IT HAD BEEN probably the most irritating, and but probably the most superb, week of elk searching possible. The actual part of southwestern Montana that I used to be searching was merely crawling with elk. I used to be into bulls day-after-day — generally a number of a day — and but by the sixth day I hadn’t even drawn my bow.
Oh, a half-dozen smaller bulls had are available in, and I might have taken one had I chosen to take action. However I used to be after a great bull, a kind of elk with many winters — and lots of searching seasons — beneath his belt. I had known as up a handful of those large boys to this point, however every time they wouldn’t fairly are available in shut sufficient for a shot. They’d hold up within the brush 80 yards out and rake their antlers, or cease and peek round a pine tree, or circle the wagons and attempt to get my wind. There’d been plenty of motion and loads of pleasure, however no cigar…not but.
That’s why I’d determined to strive one thing radical. On this present day I strapped a smallish five-point elk antler to my daypack and went to an space the place I’d seen a closely antlered 5×5 bull two days earlier than. At daybreak I used to be in place, champing on the bit for sufficient gentle to see my sight pins. When it was vivid sufficient I bugled, and a bull responded immediately not 100 yards down the canyon. I aggressively closed the hole, and we started a verbal sparring match that clearly incensed the bull and despatched the hackles on the again of my neck straight to consideration.
Thrashing and crashing, the bull got here in, however like lots of the others he hung up simply out of vary, up the other aspect of a small creek. I might see his antler tops above the comb as he raked and chuckled, displaying off his muscle. It was the identical large 5×5 I’d seen beforehand.
Taking my little five-point antler, I poked it above the comb pile I used to be arrange subsequent to, bellowed on my bugle and pawed the bottom with my boot. All of the whereas I twisted and turned the antler in a shadow-like imitation of the massive bull. I noticed my “rival” elevate his head, and when he noticed the antler above the comb he was offered. He got here rumbling down the creek financial institution like an antlered tank. Because the bull plowed into the underside, I dropped my antler and readied the bow. He then charged up the opposite aspect and paused, searching for the pipsqueak five-point that had been there only a minute earlier than. My arrow centered the bull’s lungs, and half-hour later I used to be laughing with glee.
If the elk received’t play by the principles, then why ought to I?
TODAY’S BULL ELK are smartening up. Mature bulls — those that have lived by means of greater than 4 or 5 searching seasons — have seen the entire tips. They’ve heard bugling good and dangerous, smelled the woodsmoke of camps giant and small, seen the annual invasion of their mountain properties by hunters wearing all the pieces from complete camouflage to pumpkin orange. They’ve been stalked, pushed, chased, bushwhacked and run across the mountain greater than sufficient occasions to ever neglect. They’ve achieved greater than learn the textbooks on elk searching — they’ve written the chapters themselves.
That’s why right now it is advisable to be prepared to offer elk one thing they’ve by no means seen earlier than. Not that textbook maneuvers received’t work. In fact they may. However nothing works the entire time; and when the textbook comes up with a solution of “5” to the query “two plus two,” you realize it’s time to throw away the ebook and take a look at one thing radical.
Merritt Delight, who runs Misplaced Fork Ranch out of Cameron, Montana, is a longtime information and clothing store and one high-quality elk hunter. He additionally isn’t afraid to strive one thing completely different to get a bull inside vary.
“One time I bugled a pleasant bull in for a bowhunting consumer who had a elaborate bow with an overdraw and all that,” Delight recalled. “When the consumer went to attract, the arrow fell off the remainder — clank! — and the bull trotted off. The opposite bulls had been performing humorous that week, so as an alternative of cow calling or bugling, I gave the alarm bark of a cow elk. Everybody says that when a bull hears this, he’s gone. However this bull got here proper again in.
“The hunter was so amazed that he let the arrow fall proper off the remainder once more — clank! — and the bull bolted off a second time. I couldn’t consider it! However I barked yet one more time, and the bull stopped and got here again — a bit extra cautiously this time, however he did come again. My hunter lastly bought it collectively and made the shot.”
