has a lot
of tools in the tool you know. I always kind of use the analogy of a guy that builds your house. He's got you know, twenty different saws. He's got a circular saw, a radio alarm saw, you know, a resip saw.
He's got all of these things.
That cut boards, but they're all used in certain situations right to make his job easier. You know the same thing with a hammer, a level. There's so many different tools and right ways to do it to be efficient versus tools that can get it done, but they're not going to be as efficient. They're not gonna be as effective, and so that's kind of how I relate that and going through and building this list, I was kind of surprised.
I went back and there were some common themes and things that worked on multiple ones, but like the things that I consider to be the main contributing factors of the success on that specific hunt didn't really overlap. So I'm excited to jump into these you know, six or seven scenarios and kind of lay out what I think worked there. But first off, we're going to jump into
some listener questions. And I was able to go down to New Mexico last week and do a calling clinic and an elk hunting educational for some guides and outfitters, and these are the questions that they brought to me during the seminar, so I'm just gonna kind of repeat them. I know that it's probably some things we've talked about before, but figure it's worth covering again. With elk season just
a month and a half around the corner. Today's question and answer session is brought to you by Pendleton Whiskey. So the first question we have what calls do I personally carry on me for an l cunt And it's going to be the same on almost every out count. I will change the number of diaphragms depending on whether it's a spike out, overnight, multi day trip, but for me it's the same thing every time. I will take
a Beegle tube right now. I've been using the metal Beagle tube on all of my hunt, so I'll have one Bagle tube.
I will have.
An easy estress or a Minix one or the other. I've been carrying the Minix so an external cow call. I will carry the Easy Sucker in my binal harness. I don't use it all the time, but it's a great finishing call and the reason you know, some people may say, well why do you carry the Minix? Why
do you carry the Easy Sucker. I'm a firm believer that at certain times, on certain elk with certain personalities, you need to have a call that gets them going there may be times where they will answer only one of those and not your diaphragms, or one or the other and not the other, you know, And so I carry those, and then I carry typically pink, you know, my pink signature diaphragm. I also carry a green amp
and then at times I will carry some pitch black two's. Now, if I'm going on a day hunt, I can usually get by with. You know, I'll grab two pinks and a green because I'm inevitably going to lose one somewhere through the hunt. Typically don't lose one every day, but you know, I want to back up, and then I also want to be able to change it up. So you know, two pinks and a green will typically get
me through a day. You know, the calls are going to hold up longer than that, but that's just to make sure I've gotten an extra and don't you know, have enough. Now, if I'm going on a backpack hunt, you know, and I've got the liberty I'm saying, this
is the guy that gets to make the calls. Before I leave you, I may grab five or six, you know, keep three in my in my pouch or in my pdo and then I'll maybe keep a couple tucked away in my pack so they're separate in case something gets lost and I lose all three of them, all six of them are in the same spot, so I'll usually tuck those away in my pack, in a in a pocket somewhere.
So that's it.
I'm not the guy that has, you know, seven land yards around my neck with a bunch of different externals and this and that. I can do it all with a few diaphragms, a Beagle tube, a Mini X, and an easy sucker, So that's what I carry. The second question, what's in my opinion or in your opinion, is how the question was, you know, proposed, is what's the single
most important thing that leads to success? And I had to think about this for a while, and you know, being a skilled hunter and all of that is important understanding elk, but let's say everybody has a basic understanding of that. I honestly feel the single most important thing that leads to success is time in the field. You know, I'm very fortunate, blessed to get to spend you know, thirty forty five days chasing ELK. And I've been in
some great units where It's happened very quick. I've been in great units where sometimes the wind isn't helping, the wind won't sit still. No matter what I do right, no matter how much work and effort I'm putting in, I still come up short. And so sometimes on those hunts you need time on your side just before things
click and kind of come together. So yeah, I honestly believe that the majority of guys out there are good enough woodsmen, understand elk enough that even just by being out there a lot, you're eventually going to stumble into some success. Regardless of whether you really truly know what you're doing or not, you'll eventually find some success by time. And to piggyback onto that, I feel that people will
sometimes wait for premium tags or premium opportunity. You know, maybe they've been saving points in a Western state, or you know, they go pay to going in a Mexico guide a hunt or a Colorado guided hunt, or wherever it may be.
I feel that being used.
To the nerves, feeling what those nerves feel like, go out there and practice on cow elk, you know, pick up a kwalk tag and go out there and experience or experience what works, experience what doesn't work. Go out there and have a tag that you're more than excited to shoot a raghorn or a spike or whatever it may be. Get the experience, Feel what the adrenaline is like.
