How to Hunt Late-Season Elk in a Roaded Unit: Game Planning with Tyler Bales

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To the Hunt west podcast, here's your host, Jaden Bales.

Hey, before we get into this week's episode, do you remember when buying an Idaho tag felt kind of like you're trying to win a concert ticket to see Taylor Swift? I mean, not like I've ever done that, but basically you'd wake up early, the system would crash, and you'd stare at a spinning queue for hours and hours on end to just to not get a tag. Well, Idaho nuked that dumpster fire of a queue system and the game has completely changed with their over the counter draw that is happening this December. That's why on November 5th at 6pm Mountain time, I'm hosting an Idaho webinar with limited spots. It's 47 bucks a seat, and in this webinar, you'll learn what's changed, how to develop a good tag strategy, which parts of the state have been selling out fastest, and how you can pick good units that match your style, not just the ones that everyone says are good on the Internet. If you'd like to grab a spot, you can learn more information at the show notes or go to huntwestplanning.com and it should be right there at the header. All right, let's get into this week's show.

All right, what's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Hunt west podcast. Today I've got on one of my co hosts slash family members, Tyler Bales, my brother. And I'm excited to have him on to talk a little bit of late season elk hunting. So how's it going over there, Tyler?

Good, good, good, good. Sorry, I'm just closing this up. Get that glare off from behind you.

Oh, I appreciate it. We also have. Young Cal is likely going to need some attention to at some point, but, you know, this is how we do podcasts. We just got to make them happen however we can. So appreciate you doing it. Yeah, so this year it. We're. We're not necessarily talking about your tag, we're talking about your wife's hunt. Coming up, Stephanie has a tag in eastern Oregon, but I wanted to kind of lay out some groundwork and then ask you questions. Does that sound good?

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay. So this tag Stephanie has, it is so much like a Montana general tag or an over the counter third season tag in, in Colorado, it is November 8th to the 16th. There's. It's a pretty low point draw. It's like two points to draw. Harvest success hovers around 10 to 15%. So it's really low harvest success?

Yeah, 20, 24 was 18%. So it's, it was up last year, but anyways, which is good.

I mean, that's like the right direction. But this country, I mean, you've got 400 tags, more or less, right?

Yeah, yeah, I think so.

Yeah. Not counting landowner. Anyway, so 400 tags, you got a pretty good healthy elk herd out there. It's not like it's, it's not like it's in the tank. You got 67 public ground. So there's definitely some private mixed in. And the terrain for the most part, would you say it's more like rolly hills and a lot of, of timber country?

Yeah, well, the, the public land is the rolly hills timber country. You. There is some BLM on, well, on the south side, but mostly on the western edge, the southwestern edge of the unit, which you get more into the juniper sagebrush country down in there and then that goes. There's also some state ground in there that's pretty similar. What's kind of cool about the state ground, though is a lot of that bumps up against ag fields.

Oh, yeah. Okay. So state ground, you can hunt in Oregon just like most western states. Probably can't camp on it, but you can just hunt it normal.

Yeah, I believe so. Cool.

There's also a few burns in this country, right? They're pretty recent burns, but, uh, you've got some places where the canopies opened up, right?

Yeah. Well, so in 24, the fire burned in the northern end of the unit on a forest service ground. In total, it was over. I want to say it was like 140,000 acres. I want to say 20 to 30,000 are outside the unit that because it burned from the south into the north. So, so we've got a pretty good swath of burned area to, to work with. Some pretty fresh burn too.

Yeah, for sure. So what's, what's Stephanie's and yours goal for this hunt? Like, are you trying to find a big or like a mature bull? Are you trying to find any elk? Like, what's the, what's the thought process, your expectations and wants, like going into this thing?

I mean, everybody wants to shoot a big bull, clearly, but this is Steph's first tag. So we're, I think we're just kind of going under the. Let's get something. It is a bull only unit, so no, we can't shoot a cow. So. Yeah, so I think I, I, she acts like she wants to hold off, like if she see a spike right off the bat. She's not going to shoot it, but. But I don't think that's gonna happen. I think she's gonna see an elk in her sights for the first time and, and be probably actually a little trigger happy.

Especially if it's a good scenario. Like, you know, it's not just running across the road or whatever. And if you glass it up and can make a move, like, it's. It's so fun to be able to like, have a layup, you know.

