How to Pick Glassing Knobs | Solo Round

Foreign. To the Hunt west podcast, here's your host, Jaden Bales. All right, what is up, everybody? Today is a little bit of a unique podcast because I'm just going to lay out the scenario for you and give you the. The full background of what we're doing today. So I am in Montana right now with my significant other. She does hair and makeup for weddings and, you know, big events and stuff like that. And she's got a wedding here, and then we're going to go out on a family vacation, which is why I'm out of office all next week. And we'll just about be returning by the time you hear this podcast. So essentially, she's out working right now. And I was like, well, I'm not just going to waste the middle of my day. I'm going to go check out some of this deer country that is not too far from from town. So I drove up here, oh, 20 minutes and grabbed a glassing knob. I've actually got a friend of mine with deer tag in this unit, and I figured I'd go glass and just kind of look around for him. If you're hearing some background noise of a bunch of critters, it's because it is actually middle of the day here. It is 11:10am and instead of just being out here walking around and just not seeing anything and not learning much, I figured I would sit back and do a little glassing and also team it up with a glassing podcast. So some of you might remember back in the day, I used to do a Muley Monday podcast with Cody Rich, and that was about 2019, 2020. And I knew how to glass, I thought, until I started doing that podcast. And then I got a bunch of people on to, you know, talk about trying to find deer and consequently also helps find elk. But I basically would just interview all these different guys who would were masters at glassing. And I figured today would be a good day to kind of regurgitate some of the information about what they taught me and some things I've picked up to help you with your glassing. When it comes down to both finding good spots, E Scouting, as well as, you know, when you're actually in the field, what you can be doing to find critters. In particular, it's. It's really helpful for midday stuff or like, kind of off hours when animals aren't up on their feet. But also it'll be really helpful for you to find glass and knobs while looking at your E Scouting this summer and piece together Some things, some. Some characteristics and some game plans that are really effective and they use your time wisely. So to start, I'll just kind of explain what I'm. What I'm doing today, and then we'll break down a couple of the strategies and I'll tell you a few hunting stories that I used to, like, find these types of. Find animals in these different types of strategies. So currently I'm sitting at about 5,000ft in elevation. Not super high really, especially for the Rocky Mountains. But essentially the boundary between two units runs on a road below me. On that road below me is also private land on a creek bottom. So there's hay meadows and then there's, you know, good flowing water down here below me. And I'm sitting in one unit and glassing into another unit. The other thing is this other unit that I actually want to find the animals in starts at 4,500, so about 500ft below me, and it goes all the way up to, like, 62. So you've got quite a bit of elevation, you know, 1700 vertical feet of ground that I'm looking at here. And from top to bottom, you know, you basically have a different climate at the bottom third versus the top third, and obviously a transition zone between those two. But on the bottom part, it is really. It's burnt. There's not a lot of tree regrowth, and you've got a lot of, like, rocks and shale and some interesting, like, draws and cliffs. And then the higher up you go, the thicker the regrowth of this burn is. And then at the top you've got, like, basically unburnt timber and not much for clear openings, but you do have some edge lines and a couple, like, brushy bottoms that you can look into. This is like a really classic example of a glassing knob to locate animals. Now, obviously, if I was hunting right now, this would not be a good one to kill one. I'm not even in the unit that my friend has a tag in, right? So, like, let's just say he was sitting here instead of me. This is not a. This is not a strategy to kill an animal from here. You literally, it's illegal. But it is a strategy that I think a lot of people will overlook because just locating animals is, like, half the battle. So there's a big, you know, mountain range in front of me and there's roads that are up on top of it. But if you're sitting on top of that in the thick timber, in the thick reap rod, and you can't see these really nice glass able draws that are down below. It's not going to do you any good to be in the unit. Right. And I really like the idea too that there's private down here on the bottom. So it's really hard to access from the bottom and therefore you create this little sanctuary zone. If you're going to try to hunt animals in these draws, you're going to have to come in off the top and drop elevation. You know, crap, if there's something in the bottom, you're dropping 1500 vertical before you hit private. And guys just really don't like doing that. I mean, I'm not going to lie to you, it does suck. If you do get something, you have to hike it back up to the truck. But, you know, especially like in my friend's case where he's got this premium tag and he wants to make the best of it he can, trying to find that next age class, trying to find something special. This is the kind of like hustle move that I really like. And again, the kind of guiding strategy behind this is just locating animals. It's something that, you know, I, back in the day, even Cody Rich had Jason Carter on his podcast, I don't know, 2016, 2015, somewhere in there. And Jason always talked about sitting way back with big, big optics and looking a couple miles to find animals. You know, Robbie Denning had talked about that on a podcast with me way back in the day too. And it's such a guiding principle to just like getting started in your hunt in particular. So what I'm looking at here is basically I'm on a logging road. It's a forest service road that is pretty well maintained and they actually just graded it so it's smooth right now. Probably won't be by hunting season, but I use my truck to get to a good vantage point and then can sit here and look a mile, maybe two miles away and sit behind my big spotting scope here middle of the day and just look at terrain. So it's really just like, you know, as you look at the map as a, as a road comes up a mountainside, it weaves in and out of these points, it goes out on a point and it'll come back into the draw and anytime it comes out on those points is where there's like a natural glassing point. And obviously if you're in