See if you can keep your stuff together on a call in So in addition to time, I also feel that you should have time under elk, if that makes any sense. You should have time with elk at twenty thirty forty yards. You should have time trying to call elk and and see why it doesn't always work like you think it may be. Give yourself time to maybe when it's not as important. Hey, I'm gonna bugle with this bowl and see what his reaction is. Uh in
the in the right time. So time in the field, and then time prior to special hunts or premium hunts, so that you are ready for that opportunity and can take the most of that. I think people a lot of people get hung up on, you know, one or two big elk hunts in their their life and they're not necessarily ready for it. So spend some time out in the field with the elk during the rut. See what you can get away with, See what movement, you
can get away with, see what works cows? You know, cows sounds, bowl sounds, can you spot in stockable?
Can you get away with? Draw on your bow?
And then you know, all of these things are are much better to figure out during a a you know, and I don't want to say a less less important hunt, but a hunt that maybe doesn't mean as much to you or or you know, all the hunts mean mean a lot to me. I want to kill every you know, elk that I've got a chance to so I can fill my freezer. But you know, you know what I mean, not such a premium hunt. Go out and practice and
get used to all this stuff. The third question I got it camp, was what is the biggest mistake when calling elk in? And I learned this the hard way, you know, growing up seventeen eighteen, the Internet wasn't really a big thing.
I didn't have a you know.
I got to watch the Primos videos, you know, the Truth series and see how they did it, but it didn't really translate to the way things were working here in western Washington. When I was calling Roosevelt bulls in, I couldn't set a collar up, you know, one hundred yards back and have bulls come running by me. I couldn't do these things I had. I had to change
and make some changes to my system. So for a long time I would I could get bulls to be, you know, bugle fairly, fairly routinely, you know, every morning we were on multiple bulls. But what I found is that I would, you know, maybe let's say I'm three or four undred yards away from a bowl. I bugle and I get him to answer two or three times, like, all right, he's there. I think I know where he's at.
I'll maybe walk towards him one hundred yards, whether it's down the ridge or in the timber or through a clear cut, whatever it may be. And I bugle again, and he may be in this spot, so I feel like I'm gaining ground on him. And then I'll move another fifty hundred yards and I'll buggle again. Because I'm unsure of my decisions I'm making. I want to check the wind again, I want to make sure he's still there. Well, this time, he's now one hundred yards further away, so
we're the same distance that we just were. I'm not gaining any ground on him, or sometimes he will gain more ground on you. He might be one hundred and fifty yards further away, and you're trying to figure this out, and it goes back to that idea that these.
Bulls are there to.
One, you know, live and number two, you know, experience, recreate, you know, make new elk. So between those two things and we throw in the idea that we're trying to reverse nature a little bit. You know, in my opinion, one of the reasons bulls are so much louder than cows and you can hear him for so long is it's his way to announce to other cows or elkin area, like I'm down here. Like if you're a cow and
you're interested, come on down here. So, whether we're beagle and our cow calling, that bull wants to maintain his cow so he can breed them, and he wants to stay alive, so he's not going to necessarily leave them to come to your location. But what he is doing is rounding up his cows and pushing them away from the incoming bowl. So if you're bugling, you know, I would say you're going to have a better opportunity to col call your way in. Then you are to bugle
your way in. So from my experience and my experience alone, the biggest mistake I ever made when calling ELK was to bugle my way into a bowl. Let him know I'm coming, Announce I'm coming, Announce the direction I'm coming
in from. And what I did for days on end earlier in my archery, you know, hunting, you know, days I would play cat and mouse all morning, you know, following these out to bed, or i'd bump them through their beds, or I would change the direction they wanted to go to bed, and I would I can remember the four or five long hour cat and mouse. I could never get any closer, you know. At times the closest I would get is when I would elect to be quiet, move in, try to get closer, bugle again,
and then we'd start the game all over. So try to as much as you can, refrain from talking your way into a bowl, at least bugling your way into a bowl. Try to make your best guests on where they're at, and try not to make another peep until you get in there. You know, if the wind's right, you make a good guess. Be aware of satellite bowls as you approach, but you do all that right, you should be able to get close enough to these things to call them in without calling your way in and
keeping them out ahead of you. So that kind of wraps it up for the Q and A today. If you have questions for me, for Dirk, for any of our guests that we have on here, feel free to email them to us at CTD at phelpsgame Calls dot com, or send us a message on social media Instagram, Facebook, and we'll do our best to get them plugged into
the podcast. We really appreciate all your listener questions. So the bulk of today's podcast, I just went through and kind of looked at past calling things that worked well, things that worked you know, efficiently and effect actively, and
I just kind of wanted to walk through those. And some of you may have you seen some of these videos or I would, you know, not to give myself or our video is a shameless plug, but maybe go back and try to find some of these and you can see where some of these things I will talk about you can see kind of happen, you know, on video, and it may make a little bit more sense. So twenty nineteen, I drew a big horns elk tag and Wyoming.
