Aron Snyder's Elk Hunting Strategy For 2025

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Stoneglacier.com Aaron, it's been a hot damn minute since we since we chit chatted on a podcast, but good to have you on buddy. How you doing?

I'm doing good man. Thanks for having me on. It's perfect timing. My I Got two polar bears that are dead asleep, and I don't think the mailman's coming, so we shouldn't have any interruptions.

All right, perfect. And I mean, it's been a hot damn minute since you got really into elk. And so when I saw you were like, getting into elk, I was like, oh, yeah, I wanna. I wanna hear the. The sauce from Aaron, see how he approaches life when it comes down. People don't know you're a good elk hunter, but, like, yeah, this hasn't been your thing.

I hunted elk forever. And then it. I hunted him so much, it became not my thing. I mean, when I got going in the industry, my name was the Elk Reaper.

You know, back then, I forgot about that. Oh, yeah, yeah.

But, yeah, now it's. It really. Life, right. Business, everything else. And then I was guiding in British Columbia the last few years through, you know, mid July through September, and just didn't have a chance to. To hunt elk. I mean, I say that I went with. I got to hunt a little bit. I mean, I killed a good bull two years ago with South. You know, I mean, I. I still hunt elk, but mountain goat, mule deer definitely took priority there for a while. So.

Yeah. Are you excited to get back and do some elk hunting?

Yeah, I mean, you know, not. We're not going to go into my life changes on this podcast, but I've had some major ones which have been really good. And at the same time, I met a dude, Chris Horn, who I'm hunting with. He was like, hey, let's scout an area. Do you want to hunt together? And dude, I'm like a kid again. I'm going in and out. Like, I got game cameras all over the place. I went and scouted another spot. And, you know, when I'm out there, whether it's with Chris or my girlfriend, like, being able to feel young again, like, you know, when, like, it's been a long time since I'm excited about hunting. You know what I say? Like, super excited. So, you know, we're going in several miles on foot. It'll be a hard, you know, public land backpack hunt. But it definitely the scouting portion of it, a new area, you know, the. I, you know, as, you know, I love backpack hunting in general, sleeping on the ground. I've been trying out all kinds of new gear. You'll laugh. I've got two hammocks of all things. I talk about hammocks for so long. I've got. My girlfriend and I are going in Wednesday for three or four days. And we're gonna test out hammocks and see how we like those. So, yeah, it's been. It's been good. I do the northern British Columbia thing. It's pretty hard to beat that.

Right.

Like, you know, so. But I'm. I'm excited. And I was telling, you know, my girlfriend, because Chris can only hunt a certain amount of days, and I was telling her, I was like, I probably won't come back out if I haven't killed one. And she said, what do you mean? I'm like, well, I'll just stay forever. I mean, I just won't come back till the season's over and see. Can you do that? And I'm like, yeah, no, I mean, I definitely can. I just like being out there. You know, there's nothing better, especially elk screaming and running around and everything else.

So a lot of guys will say, and I'll put myself in that category, like, backpack hunting is not the best way to kill elk. Yeah. Like, so, like, how do you. How's your mentality around it? How do you change that? And I guess the alternative is, like, it's a little bit different when you're Aaron and you can be out there for 40 days if you need to. 30 days. Right. Like, you know, you can. It's a little bit different category. Walk me through your thoughts on, like, backpack hunting. Is it because that's the experience you want or is it because, like, you just feel like you want to get away from people or, like, what's the reasoning?

Yeah, I mean, one, I just love backpack hunting, so, I mean, I just like the grind of it. Two, you can sometimes say getting away from people, but that a lot of times is out the window now. You know, dipshits like me and you and Cam have glorified. Well, Cam doesn't backpack anymore, but have glorified. Right. Backpack hunting to a level that. Which especially if you don't know it sucks. You got a really light paint. And I would say, like, with the backpack hunting thing, if you probably best to stay off of forums for the most part if you're getting info, because a lot of guys talk about going three to five to seven miles in, which is not a good. You really need to know what you're doing elk hunting, if you're going to go in that far, because you do have to get the oak, you know, back out, which isn't easy. But turns out I think that a well rounded, you know, maybe two to three nights in on a backpack hunt for elk, maybe a mile to A mile and a half in two miles is a good idea. Maybe a little bit of road hunting in. In between. But to. If you are at extremely high level of fitness and extremely high level of wood woodsmanship, I think backpack hunting would be extremely beneficial. There's some big ifs in that, right? So when I say that if you blow all your elk out and you don't have the ability to follow them, you're out of elk, right? You know, and that happens a lot, right? Like, unless you're hunting in the Pacific Northwest, Roosevelts don't really blow out because it's thicker timber. But when you're hunting high alpine elk, they'll go miles. Like, I've blown them out of a basin and seen them cross two mountain ranges farther still running, like, you know what I mean? So they.

You got.

You got to be able to be mobile, you know, when you do it. But I think backpack hunting can be good. I just think five days is probably the max. Someone should try to. To do an elk hunt in probably two and a half miles with you and a buddy is a. The final friendly line. You probably shouldn't go any farther than that because, as you know, and I've had like, cr. Like Olympic high level, whatever you want to call it, Crossfitters and athletes talk about packing an elk out was the worst thing they've ever done in their life physically.

So, yeah, I, you know, like, I'll. I'll play the devil's advocate and say, like, it's a really badass adventure. Like when. When I hear you talk about, like, I'm going in with a backpack and I'm not coming out to kill an elk. Hell yeah. That's a hell yeah trip.

I'm.

I'm kind of about hell yeah trips, right? Like, it sounds like an adventure. Like, and I think the one thing you have to be mindful of and you. I'm sure you're going to be this way, but it's like, go in and it's not like, hey, we're going in, we're setting a camp. We're hunting this basin because you're gonna. You're gonna that basin up and, like, you're gonna be three basins away. So going with this mindset of, like, I don't. Maybe I don't know what trailhead I'm even coming out at. Like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna wander around the mountains with my backpack and my. And we're gonna find out. And I think that's. I mean, to take out whether that's the best way to kill a 6.0. That doesn't. We're not talking about that today. Today we're talking about like, what's a badass adventure that I want to go on. And I think there's a lot of guys that like, hey, look up to you. Or just look up to that concept of like, that's cool. Maybe I've killed a few of all, but like, what's the next challenge? How do I push myself? What's the, the alone survival version, you know?

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, when you talk about killing a big elk and elk, any elk or whatever, like most people that are going elk hunting probably should shoot the first elk that within reason walks in front of them. Even a cow. Especially in Colorado. Right. There's not a lot of, you know, it's difficult. And then, you know, you look at limited draw tags, different story, or you got a honey hole or, you know, whatever the case may be. But when you, if you just want to kill like you're talking about a giant elk compared to a elk, there's a lot of different strategy in, in that whether you're backpack hunting or, or not or, you know, you're hunting by the road or whatever. And so the first thing you have to have to kill an elk is elk. The first thing you have to have to kill a big elk is, is big elk. And not all areas are created equal. I mean, you see certain people post giant elk every year and you think, man, what am I doing wrong? Especially when you're younger or whatever, if you dive deep into the story, a lot of times that person probably has a landowner tag or private land or private access to get to public land. There's very few people. I would like to get your opinion. Very few people are killing large five and a half plus year old, 330 plus bulls every year on public land over the counter. Very few people, almost not. And then when you get to like the backpack hunting thing, that doesn't put you in a better bracket. You're not.