Yeah. We. We gotta flip through Clifford's Thanksgiving while.

We'Re, while we're chatting. I love it. That's okay. He. Well, I guess he can't hear you. You got headphones on. I was like, maybe he trying to close captions.

Probably not. We'll play the recording for him later.

Down. That sounds good. The one thing that I think is really interesting about this unit is there's not much for roadless. Like, there's one pocket on. On forest ground that is like two miles wide and four miles long. And for the majority of, you know, if you're sitting still with your binoculars, you can see two miles pretty easy. You can see four miles if you have the right view, you know, so.

That the Forest Service ground, they have three designated roadless areas that don't necessarily show up all that great on.

Oh.

The two of them. Two of the three burned to a crisp in the fire. So basically anywhere where you see a foot trailer, like a hiking trail is in the designated roadless area.

Okay. So this, this is an important piece that I think that is hard to understand until you get on the ground or you dive into a national forest plan, which if you haven't done that before, it freaking sucks.

It. Yeah, they're a slog, that's for sure.

How you find out about these like, roadless areas within this forest plan, I.

Just, I work through work. We are down there. You know, we actually took a tour this side tangent. But it's really cool. We took a tour after it burned and one of my co workers got to fly one of our drones over the roadless area, which now there's some. There's some changes with the new or with Trump's administration to where the roadless areas are going to be a little more. A little more likely to have work done. But up until this point, you know, they just kind of more or less treat the roadless areas like a wilderness. Interesting. Most of the time. There's a reason those are. Those roadless areas are roadless areas because there's either one Road in or out, and they're super steep and they're just not good ground for, you know, thinning, logging, any of those, you know, general timber managements. So we, we took a tour of that and we were able to see where that fire just absolutely nuked that roadless area. And then at the top, there's literally a fence, a road, and then a site where they had treated. I think it was, was at least 10 years ago when they did. And I want to say it was more like 15. They did an 8 foot crown spacing thinning on this area. And I mean, it looks like a park prior to between when they thinned it and when the fire came in, with the second being the spring before. So it was like spring of 2023 and then fire summer of 2024 is when they did their last burning. And it's so cool to see how those treatments impact the impact, like how the fire behaved and dropped it to the ground because it burned almost a mile after on, on the ground from where we were at into the treated area. But it was about a hundred feet of dead trees. And then it. You couldn't even tell it burned in there really.

So where they had done this thinning and this is important for elk hunting, elk, elk hunters in particular, to know because that means even in the middle of this big burn, you still have some standing trees and it's not completely nuked in there. Right. Like where they did all this thinning and stuff is. There's still some coverage.

Yeah. And then just a little bit of experience that I have driving around out there, it seems like the roadless areas and then the boundary, like some of the timber around the roadless areas are really the only spots that got just absolutely fried.

Okay. So even though this was a, you know, for generalization sake, like, this was a hot fire, burned a ton of acreage, but it doesn't make it crappy habitat. Right, Right. Okay.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and then of course, as you know, when we went out scouting, we saw the majority of our elk in the worst parts of the burden.

Interesting.

So, like they were in the roadless area in the like six inches of ash.

So what'd you do for your scouting and what was your kind of game plan? Were you just going to learn roads? Were you trying to find elk? What was the, what was the thought? Obviously you took Little man out there like it was kind of a family adventure. But.

It kind of started as mostly just kind of find roads. So we did two, I don't know, long weekend Scouting trips. We did one in June, which was a lot of miles. All that's all we did was just drive roads. But at that time, a lot of that fire area was still under closure. And so we didn't really get to see, you know, we kind of got an understanding of how the units laid out where the roads go, which roads you need to get on to get where kind of a thing. But there was a, like a small skinny section between the fire well and lots of the area that was burned in the fire and private site on the eastern kind of on the eastern edge that we didn't get to check out. So at first we were just wanting to figure, like, let's just drive as many roads through here as we can. Of course, you know, driving early in the morning. Well, as early as we could and you know, past dark a little bit. And you're just trying to playing country.

Music for a little guy in the back and just zipping around on the roads, right?

Yeah, zip around. I mean, there's a. There's a bunch of roads out there.

Yeah.