the middle of your unit, you don't have to be, you know, looking for this exact feature where you're sitting in the other unit and looking back. But it is awfully helpful to be thinking about how these natural terrain features, you know, can. And where the roads are at, can help you get to a glassing knob easily. The other piece of this is, is like, you can't think about this from like a lazy man's perspective of I'm just going to glass it up and then drive over there and get it. I'm also adding in the element of having to hike into this place and in a pretty crappy hike to hiking downhill in a really steep, you know, thick environment to get down to where I'm actually glassing right now. So it's one of those things where you're kind of piecing a lot of things together. You're working creatively to find a good glassing knob that doesn't take a lot of effort to get to. And then you realize, like, okay, well, once we do get something figured out, an animal spotted or just some critters found that you want to get a closer look at, you gotta, you gotta make a big move to get in there and actually get into the kill range. So this is a good example of, you know, an approach that I like for locating animals. The other approach I really like is honestly just using, using like the main highways and, you know, if you can find a good bump out, a good, like, pull off that, you know, people are chaining up at or whatever, if you can find a place like that and pull off and look across the canyon or look up a mountain, those places are awesome to just locate animals. And again, this whole like, locating animals piece is, I think, the number one that piece that people overlook and like, they don't think about doing before they just dive into their hunt because everyone wants to. You know, there's like three ways to kill animals. There's killing one this season, killing one this week, and then there's killing one today and killing one right now. I kind of added an extra one in there because I do think, you know, you do, you know, you modulate your aggressiveness based on the time frame you have, right? I'm here in, you know, mid late June and this is more of a, if you, if you find an animal here, you're going to kill it this season, right? You're not actually getting ready to hunt it. So that's what kind of gives you some, some flexibility in how to approach this thing. And if I get skunked today, there's no big deal, right? But if I'm trying to get one this week, getting skunked really sucks. So it's like all factors that play into like how badly you need to locate an animal. The other piece of this is like, again, I don't have time today to like find an animal and then drive all the way the heck around, probably an hour and get to the other side and drop down on them and try to get them killed. But that plays into your, that plays into the factors that you're looking at when you're trying to, you know, find animals and just get them located so you know where to start your actual hunting. If you're looking to locate animals and you're like in the middle of your hunt, obviously, you know, if you're wanting to look at some stuff that is within striking distance, that's important. But especially with an evening glass, you're basically going like, okay, if I'm glassing in this evening and this type of environment, that's a we're going to kill them this week kind of operation. And then you really start, have to hone things in as you start getting towards the end of your hunt and go like, okay, now we got to look at glassing knobs and locating it animals where we can kill them today or we can get them down, you know, in the next few hours. Those all should be considered as you're sitting back and like considering what kind of glassing knobs you're looking for. So we kind of talked about, okay, I like, I like this whole like glass across the drainage, use the road system on the other side to look into hard to access areas. You also talk about getting down in the bottoms and you're using the main highways to look up into stuff. And I gotta admit though, if you're looking, if you're sitting down at the bottom and you're looking up into things, the way that vegetation lays out it is not very conducive to locating animals, especially when they're in thick, thick terrain. It's much better to locate animals looking down on country than it is looking up into it. That's just again, if you think about the way trees and brush like all lay out, especially as you get later into the year and there's less leaves on things, it helps to look down into, down into trees, down into thick cover, because you can see things moving when you've got matchsticks that are vertical and not very good when you've got them horizontal or pointed up from you. So hope that makes sense. It's kind of a clunky way to describe it, but just to reiterate so we've Got this like, you know, get across canyon using a road, use that main road down to the bottom. But then there's also like one of my favorite things to do is just find one quick climb. And these one quick climbs, they can be, you know, four or five, 600ft. And maybe if you're not used to doing climbs, that seems like a lot. But for the majority of western hunting, these like 400 to 600 foot climbs, you know, right from the truck, that can take you 10, 15 minutes if you're in good shape and you're just like, you know, motoring up there. I love doing those. And they don't have to be very far right, they can just be a couple hundred yards off of the road. But you do these like quick climbs up to a good glassing knob and then that will unlock a whole bunch of good terrain that will lay out below you and is a, is an approach that I really like especially when I'm more in season and you're looking for something to, to get after that day, uh, especially if you can like, okay, cool, we zip down, back to the truck, drive around, get a little closer, whatever the case might be. Now when it actually comes to locating animals during the hunting season, I really do like looking underneath or above road systems and like different features that people will be on. And look, I'm excluding the backcountry experience for now because that's its own can of worms and a lot of people are more doing this like day hunting, base camping and then like hiking around and, and covering ground that way. So I wanted to address that first. But basically, you know, you, you go grab like a 5, 600 foot like knob right above the truck or, or whatever the case is, you're going to leave behind a lot of people who are riding the road systems and you're not going to compete with the people who are hardcore backcountry folks. You know, it just kind of thins out a different population you depending on where you're at though that may or may not help your, you know, your pressure. In a place like Colorado, I think