*** The Art of Elk Adaptability – From Coast to Mountains with Jeff Helm

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This is the elk hunt podcast. Home to everything, elk hunting. I'm your host, Cody rich. From fellow DIYers to elk hunting legends, we have elk hunting stories, tips, tactics and more to get you pumped for elk season. Join us every week for great elk hunting content. Audi. Today's episode is brought to you by the folks over at Tricer. They make gear that's fast, light and simple. Go check them out. They have a ton of new products, a ton of great products. I use their stuff, love their stuff. Yeah, I can't say enough about the whole crew over there. Go check them out. Use the code tro. Get yourself a discount. Today's episode is also brought to you by Stone Glacier. If you guys want a great pack and you want some minimalist, high quality mountain gear, go check out Stone Glacier. They make everything top to bottom. I mean, they make tents, sleeping bags, clothing, they make backpacks. They make it all. So go check them out. If you are looking for a new pack, they make a great one and I love their stuff. It's minimalist, it's lightweight. That's what I like. Use the code trope, you'll save yourself a discount. All right, guys, before we get started, this podcast I did with Jeff. Jeff is an awesome dude. He is one of the most underrated hunters there is. The dude is an absolute killer. And this is one of my favorite podcast I have done the entire year, maybe ever. There was. There's some nuggets. You need to listen to this podcast. If you want to be a hardcore ear, listen to this podcast a couple times. Like, save this one. So good. And Jeff comes on. Him and Mark, my other buddy Mark Livesay, were in Wyoming. They had a great hunt. He tells a story, but there's some nuggets and you should definitely listen to what Jeff says because the dude knows how to kill elk. And I picked up some really good tips from this. So hope you guys enjoy this episode. Leave a comment. Leave or not a comment. You can leave a comment if you want, but leave a review. If you guys like the Elkon podcast, do me a favor, leave a review always helps, but if you want to leave a comment, do that too, because this is a good episode. All right, Enjoy. All right, one more thing and then I swear you can listen to the episode. Right now we're doing a big giveaway. We're doing a gun giveaway. That's a huge deal and I keep forgetting to mention it. So, yeah, you need to get in on this because it's 100 free. All you got to do is put your. Put in your email. If you're an elk hunt member, then you're already entered. I promise. You guys know the gist of it, but if you're not, go sign up. Put your email in, because we're giving away a Weatherby Alpine ct and we're giving away a maven scope to go with it. Oh, and a tricer bipod. I mean, that's a heck of a deal. All you do is enter your email if you want bonus entries. There's a way to do that as well, but you don't have to. It's 100% free. Go check it out. Let's head over to the website. Get entered, but also enjoy the episode. Thanks, guys. I was joking today, and I was like, man, Jeff, where Travis was in the office, I was like, jeff. Jeff is like one of those dudes just like, absolutely kills it everywhere. How many bulls he kills here?

4.

What the heck, dude?

That's nothing.

In different states, completely different terrains.

Yeah.

You were super bad country with Mark.

Yep.

You went to the Oregon coast.

Yeah.

You probably, like, this is gonna piss some of my friends off, but you're probably more consistent on the Oregon coast than half of my local buddies.

I've got a few haters out there that live there. I think I've. I've gone there six years in a row now, and I've killed four bulls there.

What's up with the Rosies? How come you like Rosies?

I'm addicted. They are just mystical to me. I feel like. I feel like a small man in a very large world when I'm walking in those. You know that virgin growth, like, some of that BLM stuff out there is just giant. Giant. And you're like, I feel like I'm playing the Jurassic Park. Yeah, I just. I can't believe it. Like, I'll set my bow next to a tree, and I'm like, oh, my word. This thing is just incredible. Like, it was here when the earth flooded, you know, like. And I just. I love the blackberries. I love. The only thing that I hate is the freaking poison oak. I get it almost every time.

Oh, really? Yeah.

Almost every year. I get. I got it this year.