Even that little section where there's a small. On Onx, it says there's a small, little like roadless where the private land kind of. The public land kind of. Ls around a corner of private land. And so first we were just trying to figure out, like, how do we get to there? And then after that, then we started. We had some points that overlooked into the roadless area from different angles. And so we just kind of, kind of wanted to look at, you know, go to make sure we could figure out how to get to those. Obviously if we're there, might as well see sit in glass for. For a minute or two. And then naturally, driving around, we did see elk. And so we went to those areas where we had seen elk. And kind of based on where he was at specifically, one was a little like 4.4 or 5 point raghorn. And we're. We were kind of like, oh, where's he going? We were looking at the roads and then we drove around back over there and we found this great spot where, where it was a saddle where there's a ton of elk sign where it actually went over and then dropped into the drainage that eventually becomes the roadless area.

I like that. I like that a lot.

So you were.

You saw elk in June too?

No, we didn't see elk in June. This was all. Excuse me, that we, when we went after that little strip was when we were out there recently. And that's when we, we Saw elk.

Sweet.

That being said, we ran into at least two or three guys when we were out there in June that did see a big herd of elk.

Okay.

Just. Yeah, we just happened to miss them, of course, but like, guys that drove up like 20 minutes after us to the, to the lookout tower, and they're like, did you guys see those, that. That big herd of elk?

No, dude, that's so, that's so common. It's like if you're not maybe you just, you know, took a drink out of your, you know, thermos or whatever, like you look down or like they just popped out right after you drove by. Like, that's so common. I feel like you just miss something that happens.

Yeah, yeah, we put like 170ish miles of just driving this last time we were out, but, you know, that was three days of driving because we were just going slow and taking our time.

That's. That's awesome, man. And so you guys found. You guys found some elk. And then I also love that you found like that saddle with a bunch of elk sign, because you're like, yeah. Did you see an elk standing on that saddle at that point or did you just.

No, the. The bull that we had seen, we were on the road, it was, I don't know, maybe quarter mile away. And actually we kind of found it impartially by accident, but we were like, oh, he went up and over this ridge, this little road. Like, let's hurry up and get over to this other road and see if we can catch him on the other side to see, you know, kind of how he travels this. We never did find him, but we ended up finding more roads that kind of like kept inching us that way. And then, yeah, we found that saddle. That's that. And the other thing we did is like, anytime we came to like a dead end road, we got out and looked for tracks. And you know what I mean? We were. It wasn't just drive, oh, road, turn around. It was, okay, let's hop out, spend five minutes, look for tracks here or there. When we did get kind of get above that little bit of a roadless area, we like walked one of the a ridge, a very thick mahogany covered point out that, I mean, that thing was covered in elk sign. And just because I was like, well, I want to walk out here and see like how well we can glass because it looks like it's a nice flat point and then it drops off quick. So, you know, and so, yeah, we walked out there and like I said, there's a ton of. It was all fairly old sign, you know, like, they were probably in there in September, early September, but it still was like, well, it's kind of. That was kind of our.

Yeah, yeah.

It was kind of our. Our tactic. So.

Dude, I love that. I think people. So there's like two camps that people usually like fall into. They either look at every piece of elk sign and say like, well, they're here, so they're right here, you know, and they like put too much value on a. A, A track or droppings. And then there's people in the other camp who go like, just don't pay attention. And they're just like walking or driving and like, don't look for those things. I love that you're. You're kind of in that. That middle zone where you're like, I'm paying attention and then understanding that that just means they're in this vicinity. It doesn't mean that they're. I'm right on top of them every time out.

Yeah. And what went through my mind was our dirt Reynolds hunt. Because when we went up that first. Or excuse me, not dirt Reynolds, Vert Reynolds. When we went up that first ridge, we were seeing elk sign all over that ridge. And it was quarter mile away on the next ridge over where we saw that bull. And so I was like, okay. Like it was kind of like that was about the age of the elk sign that we were seeing. Perfect, if you can kind of remember. So it was like, okay, like they haven't been over on this specific spot in a couple. In a month or two. But there's got to be around. Yeah, like they like this spot.

So on the glassing front, you walked out to that ridge and just could, you know, this is all part of the scouting process. You like walk down on the ridge and look to see what kind of a view you could get. Was it a good glassing knob or was it like. Ah, not really.