For those of you that remember it better by me losing the bet to Dirk and dressing up as whole Cogan, it is that hunt. So one thing I wanted to point out, you know, to start that one right off, we did some scouting. We were there a day and a half before we were able to get some high ground, and we just watched a lot of elk. And this is kind of a you know, something that should make sense, but some people don't fully understand it. At night we
would watch the night before the opener. We would watch elk come out of some timber for the first time that evening. And they may go through a meadow, back through some timber, back through a meadow, back through some timber, but keep in mind the timber that they originally came out of. Try to see does that make good betting?
Is that where they were betted? And ninety nine percent of the time the timber that they originally come out of, you know, let's say at six o'clock at night when the shadows hit, is likely the timber that they are going to go back into the following morning. So that day we watched the target bowl that you know, I was excited to go try to get a chance at come out of some timber. We caught them what we feel was in the first meadow, and then we kind
of followed them for the rest of the night. We kind of watched them go through some meadows, through some you know, draws, through some meadows. But the next morning we were to go back and we were able to catch them back in that timber. Now things didn't work. We had some wind swirl do some things, but those elk and the herd that we wanted to be on with the bowl we wanted to be on, came back
in that timber. So it seems like maybe a you know, an obvious you know, outcome, But pay attention to that timber they came out of and don't get caught maybe chasing beagles way off where they want to be, Like you're gonna you know, I talked a lot at that
seminar in New Mexico. If you can kill this bull or have a chance to set up on a bowl, whether it's an ambush and call a little bit, if you can get in front of that bowl and not make him do what he doesn't want to do, it's going to be a lot easier to call that bowl. In another thing we did on that twenty nineteen Wyoming hunt, we stayed on the mountain all day. Do not, if possible, do not talk yourself into going back to the truck, going back to the side by side, going back to camp.
Let everybody else on the mountain go back to camp and make a sandwich and get a nap, whatever it may be. By staying on the mountain all day, we were able to be in position. We were able to have the wind right when we were ready. We kind of had ideas where Ell could win, and it put us in the game, you know. On that hunt specifically, we had people watching us. They didn't hunt the night, they hunted the morning, and then they watched us through a spotting scope that night. We were able to talk
to them. While they were at camp, we were up on the mountain still hunting. So we stayed on the mountain all day put us in position we were.
We were very close.
To getting a bowl to Bogle that evening when the when the shadows dropped and the bulls got active, we were we were right in the wheelhouse and I feel if we had to, if we would have went back to camp, like crossed our minds multiple times. We would have never been able to get on on the bowl we ended up taking. So we went, we closed ground. We were aggressive, but one thing we waited was for kind of that prime time. We didn't we didn't force
the issue during the heat of the day. We didn't write an area off because we were We didn't get a beagle at three o'clock in the morning, so we sat and it was tough. We sat until the you know, the shade shade got to a point the weather had cooled down, and then we started to check kind of truth, check patches of timber and draws to see if elk were in there. And when we did get beagles, we
closed the ground and we were very aggressive. We used the terrain, we used the the vegetation, and we closed ground very very quickly, because especially at night, you only know where the bull's at when he bugles. If he doesn't bugle for two or three minutes, he might be one hundred two hundred, three hundred five hundred yards off the next time.
You hear him.