it works pretty darn good because you'll sit there on this glassing knob and watch people buzz by you all day long. But you're too close to the road for you to get a bunch of public land warriors just marching through versus if you're in maybe some places in Wyoming or some places in like a Utah where people like to glass. I just, I'm really generalizing Utahns on this one, but it's, it sure seems like those kinds of places where there's a lot of road systems, you're gonna find more people grabbing those knobs and doing that kind of glassing, however, I keep saying that, but, you know, like last year, I glassed this way a lot in my general deer area by my house, and it was crazy. Like, I just sit there, watch. Um, you know, I was. I was looking at a buck trying to. And it was in the evening, so I was getting ready to kind of figure out how to kill him the next day. And I'm watching this really nice deer, and these side by sides are buzzing behind me. You know, it's the last couple hours of daylight, and like, they have no idea these deer are a mile away and they're not going to be there. At first sight. It was one of those things where I'm like, look, pressure only, you know, impacts, especially with the deer hunt in certain amount of ways. Same with elk hunting, though. I mean, you will constantly see people buzzing roads, and you'll be able to pull off of a main road and look at a mile, two miles back and find animals that are unpressured. A good example is that of that is there's some boys that live in my hometown, where I'm at now, and. Or they did, and they were having a hard time finding elk. And I kind of knew of the spot that would be pretty easy to check. And I told them, okay, drive up into here as we're driving. I said, okay, pull off to the side of the road and make sure my side is facing the valley, right. Like there's a main forest service road. And I said, just find a bump out and put me out there. And I like, we'll throw up my. I'll throw up my binos. And sure enough, pulled over. I knew where to look because I'd seen elk in this pocket before. But we're on the main road in a general elk season, and I look across the valley and I'm like, nope, we got elk. And. And so then we drove a little further down the road, parked the truck, and then made like a mile and a half hike in to go try to get on those elk. My buddy Joe was up to bat, and unfortunately, we didn't get one of those elk before they zipped into a private. But it was again, just a great example of, like, sometimes the. The glassing knob you choose makes all the difference. And it still was a physical move to get back in there. That's why they're. They're those elk or in There is because it's pretty difficult to access off the main road. But what you do find is you can. You can locate elk and have critters to hunt by just thinking bigger, sitting back and looking at more country. Again, man, I especially mule deer junkies. Like, that's one of the best ways to look at a lot of deer and look at a lot of country and kind of get an idea of where animals are at. So just to break down my gear for that kind of a setup, I'm a pretty simple man. I've used a lot of different types of optics. You know, I've had the opportunity to, you know, borrow some maven stuff and just see what kind of works for me. But basically I've just got a really simple system that works good. I've got 10x42s on my chest, and those 10x42s have an adapter for my tripod. And I'll sit down and the first thing I do whenever I get to a bit, even if it's a giant glassing knob like this one, I'll sit down and I'll just check all the likely areas. Once I've kind of checked those likely areas, we're looking at like ridgelines, skylines, open areas that are easy to see animals in. Once I've kind of gridded all that out, and when I say gridded it out, I mean just like look up and down, check each of these pockets, and usually I'll. I'll run it by freehand first, then throw my binos on the tripod, do that for a few minutes. And then once I've really, you know, check the main pockets out, you know, by then it's maybe 30 minutes past daylight or whatever. And so technically it'd be right at sunrise, that's when I'll either, you know, depending on the thickness of the country, I'll either go to the spotter and do that over again, uh, or I will slow down on the binoculars and then just like really start trying to pick up animal movement as they're moving in and out of brush, moving in and out of trees, and the thick cover that's hard to see them in. But then if you're in a scenario like we are today, where it's, you know, middle of the day, what I'm looking for from this big location glassing knob is going to be animals that are getting up and re bedding. So in particular, when it's hot outside, if you're scouting in the summer or if you're hunting in September or maybe a hot part of October, what you'll usually see like again, this is a rule of thumb, not a, not a hard and fast rule, but what you'll usually see is at first light animals will be on the west facing slopes at least. Again, rule of thumb, this is pop, this is a common thing to see. They'll be just on the west facing slope, not too far from a ridge top. And then as that sun comes up and over, right about noon between 11 and 1 2pm the sun will get high enough that those animals are getting in the sun again. And that second half of the day, all west facing slopes are just in the mid, in the sun, right? They're just getting blasted by heat. So what those animals will do right about middle of the day, they get up, they kind of feed, they mosey around and then they bed on the east facing slope for the second half of the day. It's just, it is again a rule of thumb that you should be looking for, especially if you don't have anything else going on in the middle of the day. But it can really help you decide, you know, where to be looking and how to set up your glass and knob for these midday operations. I'll tell you a quick story. And in 2023, I went out, I had this buck found and I was, I was pretty dang excited to try to get this guy killed. I had patterned him three days before season and I thought, okay, sweet first opening day I'm going to be able to glass him up, watch where he beds, watch ribeds and then go get him killed. Well, I get out there and I'm actually, it's a very similar scenario. There's hay meadows with private land in the bottom and he's bedding on public ground on the other side. And I'm just sitting there getting ready. It's, it's dark, but it's just barely cracking light. And I'm looking through my binos because it's not quite spot in the scope, what you know, and especially at first light, the binos just take in so much more light than any of your other optics. It is worth just kind of starting there and you're trying to catch movement, right? So first light, I'm