You lowered your odds.

Yeah, you, yeah, you probably. Unless again, you, you're in extreme shape or whatever else. So while I've killed all of my big, big bulls on backpack hunts, that's also all I do. Right. So I mean, there's not a comparison of me hunting by the road because I don't do that really. So could I be more successful by the road in Wyoming? Probably, yeah. I mean, Wyoming's a different world, right? We, we like our residents and we hate our Non residents. So there's not a lot of pressure back here. So I think though, when people are looking at elk hunting in general is, I mean, you didn't ask this question, but like when people are looking at it of what kind of elk hunter are you? You know, you're gonna have the Corey Jacobson's Ryan Lampers. There's a few others that hunt as I've never hunted with these guys. They're looking for one elk that makes one specific bugle to, to call it. Then you have other guys that just run around like crazy looking for an elk. And then you'll have the, the guys that are looking for the 380 to 400. And they're very, you know, that's a lot of scouting, a lot of favors, a lot of friends, a lot of, a lot of things go into that. So for the most part, for people that are looking to go kill an elk, you know, really the bottom line is are you going to want to go suffer living on the ground or do you want to stay in a wall? Ten, you know, at that, at that point it's like, what kind of hunt are you looking for? What kind of terrain are you wanting to hunt? Lower land type areas, you know, are you wanting to hunt sagebrush and you know, whatever, or are you wanting to get, you know, back into the. And until you do it, you really don't know. I mean, my buddy hunts elk every year and they, they don't really bugle where he's at. He kind of stalks in other people. Can't put the freaking call down, right? Like bugle all day long, right. And so you kind of have to learn.

So what kind of what, what kind of hunt does Aaron want this year?

So I don't call a lot. I call a little bit. Right. I mean, I'll call, but like, you know, for, for me, I'm definitely more of a, a patient guy. So when I go in, of course I'll bugle or make. When I say bugle, I'm going to do a locator. Bugle, whatever you want to call it, I'm gonna see. But like, you know, for, for my style of elk is, you know, once I found a group, you know, calling or whatever else, a lot of times, you know, depending upon the situation, if I can't get in on that herd, they go bed down. This is where people screw this up a lot. I just sleep by that herd because I've bedded them down, right. And I will actually not make a sound if I'm trying to kill a big bull or a decent bull that night until they start funneling out of the wood line. And I can watch them. Right. I can see what I'm working with and I can kind of understand like, okay, he's got seven cows, you know, whatever else. And be a little bit more methodical about it because if you're just running around screaming, hoping to call an elk in, it's no different than anything you put in. You're gonna get out. If you're just blowing on an estrus call, hoping to God something comes in, you're gonna just get some that comes in. Probably not a specific bull. And that's the other thing too, with, you know, depending upon like if it's a 65 bull to cow ratio, 50 bull to cow ratio, that whole get within 80 yards and scream as loud as possible does not. That's cr. Yeah. They don't want to fight for their women. Right. They want to keep the women they've got. So there's a lot. I'm going off a deep end here. There's a lot to killing an elk that I don't think people probably realize.

The simple. I'll kind of pull off your analogy or like a different. Different players. So like different players have different tactics. And like, I think there's some confusion because like I. I think what Corey does or what Corey used to do, I don't know what Corey does anymore. But like what Corey used to do was cover a ton of ground until a bugle did an elk did the thing he wanted it to do. And then he had a play that he ran and it worked, right. And he's like, cover enough ground, go buy enough elk and it'll work like it just rinse and repeat. But you don't do that on a 10 mile in backpack hunt because like you just can't possibly physically cover enough ground depending on where you're at in the unit and things like that. But if we're talking, let's take Wyoming, maybe there's one herd of elk in this basin. Maybe like there's a little pocket, second pocket. Right. But you can't just play that game. You can't cover five miles a day in that country. There's just not enough elk to play that certain game. Right. You need the truck, you need the like parts of Idaho where it's like you can drive 100 miles. Right.

Which is kind of why I'm the. The patient. Yeah. Because you don't want to blow them. You don't want to Blow them out.

Alrighty, guys, Quick interruption tell you that we got another giveaway going on before season. This month we're giving away a Stone Glacier Sky Archer 6400. It's the pack I'm going to be using. And we're giving away a pair of Schnees timberline boots. So if you want to get entered to win, head over to the website, get your name in the hat, or sign up for the elk hunt course and get five bonus entries. All right. Enjoy the episode.

Totally. And like, I. I'm assuming, right, you're gonna go in and you're gonna be very mobile in. In the. In the most sense that you can. And it's like remote, right. You probably scouted a bunch of stuff and you're like, you're gonna use these ridges and again, you're trying to cover as much ground with your glass. You're trying to like, just be. Find the pockets, right? You're trying to find pockets of elk in a vast area of wilderness and. And whatnot. The upside to being that remote is that hypothetically, those elk don't get messed with as much. So, like, you, you have that patience play because you know, the flip side to. I hate to pick on Corey, but, like, the flip side to like, parts of Idaho where it's like, you know, you cover a lot of ground, someone else is doing that too. And so you don't always have the patience play. So you kind of, if you want the patient play, you want to like, wait till the elk comes back out. You got to be away from Joe Blow on his quad, who's going to go in there and screw it up at noon because he's playing the Corey. Corey Jacobson playbook. Right? So like, yeah, walk like, I mean, I mean, kind of elaborate on that. Or maybe your system, like, what's your day to day look.

Yeah. So, and this is again, this is backpack hunting. And in this case, we'll say hypothetically, I'm going to be in five miles, because that's about where I'm starting.

Yeah.