So if the train of vegetation allows take that information for what it's worth, close distance very very fast and see if you can, you know, get in the game at that point instead of trying to trail him and you know, make the game happen somewhere else. So during this call in, we get very very close, maybe a little bit too close. We get up to a spruce tree and it's one of those trees that you can kind of see through a little bit. And I realized when we had got there we kind of hugged the
upper edge of the timber. When we got there, I could see the elk on the other side at about forty yards away, kind of through the trees. He had never really picked us off. Well, what happens during this cal in? We're there for about ten minutes, call him back and forth forty yards away with a you know, I'm right up against this rose tree and he's, you know, forty yards on the back side of it. We're getting more, you know, we're we're picking up the argument. You know,
he's screaming, I'm screaming. We're going back and forth, and all of a sudden, this bowl barks at me. And I've said it before. I don't get too caught up on language and what this sound means or that sound means, but I think it's pretty universal that when a bark happens, and some people will say alarm bark versus a nervous grunt, nervous bark, whatever it may be, it's very very tough tough to differentiate. Yeah, the elk may act different, but
in this instance it was very clear. It was basically a hey, show yourself type of a sound. Right, we've all agreed when when an elk barks, typically they've seen something or heard something that they don't trust, and by barking, they will typically, you know, say show yourself. And in Colorado a lot of times and some other places we hear some bulls tend to during a call in when you bring him in, they will bark, scream or bark chuckle at you. And you know it's like, hey, I've
came two hundred yards to you. I should be able to see you. Now, come and show yourself sort of a sound. So the bark, if you've watched that hunt, I bark back immediately. Now, I did have my bugle tube kind of down between my knees, kind of in its resting place. I didn't have a whole lot of time, so I just bark with my voice with a diaphragm, and just like clockwork, that bowl instantly puts its head down and walks about ten yards to the right out
in the wide open wine at full draw. So being able to bark at that bowl kind of saved it. And it was kind of in my response. I was like, hey, you show yourself. I've been here for the same amount of time. Show yourself. I'm not showing myself sort of a response. And that bowl was able to come out to you know, thirty thirty thirty two yards, and I was able to make a great shot on that bowl. And the last thing on that is we continued to call.
We didn't get too crazy and pump fists and yell and scream.
I was able to call that bull back.
Why the first shot was definitely going to kill it very quickly and effectively. He came back in and I was able to put another shot, you know, high and back in the lungs, probably only caught one lung, but I was able to be quiet and get an additional arrow into that bowl. So, you know, don't go crazy after a shot, don't scream and yell at your buddies and fist bump, you know, stay calm, try to call the bowl back in. You always call after a shot to try to slow the thing down in case it
doesn't know what happened, reduce that blood trail length. But that was kind of the the factors that went into that being a successful hunt. So the following year, twenty twenty, we went to New Mexico, myself, Dirk, and John and I had come off of a different New Mexico hunt with Ranelda that year. This was a no, no, no excuse me, I got my years mixed up. Twenty twenty New Mexico. This is a hunt where me, Dirk, and
John had tags and we had hunts before that. So we get there and we didn't really have any time to scout. We had we had to figure out what was going on in that area, you know, where the elk we're at and how they were going to adapt. So we started to kind of get our butts kicked a little bit there. We we were, you know, chasing elk. We couldn't couldn't get in. You know, we'd start them on water and started paying attention to tracks on the ground.
You know, they're coming in to water midday, the bulls are coming in midday. We started to cover different ground, just trying to find out where the elk we're at and where the elk wanted to be. So I felt like, right off the bat, we wanted to try to hunt some areas that maybe looked good on on X or areas in the past that had been good. We had to adapt, and we found ourselves in areas that we typically hadn't hunted before or didn't think about hunting to
go find the elk. And so, you know, right off the bat, we adapted. We It's kind of funny if you watch this video. This was filmed for a loophold project. We just we were getting our tails kicked. John had killed a bull on the evening of night four, and then I think we were going into like the morning of the eighth, the eighth morning of the hunt. Me and Dirk still hadn't killed a boy yet. And Dirk
was kind of joking over there. He was giving you know, his if this was his first elkount ever, he might just hang it up and not every el kind again. Because we were just getting our tails kicked. He's like, this is the way it always is, you know, kind of having a little bit of a pity party, and falling in it there, which was we were all in that. He was just the only one to say it. You know,
he kind of looked a little bit sad. He had a bloody nose and had some toilet paper in there and kind of explaining how this elk count was as miserable as it could be. But we were still out there, right, We weren't back at camp, we weren't at the truck. We were still trying to find a bowl to get going.
And as we were midday going to head back to the side by sides to go try a new area, we did hear a faint bugle, And so don't ever give up out there, Like being in the woods, having times in the woods is always going to uh, you know, it's always going to have better success than being back at camp. You know, ninety nine point nine percent time nless you have a bullwalk through camp. Being in the woods, being in the game is more important than being back
at camp. You're going to find success that way. So when we got there to where we heard the bull bugle, it was kind of a ret fest. And so there's a few different sayings. You like, win in Rome, do what the Romans do. So these bulls were cranking. We had spotted a bowl across the way kind of chasing cows.
You could hear a couple of different bulls over the ridge going crazy, so it was obvious you had some bulls or herds that had come together or satellite bulls that had come together and were really kind of causing some havoc. So we wanted to join the party. We started calling a lot. We were biggling very aggressively, We
were cow calling very aggressively. And that bull we spotted, we originally called into about twenty five yards a Dirk, but on that one, that bowl came in so silent after he beagled, We had no idea he was there. And the lighting was real, real bad, and I think
Dirk ended up getting picked off. But we knew at that time that that bowl may have ran back over there, but those other bulls didn't know what was going on, right, the other two bulls that we could hear, So as soon as that bull crested back over the ridge, we took off down and after him we got up over there. And this setup was one of my favorite because you don't ever want to set up where the elk that you're calling into should be able to see your location.