Really? Yeah. I don't get Put. Well, knock on wood. I don't get poison oak, but my brother gets it for the both of us. Like, he will. Yeah, he's gotta take medicine stuff. I always thought it was like, you know, if you grew up in it, you don't get it, but that's not true.

Yeah.

Yeah. I do feel like some people get it worse.

Yeah.

So does it, bug breaker, that you're a better Roosevelt hunter than he is? I mean, we.

We never talk about that.

I mean.

I mean, he kills one pretty consistently, so. Yeah. Yeah. I. I mean, he. He gave me a hard time the last few days. You know, he was threatening to. To put me on some watch lists and.

All right, I want to hear the story of Wyoming.

Okay. What do you want to know?

Let's hear it. That's the story. So you guys show up.

Yeah. I had never. So I've hunted Wyoming before, but where we got a tag, it was a. It was a general unit, and Mark and I had never set foot there. And we picked it based on just some access locations and, you know, so on and so forth. You know, there's a lot of different general units. Right. And so we picked this one and just started E Scouting, which lives a. You know, you know, Mark. Well, he's pretty good. He's pretty good at it. And we had quite a few e Scouting sessions where, you know, everybody's got the screens on, and we're just, you know, going through and picking. Where do you think? And so we had plan abcd, you know, and all the stuff, and we're color coding things and kind of walking through it, and it was rugged.

I was gonna say, when you like you. I know enough about it. I know enough about it to know that it's very much a Mark spot.

Oh, yeah.

Mark likes to go deep.

He does.

And he likes to find those spots like that.

Yeah.

Not necessarily your style. What do you think? What would you say?

Not generally. Only because I don't have llamas. Right. Usually I would say the majority of my bulls are within eight miles of the truck. That's kind of my limit.

Still a long ways. Yeah. Really long ways. Yeah.

Don't get me wrong. I'll kill him a mile away if I can.

Right.

I'm not Biggie. But this particular spot, we were 7 to 13.

Yeah.

And camp, I think, was 9 miles or 10 miles from the truck. And. But we had llamas. We had eight llamas. So we had a pretty good plan. Now we had. This was. This was plan B. So plan A, we went into and we saw more sheep and bighorn rams and stuff than we did elk. And so we got there a couple days early, did some driving around, and really tried to look at access points.

And do you think that was beneficial, Mark and I. I don't think it was on a podcast. But Mark and I were talking about. He's like, yeah, I want to get there a day early.

Yeah.

Like, check things out. He's like, I always just bomb into places. And I think there is a risk when you just bomb into places 100%. I mean, I think everyone watches your guys's hunt and you're like, I'm going nine miles deep.

Yeah.

But like, for every. Every time you get spoiler alert, they kill a lot of bulls. But every time you get that hunt, there's like four other hunts where you go nine miles in and there was like, it's ghost town.

It's an island. Right. There's nothing there. And you're like, oh, crap. I got people everywhere. And I, I love to get there a couple days early. And I probably blow through two or three tanks of gas just driving. Because, you know, you can scout and you can look at it and obviously Google Earth imaging is pretty good, but it never fails. Like, it's not as good a road as you thought it was or it's way better of a road than you thought it was. And so there's more people and it's like, it's crapshoot. So. And we didn't want to take the llama trailers down certain roads, so that's why we also did a bunch of driving, just trying to make sure where we were going to take the trailers. Because Mark had a trailer, Josh had a trailer. And so we just did a lot of kind of pre work and we determined that plan A was going to be out. And I think there was out there, but I, I don't. I think we actually would have had to take plan A and like, come in from the bottom instead of the top. And, you know, I think there would have been more people.

So you figured that out before you even set foot on the trail. 100%, dude. That's such a secret sauce.

And I.

Most underrated thing you can do is like, I love getting to a place, driving every road, at least driving the unit, like getting eyes on and like, and if you want to talk about, like, scout, like if you can not hike in, but if you just scout a unit and know the roads.

Yeah.

Know where access is. I think that's. That's huge.