So at that I've got crap hung up in a tree. I'm giving you the top to bottom. So that's about as far as I want to go, is that. And so I'm running, you know, back. So I've got everything in a Tree to stay 20 days, plus what's on my back. So I've already got game cameras set up. I got a real good idea of the different pockets and everything else. So every morning, once I know prevailing thermals and winds. I'm going to pick my route. And when I say my route, that can get thrown out of the window real quick. I'm not a, I'm not a planner, like I'm not. But I have a, I have an idea of which route I'm going to take. And so, you know, it's almost like tree stand hunting. When I brought this up to people, where people rotate, stands don't sit the same stand the same day. I'm going to rotate in one area that morning where the wind will be in my favor in the morning. And as I'm doing my loop, it's going to be in that. And that, that loop could be. It's never less than a mile, but it could be fairly short depending upon what I know is in there. And so when I'm going in on that prevailing wind or thermal, meaning, you know, first thing in the morning, it's blowing down around 9 or 10, shit gets squirrely, it blows up. I'm taking that into consideration. And so when I'm doing that loop, I'm listening one hope, because I'd rather them bugle. I want them to tell me where there are before I tell them where I am. So I try not to bugle unless I absolutely have to because I just don't want them to know I'm there. And then if I hear a bugle as I'm doing my, my loop, my route, then I plan accordingly. Meaning I know people say you can't judge off a bugle the size of the bull by the sound of the bugle. That's semi a crock of yes, I've heard a few giant elk or, you know, growly bugles that weren't that big. But for the most part, if I hear a bull that's just growling like crazy and then chuckling after and screaming deep growl, I'm probably assume that's a decent bull, right? And so when I go after him, you know, when I drop in, my first thing is to get as close as humanly possible. And I mean too close, almost mean, because a lot of guys, you get that, oh, we were in them all day. And I'm like, were you in them or were they just staying about 200 yards from you? Right. So I don't want to bugle back and forth, keeping them 200 yards. Once I hear them, I want to close to sub 100. And when I say that I'm real sneaky, I almost still hunt. I'm just creeping in because there's a lot of cows and, you know, everything else. And then at that point, once I'm close enough, I'll. I'll park it there. If they're moving around, kind of figure out which way I can move, and then I don't. I try not to call, especially solo, until I have some specific things, if at all possible, to deviate the elk when I'm solo, the direction I want it to go when I don't have a caller. One of the reasons I've taken so many frontal shots, I may set up calling where I got a boulder field to my right. The wind's blowing, like, low right to high left, where they're going to swerve in front of me. So I've kind of blocked them where they can't come to a certain area where I can move, get them to move in, if at all possible, to take the shot, and I'll launch bombs. I mean, I will shoot elk pretty far away. I mean, I hunt with a recurve forever, so I'll shoot them close, but I'll certainly shoot an elk at 60, 70 yards, if it's not chasing cows, if it's feeding. So once I've done and got in on that group, if that wind starts to swirl, if something changes, man, I pull out. Like, if it. If I'm going to blow the elk out, it's boring, right? I mean, people are like, but I'll pull out. I'll go to a totally different area if that wind gets really bad. Because I've experienced for 20 years the reality of what happens when you push the wind. You have to work a lot harder. Well, I've got an entire wilderness to work with, so if that loop goes bad, I'll pull out. I may go sit on a wallow all day, you know, if the wind's right to sit there, or I'll go back in there at night because I haven't blown them out. And those elk do basically the same every year. And I think people probably don't realize that those elk are in the same spot every year. And if I haven't blown them out, yep, I got a boring six hours throughout the course of the day where I may be sitting in a wallow. I'll go back in there with a better wind that evening, knowing where those elk went. So that doesn't explain that much. But that's what I do every day. And I do different cloverleaf loops. I'll do one over here, one over here each day, so I'm not burning one specific spot out. And in the Middle of the day, or, excuse me, in the middle of the morning if something goes sideways, I haven't killed one yet. I do. I, I get out of there. I don't push bad wind ever. I'm. I'm really.

Walk me through the, the feeling of wanting to call so badly. I think this is the. A giant mistake a lot of guys make. And trust me, I've been there. I know you've been there. Like, you want to know so badly where they are. You want to make that sound like a party. You just wants to hear in bugle. And it's like, yeah, I have to be quiet. Just give me like five more minutes, ten more minutes. And I think really great hunters have that ability to sit with the unknown. And I think new hunters, they have to know where that thing is all the time. They want to know where, where the elk are, what he's doing, right, because you feel like he's going away. But that patience of, like, just give it a few minutes, let it, let it materialize. That's like an expert level thought, and it's really tough. I even struggle with this.

Yeah, I know. I mean, everyone does. I, I think, you know, in, in the case for me, when in doubt, call mildly. Right. So, you know, I, you know, I would say, like, I would be much more apt to throw down some badass cow calls. Right? I mean, when I say that, I, I might, you know, in the case of if again, higher bull to cow ratio area or a bull that maybe I don't want to bugle if I've got a 280 bull and that's what this unit produces, I really don't want to honk on it like Phelps and scare the out of it. Right, Right. Like, and I, I equate this a lot when I teach classes on calling when you're at a bar, okay. When you're calling, so if you're trying to pick up a chick or, or you got a bunch of herkin dudes in there, you don't want to get your ass whipped. If you're flirting with a chick and she seems to be liking it, you're not going to puff your chest up and like, try to fight the whole bar because you're gonna lose her, right? So you. Same thing. Like when you're, when you're in there or whatever, you want to kind of play the mood, right? So, like, depending upon the time of year, if it's earlier and he's still looking for cows, I'm much more apt to cow call than I am to throw some dominant you bugle out especially. I got distance, I got the compound, right. I don't have a recurve. And if he's going to be snooping around, seeing if there's a cow coming in, I will call accordingly to pull him out. Now, there are times 100 I've bugled bulls in and everything else, but for the most part, I haven't found my bugle as my primary weapon. And there's probably people going to listen to this screaming at the computer. The people that. That works for Jacobson being one. That's again, you got to pick. You know, you're writing your own book, right? Whatever you want that book to be about, you may never lay down the bugle, and you're going to have a great book. Yeah, I'm not that way, right? So me, when I'm getting in close and like, we'll just say this last bowl. No, the bull before last that I killed, which was a giant bull, you know, we snuck in on that thing literally, mildly cow calling. I didn't bugle one time. That's a 356 bull on public land. Called it into our laps with cow calls. So how did we do that? Well, there was multiple bulls around, screaming, heat of the rut, right? He had four cows with him. And we got close enough to where it was worthwhile for him to pull away from those cows, keep them in the wood line, and come check us out. Now, if I had dominated some crazy bugle, he might like, man, I don't want to leave her. He might kick my ass and take him. You know what I mean? So we. We made it. Just lured him in enough. We got close enough where he felt safe to leave those cows a little bit and pull away. How far was it?

Huh? How far away? Yeah, how far away was he when you.

200 yards, probably. Again, you know. And we knew, though, that a lot of it is reading the elk. Reading. What's going on? Like, when I was cow calling and he was glunking, I'm like, don't up a good thing. He's gonk. He's dead. When they start glunking, probably gonna kill him. It's like a moose grunt, step for step. So that's another thing, you know, if that bull wouldn't have come out of his bed if he just kept making noise, I'm not going to call him in. I know he's there. Those calls are going in my pocket, and I'm gonna sneak in and shoot him. He's Already given me everything I need to know. Yeah. Why up a good thing with an outcome. Right. Like, and this is. Again, this is me, but, like, I'm really sneaky, so I'll sneak in to shoot him rather than risking calling. Because I know I can sneak in and probably get a shot or get close enough to where, you know, I can get him to cross that threshold. But everybody hunts differently, right? Like, I remember 20, however many 18 years ago on. On bow site. Yeah, bow site. There was a dude from Montana. I can't remember his name. Hunted the same area every year. He was kind of a legend on there. And he would just throw guys cow calls away. He would talk about them cow calling. He only bugled. I think there's some validity to that where he was at. Yeah. That does not work everywhere. Okay. And so this is where you've got to know your area, you got to know your unit and. Or maybe I just need to become a better caller. But, you know, I. I think that for you asked, that feeling of how do you not call?

Yeah.

Like, you know what I mean? Like, you can just not get guys, they'll start twitching because they can't. Cole is like, if you know the elk, you know where they're at, assess. Why would you call? Is it beneficial to that situation at that time? Meaning, are you going to call them in from 400 yards away? Are you going to call them in from two from bugling? If you bugle back and forth for 10 minutes and nothing has changed, probably not going to change in the next 10, you know, do you feel like there's that.

Like, I always talk about the shot clock, and I think, like, good hunters will feel that shot clock. You know, it's like, oh, man, things are going to go sideways. Or like, I think I can, you know, keep this bull going. Like, your decision on the 356 bull, it's like, I think we can calculate, man. Like, he's hot. The timing's right, you know, and.