Not really because it got really rocky right when it. Right before it really took off. But then there'd be like big pine trees growing out of the dirt patches in the rocks.

Hmm.

It was. It was pretty weird actually. I was. I don't know, I was kind of surprised cause there wasn't much for trees, cuz on top it was all mahogany, which was so thick it was hard to see out of. So it was one of those where it's like, yeah, it's a good spot, but like, you're not going to sit in one spot and see everything. You're going to move around this point to get different, you know, six or seven times before you feel like you've even looked over everything once.

That makes sense. Yeah, man. That's kind of, that's kind of tough. But that honestly makes that spot I think even a little better because you can't see it all right. From one master vantage you. You have to dig around and they might, you know, not just get popped from.

The one thing that we did see from there though, which I haven't decided if it's helpful or hurtful, is the road that we originally drove in on. We could see it from that glassing spot.

Yep.

Like very clearly. So it was like you could almost glass from the road and see more because you could see underneath of us and more of a. I don't know, it's just one of those where it's like until you, until you got around to that point, you didn't really know how far the road could see.

So from that other road though, can you see underneath that road? Like can you see the habitat from underneath?

I think so.

Okay. Yeah.

And then it's, it's really below the road itself. Right. There was probably the steepest section.

Cool.

And then there was like a drain. You know, it kind of all came into a drainage. I mean it was a. Look that point was at the fork of two little drainages or the big drainage to a much, much smaller drainage. And like from that point on the road, I almost think we could see into that second drainage all but the, you know, the, the hills, the. Trying to think of where it is. So the road would have been east facing slope. So you wouldn't have seen the east facing slope of that other draw. But other than that you could see which on that point you couldn't see that draw anyways.

That makes sense. So all this is like coming together as like okay, where, where can you not see from the road? And if you, if you're the people who are on the road on opening morning, like that's, that's fine. Right. Like as you can glass. And that has had pressure. But after that I would imagine that that pressure is probably anything you can see from that road will, will get picked up or has moved out.

The, the most surprising thing that we learned when we were out there. So we were out there the.

Be.

The second weekend of deer season and we saw four camps across the whole, like the whole area that we drove.

Yeah.

And granted it's the second half, you know, the second weekend. So there it's probably thinned out a little bit, but it's just one of those areas where, you know, I asked everybody and their dog that I know likes to hunt, at least around here, and I found like maybe two people.

Interesting.

For whatever reason, it's the people like that unit way more.

I think that you have like a interesting advantage that I think people underrate is like, obviously you live close to the unit and you know people and you can talk to people, but this is why it's so important to like hunt places consistently because you learn stuff. Like the amount of things that you've learned this year would be the same as like three years of hunting the unit, you know?

Yeah.

That's huge.

Yeah. Yeah. And then if part of it, of course, is just. Is campsite scouting too. Yeah.

Yeah. You want to be.

Yeah. Our. The campsite that we want to camp at the most was 45 minutes from the house.

That's sweet. That's super sweet.

So it again makes me ask, like, why aren't more people hunting this unit? Well, I will say fine.

I think opening day is going to be a gong show, which can be in your favor. But you pointed out something really important there is like that next weekend is probably going to be really enjoyable.

Yeah. Yeah. The other thing is, is like, what. And we'll see, you know, with physical capabilities and how much we have cal in that first weekend, like, I just don't see a ton of people doing the thousand foot descent in a mile into the roadless area to go shoot a bowl opening weekend.

I think you're right. I definitely think you're right.

Like, I just, I just don't. I don't get the sense, like, I just don't get the sense that people hunt that unit hard like that because there's so many roads that. And, and I kind of attribute it to the unit that my house is in. There's a bunch of roads. There's a bunch of steep, gnarly pockets too. I think the theory is there's. There's more people from outside the county that hunt that, you know, like. Well, we kind of shame them. But west western Oregon folks come and hunt that because that it's got a lot of roads. You know, there are some deep pockets if you really want to get in there. The, the elk population, I think they estimated at like 16 or 1800 for relatively not a huge area. And so it's got a pretty like the, the. I think it was like the amount of elk per mile were like. Or per square mile was like point four eight or maybe even five. And so it was like. And there's not a lot of private ground in there too. Like there is on the, on the valley side, but after that there's really not. And so I think that just draws a lot of people. And because of that it's a five or six point tag.