looking through my binos trying to find this buck, trying to find this buck. And it's just barely getting to where I'm like, okay, this is getting good, good light, good light. And all of a sudden I hear and I see this helicopter come over the ridge line and land next to a Tanker truck that is in the field below me. And I'm just like, oh, no. So, sure enough, you know, it's like prime time, and this helicopter is. Is getting herbicide. So they're getting a spray from the tanker truck going and spraying, and every 10 minutes, they're flying right over the top of where I had been looking at this buck. And I just was like, oh, my goodness, this cannot be happening. So I. I stayed till like, 9:30, 10:00'. Clock. And I was just like, I cannot believe this happened. But that was the year I had a pretty good kind of like desert transition country elk tag. And by like, 10am I was just like, all right, let's go find an elk. And I went to some country where I was like, I know I can glass up bulls in half aspen, half cedars. Rocky country. I'm gonna go look for something that's bedded. And I knew that I could find embedded in there because I had done it in scouting in, you know, early part of August. So I was like, I know that these. There's some bulls that are in here. It's September 1st. I should go try to find a bull bed in the middle of the day. And I will admit, bulls are way easier to find bedded in the middle of the day than a little mule deer buckle. Um, when I say little, I mean just body size comparison. They're just a lot easier to find. So I was like, okay, no big deal. We'll just go, you know, grind it out, see if we can get around on this glass and knob and look back at this really good habitat where they like to bed. So just some characteristics here that might help you out in your scouting or e scouting especially. But there's this. It's very similar layout of what I'm looking at here with where you've got a kind of mountain side with a road on top. It's like a rim, and then you've got a valley. And then the other side, there's no road to get to it, but the other side has another, you know, ridge line that you can look back underneath the road and glass. So I get out there. I mean, it took me an hour to get there from my. My first spot. And I get over to the other side, hike across in the middle of the heat, I'm sweating bullets. And I sit down underneath a cedar tree, and I'm starting to, you know, check spots. And then I start looking under rocks. And sure enough, under these, like, rocks and brush, I spot some deer antlers. I look at My watch, I'm like, this is 11:45, I got a deer. And he turns his head and I'm like, oh, that's a, that's a pretty nice deer. And I'm looking at him and I'm judging him in my spotting scope at this point and I'm like, you know, I drew it down and I was like, I think this buck is over 170 inches. And I hadn't killed a buck over 170. And actually my best deer with a bow at the time was like a 150s type deer, three by four. And so I was like, man, I'd be foolish not to give this a shot and like, see how it goes. And you know how your brain works. You're like, I'm gonna blow it out anyways. But fast forward. I'm sitting there watching him and right at noon. So I find him at like 11:45, let's say at noon. He gets up and does exactly what I'm talking about. He's sitting in the sun when I find him and he gets up and he beds and stuffs himself into an east facing slope with a big, there's a bunch of brush in there and then there's some big kind of cedars in there and rocks so that he's going to be in the shade for the rest of the day. So as soon as he beds down into there, he's got a couple other bucks that he's with. And I'm like, all right, cool, time to go make a game plan and, and make a play. So I like kind of run onx and I see, okay, there's this ridge line is 50 yards from where he's bedded. I'm going to have the wind good and I'm just going to wait for him to stand up because there's not going to be a shot from above like you see in in the south films. So I get in there, I slip my shoes off at like 80 yards and I pop over the little ridge and I can see his antlers sticking out of the of the brush. And he's at like, you know, mid-50s. And I was like, heck yeah, this is gonna be, this is gonna be great. And I'm sitting there and I'm waiting and I'm waiting and I'm waiting And it's like 4:35 o' clock and some of the others start getting up and then just as I'm like, okay, he's got to get up here pretty soon. I kind of like look down I'm kind of just like waiting, you know, my. I've got an arrow knocked. And sure enough, I look back up and he's up feeding, and he's kind of feeding away. And I'm like, oh, okay, time to. Time to make a decision. So I, I basically, you know, like I said, I had my arrow knocked already. I ranged him, I rolled my dial, drew back, and I made a shot on that buck. Like, I stood up and a couple of the bucks could see me, but his head was down facing away and released that shot. And, gosh, it looked like a money shot. But then he went out into the sage flat and he bedded down. And I was like, oh, maybe he'll tip over right there. And then I waited and waited and then, nope, he got up, he moved, and then he went up over the ridgeline where I glassed him from. And so I called in a dog. And the next morning we went out there, we found him, he was still alive, and I got another arrow in him. But that's a, the point of that story was more to just kind of tell you, you know, even in the middle of the day, it's well worth, it's well worth keeping with it, trying to get creative and finding a way to, to look into new areas and get creative with your angles as you can. Look into the habitat where they're going to be bedding, which really can help you. I mean, especially, like I said, middle of the day stuff. But even at first light, you know, if it's been hot and dry, if you're on an October mule deer hunt and they're just stuffing into the thick stuff, be sure to, you know, be thinking about those kind of characteristics as you're, as you're getting ready to mark up your, your waypoints on your onx and really build together a really good game plan. Hey, sorry to interrupt, but I want to make sure that you knew that we're going back to Argentina in 2026 and you are invited. If you'd like to come down to Argentina, there's only a couple spots left. So if you've heard the podcasts that we've done and you want to go back and chase Argentina Red Stag with me, be sure to reach out. Jaden Huntwest.net We've only got a couple spots for 2026, and we're also going to try to fill up the whole lodge in 2027, so let me know. And if you haven't listened to those podcasts, go back and do it. It's going to be an awesome time, and I'd love it if you joined us. All right, back to the show. You're listening to the Hunt west