And if you.

You knew, if you waited, you know, whatever, even 20 minutes, the whole. The whole dynamic change to read the room completely different. So, like, you kind of have the shot. I always think of it like the shot clock. Not a great analogy, but, like, you got to make it happen in a certain.

I would say there's a window. I would agree with you. 100. There's certainly a window. And I mean, you know, that window, maybe he come. You know, the setup's huge too. Like, you see guys cow calling and bugling with like two Trees behind them, where, yeah, he bull comes out, he's like, well, where's the beef? Right? Where's all these elk? You know what I mean? So there's parameters of what you can get away with. But like, when you. With that shot clock, from the moment he bugles right to me anyway, I would say 20 minutes is about the, The. The farther extent of what you're. You. Your chances of killing him are going down quickly on minute 20 compared to minute 4. Now, I've had battles back and forth where we finally were able to get him enough to come down. But when I say that, depending upon what the bull's doing, if you bugle, he bugles you. But, you know, okay, you're in a bugle, bugle battle, all right, Then raking trees, doing things like that, that might be all it takes to, you know, to. To bring them in. But a certain point, you almost want to pull the pin and just stop calling. And sometimes that'll do it. You know what I mean? Like, he'll come to check it out, because at that point, if you are making bull cows and, you know, cow sounds or. Or bull cow cap, like a herd, he might come in quiet just to. To check it out because things went silent. I mean, they certainly do that to you. I mean, 100. How many times have they stopped calling? You're like, it's done. And then he sneaks in and blows out. Because, look, but he's smart enough. Not like us. We're stupid. We keep calling. He's smart enough to shut up and sneak in to take a look where we are generally not smart enough to do that. We have to keep calling. And that's with any whitetail turkey. I mean, over calling, I would say, is as bad as alcoholism. Like, you almost have to go to, you know, class for it or something.

No, it is. And I think it's like, I mean, you want to know. You want to know where that bull is at all times, because the unknown is really hard to deal with. When that bull shuts up and you know, you don't know if he's coming or going, and he won't answer you anymore. Like, I. I bet so many people just walk away from elk that are still coming. And, you know, sometimes you can hear it. Like, you'll hear the bull coming. I remember, you know, growing up on the west side of Oregon, it was like you could hear him coming through the trees. Almost sound like swishy pants, right? You hear the bull going through the reprod. You're like, oh, he's coming, he's coming. And it's like that patience pays dividends.

I, I think being able to see it is a big part. So being in the woods as much as I have have been when you can actually see a bull that you are calling to close 400 yards without making a peep and how he did it and how long it took, you know what I mean? It kind of lets you know, like, and like cold calling, usually cold calling, it's a minimum of 30 to 45 minutes before I even think an elk is going to come in.

Right.

Cold calling, well, think how long that elk took to come in. 30 to 45 minutes or, or more sometimes. And you'll see that when you're calling elk, like I've called in multiple bulls where you can watch them come down a mountain half the way, three quarters of the way and just stop. What happened between that time for him to go all that way and, and kill it, right. And go back up. Generally that's because you effed up your call, right? You did something he didn't like or whatever else. So I just, I'm very methodical with calling, but I'm very cautious. I just don't call as much as others. Now when I say that if you're in a rut fest and you know, things change, right, like you could go hunting with me and on one day out of 10, I called my ass off and it was just the situation determined that. But overall, not to beat a dead horse, I would say people are calling. If they cut it down by about 80%, they'd probably be better.

What's your cold calling sequence look like? And like, and maybe throughout the year, like, you know, as a guy who wants the entire month of September can, you know, does your, your cold calling sequence change from September 1 to September 30?

It, man, it doesn't change that much. I mean, for me, it doesn't change that much. I will. So I mean, the cold calling sequence just out of the gate, it depends if it's me or someone else. If it's just me, I actually grab a lot of. To make noise with very little movement. So like, I may have sticks I can break by my feet. I may have a stick I can reach down and rub a tree because a lot of times they're coming in silent when you cold call. But for me, it's generally very mild. Bugles, cow, calf talk, an occasional, what I would consider an estrus call, but an occasional estrus call generally after the 6 to 8 September timeframe. An occasional estrus call. And I'm just wanting to sound like a group of. Of elk. Yeah. What I found with that best is if there is a big bull around, he is more apt to sound off to I'm here and I'm coming. And when that happens, they generally come hot. Like he knows he's the cock of the walk. And that sequence of cold calling can kind of ignite the forest. It can get everything, you know, cranking for the most part. In the beginning of the season. Earlier, I have found they come in silent, right? They come in quiet as you push later down the season, the dominant herd bulls have grabbed the cows or whatever else you're getting. Bulls that are literally just searching, looking for a cow. And they'll bugle all damn day sometimes. Like Gritty One. He killed, I think we killed that at 2:30 in the afternoon. And that bull committed suicide. I didn't call at all. It literally was just bugling looking for a cow. Or it had heard us calling earlier and just came over and it literally bugled and walked his way to us and we killed it. I mean, I didn't call it all. It literally walked to a screaming his head off the entire way in. Timber. Now, was that because we were calling before? Because he, he came right to us. He had to have known something was up. So I'm assuming it was the calling we were doing 30 minutes prior. And he just got close enough and he was sounding off to find that cow. And so, you know, for me, I will get later in the season a little bit more aggressive with the, the calls. Meaning I'll make a lot more noise, I'll do a lot more estrus calls. Because I'm now not looking for a dominant herd bull. I'm looking for a decent satellite bull that's looking for love. Right. I'm just trying. So I'm gonna. More estrus calls, more cal calls than anything. But I sit for an hour minimum when I cold call that.

Yes, really good. Really good point. I mean like especially early season, man. Like early season you could. There's, there's two things going on here. Like early season, you know, your 356 bowl may not be kept. You could have what we'll call bugle fest. Like heavy, heavy road activity, bugling, you know, all the action. But that 356 bull hasn't even, you know, hasn't had any interest yet. He's been off doing his thing and now here he comes. Seen that many times where it's like, you're let's call it September 7th, 8th, 9th, here comes that bull and all you cold calling sequence. And he, he might just come slip over. He may be bugling, who knows? But then the flip side, you know, let's say it's September 25th and bulls are going crazy. You may still have a 350 bull that is either just cruising, looking for new cows. Maybe a bigger bull came like. And so, like, he could be cruising too. Like you said, generally speaking, things are going to happen at a quicker pace. At the later of the month, you're gonna know or not know pretty quickly versus September 7th. You could call for an hour and then get an answer. And, you know, maybe three hours later, that bull comes walking in, right? Like, and so, like, people have impatience. That's tough. One of the things I want to go back to, this backpack thing, we really touch on it. But you, you know, your backpack hunting, I know a lot of guys love to do it. Not my thing, but, like, I'll touch on it, right? How do you know when to bounce on an area or move to the next one? A lot of times there's elk, there's elk sign. Maybe it's just not working out or it's just not a great hunting spot. You know, this whole leave elk to find elk. How do you know when to go to the next spot or the next area?