So this this ridge had a pretty good role in it, and I was able to kind of crawl over the roll and get set up just on the backs or the front side of the ridge, and Dirk was able to stay on the back side of the ridge. So for an elk, in order for an elk to be able to see, you know, where Dirk's calling location was from, it was going to have to get up on top of that ridge, walk by me and get up over that so it could you know, get the visual on that.
So that elk had no idea. I had crawled forward and got set up under a juniper and Dirk was in twenty yards behind me, just over a roll, which was an ideal setup. We we eliminated all chances of hanging up on that setup if that bowl was to come into Dirk, who was the caller of the bowl. You know, amazing setup kept the shot distances really tight. I knew it was going to be twenty to thirty
and it worked out excellent. And so take a little more time on your setup if you can, you know, in instances like that where it works just perfect, you know, otherwise, use that terrain, use that vegetation. Make sure when the bull gets the thirty forty yards you've got a chance to shoot, and you're not going to force that thing to hang up. You know, don't set up across from a meadow that's one hundred yards wide because you're likely never going to kill that bowld archie equipment. It's going
to hang up at the edge of the meadow. Look for the cow that should be at the other edge of the meadow, and you know it's going to be. It's just not going to work out. The other thing to note on that hunt, we killed bowls three different ways. John killed his sitting over water. We killed mine with aggressive bugling like herd bull tactics challenged bugles, and then Dirk killed his bowl a day later with just natural
betted herd sounds. We spread out over a ridge. We kind of followed a herd to bed with what we assumed was a herd bowl and a satellite bowl. We got on an adjacent ridge to him and we spread out one hundred and fifty yards and it was just calf call, cow call, lazy betted bugle, calf call, cow call, cow call, calf call. You know, we were, and it wasn't quick. It was, you know, maybe one or two calls every five minutes. We were just being very natural.
We weren't trying to call elk. We were just trying to make it sound like a herd had come in and bedded on the knob next to him, and you could hear the bull eventually get up out of its bed and bugle, a little more active bugle, and then we could hear the bull slowly, you know, come across the drainage. She was bugling kind of on his way in. We had to do a little bit of a hopscotch.
Dirk was on the opposite end of the ridge and we had to get him to the side of the ridge that the bulls to come in on, and we were able to kill that bowl. So don't don't be stuck with happened to always be aggressive, you know, sit in water.
There's multiple ways.
To find success on some of these hunts, and on that hunt, we used them all. My twenty twelve Washington Bowl, we had fire danger here, industrial timberlands kind of shut down. Don't be afraid to just go try a new area. I wish I could say I knew this bowl was here. We had scouted him, but we didn't. I had no idea that that bowl lived in that area. We had we had scouted it before on a very foggy day and the only thing I had to go off of was tracks in the trails.
Like.
We never seen any elk on that scouting mission, but we just went and tried it, like, hey, it's there. We didn't see anybody at the trailhead. We went and tried it. So don't be afraid to try a new area. Sometimes some of my best hunting spots are you know, me throwing a dart at a dart board, abandoning what maybe has worked in the past. Let's go find something new. And that's one of my favorite things about hunting, is just finding new areas that produce or can produce, you know,
in the future. On this one, I shouldn't have been the one to kill this bull. I called in that big bull the day before my buddy Derek had you know, we we had. I had sent him down to set up where I thought the bull was gonna come in and didn't realize he had kind of set up behind kind of like an iron wall of high mountain cedar. It was like an impossible penetrable wall, and I called that bowl into about fifteen yards from him, about sixty
yards from me. So on that setup, if you would have set up with his back to that wall or at the last of those cedar trees, he would have had a chip shot. So you know, always make sure when you set up set up in front of or to the side of a tree. I prefer to be standing if possible, you know, my left shoulder facing to where I think that bowl will go, and then be able to shoot as much of the shooting lanes as
possible without tucking in behind something. The other thing on this this hunt was persistence, right we I ended up missing that bowl the day before. I did shoot at it from what I thought was fifty five yards away and it was actually forty five. I shot right over its back. But we were persistent. We went back in there. We never we went back there that night. We went back there the following morning when I killed it. Don't
don't become frustrated. You know, we had other people show up that that evening before, and we just kind of held tight. We we needed to stay with that bowl. We needed to try to figure out what he was going to do and by staying there. You know, the other hunting group had left with about two hours left in the day. Well guess what. We stayed there until dark and the bowl beagle an hour before dark after those guys left. So I was able to to you know,