It's huge. And I don't know about you, but new places, I, you know, on whatever mapping software I'm using, whether it's Gaia or onyx or whatever, I. I have all my roads yellow. You know, I color code them all where I drive versus where I hike. And so it literally helps me later when I'm putting everything together and I'm looking at other access points, and so I'm. I just mark them. You know, it makes such a big difference for me. And knowing, you know, and obviously you've got the, you know, the roadless areas you can turn on and different things within the apps. But I just want to see where those pockets are, because I'm always looking for pockets. Yeah, you're not going to get away from pressure this day and age. Even 10 miles deep, you're going to have pressure. And it's just a question of what do those elk do when that pressure happens. And so I'm looking for pockets close to the truck. I'm looking for pockets in the backcountry.

Yeah, and that's true.

It's just. I mean, you know, you've done this. You kill a lot of bulls. Like, you're just constantly evolving and adapting because, you know, it's funny to me, you know, a lot of these guys get up on stage and talk about how to kill elk. And, yeah, I don't. I don't disagree with them. Like, there's definitely ways. But to me, number one thing is being adaptive. You just have to look at the weather, the pressure, the time of year, you know, the moisture levels that happened, the beetle kills. Like, sometimes you miss stuff and you're like, oh, my gosh, you know, there was a fire in here and I didn't see it, you know, and so being adaptive is.

So I got a question for you. I think, you know, it's easy to listen to podcasts, guys on stage, go to seminars, read every book. And I do think that some people get too many. Too many tools in the toolbox. Right. Especially early. You know, like, you and I have a lot of gut intuition. We can analyze a lot of things. What's your recommendation? And we always call it, you know, I. The whole 201 hunter is like the guy who wants to just kill six points every year. And I think that's most people just trying to kill six points.

Yeah.

For that person. Can you have too many tools in the tool chest or is that tactics thing?

You know, I. Well, a lot of it is. You can't get overwhelmed, you know, if you're not careful. When you're tired and you're hungry and you're exhausted, you know, you don't have water and it didn't go as planned. You got a flat tire on the way there. Your trailer threw out a bearing. You Know all the things that happened to us. Right. You get overwhelmed. And so I think that it's nothing wrong with having tools, but that doesn't mean you're necessarily going to use them all, because, you know, I did. I killed bulls in multiple different states, and they were all different. Nothing was quite the same. There were some similarities and stuff, but they were all different. And so when you get to a place like this Wyoming trip, it was, you know, some of the stuff I've done in the past wouldn't work, you know, just because, like, for instance, Oregon. You hunt Oregon very different than you hunt, you know, Wyoming. I mean, I was at full draw on a bull this year at 10 yards for 90 seconds, and I could not find a hole to put the arrow through.

Like, I work in statement ever. Oh, my gosh.

It was the most exhilarating and yet frustrating situation because you're like, I know I can find a hole here, right?

Yeah.

And versus Wyoming, it's very different. Like, you could actually do some glassing in Wyoming in a couple areas. And so a lot of the places that I hunt in Colorado, they're super thick. Glassing's hard to do. And so I personally love to hunt where I can do some glassing just because it helps me kind of create a game plan.

But says the guy who liked On Oregon.

I know, I know. It's so true. You know, variety is the spice of life.

Yeah. You know, so you guys show up in Wyoming.

Yes.

You may go to plan B right out of the gate. You go way super deep, which is, you know, not necessarily mo, but it works out. You get there. You guys basically have a pocket full of elk that are untouched and have never been called to. Is that true?

No. No. So we get there. We get to the trailhead, and there is 18 trucks.

Nice.

And I literally was like, mark, are you sure? Like, he's like, no, no, I think it'll be fine. And I'm like, this is. I was expecting like five or six, but 18 trucks. I'm like, dude, you know, the one thing I will say, they all were horse trailer trucks. Some of them had multiple horses. Some of them just had two. And the truth is, when we got back in there and we actually figured out what was going on, it was. It was like four groups of hunters.