So there's a couple things, man. There's. I guess it's more than a couple, but, you know, because wolves can be a pro. You know, if there's a pack of wolves in their area, if there's other hunters. But, like, if I'll just, I guess, paint a picture, if I'm in there, no one else is there and they're just not calling. But if they're not calling and I'm seeing fresh elk sign, I'm not pulling the pin. You know, they're just not cranking yet. And I'm probably going to sit elk wall. I'm going to sit a water hole or an elk wallow in hopes to hear something. And I'm just going to sit. But if I'm in an area and there's elk there, and I know when I say I know for a fact this is fresh elk poop, this is fresh sign that they're in a wallow, I won't, I won't pull. If I'm in an area, they're not calling and I'm seeing very little sign, I do not stay very long a day. Like, like if I go into an area and it's just not producing. And I say producing, if I'm just not seeing sign, they're not calling whatever else, I don't stay long. I mean, I might stay a night, maybe, maybe two, but not, not much. And when I say pull the pin. There's different levels. If you've backpacked in, Am I going to go to another area two miles away? That's generally not an option. If they suck where you're at. Two miles away may not be, may not make a difference. You may need to hike out, get another trailhead and hike back in. And so I don't hang out very long when it's not going well. You have to have a high level of fitness to do that. That's where you get jammed up. Backpack hunting. You could be coming from Kansas, Missouri, whatever, and you have all these plans and you hike into this one area and you're spent and then you're stuck with that area because that's as far as you can go. You don't have the ability to go out and go back in somewhere else. So you're locked into that area. And then if you're also making bad decisions with wind and everything else, you're probably going to have a seven day backpack hunt and not see an elk.

How important is scouting to backpack hunting?

I mean, it depends, man. This is a hard one for me because there's some areas I don't scout at all and I just go in and we have killed stuff. And there's other areas like this one, I've got the time and I scout like crazy. I would say that if you have no intel whatsoever at all, no forums, no buddies, no nothing, and you're picking a spot on a, on a map and you haven't scouted it, and that's a big gamble, you're probably not going to be happy about that, you know, no matter how good it looks. So if you can preseason scout and at least make one trip to confirm, you're seeing what you want to. I've done a ton of videos on this. You're seeing rubs, right? And you're seeing trees that are rubbed raw, right? You're seeing elk wallows everywhere that were used before. Like, you're probably going to be okay. A wallow specifically because they don't dive in that water until their nuts are all heated up with testosterone and they're horny. So if you're seeing all that, great. But if you go into that area and you've done it with 70 pounds of shit on your Back, and then you get in there, and there's none of those signs. The chances of it magically, that year becoming good are very small. So if you can scout, I would say it's pretty important.

Okay, so I'll give you a hypothetical scenario. You and I, we backpack into whatever. Pick a state. But we're. We're going in. We're four miles in.

Hot tip, right?

Because I'm trying to, like, paint the picture of someone I know or someone, like, very common listener, which is like, we go in there, we're. There's old elk sign. They should be here. There's rubs, there's all this, but there's just no elk. Like, we're not hearing anything. There's no fresh sign. You know, do we back out? What do we do? Because this is like the predicament so many guys get into. The great plan falls apart. You know, everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face. Then what do you do? Like, what is. What's the system for un unraveling or, like, fixing it? How do we. How do we find elk from this point?

So I've definitely found in every area is different. But, I mean, a lot of times the elk move significantly as the rut cranks on and on. And in some units, they go down lower, they start up high. They're in their summer feeding patterns early. Everybody's starting to rut up. And then as the dominance, you know, happens and they're. Some of them are coming down, you know, some of them may be going over to the left or the right because they're separating, because they're grabbing cows. But some of them will drop a substantial amount of. Of elevation. They could go from living at 10,000 to 8. Are you at 8,000 or are you at 10? And what time of the year are you at those spots? And I would say earlier in the year, if you're lower and you can go up higher, then you should probably go up higher. Later in the year, if you're up higher and you're not seeing it, you should probably go down, you know, lower. The thing is, is what gas do you have in the tank and what options do you have at your disposal? Because if you've petered out and blew your load to get there, you might have to wait and hope to God they just come back, right? And because that's the thing, is the physical fitness aspect of it, because four miles, and I don't give a. What the Internet says is a problem, right? Four miles with an elk is and you've heard some of the dumb I've done getting an elk out. Yeah, you're looking at 150 pounds of meat on a three year old bull. I would say that's pretty realistic. Three year old bulls probably 500 pounds, maybe 6. 30% of the weight of the animal on the hoof is about what you get in deboned meat. 150 pounds is not a big bull. So now you've got 150 pounds of a three and a half year old bull on the ground, plus 50 pounds of gear. So you got 200 pounds of shit. If you're not with a buddy or you're with a buddy, mathematically that's a lot of trips back and forth depending upon how much you can carry. So if you add to that, you're in four miles and you have to go deeper or higher. What's the validity of you actually getting the elk out? Right. And so that's kind of the other problem in this equation isn't just finding the elk. It's if you find them, can you get them out? Can, can you, can you hike an elk out that far?

I'm the opposite. I like, I just, I'm like, when we kill it, we'll solve that problem. Which has got me into some predicaments. The only exception to that rule would be like, if it's going to be 90 degrees, then I'm like, man, we're, we're playing with fire here.

Even at 90, which you know there's, you could, hopefully there's a creek, so you know, hopefully you can keep it cool. But if you're of that mentality and you're in there and you're like, whatever it takes. I would say depending upon what you can see, you might want to look up and start glassing above tree line and see if you see bulls coming in and out in a herd. But the, the bottom line is if you're, we're at where you're at and there's no sign, there's no fresh poop, there's no fresh. And you've covered it pretty good. Even in a day, you have to make a decision of are we just going to be stalled and hope these don't come in or pull out? Right. And when I say like pull out that pull up stakes because you can't make elk appear no matter how good you call if they're too far away. And so, and this happens a lot, and that may be those elk were there the first week of season and then they Bounce. They're not there anymore. That may be a hunter that you didn't even know blew them out two days before you got there. Like, if you come in on September 10th for your greatest elk hunt ever, some. I gotta stop cussing. Some chucklehead could have been in there 10 days or for 10 days before you and piss pounded that area. Did they piss pound them a mile away? A half mile away? You know what I mean? And then you got to go find them, right? So. And that happens. I mean, it's public land. It happens a lot.

It does. You know, it makes me think, like, I've been in the scenario. I've been in that scenario where, man, the year before, it was Jurassic park and I was all alone, and it was the greatest wilderness experience of my life. You go in the next year and some, you know, outfit brought in 10 of your best friends, and you're like, this sucks. And they've been here a week. And so, like, that happens. The other thing that I think people run into a lot is, like, we talk about this, like, finding elk is easy. Sometimes it's difficult. Sometimes these elk don't talk. I mean, I. I will. I will still claim that somewhere on the mountain, elk are talking. When people tell me that elk aren't talking, I usually say, like, it not where you were.

I would agree with you. 100. They're talking. They like to talk. They're talking.

They like to talk that you're in the wrong spot. But, like, hypothetically, man, there's elk sign, but we're just not hearing a damn thing. How do you find out when they're not talking? Or is it just, like, go something?