get that bowl to bogle again. We knew he'd be there in the morning, and we went back in there that next morning and killed it. So be very persistent. Don't just give up on things that you know, don't go your way. You know, it was the last day of the hunt, and I was able to kill that, you know, the best bowl of my life by just going back and you know, just putting time into that elk and not want to change, not go to a new area, I think, and I had screwed it up,
held tough and made it work. Twenty fourteen Idaho Bowl. This was my first trip out of state from Washington kind of when you know, started to hunt elsewhere. And we could still buy tags in Idaho over the counter back then, so we showed up. It was a relatively new area. We did some on X scouting and did some of that. So when we showed up to the area, we we there were other hunters at the trailhead. I'm not I'm not ashamed to say that. I'll talk to
anybody around us. Hey, how's hunting going. You've seen any good bulls? What's the action like? Are they talking? Well, this guy right off the bat says, you know, up and you know around blah blah blah mountain. We've had a couple of good bulls going. We just can't seem to make it work. And you know, this area is good. The wolves have moved over into this area. So use use whatever people are willing to give you now. You know, if that guy says like, we're going back in there,
we didn't end up going into their spot. It was it was good for me to end up saying, all right, at this mountain, this sort of an area, this sort of elevation, these these elk are talking. You know, it just gives you some ideas on what's going on. You know, A couple of days later, uh, he said, I'm out of here. We're leaving, Like, if you want to go
in there, go ahead. We didn't end up going in there because I killed my bowl that day and then Charlie we were able to get on some you know, elk in a different spot, but we just went in there covered as much ground as possible. So we had
a plan. We were gonna walk ridges, we were gonna walk some road systems, some gated off road systems, and we were just gonna cover as much of that ground as possible, try to get it figured out and then you know, figure out where the elkra at and then and then go from there.
So I was able to get a bull to bugle.
We went on a little six mile jaunt, got back to the truck, didn't really have any great success yet, but we're like, hey, we're on this long road system, nobody's hunting it. Let's just bugle occasionally off of the road into a big giant canyon. I don't remember for his our third or fourth bugle. All I know is Charlie was eating a bag of purple skittles. And every time I would think I heard a bugle, I would hear the crunching bag of purple skittles or him chewing
on purple skittles. And I remember getting out of the truck because he's driving me nuts, and listened a little bit better, and sure enough we got a bigle to you know, a bowl of bugle. So we went and dropped the trailer, came back, and this is a good instance of if you can get a bowl to do what the bull wants to do, it's going to be easier to call him in. And I'm jumping ahead a little bit here. This bull was going up the drainage
and you could hear it between bugles. He was going up to drainage and we were gonna have to come in behind him because of the wind. At that point. He was in a it had a flowing creek. It was the sun was starting to go down in a steep canyon, and we knew the wind was going to be getting sucked down the canyon, so we had to come in behind him. But he was trying to travel up it, which is smart. You know, he's keeping the wind in his face, doing goods, you know, making goods
smart elk decisions. So we had to come in behind him trying to relocate him. I mentioned earlier one of the biggest mistakes is calling away into elk. He was moving so fast. I did elect to call to this elk on our way in you know, location bagle, nothing cow call with my diaphragm. Nothing and one of the reasons I carry all these ELK calls is back then I was using the easy estress. I cranked on that and he fired off instantly, so I knew he had
heard the bugle, didn't answer. I knew he had heard the cow call with diaphragms, but he liked the sound of that easy estress. So we move in another one hundred and fifty yards. This is a big canyon, so it's taken us a while to make up this ground. Move forward. I want to know where he's that one more time, thinking the bowl. Well, maybe now he'll answer bugle. Maybe now he'll answer an easy estress or you know, a diaphragm cow call. Nothing hammer's on easy estress. So
it's like one of those things. If I hadn't had that call, we may have never been able to kind of complete this call in. So of those reasons why I carry multiple calls on some of these hunts. So back to it's easier to do it's easier to call ELK in if they're doing what they want to do. So that means if an ELK wants to go from point A to B, I don't want to call him from point b back to a if that makes any sense. So I want to get in front of him. I want to get alongside of him if the wind allows.
And do that.