Yep.

But the way you hunt it, I mean I'm just approaching this unit the same way we approached that unit.

I. I totally think you're on the right track. The other thing is like the unit you have that Steph has tag in has quite a few elk, like 2200 elk spread across like quite a bit of. Of public ground. I think you're. You're nailing something like it. People will shoot elk from the truck on opening day. Like that is just gonna happen.

Yeah. So it happens everywhere.

Exactly.

You know what I mean?

But it's almost like when all you have is a hammer, all you see is a nail. And because there's so many roads, like people will just be bop around driving roads or walking roads or doing whatever on the road systems where like there still are these pockets like you're talking about that you can like if you have some physical fitness, you can get into these like quote unquote hell holes and find elk that are going to be there year or not year round, but they're going to be there throughout the whole season. And I think that that's part of the. Everyone's just planning to get lucky and whereas like the way that you've approached this is you're. You're planning to do something intentionally and I think that that's really effective now.

I think, I think, I think our game plan is going to be pretty similar to a lot of those guys in terms of like the hunt. Hunting the, the doing the thousand foot descent into the roadless area to turn around and hike that back out with potentially an elk on our back. It's. It's not our primary option just because I. It would be a lot for the. Especially if the three. If we've got a cal too because yeah, we're, we're not making trip. We're not. We're not both packing meat out on trip one.

Oh, come on. You can do a. You could three or four trip an elk out of there. What are you talking about?

Yeah, we could, but because he's got it right on our back. It takes up real estate. You know what I mean? Like you're not.

Yeah, no, I was saying you'd be the one packing the meat.

Oh, yeah, totally. And that's, and that's fine. You know, we would understand that too.

Yeah, yeah.

And it would, it'd probably, probably be one of those where the first hike would be the by far the worst.

Yeah.

Because what we'd probably do is drive to a trailhead and walk the trail down. It'd be longer in miles, but less in elevation.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

And then like, you know, we could probably our, our little backpack that we stick Cal in, it's got a little pocket we could probably throw a backstrap or two in, you know, like.

Yeah, have him riding on top of the meat.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, but so the first, the first trip is going to be me and our gear with as much meat as I can pack.

Yeah.

And then the second trip, you know, and depending after that, especially if we're driving around, you know, maybe we have time. Like I said, It's 45 minutes. So maybe we can get somebody to come out and either help pack or someone to watch Cal so we can pack stuff out, you know. Yep. And thankfully it's second season, so we're not worried about meat spoilage. Yep.

I was just looking at the 10 day forecast. I was looking at it in Montana, Colorado and Oregon because that's where most of these seasons are taking place. And across the west, the 10 day forecast says lows in the 20s, highs in the 40s, which for meat care purposes, that's, that's fine. That's perfect. Yeah, but as far as like, for elk movement, I mean 20s at night is going to be good for morning and evening movement. But. But gosh, you're not gonna. Cause like, sometimes you'll get a. A cold, cold storm and elk will be bedded or feeding out in the middle of the day in the open. And I just, I don't think that you're gonna get much of that. So that's where maybe hunting that burn is gonna come in so handy so you can actually see into it.

The other thing is though, is, you know, when we say hunt the burn, those roadless areas are maybe 28, 20,000 acres between the two of them. Like, they're not overly large, so there's still a lot of. Of burn to hunt. That's not ridiculous.

Yeah. Yeah.

So. And that's kind of the. I think kind of the. Anyways, my kind of initial thought is we're gonna obviously kind of start out on the roads, kind of check for some sign and things like that. Try to catch something.

You know, Will this be the day before season? You're kind of driving around on Friday.

We'll. So we'll. We'll do a initial evening scout. No, don't pull my cord. Friday night we're going to drive and set up camp. Friday morning I might do a little bit of a scout, like Tuesday or Wednesday evening because we're going to drive out and drop some stuff up at the campsite that we want just so.

You can kind of claim it.

Kind of claim it. Yeah. It's just. Yeah, it. Because our next best option is another like 15 minute drive.

Okay.

So it's like, yeah, we'd like to get that. That main one and. But so then, you know, we might drive around a little bit since we're already out there, you know, But I kind of want to attack that. So that fringe zone where the burn ends and there's a little pot of public land before it hits private. Kind of want to attack those edges.