No, I mean, honestly, whatever some people say, it's I, you need to have a long night of not sleeping and calling all night long. And when I say that, it could be to midnight, one in the morning. And so back in the day, you're from Oregon. Loggers off the logging roads. Just people out of the truck to hear them. I mean, that's pretty common tactic. Same tactic. It's just you're on foot, so, you know, an elk bugle can be heard in some areas long ways away. Other areas, topography, everything else, not as far. I will either. If it's been rough going, I will plan accordingly. To hike back to my tent in the dark. From a long distance. Yes, from. And I'll hike back in the dark, and I'll bugle every couple hundred yards down the trail. I mean, you know, and. And when I say that, I'll bugle And I'll sit there for a while, right? And, and when I, because I don't just bugle and wait the 15 seconds or whatever people say to wait or 30, I'll sit there for five minutes. Can I hear any cow talk? Did a bugle, you know, can I hear a bugle? And I will do that the entire, whatever it was back to my camp. Because they will, they will talk at night far more than they will talk in the day. And so.

And you can hear farther.

Oh yeah, there's less noise generally. There's no wind at night generally compared to the day. They have what's called the military seals where it's like stop, look, listen and smell. Where when you're on a patrol but you, you let your eyes acclimate your ears, you just sit there and chill. You want to perform sills every time you bugle, right? You just want to make some guys make some, make some bugles and just park your ass for 5, 10 minutes, move down the trail aways and do it again. That is almost guaranteed. If they're not bugling, then you're probably in trouble, right? But like you can almost always get a bulldo bugle at night. When I bugle at night and I find them marking on my GPS or Spartan forger onyx or whatever you're using, get your ass back there the next day they were there that night. So elk need to eat, sleep, drink and fornicate. And they do that luckily during both season. So they're probably feeding all night long. And they're going to be heading as the sun comes up just before, just after, to their bedding area generally is going to be north facing timber. So if you can read a map, it's part of being a good woodsman or woodswoman. You. Where the hell is the nearest north facing timber? Is that probably where they went? And then I'm going to figure that out the next day of like, okay, that's where they went this morning. So when I get in there, did I miss them? Did I catch them? Whatever happened, if I didn't, if I didn't see them but they were there, I'm going to get myself as close to north facing timber I can without blowing them out for that evening sit. And I guarantee if you sit there all day, almost guaranteed you're probably going to hear a bedded bugle. You're going to hear something that you would have never heard before because you were just wandering aimlessly through the woods. Shit's breaking, you can't hear anything. You get close enough to that and post up. Get comfortable. You're going to hear a bull bugle that or a cow call or calf. And you know, they call all day long. You just think they're not calling. They're just not calling by you or you're not listening. Yeah. So if you've marked them that night, you're probably going to be able to find them, if you're not an idiot, and blow them out with wind. So get close enough to where you have a good wind and sit there all day long.

Yeah, I, I think there's a lot. I mean, there's someone listening to this podcast that thinks they hunt really hard, and they probably do, but they're doing it all wrong. Like, to your point, like, if you're hunting all day and you're not hearing or seeing anything, stop hunting in the daytime. Sleep in the daytime if you have to.

That's another very big pet peeve of mine. It is very unproductive to hunt all day elk because of the wind. It's just. It's very, very bad.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like, there's definitely been times where, like, there's things you can do. And I, I did, you know, like, you can hunt all day for, like, to your point, if you're not in elk, though, or like, you. You haven't found elk yet, don't. Don't waste your days trying to find out. It's the hardest time. Middle of the day is the hardest time to find elk. When it, you know, 80 degrees, it's. It's a tough time to find out. You can sit a wallow and hope.

Yeah, I just say sit somewhere and hope. That's what you got.

Yeah. But, like, if you're like, hey, we need to find out. Like, before we can hunt out, we gotta find out then, Then change the day a little bit. Change your tactics. But I think the, the look, listen, and whatever you said about, like, you gotta get in tune with it. A lot of guys are just hunting really hard in the morning or they're hunting up a bottom and, man, you can't hear anything. You know, you maybe heard an elk there before, but if they're going over a face and they're, you know, just over a hill, you'd be surprised how you can, you know, not hear those elk just over that face. And maybe they're crossing over before. Before daylight. Right. And you're just down there pounding timber in these meadows because it's where you heard them or saw. Saw a sign. But you can't hear him just over the hill.

Well, and I think the thing that you should take away from this segment of this is you don't have to be walking to be hunting. You can be listening. You can be looking to be hunting. So I would say your midday stuff would be hunting without using your feet, be cognizant of what you're doing. If you hit a wallow that's been hit, figure out which way the wind is. Even if you have to sit 200 yards off that wallow and you don't have a shot, you at least can see the elk come in. You're not blowing it out because the wind is. When I say this, I want to make sure I'm not taking out of context. If you can set up to shoot the elk, do that. But if you have no chance to shoot this elk, because he's probably going to be coming out of the timber across your winds, blowing that direction or whatever else, use some common sense. Back up 2, 300 yards and watch your hunting. Watch that wallow. Where did it come from? Where did it go back to kill it that night? Because sitting on it to get a shot, you'll never get that shot. If the wind is bad, back up 2, 300 yards, then watch it. See, if they come in, you're into elk, you know they're there, and then route. Plan accordingly. All right? This is what the wind's done every night. Loop your ass around to kill him from the backside or whatever else, because now you know he's there. So while you didn't get a shot, you at least know now that there. There's a bull coming to that wallow.

Yeah.

And that's very, very hard for people to do.

And you will, to your point, man, I. I find a wallow, and I sit there. And this happens more often than it doesn't. Like, oh, the wind's really swirly right here. Like, yeah, it's probably why there's, you know, they're hanging out in here. Well, I can't. Well, a lot of guys will just sit there and then never see anything because then window swirling. But if you back up, you're getting intel, right? Like, is it three bowls? Is it three satellites? Why is there satellites here? Is there a herd somewhere else? Like, what. What else do we know about this spot? Right? And to your point, like, don't just either sit there and screw it up, sit back. Don't screw it up, but figure out, like, figure out the big picture. What is going on here? Is it one?

I'll Give you prime example. My. My girlfriend, because she's very ready to take on the world and everything, hunting, she's excited, right? So we go into this area. She's seeing elk on game cameras, right? She knows there are hundreds of elk. Like, she's. She's seeing they're there. She's seeing shit. She's seeing tracks. She has not seen an elk yet. Okay? And this just happened. I mean, this is legit. And I was like, do you really want to see an elk? And she's like, I do. I want to see an elk. And I'm like, okay, we're going to sit here tonight. She saw a lot of elk that night. My point being is we saw him from 400 yards away. Was letting her know, like, they're there. She. She's like, there's no elk here, right? Because she hasn't seen one. And I'm like, look, we're going to back up. We're gonna. We know there's a water source over here. We know they're. And I explained this to her. I like, we know there's timber there. It's hot right now. They're probably in that timber. And by 6, 45, 23 or 4 elk. Had she had seen. Now, if we've kept scouting and doing my thing, she never would have seen those elk because you got to sit, you gotta. You gotta watch. So, like, she's so pumped up now, she's bringing. Because I usually don't bring in binoculars when I scout in a timbered area. I just. I don't need them. Right? Yeah, we're bringing binoculars. Because she wants to just sit and watch now. And I explained to her exactly what we're talking about. Like, this is the death of elk hunters. They are not patient enough to wait, back up, find elk, and then kill them. They want to go in and kill them before they found them. Yeah, you got to find them first. And so she was, like, amazed because bighorn sheep came out. And I'm like, look, it's the golden hour. This is when dies, right? This is when everything comes out. But you have to be patient and wait. And so I'd explained to her because she's learning, okay, These elk came from here, right? They're bedded there. That's where they came from. Whether they were 400 yards up or 200, they're in that timber. They're going to feed here all night long, and they're going to walk back up there. This is how we would kill them. Because she's like, would we try to kill them tonight. And I'm like, with topography, in the wind, I'm like, we probably wouldn't pull that off. I would sit here, which would kill almost every hunter to sit and watch elk. I would sit here, if it wasn't overly populated, somebody else was going to blow them out, and I'd kill him the next morning. Like, you know, And I would. I told her, why, with the wind and everything else, you're not trained that way in the human brain. And certainly watching Primos videos does not help. Right. It makes it worse because you got to be more methodical. Those Primos videos, I don't know what it costs to hunt the San Carlos and all those, but you're looking at 20, 30, 40, $50,000 for those tags. Those elks are. Those elk are untouched. Right. They're not. They're coming into whatever. Right. I mean, they're. It's not the same where on public land. You got to be a little bit more methodical, a little bit more patient.

