I've been watching a lot of videos. Trying to gain as much knowledge as possible before going out to Colorado this fall. Any tips or advice on certain calls to stay away from or calls that have worked well for people. We will be backpacking in somewhere and didn't know if that would have an impact on calls. I'm also terrible at using mouth calls. Thanks for any tips on a good call or how to use them most effectively.
I use the mouth calls for bugling but they have a lot of different calls that you blow. I do like to take 2 different cow calls. Let the elk tell ya what there doing. I have had good success with bugling and cow calls. Last year bugling seem to be the answer but the two years before that I had better luck with cow calling. Elk can be finicky sometimes and you have to work both calls.
Bowhunting elk can be extremely addictive. (grin) The type of cow call you take is more a personal preference than brand, all will do the job if the user does his part, even a hoochie mama will work when not abused. A bugle is also a powerful tool but you must know how to use it or more harm than good can come of it. Both are very important tools once you realize & understand their use & potential. As a newer elk hunter/caller keep it simple! Consider setups where elk will come to you instead of a lot of running & gunning until you start to get a grasp of how & why specific sounds are understood by both you & the elk. A decent cold calling technique can be very good throughout the entire month of Sept. It requires two cow calls & a bugle. It will then require some practice time to be confident with your calling. Look for areas where a good setup can be had, fresh sign or where sound can travel 1/2 mile or further. Elk are herd animals so are very curious about others in the area. A good setup means elk must come into bowrange before they can see the source of your calling, also the wind must be in your face from where you hope to pull elk from. If you give elk the luxury of hanging up at 50+ yards because the area is open enough for them to see into then they will stop there & assess the area for activity where sounds are coming from & this could be out of your bowrange! --- Learn to make mews & chirps like a calf & a cow or two imitating a smallish group, if you have a hunting partner then get 30yds apart & communicate with each other with these cow sounds, after 2-3 minutes of social type "elk talk" give one immature bugle, no chuckling is needed. Now wait 7-8 minutes & repeat 3 times total, wait there for 30 minutes & do not move around after final sequence, have your bow ready & an arrow nocked. Keep a sharp eye out & your ears finely tuned to anything sneaking in. If no elk appears then move beyond where your sounds already carried too & setup again, you can do this several times throughout a morning. When you get up to move to a new spot scan the area carefully as elk can be coming or already there & you never noticed them. Transition spots are best for this type of calling, this means you are between their night time feeding area & bedding area they will be traveling too an hour or so after first light. Decent cow calls can be Hyper Lip Single, Fighting Cow Call, Temptress, Cow Talk, etc. You will also need an external bugle it's one with a built on latex reed of sorts, they are easy to learn. Good Luck ElkNut1
^^ listen to what Paul says! Grab his videos while your at. Changed my elk hunting completely! It's nice to know what your saying and why, rather than just bugling. Sent from my ADR6350 using Tapatalk 2
Fitz, Make sure you talk to some of the locals where you'll be hunting. In the area I hunt in Wyoming (didn't draw a tag this year) calling of any type can sometimes shut the elk up in a hurry. Bugling will almost always cause the bulls with cows to leave the country. We often use them at night just to locate bulls as they don't mind bugling after dark. We have found that sneaking in close to elk and then using the softest cow talk you can make, will pull a bull to you. A guy I know has killed a mature bull each of the last 21 years and 95% of the time he only uses very soft cow calls.