Yep.

That's. That's where we saw that raghorn bull was right on the. He was in the burn side. The road that we were driving was the boundary between burned and not burned. And then. So we'll go hit that. And then that saddle that we were like. And it got. The trees got pretty torched off of that. So I'm like, man, we could sit there and glass off of that. You know, there are some, you know, some trunks that you have to look around, but it really could be a pretty easy spot to glass. And like I said, it's the head of that roadless, roadless area. And I think the. I think it's a pretty main. Hey. Travel corridor between the. The private and the. That roadless area. It's kind of like the last saddle into the roadless area along the travel corridor of that private. Which I sent you that pin.

Yep. I'm looking at it right now.

Yeah.

And one of the best things about this is like, so we're talking roaded hunting pressure is going to be pretty high on opening day and they're going to be pushing elk around. And so when the elk. And this is kind of what you've done, but just to put words to it, but like when the elk do get pushed around from hunters that are in the roaded areas, they're going to be going over that saddle into the places they can escape from hunting pressure where. Which is where you're going to be basically posted up. You can glass a little bit of the roadless stuff that won't have much pressure to begin with. But also you're on. You're in the interception zone. Right. You can intercept elk as they're coming into that stuff. And I. Dude, that's so smart. It's so underrated for folks who, like you said, you're conscious of not shooting an elk in the. In a hell hole without a bunch of help and a baby on your back. So I think people who, people who, let's just say they like, aren't in great shape or in a position like you are or you know, hurt their knee or whatever. Like this is the perfect like layout of a hunting plan to make sure that you get into elk without having to just pound the crap out of your. Out of your body. That's a good idea.

Yep.

Cool.

Yep, yep, yep. And then go ahead. And then, you know, we always, we. We found at least two good vantage points to look over the roadless area when that fails. So it's like if, if there's an elk in that roadless area, like, we'll probably find it. It's just whether or not we can get to it in the same day or not.

Yep. So how many hunting kind of plans or hunting zones do you have within a 15 minute drive of your or 30 minute drive of your camp?

Oh, at least four.

Four.

That's one of the. That's also part of the reason why we're like so worried about our camp is it's on the main forest service road that connects to the other main forest service roads. So it's like no matter which direction we want to go, you just pull out a camp onto the main road and go. We don't have to back bush.

Yeah, that's underrated. If you stuff your camp in a spot that is hard to get around the unit, it can make it so tough to freaking make the moves that you need to make in order to. To stay in elk or stay into deer or whatever. We just have this on the guided deer hunt I did where like. Well, our camp was. There was a spot that wasn't too far. It was like a 30 minute drive in the morning to get to this like first spot. But everything else do. We were driving an hour, hour and 10 minutes. Hour and 30 minutes, like depending on where we were going. Dude, it is. Logistically, you just have to get up earlier, you have to stay up later, which is not too bad in November when the sunlight's sun's going down pretty early. But the big thing is you burn so much gas, you have to go into town every other day and go freaking get more gas or you have your, your jerry cans and maybe you get a couple more days out of it. But it is a logistical freaking challenge when you're driving that far. So sounds like your camp won't have those same logistical challenges. So you're in, you're in a dang.

Good spot as long as we. We beat people there.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And like, like the other thing that I'm kind of.

Yeah.

So going back to the like the people that hunt, actually hunt this unit seems like the majority of them are coming out of. Because it goes right down. I mean it borders the town. And so our camp is also on the northern boundary.

It's on the further part from the closest town or one of the closest towns.

Yeah, right. And so I'm kind of. I'm a little bit hopeful that that'll kind of keep some people maybe out. Out of that spot. Just because it's, you know, it's an hour 15 minute drive or an hour 20 minute drive for them. Yeah, I don't know.

I like that. I like. I think that that's an important piece. Like, you know, those stuff that's actually close to town, like the stuff that's 10 minutes from town can sometimes get overlooked. But then the stuff that's, you know, on the other end of the unit from the nearest population center is not that this is a big population center, but it still can get a lot less pressure, you know, overall. So yeah, I like that.

So yeah, compared to or my local unit here, I want to say it's almost a hundred less tags for. It was like, I can't remember if it's 2 or 400 more elk. Yeah, I think 1, I think 1 was estimated at 1800 and 1 was like 2000 or 2200.