Totally. You don't get so many second chances. Yeah. Like, that's such good advice. Like a huge believer. You have to find out before you can hunt elk. I think too many people assume there's an elk around every tree or, like, they just want to kill any elk. So they just got to go out there and. And, like, just find that elk and get close to them. Right. But it's like, man, find the elk, figure out what they're doing. Find the. Find the pinch point. Right? Like, find the attack point. Um, and I think that'll make you a better elk hunter. Even if you're trying to shoot a cow or a raghorn or a spike, like, you still got to figure that part.

Yeah, I'm not a great. I mean, I'll be the first to tell. I'm not a great trophy hunter. I have shot some big animals, but I've shot a lot of mediocre and small animals, too. Elk specifically, because even small elk are big. And I eat a lot, right. So I eat 5, 600 pounds of meat a year. So the thing is, like, you say that tactics the same whether there was a 350 to 380 bull in that group or there was a 280 bull or. Or raghorns. It's the same tactic. You got to know where they came from, what you want to do. It's the same general principle. They get smarter as they get older. But, I mean, it's the same general principle. The biggest thing, like, I'd say probably every Fourth year I kill a big elk. The other three are three and a half year old, you know, five by fives or five by sixes or whatever else. But it's the same tactic and I use the same thing. The biggest thing like when you, when you, when you're first starting to hunt elk specifically, you really don't know any, anything you think you do, probably because you watch Primos videos. Right. But you know you're going to want to call. So you've probably went and got 17 calls. You've got everything you could blow into known demand. Right. And then you're watching how to call, so you're probably going to watch. Who are some of the more well known names? You've got Jacobson, Phelps, slayer, Joel Turner. All of them have like Turner talks about the bull calling cows bugle and Phelps has whatever. They're all different. And so if you try to combine all that at one time and never done it, it's, it's not good. Right. So again, once you kind of when in doubt, cautiously cow call cautiously bugle. Mildly. Like you can get so confused from listening to all these people. Well, you look at Jacobson, he's had signs left on his window that said you call too much. Right. He's talked about it. But how can you tell him he's wrong? It works for him. Yeah, but are you him and can you bugle as well as Corey? If you can't, I would say don't try it. Right. That's not a good tactic because you're going to blow all the elk out. Yeah. So you kind of have to weigh out what you, you know what you want to do, what kind of hunter you are and what skill set you, you have. And there's something to be said to just be too stupid to stop. Yeah, right. If you, if you can just keep going, eventually something might fall in your, your lap. Right. But it's better to be more methodical and patient. I found by far, and that's for me doing a lot of dumb. Right. I've touched, I've touched the stove a lot. I've blown a lot of elk out in my day.

So yeah, we hiked a lot of miles in our life to figure out that maybe that wasn't the smartest way to go about it and be a little more patient. Might have to not hike so damn far.

Yeah. Well, generally everybody, I think for the most part, whether it's by the road or they backpacked in, they wake up in the morning and they bugle all day. That's pretty much everyone. I would you, I mean, I think.

It'S changing, but I would say yeah, for the most part, you know, that there was an era of that for sure.

I, I hope it's changing right. So if you talk to those people and you broke it down and were like, hey, did you do this? Did you sit here? Did you wait? What time did you wait? You know, you'll find that most people just kind of wander around bugling. And in the middle of the day though, I remember Primos talking about this. And this is me. I mean I'm old, right? I'm almost 50. Back in the truth. One, two and three being very impressionable. Even though I was from the west and it elk hunted. Listening to Brad Ferris who's from freaking Mississippi talk about, you know, sound like a herd elk and break sticks and whatever else. And then you find out later on they're hunting on this private ranch.

Yeah, they're on the ca.

Yeah, yeah. You know, and there's nothing wrong with that and they're great people in the, they've done amazing things for the industry. But you break sticks and branches all day, bugling like crazy all day long, you're not going to have very many elk in your area. I promise. I've seen. And there's also going to be the, the reality of, of when you're trying not to be disparaging. I don't know how many messages I get. I'm sure you get a lot of, I'm just looking for a 300 inch bull. I don't want anything giant. 300 inch bulls, pretty big, right? To me, like, yeah, I'm not a trophy hunter, but if you kill a 300 inch bull every year, you're, you're pretty, you're stuck, right? You're a gangster. So like when people are figuring out what they want, I would say that the beginning trophy hunter is going to be in for a rude awakening because there's a lot more to it. So getting a cow on the ground, one, you're going to get meat. Two, you're also going to learn what it actually takes to pack an elk out. You're going to learn your parameters of physical fitness. Did it kill you? Did you do it on a backpack hunt? Should you do it again? You know, there's a lot to learn from packing out a cow or a spike, you know, on your hunt and then you kind of gradually, you know, bridge up as you're moving on. So I really caution people that are coming out west the first time that are really looking for, like I'm six pointer or nothing. Yeah, it's probably going to be nothing. You might want to, you know, lower that standard just a little bit till you learn what you're doing.

Yeah. And honestly, just focus on. I get at bats, man. Get around elk, get the elk experience. Like, just try to get close to elk. Don't worry about what you're gonna shoot or not. Like, make the decision in the moment, which is really bad advice if you want to kill big bulls. But like, also you have a great experience in like just being an elk in the elk woods. Get around elk. You need that time, time in the red zone, that time around elk to like figure out what to do, what to not. I think most people would be surprised how many times you're going to screw that part up.

I don't want to rat on Phelps, but I think this is a true story. When he shot that giant Roosevelt, the, the one that kind of made him famous in the beginning, I think he missed a spike 15 minutes before he shot that bull. I think, I think, yeah. You know, when I say that Jason's a hell of an elk hunter, I'm just saying in reality, I'll be a prime example. I've probably shot, I don't know, under 50 elk, but a lot of elk. Like somewhere near 50, cows and bulls and everything else. Colorado, you could shoot two elk. Not all of those were big. And even this year, I can tell you, if I get a three and a half year old, five by six, screaming his head off coming in, he's probably gonna die. I like killing him, right? I mean, in the moment, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I've passed up, I can tell you, like most of the elk that I've passed up, recurve and compound wasn't exciting, Meaning they weren't that big of elk, which is why I passed them up. But they weren't screaming. They kind of came in scared and they just look stupid and I didn't shoot them. That happened a lot with me and south put a five by five. I don't, three and a half years old, screaming his head off, beating up a tree. He's probably gonna take a broadhead from Snyder because the moment, right, it's like, oh, he was screaming. It adds inches totally. You know this. I mean, I guess the same thing is like, if you're in a group of elk and you're just getting started and you're, you're watching them and you're learning and a cow happens to Pop out and you shoot it and a bull comes out and you're like, oh, I should have shot the bull. That happens a lot every year. The thing is, is you shooting that cow probably made that bull come out anyway. Otherwise you probably would have never seen it. But I mean, just learning like when to draw. Right. Getting an arrow in that, you learn a lot. So it's, it's important. Building up your, your toolbox of, of knowledge.