Oldcarp & Others, you are welcome & thanks. I will say it's not the bugle or the bugle of a bull that runs elk out of an area. When bulls with or without cows hear another bulls bugle they do not leave the country, they are communicating with one another or in search of! It's hunters who are misusing the bugle. In heavily hunted areas with as many hunters as there is elk, elk can quickly become educated as to who the impostors are, this is where the issue lies. When hunters use a bugle so many of them expect to call elk to them no matter the distance if a response is received, when this isn't going according to their plans then they proceed to bugle & even throw in a few cow calls, they may head towards this once vocal bull & continue to randomly bugle their way to him in hopes of keeping his interest & give away his location. Unless elk are rutting hard & throwing caution to the wind it's the opposite that happens. After hunters do this more times than they can count & elk run the other way they then feel bugling doesn't work so start to shy away from it. The same would hold true if hunters continue to misuse cow sounds, this too drives more elk away than any other sound because of its wide variety & ease of use. Most anyone can cow call but not anyone can just bugle in a realistic fashion that communicates with the gender they're representing! Just as we have many words that have different meanings to us so a message can be conveyed to another, elk have their language as well. There is not one bugle tone that represents 10 different meanings, they all have their own sound that elk can identify with, it's us hunters who fail to see the differences from one bugle to another bugle, instead it's common for us to ball them all into one big lump & call them a bugle which equates into "There's A Bull Over There" -- Bottom line, most hunters do not know what they are saying when using bugling/bull sounds or understand what they are hearing when receiving a response or elk talking on their own in the wilds. This is where the problem lies! Understanding an elks language is as important as knowing what club a golfer needs for a specific shot distance. ElkNut1
Great info Elknut1. Your knowledge is much appreciated. I'm going on a guided hunt in CO this year on some private land but I want to learn from these guys and get your videos for my OTC hunt next year.
Elknut, I have always tried to mimic what the elk do when I am out there. To be honest some times it works great other times I have had to go after them. I am by no means a great elk hunter. I am one of those every other year I get an elk. I live in a area where I can spot and scout a lot. So I contribute a lot of my success to that. I do love to bow hunt elk and call elk in. So with all that said, I have elk come in silent probably half the time. All my hunting is on public land so I have always thought it must be the pressure. I have harvested elk that have come in silent. My question is, Am I doing something wrong or is it just the pressure?
I don't see where you're doing anything wrong from your description. 50% on elk is a great average when compared to statistics. I can see you like spot & stalk & there's some great rewards to be had in doing so, I love that at times as well when the opportunity arises. Type of terrain ones hunt dictates much of ones elk hunting style. In real open country with few pockets of timber/brush that's a great tactic, nothing wrong with ambushing elk. (grin) It does appear that if you have quite a few elk coming in silent then you are doing a lot of "setups" -- Meaning you are staying in one spot 30-45min with light to moderate cold calling in attempt to draw elk your way, at these types of setups silent elk moving your way is the norm. It sounds like you are wanting elk to come to you whether in these cold calling setups or you hear vocal elk. When we get elk to call back or we hear them on their own calling we instantly go to them, we do not call our way to them with bull sounds unless we are very close & it's a herd bull we're working. Bottom line, we are very aggressive when it's called for, yet very subtle when needed. When hunting elk we take each day differently & approach it according to the phase of the rut. The phase of the rut is not dictated by a calendar, it's dictated by the elk that day. You will have those quiet days even during supposed peak rut phases, this is the time where we must be creative & work on an elk's curiosity. When cows are in estrus all elk are easy to locate & hunt, it's when they are not that hunters get confused as to why the elk aren't bugling on these so called rutting times. Much of it is attributed to hunting pressure & it's true to an extent, but when no cows are in estrus all elk are much more quiet no matter the date yet they are very callable when approached correctly. We too hunt OTC Public Land DIY with lots of competition from other hunters & lots of wolves but we still kill elk every year, 95% of these elk are called in & around 75%-80% are done with bull sounds, now that really throws a curve at you doesn't it! (grin) Calling elk in is a "timing" technique, you abuse it you lose, you communicate with them & the odds escalate into your favor. Use sounds elk expect to hear per encounter & your call ins will rise dramatically. To use any cow or bull sound because you may be limited in their vocabulary will handicap you in two ways, one, you really don't know what you are saying, two, you don't know what the elk are saying, if you don't know how do you give an appropriate response?. Just because we can bugle & cow call doesn't imply we are fitting in to the conversation, it means we know how to make some elk sounds. Understand why you're using specific sounds & what to expect from them & when elk are vocal you'll find that it's not tough to convince them you are one of them. This is very important on heavily hunted public lands. If you have any questions specific to an encounter that went south please feel free to elaborate or feel free to question any thoughts I just shared. It's those things that bother many hunters including me! (grin) ElkNut1
Absolutely the information I was looking to hear. I've always figured less is more when calling. Curiosity killed the cat kind of thing. Especially when I don't really understand the language. I'll have to work on the calling and understanding. I'll have to check out the elknut website. Thanks to everyone.
Elknut was very helpful to me when I was getting ready for my first and only elk hunt, Paul help make that trip successful. listen to him he has great knowledge and is willing to share it.