podcast. Okay, so we kind of have talked about, like, how do you locate animals? Right? You sit back, you find glass and knobs, like I'm on right now. You can even be in the other unit looking into your unit. You run in big optics. You're just, like, really seeing as much country as you can. So you can then find out where they're at and then get closer to get them down. So what happens when you do get to the point of, like, okay, I've located them, now what do I do? There's a lot of. There's a lot of different, like, approaches that are going to be dictated by the ground and by the access. But here's a good story. So back in 22, my brother drew a tag with me. It was just a general tag for me, but my brother drew a tag and we were both going to go hunt. And so I did a bunch of scouting trying to find us a couple of herds of bucks. And in one of these herds, I actually saw them crossing the highway one day. And as I was driving to a different glassing knob, and I noticed there was a really nice buck in that group. There's also a couple other nice deer and there's probably eight, ten bucks all together. So I was like, sweet, this is, this is good. But I saw them go up and over the ridge and they went into this basin that you can't see, and they were crossing the highway at a private land spot. So as I looked at it, I was like, okay, how do we get in here? Okay. Looked at onyx, the way that we were able to get into this area was like a mile and a half hike, 600ft vertical. It wasn't crazy, but it was around this private. You go up these big, long sage jaws and then you pop over the ridge and you're looking at a giant basin. When I say giant basin, it's. It's probably more like a mile and a half at the furthest point, but you can see 270 degrees. And so I knew they were back in there, and I went in back in there a couple more times. But instead of glassing from the highway, there's only a couple hundred yards you can see from the highway. I would go back in there and I would see these 270 degrees, but all everything is basically within striking distance. So I'm sitting there at this glassing knob and would find bucks. And throughout archery season. I hunted that spot a few times, and I actually got in really tight on the herd one day, But I could not find the big boy that I was trying to get. And I knew I was like, man, I need to find, like, I don't know where this big buck is at, but I've got this herd of deer that's in here pretty consistently. So then opening day comes up, and the way that that place lays out, there are some access points back further that you don't have to hike that far into. But I wanted to lay it out so that my brother and I could basically get in there and get these bucks down once we found them. We just knew like, once hunting pressure kicks on, especially on, well, really mule deer and elk, once the hunting pressure kicks on, like, they're either going to tighten up their program and stay in really small pockets, or they're going to go like, nocturnal, for lack of a better term. Especially, you know, if you're talking the second half of October for bull elk or really that first week of October into the 20th or 25th of October for mule deer, and it's warm and dry. You're definitely going to be struggling after that opening day if you're not getting any weather. So basically, again, that's a long way winded way of saying, my brother and I were going in here, we were going to, like, get these bucks killed today. That was the guiding principle of what we were doing. So we get in there, we get to the glassing knob, and we are at first light. I'm in my binos. My brother, he's running a smaller optic from Maven. I think it was their C series spotter, but it's like a smaller but better light gathering optic. And we're looking again, no more than a mile, because once we find them, we're going to try to get them. You know, my big optics, my. My big 80mm spotting scope was in my backpack because we are looking to find them and then get them, get them killed. Sure enough, you know, I'm looking, I'm looking, I'm looking. And my brother's like, oh, got. Got bucks, got bucks. And we look at them and like, all right, buddy, like, throw your crap in your pack. Like, let's. Let's boogie. And as you're thinking about getting something down now, especially during rifle season, this is also the same in archery season if you're within striking distance. But when you look at these animals, you go like, okay, the winds come in one direction they're feeding into the wind, usually, and you got to come up from behind them. It is kind of hard to do, especially with elk. It's hard to do because they move so fast. But. But with deer, they're feeding, they're kind of milling, and they're going towards their. Their bedding. And so we run off that glass and knob again, where they were probably three quarters of a mile up in the basin, and we just take off, right? We drop into these drainages where they can't see us, and we're running a crick bottom, trying to get up close. And then once we pop over the ridge, we slow down. I literally get my tripod out. My tripod is out for two reasons. One, I. I shoot off it a lot. But two, I needed to get stable to see these somewhere between 150 and 300 yards from us. So we pop up over the ridge, and we slow it way down. Once we get to that, like, zone where they can start seeing or hearing us, we're slowing it down. We're slowing it down. I put my binos on my tripod, and I'm moving up, glassing, move up, glassing. And as I'm, like, looking to get these animals, like, find them, I don't remember if it was my brother or I, but we're going slow, and we go, oh, got him. And from there, then I took the binos off, and we got my brother set up on the tripod. And we're looking. We're looking through these bucks. They're, like, at 200 yards. And he's like, I said, he's on the tripod, getting ready to. To make a shot. And a buck turns his head, and I'm like, that's a pretty good wide buck. And he's a. He's a solid four. And so he shoots and hits him. The buck's kind of moving a little bit. He shoots again and drops that buck. And we're like, oh, sweet. Okay. And then we swap out, because I'm like, there's. This is that herd of 10 bucks that's in there. And we're watching these deer move, move across the hillside. They're in that 220, 230 range, and they're moving across, moving across. You know, my brother shoots with a break on, or at least he did at that time. And they didn't really know where the sound came from, but they knew something was up, obviously, when their buddy dropped in his tracks. And so they're moving off, moving off. And I'm Waiting for them to go through this opening. And as they, like, start trickling through the opening, I'm like, first buck goes through. Nope. Second buck comes through. I'm like, that's decent. And he turns, and I'm