Yeah. I'll put it this way. I could walk around in the woods and find 300 inch bowls from afar all day long. It doesn't mean I ever had a chance at shooting them. There's a big difference between just finding them in the woods, you know, in open country and whatnot. First, you know, ever having a shot. And there's probably a lot of guys that say they passed elk that like never really had a shot, like they saw some elk. But you know, I think once you decide you're gonna commit, you know, you don't get shakes or like, you know, no one's getting shakes when they're like looking at it from 500 yards. So like you don't, you don't have to make those hard decisions or like the, the intense moments until you're right tight, right. And once you're there, like there's a lot that goes on and I think that's, that's the at batch you need.

Yeah, no, I would agree. I mean, I try to think because my life's kind of a blur. I don't know. A couple elk ago with, with Mike Hearn, we were in an area and this area is like, I don't know, 14 years to draw it. I had a landowner tag, but it's public land. But I, we were in elk a lot, you know what I mean? And the recurve obviously kind of hurts you a little bit for, for killing something. But we were in a ton of elk. I think on day three, Mike called in a five by five and there was 13 bulls screaming around us. And this bull came in screaming. You know, I lost my. And shot it and made a great shot. And literally Mike, I was standing there looking at him and I was like, did I kill it? Because it ran to Mike when it died. Amazing. Hunt south had just killed one. One of the largest bulls in that unit. Came out 35 yards from me broadside. After I killed that bull with cows to the point I, I chucked my bow on the ground. Was like, I don't need this type of temptation. And Mike's like looking at me and looking at the bull and what? I. I am not a person that really looks back and is like, I shouldn't have shot that bull. You know, I don't, I don't have that. Like, yeah, I would have rather killed the bigger one, but, you know. Elk screaming. You're in elk. You know, I'm taking a full elk home, you know, I mean, it was a great experience, but I'm a horrible trophy hunter, so, like, it doesn't take a lot to excite me when it comes to elk screaming. And I think people probably have watched maybe a little bit too much TV when they have these preconceived notions about what's going to happen. Because I get the whole book, right? And messages. Here's my plan. And I'm like, man, I hate to shit on this guy's dreams. But I'm like, yeah, dude, I don't know that that's what's going to happen. And it's even worse in some states, like Oregon. Oregon is not a place you really want to go elk hunting unless it's in the winter unit or whatever.

But, yeah, I mean, I kill a lot of really great bulls in Oregon. They were like 270. And so, like, you know, they're, they're big bulls, old bulls, you know, they're 270. Yeah, yeah, I did really good stuff. I just had a really good last question. Oh, I know. It was last question for you. If you could tell an elk hunter that the listener, like, what's the one skill you would impose to make them a great long term elk hunter? What's the one skill you'd have them focus on?

Well, out of the gate is hitting the elk, but that's accidentally forgotten. So just being able to shoot, right, Just learn how to shoot. But other than that, I would say animal behavior would be the number one thing that I would focus on far above anything. And when I say that, meaning with animal behavior, where are they sleeping, where are they eating? Where are they going? Why are they going there? All the things that most people, they'll flip tires, they'll buy brand new bows every year, but nobody actually studies elk. I would say learning elk is far more important, even more important than calling. I'll take a guy that can, that knows elk, that can't call more than a guy that can call and doesn't know elk. And so knowing what they eat, where they live, why they move, what they do in the rut, those kind of things, I think that's far more important. It gets Forgotten. And I think that once you learn those things, you're going to magically be into elk.

That's really good advice. I love the, you know, makes me think of the analogy like if you go into a neighborhood you don't know, you just don't know what's going on, who is who, why the, what person does what, right. What trucks are, nor what trucks are local. And like in the same concept, like if you grow up on a road or you grow up in an area or you live in an area, you know, who drives by at what time, why, where they're going and those little things. The same thing is happening in the elk woods of like just understanding all of those aspects of like being a local. This is why guides have a lot of knowledge. They're there every day. They kind of know where they go. They know where they go when they get bumped. They know, you know, what bulls are hanging around like that. That takes a lot of years of local knowledge. And once you, once you understand that, you can kind of start to see it more, more quickly. Right. You can like go into a new area and you could go in an area you've never been to and you're going to figure it out very quickly because you kind of understand how those dynamics work.

I would say when you said it was the last question. I'm going to throw this in though. When in doubt, when you're calling elk, think of it as like when you're going into a bar, if you have a chick that walks up to you and screams, sleep with me.

Right.

You're probably like, oh my goodness, what's wrong with this crazy chick? Or if you're screaming at her, the same thing.

Yeah.

Think about calling as far as that too. And then elk behavior is you want to act like an elk. You don't want to act like a psycho crazy ex girlfriend. You don't want, you know, so you need to read the room when you're calling elk. And that goes along with animal behavior as well. Like learning you don't have to be a very good caller if you know when to call and what noise to make. Right. You know, you can be a half assed caller as long as you know what call to make when. And I think that's very important too.

That's huge. Yeah. Well, I appreciate it, man. Thanks for jumping on. We'll follow along. I mean, everyone knows who you are and where to, where to find you. But yeah, look forward to seeing your elk season, man.

Yeah, we got a camera person coming. Camera guy. Coming. So we're gonna film. I never. I'm not a big fan of. I'm not. I don't really like everything on film, but this one, Levi Mayfield, super good friend of mine, he's gonna come film it and he's funny. He's like, well, what kind of vibe do you want? Like what? I'm like, I don't know. It's making a badass elk hunt, dude. I mean, I don't know. Like, I don't need a. Like a story or a plot of Aaron's life storybook. I just want a badass video to see. I really want to get a. A true backpack elk hunt portrayed for people to see for this reason. Like, so people know, like, yeah, this is what you're getting into. So.

So when you going in and how long are you going for?

I'll probably go in the third or fourth, and then I'll probably. Well, I have to stop hunting the 20th, so I'll hunt till the 20th if I have to. So we'll see what happens.

Hell yeah. Well, good luck, man. Look forward to it. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing your knowledge as always.

Yeah, no, I appreciate it. And then, yeah, maybe I should probably get you on my podcast at some point. We'll talk about something else. But yeah, yeah, I appreciate you having me on.

Sounds good, buddy.

Alrighty, guys. Thanks watching for tuning into the show. If you like this episode, do us a huge favor and share it with one of your hunting buddies. Also, if you want a free hunt planner, be sure to go check the link in the show notes. It's 100% free. You can download our hunt planning tool, which is a great resource for kind of keeping track of all of your hunts, your hunt plans, your points, all those things. Pretty great resource. Go check it out links in the show notes or you can check our website, www.elkhunt201.com.