Then there was the time Delight and I have been searching as a crew. We had gotten a great bull moving into a spot so brushy that you can barely see your hand in entrance of your face. The bull had a small harem of cows with him, and the group was above us on the aspect of a small timbered ridge throughout a creek reduce. Because the crow flies, the elk have been 75 yards off. Because the hunter walks, they have been 200 yards away.
The bull strutted backwards and forwards throughout the face of that ridge, bellowing and ripping up brush. As he moved, we moved, staying parallel and never letting him get what he needed — the wind. This went on for maybe a half-hour, when lastly we heard some rocks clatter. The bull had had sufficient, and he was going to take his cows over the ridge and away from this noisy madhouse. Delight and I each realized what was taking place on the identical immediate, and when the information checked out me with bug eyes and an expression that stated, “Now what?” I whispered, “Let’s cost ’em!”
So I did. As Delight known as and raked like a demon, I crashed by means of the comb as quick as I might proper on the elk. I hoped the herd would assume the noise was one other bull that was lathered up and able to do battle. Once I got here out of the thickest brush right into a smallish clearing, there was the bull, not 40 yards off-and he was a dandy six-point. Surprised to seek out that the Cost of the Gentle Brigade had labored, I stumbled over a fallen log. That broke the spell, or I’m certain I might have had a great shot at that trophy.
It looks like elk wish to see elk, or no less than one thing with 4 ft that doesn’t resemble a hunter. If they’ll’t see one other animal, they usually get as cautious as a cat stalking a chook in your entrance garden. Any little factor that will get them to consider that you’re actually one other elk, and never some bozo straight from the espresso store on the town, is commonly sufficient to win the day.
Take horses, for instance. I’ve had multiple bull bugle on the sound of my horses’ hoofs as we clompity-clomped down the path. I can bear in mind one rifle season in New Mexico when my associate and I have been driving alongside by means of some rolling mountaintop meadow areas dotted by a number of islands of heavy timber. Coming across the nook of 1 such timber stand we ran smack dab into the center of a herd of 30 elk, 5 of them good five-point bulls. The textbook says to cease, slowly flip the horses round, journey into the timber, dismount and make a stalk on foot.
Not us. As a substitute we continued to journey proper on the elk, who stood their floor making an attempt to determine simply what on this planet we have been. Once we bought to inside 150 yards, I turned my horse broadside, tossed the reins to my associate, who had moved his mount in between the elk and me, stepped off the saddle, sat down, and because the horses cleared my place, shot the most important bull within the bunch.
Textbook elk searching? No approach. Efficient? You betcha.
AN ELK HUNTER’S worst enemy—after his personal clumsiness—is the wind. Bow season, rifle season, muzzleloader season, it doesn’t matter-if you don’t have the wind in your favor, you don’t have an opportunity. How good is an elk’s sense of scent? Jack Atcheson Sr., the veteran reserving agent from Butte, Montana, has shot extra large bulls along with his rifle on public land than simply about any man alive. And Atcheson has a reasonably sturdy respect for the elk’s nostril.
“Elk have a way of scent like few different animals you possibly can hunt,” he stated. “Let me offer you an instance. I noticed a band of elk feeding alongside in an open meadow a half-mile from the place I used to be standing. Unexpectedly I felt the wind swap, going now from me proper to them. The second that breeze—and it was a mild breeze, not a robust wind—bought my scent to these elk, they threw their heads again, noses within the air for simply an immediate, then bolted into the darkish timber. At a half-mile! What number of elk do you assume scent most hunters in the course of the season and skedaddle earlier than the hunters ever even know they’re within the neighborhood?”
Elk stay in swirling-wind nation. Many longtime elk hunters—myself included—consider that elk purposely mattress down in the course of the day in areas the place the wind all the time swirls as a method of additional safety in opposition to assault from all sides. Textbook technique says to remain out of those unstable wind areas so that you simply received’t spook elk in a foreign country together with your evil odor.