like, nope. Big fork. Fork and horn. The next buck comes through. I'm like, oh, that's a good one. Boom. Drop that buck. So then my brother and I look at each other, just absolutely elated. We're just like, holy crap. Did we just get two bucks? We just got two bucks. And we walk up to his. He had spined that buck and needed to shoot it again. And we walk up to his buck, and he's just pumped. You know, he had shot a fork and horn when he was, like, 13, and. And this buck was a nice, solid four point. And we were. We were just tickled. And then we walk over to my buck, and we come up on it, and I could start. I could see the stickers off the side and like, dude, we got him. We got. We got the buck. And it was the one that I had seen in July crossing the highway. And it had been, you know, basically, it's been July to August is one, two, three months since I'd seen him. I seen him on July 16th, and we killed them on October 15th. And those bucks basically just. Oh, man, it's one of the best fricking hunting stories and best memories I've ever built in the woods. It was just awesome. But again, that was. That whole game plan was built around, we're going to get in here. We're not just going to locate, but we're going to. We know these bucks have been located, and we're just going to get in there and get into basically what I call like a kill position. And we were going to play it like, you know, it's opening day of raffle season. We got to get them down today. And. Because after this, everything gets wild. And of course, as we're sitting there butchering our bucks, we drug them together for photos and stuff, and we're sitting there butchering our bucks up, and a father, a son, and a grandpa walk by on the ridge above us, and we're just like, oh, man, if we hadn't been in position to get those things down at first light, bet you we'd have never seen those deer again. So that's a good example, especially, you know, from the mule deer perspective of getting something in a position to, you know, first we went from the highway kind of perspective, where you're just cruising country. You're finding animals, you're locating the general areas that are going to be in and then you figure out how to get them killed. The same thing can also work with elk, though I find highways to be way less effective for locating them, though they'll be good for getting them glassed up, you know, deeper in the backcountry. And in particular, the nice thing about elk is you can be even further back and looking at more country in order to get them spotted. Especially if you're not being particular about how big or not big they are. Uh, if you're looking for, if you're scouting in August or July for a September hunt, you're looking for cows at that point and there's usually a bunch of them together and they just seem to pop out, especially when they, they're feeding from a long distance. Even with 10 power binoculars, it's pretty easy to see them. And I even last year I was up, my birthday's July 19th and I always like to kind of kick off scouting on my birthday and I was up in the high country and was able to locate elk at like 7 miles in my binoculars. Granted they had skylined themselves in this alpine kind of country and I could just kind of see their dots moving on the top of the ridge line. I swapped over to the spotter and I was like, sure enough, man. Now in that case, obviously it would have been like a big, big move to get into them, but still the idea is if you don't have elk located, you're not, you know, you're at a disadvantage unless you're just in a, a really low pressure area and you've got elk that are bugling non stop. One of my favorite things to do with elk though is especially for like late season rifle hunts, is to get these big vantage points and make a fire and get to where you can see some stringers of timber. And Cody, really, he's got this great story when they went to Idaho, him and his buddies, you've got stringers of timber that you can look into. And so in this scenario in particular, getting high to look into timber is even more helpful for elk hunting. But you're looking into this stuff that you can see from across and high up, but you can't see it if you're on that same side. And you'll find, especially if it's steep and it's got little pockets of places for them to feed that those elk will get up in the middle of the day, just like these mule deer that I was just talking about. And they'll move around just a little bit. One of my favorite examples of this was a late season hunt. We're talking like the day after Thanksgiving that my friend Gray, his wife had the tag. Her name's Catherine. And we get up into this stuff and there's a sweet burn. There's this sweet burn that is way high in the. On this whole mountainside, really. But what you have in that mountainside is you've got stringers of trees of dark timber that come down in different pockets. And as you look at this stuff, you're like, okay, sweet. The bulls will be bedded in that and they'll come out into the burn when they're ready to feed. And so what we did is on Thanksgiving Day, we had a gnarly storm come through and we tried to glass it. We actually found some bulls that first morning feeding out and then going back into the timber and then the storm hit. So then we went back and we were stay like basically a rancher's cabin that they use as a hunter rental. And we had Thanksgiving dinner with them. It was pretty awesome. The next morning we get out there and we check some spots and the storm is just still going. It's starting to let up, starting to let up. And I'm like, dude, this pocket looks really freaking good. There's. There's live timber here, there's burn there, and there's got to be elk in here. So we climb up on the ridge. This is a classic. Like they might not even been 400ft, but a couple hundred feet above where the two tracks run. We were in a side by side, and we climb up there, get on the ridge, and we're just sitting there looking, looking, looking, and we're getting our wind. The wind is just blasting us in the face. And we're just like, oh my God, this sucks. It's cold. It's right after a storm, and it's middle of the day, maybe, I don't know, noon, ish. And we're looking, we're looking, and we kind of, you know, looked for a few minutes and we're like, I don't see anything. And then all of a sudden the wind stopped, the snow stopped. And I was like, oh, crap. Like, we're just about ready to call it and go back to the side by side. And I go, whoa, hold on. And as soon as that wind stopped, we went back into the glass and some bulls started feeding out of the timber and they just get hit into our line of sight. Right as we were getting ready to leave. And I was like, we got bulls. And again, man, I mean, if you think about the conditions, they sucked, they sucked a hunt in until they