Yep. So no, that'll work. Good. And it's one of those things that like I did. We even saw it. Oh my goodness. 17 point mule deer tag. 50 tag holders, month long season. We're at the last week of the season last week and we saw, we found a buck and it was like, this would be a great last day buck. We come back the second to last day to try to find him and there's a carcass. You're just like, oh my God. So like even when you have low amounts of tags, you'll find hunter pressure. And that's, that's one thing that I think is the nice part about these low point units is like people who draw a low point tag or like a general tag or whatever, they don't have any heartburn about leaving it empty handed because they're just like, yeah, no problem, we'll come back another year, you know.

Yeah.

So I do think that, yeah, you're probably gonna find like just overwhelming pressure to start and then even by Sunday, you know, it's going to be a lot less.

Yeah. Well, and that's the other thing is we're, we'll have the advantage of staying there all week.

Cool.

If need be.

So what's your camp setup? Obviously I know what it is, but like describe your camp setup for a week of elk hunting.

Well, it's mostly just our, our camper. I have a truck bed camper that I put in. I have a 1 ton ram that I drive and then I also tow. We have a 1985 Bronco 2 as our transport rig. Um, but yeah, I mean it's a small camp trailer equivalent.

Yeah. So you're basically going to pull the Bronco behind the pickup, have the camper in the pickup, and the pickup will stay mostly stationary during the hunt. And then you're going to be bop around in the Bronco. Correct.

Yeah. And I would correct you and say not mostly stationary. It's not moving until, or, you know, something catastrophic happens. But hopefully we don't have that problem.

Yeah. Well, and for those who don't know, Tyler and I, last time we hunted together, had a tree fall on our wall tent. And that was a pretty catastrophic event. Just destroyed the tent. Luckily nobody got hurt. But yeah, I get, I get what you're saying. You got to have a little bit contingencies in the back. In the back pocket. Just in case.

Yeah. So, fun fact. We're actually planning on taking that wall tent with us. We resurrected it because the only thing that was actually damaged on the tent itself was the couple of poles got bent. So we fixed some of the poles and replaced a couple of them. And we'll use that as just an extra dry, you know, like a hangout spot. Yeah, yeah. Because we're worried about. We have a, like a, a pop up awning, but we're worried about that if it starts to snow getting too much weight on it.

Yeah, that makes sense. For the majority of the West, I was looking at the 10 day outlook. So at least this is taking you through the beginning of your hunting season. It looks like there might be a little bit of rain. Just like some. And obviously you could get a little snow out of it if it's raining or if that precipitation's falling at night or in the morning. But doesn't look like there's any big snowstorms in the forecast for the first part. But you never know this time of year. Right. Like you could, you could, you could have a rainstorm come through the temp drops all of a sudden, and then you're like, oh, we got a foot of snow like this. Yeah, this is a pain in the butt.

And that, that happened when we were out camping and scouting during that last week at deer season is that Monday after season had closed, when we were packing up to go home, we woke up to four, I don't know, three or four inches of snow.

Dude, that would have been such good deer hunting the day after season.

Closed, Close.

Oh yeah. That's classic.

Exactly.

Cool. Well, this is sweet, man. I'm excited for you guys. I think you're gonna have a fun, a fun week of hunting together. And so how much of the time are you thinking you'll have your 18 month old with you?

Not exactly sure. We're kind of gonna play it by ear. I think he's gonna stay with grandma for the first weekend.

Okay.

Because I'm anticipating if we run into people having to, to maybe hit those roadless areas a little bit harder.

Yeah.

Sounds like grandma and grandpa might come out and camp with us. So we may have a little bit of some hunting with him and some hunting without him during the week. But I would suspect that that last weekend we probably have him the whole time.

Nice. Well, that's going to be, you know, one. I think it'll be cool, you, you and your wife get to hang out by yourselves for a little bit and have some Time just to have an adventure, but then also you get to bring him in if. If he comes to it. So. Yes, that's cool. I. Dude, I told. I've told you this multiple times, but I just applaud you for still getting out and having fun and, like, bringing the whole family along and. And not taking. Not taking the easy way out and being like, well, we have a baby. We can't go anywhere. You know, like, that's, I think, a really easy thing for people to do. But you guys are. You guys are doing a good job getting that little guy out, and it's awesome to watch.