However when it’s sizzling, dry and the bottom underfoot is as crunchy as a crumpled-up newspaper, the elk don’t transfer a lot throughout capturing gentle. If you need a bull, you must go in after him. The way in which to keep away from the swirling wind is to borrow a web page from the whitetail hunter’s textbook and get above the breeze — in a tree stand.
In sizzling climate, elk wish to stay close to water holes and/or wallows, which they use to assist them keep cool and comfy. Scout round and discover a wallow or water gap that’s peppered with contemporary signal — often tracks and droppings. Take a conveyable, backpackable tree stand and set it up close by. Attempt to transfer in and place the stand when the breeze appears to be blowing steadily in your face, however as soon as the stand is up, plan on spending all the day there. Take lunch, an empty bottle for “emergencies,” and a great paperback ebook to assist combat boredom, strap your self in with a security belt, and be affected person.
Give the stand a pair or three days, if crucial. Throughout that point you’ll be shocked at what you’ll see out of your perch. On a latest hunt in Idaho’s Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness in the course of the opening week of rifle season, a pal staked out a water gap beneath sizzling situations for 3 days. He ended up seeing not solely elk, but additionally mule deer, whitetail deer, a coyote, a lone black bear, a mountain lion, plus quite a few raptors, songbirds and small recreation. In so doing, he shot the largest bull of the hunt, an eye-popping 6×6.
ANOTHER TRICK borrowed from the whitetail hunter’s handbook that may be fairly productive for elk is rattling.
Searching in New Mexico in 1990 with U.S. Outfitters and my good pal Archie Nixon was when the rattling gentle bulb went on in my head. With a bow I had taken an enormous bull that scored 345 Boone and Crockett Membership factors two days earlier, and I used to be now serving to Nixon information one other of his shoppers. One morning we seemed down off a hillside and noticed a really giant 6×6 bull stalking a lone cow. All of a sudden, one other large 6×6 appeared, and it was apparent that we had ringside seats for what was going to occur subsequent.
The bulls circled one another briefly, then locked horns in a for-real, somebody’s-going-to-get-hurt battle over that cow. They spun in a giant circle, clacking their antlers, pawing the bottom, and making a ruckus that might frighten a lifeless man.
As if by magic, out of the comb popped the top of one other good bull. Then one other. And one other. And nonetheless yet one more. In a matter of minutes 5 good bulls along with a few cows had come to the sound of these bulls battling. Why they got here — whether or not it was curiosity, the breeding urge or no matter—who can say? However come they did.
Elk hunters have usually raked and banged bushes with limbs reduce from different bushes in an try and mimic a bull raking his antlers. That is high-quality, besides that the sound doesn’t carry very far within the dense timber or over uneven floor. The sound of rattling a pair of deer antlers collectively carries a lot better, is sensible, and it really works. Not the entire time, after all, identical to rattling for deer doesn’t work each time, however it’s yet one more trick to drag out of your bag when the searching’s powerful and the textbook solutions don’t get the job achieved.
I’m not by means of experimenting with off-the-wall, radical elk methods, both. For instance, I take into account for this fall a pleasant secluded little wallow on a small creek that’s not removed from a logging street. If the elk signal is there the best way it has been the previous three years, throughout bow season I plan on establishing a tree stand close by and putting a standing elk decoy within the wallow. Decoys have labored for me once I’m searching whitetails, so why shouldn’t they work for elk? In fact, I’ll flag the decoy with some fluorescent orange ribbon for security’s sake, after which I’ll spray a bit business elk-in-heat scent round and bugle from my tree stand.
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Will it work? Who is aware of? The one factor I do know is that if the elk received’t play by the principles, I’ll throw out the textbook and play the sport any approach they like. With regards to searching right now’s well-educated bulls, it pays to get radical.
This story is republished because it initially appeared within the August 1992 concern beneath the title, “Break the Guidelines for Bulls.”