weren't. Until it didn't suck and those elk came out. And so we see this bull, he's got a sweet mainframe and they're still a mile or so up the ridge and they're in the burn and like, sweet, let's go make it happen. So then we basically go back to the side by side and Catherine's gung ho, we start booting up this dang thing and we've got snow because we are on the, the sheltered side, the wind sheltered side. Getting up into this stuff. They're feeding on the open, the more open wind blasted stuff where there's, there's feed they can get to. And we're just, just post holing all the way up as we get up into there. You know, again, we're, we're not really concerned with being quiet, but we get up into this like top valley and then once we get ready to locate to kill these elk, we actually get back up away from them a little bit more. You could take that saddle and just pop up like 100 yards from where we had seen those bulls, but that wouldn't be, you know, one, we don't know exactly what the wind's doing right there if it's swirling in that saddle. And two, man, once you're at that like 100 yard range, you better be like ready to shoot because you, your time is usually running out between when they can see you or smell you or hear you. So we basically, we got close to that saddle and we swung back out just a little bit. So we're more at that 200 something yard range and we can look down the saddle and then up the other side and we can start picking them apart in this burn. And once we got to that position, then we slowed down and we kind of got a shooting rest built together and we started really picking it apart. And then it was like, okay, there's one bull. Yep, that's not the shooter. There's another bull. Nope, that's not the shooter. And then of course, you know, we locate the guy and we're like, all right, cool. Now we walk the Catherine in. She's, she's freaking dialed. She did not take much walking in at all. She was right there paying attention and find an elk too. And so we get Catherine set up and they're just feeding and once he's like kind of quarters away, like, all right, I'M on him. Gray's like, yep, I'm on him. And she just boom. First one. Whack. Gray shoots a suppressed.300 win mag and just boom. Flack. And all the bulls are just kind of like, they pick their heads up, but they have no idea where that sound came from. And then I'm like, I hit him again. Boom. Whack. The bull kind of like gets like a little confused. He turns the other direction and I'm like, he's still up. Hit him again. Boom. Whack. Boom, whack. And she's just drilling this bull and he's. None of them really know what's going on. It was pretty crazy to see. And sure enough, then eventually he just gets wobbly legged and tips over. And I was just like, holy crap. That was freaking awesome. I've got some good photos from that one. You know, we, it was freaking cold that night. If you think about any storms, systems that come through the Rockies, it's like you'll get dumped on with snow and then you'll get crystal clear skies and it, the temperature drops. We talked to the ranchers that night and they said it was negative eight down where they were, and we were 3,000, 4,000ft above their, their place up on the mountain. So it was an awfully cold one. We, we set up a fire that night and honestly, we melted a couple gators, we melted my water bottle. I think a good set of gloves didn't make it because we were just trying to stay warm. But boy, that was just classic for like a late season elk hunt where you're just waiting for a good storm to break. You're finding this, this combination of thick timber where they're bedding in and then like the, the open stuff where they'll come feed out into. And Catherine just did awesome on the gun. She just made such good work of that, you know, that bull still standing and she just kept hitting them. And again, it was with the 300 wind mag too, so it wasn't like we were. She was making great shots. So that just is such a classic elk hunt scenario, man. So as you're thinking about glassing a lot for these late season bulls when they're not bugling back, that's such a good way to do it. All right, so we've basically covered, you know, the main ways that I like to sit back and locate animals and then, you know, basically look for different glassing knobs. The one thing we didn't talk about is basically the backcountry experience. Now Once you're in the backcountry, obviously the idea is you're not going to have as much pressure. And so all of your, your kind of research is going to be based around what the best habitat looks like. You know, if you're looking at elk in September, you're going to be looking for good places for them to bed, good feed and water. And as you get into that backcountry, oftentimes what you'll find is their bedding is pretty hard to look into. And so your glassing is going to be heavily, you know, heavily directed towards those, those meadows and those parks and a little bit, you know, more of like the feeding features where they're going to be in and out of the timber. I really like the idea, though. Once you get into that backcountry again, even if you've hiked 4, 5, 6 miles back into this place and you've got your tent camp setup, I like having a glass and knob that is within couple hundred yards, but maybe a little climb up away from your tent because usually up on the high glass and knob, it's not a flat spot to pitch a tent, but get up there to high glass and knob and locate first. You know, when I first started piecing these things together, one of my favorite guys to interview back in the day is Sam Davis. And I know a lot of you have probably heard him on other podcasts, uh, but he talks about, like, he loves getting to a place where, especially when he's backpacking, he gets up to a big high knob and in archery season, he'll link together a bunch of a good location spots. And this is where like, the physical fitness can really come in handy. Right? If you've got a good ridge line mapped out that you want to go run, you still have to like, run that ridge. And obviously you might find something on the same ridge as you like. Don't think that they couldn't be right below you and you shouldn't look there. But oftentimes what you're going to be doing is you're going to be looking across the drainage and then finding where they're at and then realizing you got to make a big move. And whether it's a mule deer hunt or an elk hunt, oftentimes you're going to be sitting way back, even in the backcountry, and then making a game plan once they bed down for the day. One of the best ideas or best moves that, you know, he taught me was basically just like, you know, especially if you're Elk hunting, but mule deer hunting in wide open country. It's also possible to do this is he's like, grab a knob, sit down glass for 15 minutes and