Wow. Really?

Yeah. And they. Each group had six to 10 horses. And so there was a lot of trailers and a lot of trucks, but there wasn't actually. Yeah, there's four groups. At one of them was an outfitter camp the other three were locals, and we were the only out of state guys, so. Well, there was a couple trucks there that were out of state, but you could tell everybody was there. Pretty much they were local grown. So we spent two days just glassing, you know, Dan Evans.

Yeah.

Sit back and watch.

Yeah.

And didn't even pull the bows out. Didn't go anywhere.

You went in and then spent two days glassing. Yeah. Okay.

Got high. And the first night we just. We camped up top and we just glassed.

Yeah.

And we started to watch. I mean, I was watching the horse guys as much as I was the elk. And so we're watching the horse guys do their thing, marking them on the maps, figuring out where their camps were, figuring out how it affected the elk. And we did. We saw elk pretty much. First night we saw elk, and the next day we saw elk. And then we started to come up with a game plan because it. You could tell that the horse guys usually don't get far off the trail. And that was true again. And so they were pushing the elk into pockets that were generally two or three drainages away from where the guys were going with the horses. And obviously there was. There's always exceptions to every rule.

Right.

But for the most part, they were staying in the open areas, and they were moving areas that they could get their horses through because there's a fair amount of burn, fair amount of deadfall, you know, some stuff that was pretty hard for the horses to get through.

Right.

So we just started marking all those locations. And then once that started to happen, then we're like, okay.

So then you kind of get the macro view. I mean, this is the exact same we would do if we had Nevada tags when we were road hunting. We'd be looking far, looking off, and find the pockets of elk, start to work in, and then start to figure out what they're doing. Right. So we start high, whereas, like, what side of the mountain is there elk on? Good amounts of elk. And now we're like, okay, let's move in a little bit more so we can figure out where they're bed and where they're feeding.

And I'm assuming it's kind of exactly what we did.

Yeah.

Tried to figure out what part of the rut we're in. Are the bulls together? Are they separate? Do any of the bulls have cows? You know, and obviously we went early enough. Some of the bulls were together, some of the bulls were the cows.

So did you get, like, just out of curiosity, you have groups that were in different Phases or was it kind of small enough that you had.

No, we had groups in different phases. On one end where we were at, there was a bull that had like 15 cows, but for the most part the bulls were together.

So did you kind of steer away from the bulk of the bull bachelor group and move towards the rutting elk or what was your thought?

We actually went towards where we saw the most bulls and just a few cows, and it really didn't look like there was much activity going on there. And that's where I killed my bull. Day three.

Right. So does your tactic change based on, let's just say like, the west herd is the, you know, rutting elk, cows, one bull. The east herd is a bunch of bulls, some mixed cows. Do your tactics change or what's your thought?

A little bit. You know, when I. When I lay eyes on the elk and I actually get in close, you know, well, number one, is it a herd bull? Is it a satellite bull? You know, we were looking for mature bulls and so we really wanted to go after the bulls that were on their own. And then once again, El throw us a curveball. Yeah, you know, it was kind of crazy because we went into a pocket that we had seen four or five bulls in that drainage, basically. And we started at the top. By the time we worked up the next morning, day three, up top, we started at the top because the thermals were coming up. And by that time it was nine o', clock, nine, 30, maybe 10. And our plan was to kind of work down through this drainage and do light cow calling. Calf calling, actually. Yeah, start there, see if we get any responses, maybe do a locating bugle. Our plan wasn't to lead with that though, and just do light cow calling and see if we could get something going and start out with a calf, a bunch of calf calls. And the very first setup on day three, here they come. And it took a while. We were sitting there for 20 minutes probably, and all of a sudden we heard a bugle. And I turned to the camera guy and I'm like, I think we're out of position because Mark was up above us and with Josh and. And I was kind of on edge where I thought they were going to come. And so then we heard a second bugle. I got a direction, grabbed the camera guy, trucked up 80, 90 yards to kind of swing around, and I mean, all hell broke loose. I. I've never seen anything quite like it. We had three bulls and 15 to 20 cows come in.