So this hunt, we had to change shut ups, setups multiple multiple times because that bull wanted to keep going up the creek and we were trying to catch up to him, kind of coming up behind him. So we set up multiple times trying to get that ball to come in, and finally we were able to put enough pressure on him to get him to come in. That was one of the bulls that I shot on a on a pretty heavy quartering to more of a frontel
but a slightly quartering, you know. On that one, we had to set up in some pretty tight quarters and some brush. But changing setups and you know, putting pressure on that bowl is really what kind of change that scenario to the positive, because that bowl was very, very hesitant to come. In twenty eighteen, Idaho, some Idaho was on fire that year, our original hunting you know spot was on fire. Thankfully, back then we could still change
units because we hadn't bought our tags yet. So something we don't talk a lot about and sometimes we're too tired to do, but on that hunt, we did some night bugling. I did some night bugling prior to my buddies showing up on this hunt, and I got three or four, I don't remember, five, six maybe bulls the bugle, and so I started making pins on my on on x is as I got bulls to bagle and where
they were bugled from and about how far I thought. Well, the next couple of days we hunted and it was very very hot and dry year, you know, for the reason there were fires. The majority of the vegetation above tree line had burnt up either been burnt been ravaged by you know, sheep that had been you know in the area, and it just wasn't good. So we had
to become smart elk hunters. Right, if the elk can't maintain, if they don't got food, if they don't got water, they're not gonna be here, no matter if that's where they want to be during September or not. They've got to survive. They've got to find water. And I had the idea that there are elk around because I've heard them bugling at night, and so the night biggling kind of save that hunt because I maybe would have pulled anchor and went and tried complete different area within the unit.
So we realized what the elk really needed. They were able to give up their preferred food, their perfood bedding, their preferred running areas because they needed water. You know, elk haf to water daily, if not multiple times a day during the rut and not hot weather. So we adapted. We moved where we wanted to hunt. We were in Timber a lot more, but we we went and found the elk. You know when calling this bowl in so this is actually my buddy Tyson's bowl. We were able
to spot some elk. We were up early, we weren't, you know, sleeping in. We spotted a bowl pushing a cow over a ridge. It basically the first bit of light that we could. It was barely daylight enough for it to happen, but we spotted elk and that really got that whole day started. So we had a pretty good jaunt, you know, hour and a half hike up to that ridge line to get up and over there, and there was a major retfest going on the backside, which is exactly what we needed. We moved in. We
let them do the talking. We didn't have to make a peep, so a little bit of shock and awe as we got in on this setup. We the elk had no idea we lived there. The thermals had switched coming up into us because we had to climb up to the ridge. It was just an ideal setup until we got down to where the elk were bedded, and the amount, the distance of shooting lanes, the distance of you know, an aerowaut getting hit by brush was very very.
Tight. You know.
We we had five to ten yard shooting windows. So we finally found an area that was as good as it got in some of this big timber. We had about fifteen yard shooting lanes and I needed to set up. I like to be able to set up so I can see my shooter and then hopefully I'll be able to see, you know, an elk and be able to react to them. So Tyson got set up and I backed up only about ten or fifteen feet above him and started to call.
It, call a herd bull.
In We had a spike that come in kind of check us out, and then the herd bull kind of started ripping up up the hill. We were able to get within about I'm guessing one hundred yards of where they were betted, but we couldn't get any closer due to the brush and the proximity of where those elk were betted. So this bull comes in fairly quickly, but it's so brushy. He gets about the twenty yards and Tyson needs him at about fifteen yards to have a legit shot, and the bull loses interest and starts to
head back to his cows, which is typical. They will come check it out. They should expect to see you there. If not, they're going to turn.
Well.
Fortunately, as the caller, I was able to see him turn and head away from us, and I instantly hammered him with a lipball. I was able to, you know, see how aggressive he was on his on his way in. I knew that I could probably take advantage of a very aggressive lip ball that was you know, twenty yards away from him, and that bowl on a dime, flipped an additional one eighty in the direction he was, and
he came right back in. He broke through the brush, kind of pushes his head through, and Tyson was able to make a great shot at fifteen yards. But if I wouldn't have been able to see that elk or if Tyson wouldn't have been able to communicate to me, we would have never killed that bowl. So there's a great reason why I think the coller needs to be sometimes close, and the caller also needs to be close in order to create a.
Threat for that bowl.
If I'd have been backed up a lot from that, you know, now the bowl that's close to your herd is one hundred and fifty yards away and not one hundred yards away. And and you know, so sometimes I'm a big I'm a big you know, a big fan of having that collar right on top of the hunter. That way, you're not creating any more separation because you exponentially going to have better call ins or more successful call ins when that caller is right on top of
the shooter at times. And sometimes, you know, another thing we took from this hunt is a setup wasn't optimal. But you have to take what's given to you, your relation, your distance from the elk, your you know, the best shot opportunities you're gonna have, and sometimes you just have to make that work. Yeah, I would love to be able to shoot thirty yards in there, but it wasn't possible, you know, set up and uh, we made it work the best we could. So twenty twenty three Oregon Bowl.