then grab a knob and then get up, move just a couple hundred yards down and then sit again and like open up more country. Especially, like I said, if it's more open and you can really see we're talking like high alpine stuff or low, low country where there's just like little coolies and you can see a lot of good country, don't be afraid to move a little bit more, especially in that early September season at that perfect, you know, first light, last light type situation so that you can cover more ground and see more critters. And just kind of like I said, it's all about angles. Once you're. Especially when you're up in that back country and you know that there's critters in there, that's like good looking country. And there's not a lot of pressure be thinking about those angles as even when you're back in there, because that's going to really help you determine, you know, if there's critters in there that you want to chase or not. As far as backcountry elk hunting is concerned, I think a lot of people forget that, that a good glassing strategy can be helpful for you. It just seems like every single year you hear guys say, God, there's no bugling, there's no bugling right now. They're just shut up. There's wolves or there's other people or whatever the case is. Uh, but even last year, you know, I was on a elk hunt with my friend Hayden and both of us have a pretty glassing heavy strategy. I love getting into mixing it up and calling though. And it was like, you know, you could, you could sit back and you could glass and you could constantly be an elk even without having to hear them first. Especially these big open country that, you know, we were in a big burn then. But like, if you're in the alpine, where was a couple alpine pockets? I stocked in on a bull. Well, really, it was a whole herd of elk. There's a couple bulls, a couple cows, and I stocked in on them because we found them from a good glass and knob. And it was in the evening too. So we had just popped out on this glass and knob and as we're sitting there looking, we, you know, glass some cows and we're like, oh, it's September 5th or 6th, like, there's got to be some bulls. Around somewhere. And sure enough, out of the bottom comes these elk. And then it's like, all right, we went from locate mode to kill mode right away. So then I, like, bombed off our. Our slope, dropped in, you know, I don't know if it was a thousand feet, but maybe a 700, 800ft dropped into the bottom. And I. And it was the evening, so I had the wind coming down in my face. So then once you got to the bottom, it was like, locate, locate, locate. And then I screwed it up. I went a little too fast, trying to think I could pop out on the edge and try to get one of these bulls found. And he saw me first, so that one obviously didn't work out. But just getting them located and. And then realizing, like, switching to that kill mode. Gosh, it's such like a. Making that final few moves is such an art more than a science. And that's probably where, you know, just repetitions is going to really make the biggest difference for guys. Okay, so I think we've done a good job here. I hope that it's kind of helped you think about ways that you can look at the landscape, look at it on onyx and escout as well as, you know, think about what you. When you're actually in the field, what you're doing at that particular time. Are you locating or are you getting in position to kill something that you've already located? Those are important distinctions to make because they're going to help you create game plans that are. Are, you know, really just for that moment that you need, right? If you're on day one, day two, day three of a. Of a week or more. Hunt, man, locate animals. You know, we talk about that whether it's a good mule deer hunt and you're just trying to find, you know, where the mule deer hanging out or a September elk hunt, and you're not hearing any bugles yet. It's like, dude, just get them located, get them found, and then you can, you know, make some educated moves as to get them actually killed. I hope you found this to be pretty helpful for you. But really, it was just on my mind as something that some people had asked me about is finding good glass and knobs when you're looking at e scouting. So hopefully it's helpful to some folks, and we'll. We'll get you to some good glassing knobs without ever showing up in the unit before you get there. Because this is, you know, how most of us hunt is just. We find a spot on the map. And we want to go throw a dart at it and see what we can make up with that. I'm gonna hit the glass here a little bit. It's closer just, just past noon. Now, I haven't seen any because I've been yapping at you, but I'm gonna keep digging around a little bit longer before I gotta get back and and go to this wedd. Everyone has enjoyed this episode. Again, if you have any thoughts, feedback, feel free to reach out to me. Jaden Huntwest.net I'm going to be back in the office probably about the time you're listening to this, so if you have hunting plans that you'd like to work with me on, feel free to do that. And you may have seen this if you're subscribed to the Hunt West Digest, that the Sunday newsletter I send out to pretty select group of folks every week. But I did clone myself and it's really weird, but I cloned myself based on all of my podcasts I've done, all the articles I've written and all the kind of hunt communications I've done over the last six years. And that little clone that's an AI clone is dang good actually. It knows what to help people with when they come to it with questions about creating hunt plans. So if you want to check it out, it'll be in the show notes and you can go in there and play with it for a little bit. It does take quite a bit of money to run it each month, so I'm, you know, just testing it out. For $10 a month. You can get unlimited messaging with it. And it's a way to kind of just make it so everyone can get a little bit of help without, you know, without just having to get on the horn with me and line up schedules. And it's a little cheaper than it's a lot cheaper than if you were to schedule a hunt plan session with me. So I hope you like it and if you don't, I'll give you your money back. So just don't, don't feel afraid to try it out. Let me know what you think and be brutally honest. Because if it's either A too weird or B, just like not helpful enough, I totally understand. I'll give you your money back. I'm not really interested in just fleecing people for all they're worth. So if you'd like to, like I said, go check out the new AI virtual hunt buddy. I've got it linked up in the show notes here and let me know what you think. All right. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Hunt West Podcast. Hope you enjoyed it. 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.