Oh, wow.

Like, pushed them, pushed the Whole herd. And all of them, when they came in, mouths open, like they'd come from a long ways away.

These are coming to you or just in the right.

I think so. I. I really do. I don't know why. It was crazy.

And lead cow just decided she want to go see that calf.

And. And the. I mean, it was a rut fest and we hadn't seen a rut fest.

I wonder if it.

Sorry.

I wonder if it. Like my guess. Speculation. Maybe. Maybe her lead cow was. Started running the ruckus of everything. That many bulls.

Very possible because we've seen that where.

It'S like, you know, like a little bit of chaos in a herd. And all of a sudden, like sparks some satellites. And if you're right on the edge, it's like all of a sudden they start.

Yeah.

Yeah. Getting crazy in front of. Yeah.

The big bull gets, you know, rips out a bugle. Another bull bugles back. And all of a sudden you've got a ruckus. Yeah. And that's exactly what happened. I ended up having a five point come in to seven yards and camera guy thought I was gonna shoot it. And it was just a little one, you know. And I'm like. I could see the big one in the back and he was ripping. I bet he bugled 15, 20 times. We had cows all over the side of the mountain. Somehow the wind stayed good. That's where I think the Lord took care of me on this one. Because it never stays good.

Yeah.

And I mean, you never plan on killing in your very first setup of the day. And they. Mark had cows within 10 yards of him. I think maybe closer.

See what doubled up there?

Oh, it was crazy how many elk came in. And so when the big bull came around and he was. He was raking, we got tons of great footage. It was. It was like something off Disney World or Primos the Truth. Right. And he ends up coming around. When he goes past a cedar and comes around, I come to full draw. The five points. Looking away, catches something. Because he's seven yards away. He kind of bumps off, but the big bull doesn't think anything about it because he thinks he's pushing him off.

Yeah.

Comes around the corner and he's there. 18 yards, basically frontal. And I just let her rip. And my arrow disappears in his chest completely. And. And he literally goes 40, 50 yards and tumbles down the hill. And it was insane. All over the shoulder, you know, And Bryce was putting a bunch of pressure on us to get, you know, something on camera. And it was incredible. And then the pressure's off.

Oh, yeah. I'm like totally.

Here we go. And. But that was a. That was calf calls distress.

Is that going to be your go to or.

No? No, I. I have. I mean, I like to start with calf calls a lot of times just because I think they're non intrusive, you know. And obviously Mr. Turner is big on it right now. He's pushing it hard.

Yeah.

But it doesn't work for everything.

No.

And so it's definitely something that I think you can do and it's not a big deal. But I. I throw everything at him. You know, it depends on. A lot of it is reading the elk and reading how fired up they are.

Totally pressure everything.

100. And so that one was good. We. We hiked that one back and ended up having a few days of. We had a grizzly come into camp that night with the quarters hanging, you know, 30ft up in the air. Whatever. That's fun. Yeah.

Exciting.

You know how it is.

Oh, yeah.

10 mils on all the time, you know, and stuff. But I ended up taking a couple days to get that meat taken care of and done and. And Mark spent the next few days on the struggle bus. It was kind of slow.

What happened to those elk? Did they just.

No, they ended up moving like two drainages over and they were still around. But, you know, there wasn't any shooters in there after that. I took the only shooter out.

All right.

And so we were. We were focused. We actually only saw one big bull. I would say that's 350 plus. And so Mark was trying to focus on getting on him.

Yeah.

And had a couple semi close encounters, you know, like with some good bulls, like 250, 300 yards. But none of them wanted to play. So we come up with a plan. I think it was day seven. I saw a good bull across the drainage from us. And so that night we came up with a plan that Mark would go in to try and get on that big bull. And I was going to go to the other side to glass right across from the drainage and kind of guide him in.

Yeah.