Yeah, that's. It's. It's definitely a little trickier where, you know, if it was my tag, it would just be, well, we. You know, maybe Steph needs to stay back at camp on whatever given day if he's not not having it for whatever reason, and then, you know, and then I'll go hunt by myself, but it's not really an option when she's the one with the tag, so. Yeah, kind of. Yeah. I expect lots of long car naps. It might be one of those where it's like I drop her off at one of our glassing spots, and then I just go make circles for a while so that he stays asleep in the. In the rig. But.

Well, you know, if you do that, you're gonna see an elk from the road. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, yeah, of course. So, no, last. When we did that, there's both of the overlooks over the roadless area that we like. The. Like, the two that we like the most. Um, because the fringe area had burned so bad, people just started making loops because it. You can't really tell where the road is anymore.

Uhhuh.

And up on those. You know, it's not too bad driving, even when it's muddy. Um, and so there's just, like, loops all over the place. And so within, like, 200 yards, I made, like, four different loops from where she was at, and, like, I could see her the whole time. That's funny. It's kind of cool. I just, you know, and granted, we. You know, when we were out there glassing, you know, like I said, we'd go to the dead end and just go out and glass a little bit. You know, the. The spot where we saw that little herd of elk, we were there for probably 20 minutes is all. Oh. So it's like. And part of that was they're so far away, and because of. We were just scouting, I didn't have my spotting scope. With us because we were just mostly driving roads. So it was like, well, we can sit here and watch this exact same herd of elk that we can't really see very well. Like, we can tell that they're elk and we can tell that there's a couple of bulls, but we can't tell much more than that.

Yeah, yeah.

We can just sit here and watch them, or we could go try to find more elk. So we didn't hang out too awful bad. But. But yeah, that would have been a. An uphill both ways adventure to go after those elk because they were up the other side probably 6, 700ft, dude, in elevation.

And as much as like, you can certainly stumble into something close to the road. An uphill both ways pack is pretty, pretty much where you find elk. It's always. It's always a bummer, but. Well, I don't know if it's always a bummer. It's just like the way of the world sometimes. So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is one of the few hunts where I'm going into it. Like, I'm not concerned about finding elk in general.

Yeah.

It's more about how, you know, the. I think we'll find Elk. 1. I. We'll probably find a herd of cows at some point now that the bulls are pulling off. Yep. So that'll be a little different from where we've looked thus far. But then just once we get them tracked down, the execution, because, I mean, it stuff's pretty green. So, you know, she's gonna. I'm. I'm hoping she doesn't because I've taught her well enough. But, you know, like, oh, crap, that bull's at 100 yards walking away from us down the road. Like, I. I'm not sure how. How well she's going to be able to succeed in that situation, you know? Yep.

But that's where I think taking a newer hunter like that and putting them into glassing situations and sitting and waiting for things to come to you that can be most beneficial. But yes, you and you. You hit on it already. You're like, yeah, bulls are going to be pulled away from the cows, but. And last time you and I hunted for elk, dude, we had that one herd of cows walk across in front of us. And I just kept telling you, like, wait, there's gonna be a bull in the back. There's gonna be a bowl in the back. And there was no bowl in the back.

Yeah.

I was like, oh, this sucks.

Yeah.

Hopefully you guys will get one.

And that was. That was a would have been almost two weeks earlier. Cause there was an early second season that year before Oregon pushed it back a week.

Yeah.

And so I was like, who's like, yeah, there's gonna be like something at the back of this.

Yeah. And there just wasn't.

Yeah.

Yeah. So.

Yeah.

Well, this is good, man. I'm excited for you guys. We'll have to get you on again to talk about how, how it all shook out. So. Yeah, I'm excited for the pre and the post podcast at some point.

So yeah. Kyle, can you say bye bye? Can you say bye bye?

You send us off, sir. He's waving for everybody in the, in the podcast land. So. Alrighty. Well, thank you for doing the podcast, man. And I'm excited to hear how it goes. So stay in touch.

Yeah, will do. We'll talk to you later.

All right, bye bye.

Thank you for listening to the Hunt west podcast. If you like what you heard today, the best compliment you can give is to share the show with a friend. We will see you on the next episode and we hope one day to see you.

Hunt West.

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