This is a story I don't like to tell, but once again, it's one of those times where you need to be, you know, as skilled as possible. You know, you don't want to be a one trick pony, so to speak. And twenty twenty three, So last year I had a little bit of a mental breakdown. It's big country, it was rough. We had put in some tough rough days. But finally about day eight I had to kind of kick myself in the butt and say, stop trying to
find an easy one. Yeah, there were elk all over through the unit, but the easy ones were having more pressure. The easy ones. You had heard more people bugle from the road. The easy ones were not going to be as likely to come in compared to the harder elk that I was able to find. Yeah, the harder elk were maybe less dense in areas, they were maybe harder to get to. I was going to burn more energy
to get them. But on that twenty twenty three hunt we had the I kind of had to just question myself, like, why are you trying to find an easy one? This isn't you know typical let's go find a difficult elk, and uh, it really kind of helped. And that goes
along with pressure. There was a ton of pressure on this twenty twenty three Oregon hunt, you know, people claiming areas, people in areas, and so I really just had to, as I mentioned, make an effort to go find elk that I knew other people weren't hunting, and it kind of you know, turn turn the corner on the hunt. But it was it was still still difficult. And so when we we stopped trying to find an easy one, we had made an effort to chase every bugle and
all this deep ground things just weren't working. Trying to run my system of being a you know, a pressure hunter, you know, put pressure on the elk, get close to him. Bugle wouldn't work. We'd bump something, we would you know, the elk would just pick up and leave. All right, let's get real tight, and so on that day I ended up killing. We had dropped thirty seven hundred feet and climbed thirty seven hundred feet chasing bugles, so we would get in tight, we would go to cow calls.
Same result just wasn't working. So as a hunter, that's you know, a hunter that loves to call elk, that takes pride in being able to call elk. I had just got my tailkicked for nine days straight, and so that evening I was able to locate a bowl with a location bugle, so that was acceptable. We had to make a we had to make a move, so we
had to come in from a different direction. During the little drive where we kind of bumped around, I said, you know what, I'm not grabbing my pack and I'm not grabbing my calls.
I'm gonna wear my.
Chest harness with a rangefinder. We're not using calls where I'm not even going to use a call to keep him buggling. We're just going to go completely silent and if it works, it works. If not, then I'm gonna probably be cussing myself and wishing that I had called. So this bowl continues to bugle throughout the evening. We have about an hour left, so we're trying to really beat feet up there, get set up and on that one. This was the first bowl I've ever killed that I
didn't call in. We were able to slowly work our way in.
We were able to.
Spot a cow up ahead of us by slowly, you know, scanning the area. I was able to spot some horns to the grass. I was able to kind of figure out how he is oriented. I was able to figure out where to put his head behind a tree, and we just literally crawled, you know, walked and crawled to within forty yards of this bowl. So why sometimes I take a lot of pride and being able to call it again. I also want to find success in any way that there is, and on this one, we just adapted.
We put the calls away. We want to be able to use all of those tools in our toolbox, and you know, I was able to make it happen on that bowl. So that's kind of my wrap up. I just wanted to kind of walk through those things and to kind of bring all that together. There are things we do on every hunt, and a lot of it comes from the gut.
You know.
We sit on this podcast, we sit in seminars and we're able to draw up these perfect cookie cutter little scenarios and.
The real.
In the real world and the real Elk woods, it just doesn't work like that. There's little pieces of information that I would be here for an hour trying to explain the entire scenario, like, oh, there was another bowl three undred yards way down the ridge, and we maybe heard a cow over here, and earlier that morning we had,
you know, seen somebody on the road a half mile down. Like, all of those things come into play that will eventually like help us make decisions, but these were This was just to show you that on all of these things, to be a successful, a complete elk hunter, you need to be able to use all this information you know to help you be successful. You know, you know scouting, you know being aggressive, you know bark, you know, sitting water, whatever it may be.
All of this.
Stuff at times is is what allows me to be successful and and not necessarily you know, the same thing over and over, if that makes any sense. So I really appreciate all of you tuning into this episode of Cutting the Distance. Elk season is a month and a half away, so I hope you guys are all, you know, shooting your bows, getting your calls tuned in, just getting ready. It's it's, in my opinion, the best month of the year.
Look forward to it every every season. And thanks again for tuning in to Cutting the Distance, and we'll catch you on the next episode,