And it was a strange morning because we saw oak right away. One of the horse guys bumped him and gotta love it. It's public land. Doing their thing. Bumped them and ended up. I mean, he went two miles.

Oh, wow.

And so new plan. Herdable bugle down towards the bottom. I'm trying to get eyes on him. Can't get eyes on him. Mark moves in close. And I ended up deciding to throw a couple of cow calls at him. Like reed calls that travel a long ways. And I put him in my bugle tube and I threw a couple cow calls and he responded. And so then we get, we get glass on first. I'm telling Mark to get in on him. So Mark drops his pack, you know, and, and, and he can hear him. So you can tell in my glass. I'm like, oh yeah. Mark's moving in. And so I throw another cow call out. And when I do, that bull dives off the cliff. And it was steep, it was 3, 400 foot drop down to the creek. And he just goes off. And I'm like, oh my gosh. And Josh is like, that bull's going to the creek. I go, no, that bull's coming to us. I said, get your bow and get about 60 yards in front of me right by those trees. He's like, are you sure? I'm like, I'm pretty sure. I look and I'm like, that's 1600 yards. That's a long ways.

And.

But there's no other reason for him to come straight. It was 10:30, 11:00 clock.

Wow.

And that bull ends up coming all the way up, hitting a wallow like 500 yards from us in this burn. And I, when he gets in that wallow, I hit him again with a cow call. And he responds, works all the way in. And we shoot him at 25 yards.

No.

All by himself.

1600 yards.

That was that. That was Josh's first bull archery bull ever.

That's cool.

And it was just like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. You know, and that shouldn't happened. Right, Right. Like he was obviously super fired up and it was a great like, you know, 310 type bull. Just a really nice solid six point. And I don't know why he did that.

I mean, that's why I love that like 10 to 15 range. Because that happens.

Yeah.

You can catch those bulls and like they'll, I mean even like as early as the fifth, like you.

Yeah.

A couple cow calls. Here it comes.

Yeah, I think that day, I think that day, I think I shot mine on the 3rd. And that would have been the 8th of September, which is early.

Yeah.

But you just never know.

Yeah, I feel like that, I don't know, five to 10 time frame, to me it's like you can pick up a bowl that just absolutely comes to a cow call.

Yeah.

And you know, post 15th, I don't think it's happening.

Right.

But that's that special Time where it's like, there could be a bull.

Yeah.

You know, just off doing his own thing and. And just enough rut in the air to make him like, he's frisky. There's other times, like, I mean, like, it could be early, and you. Cow call, won't even look at you.

Yeah.

Does not care. I think, you know, set to be, like, enough rut in the air to be like, I'm ready. And I've seen it a couple times, but it's pretty rare.

I like it early. As long as it's not too hot. Yeah. You know, and it wasn't. It was chilly. Like, we had nights where it was in the 30s. Of course, we're high. We're super high.

Yeah. So then Mark's up.

So then Mark's up. We take care of Josh's bull, get it all hung up. And so then Mark and I go into an area that we had seen two bulls fighting the night before, and we had seen two dink bulls in that area. And so we start working. We're up there early. We're doing multiple setups. And Mark really likes to call. I can take it or leave it. I want to. I'm not hitched to one wagon or another. I want to kill an elk.

Right.

Right. And so, like, my Texas bull was all spot and stock. No calls. Spot and stock. Idaho was spot and stock. But Mark likes to call. And I'm like, all right, let's call. No problem. So we. We worked through, and we spent all morning getting into setups and calling. We. We tried locator bugles, we tried calf calls, we tried cow calls, and we tried raking. You know, each one was different. Probably had 10 different setups. Nothing. Now, we were within six to 800 yards of where we saw those four bulls the night before. So we knew they were fairly close, at least we assumed. So gets to be about 10:30, 11:00'. Clock. We call it a day, you know, call it a morning, take a nap, you know, and I'm like, we need to wait till game time. So we take a nap and then we. We start working. And Mark kept trying to take me down towards where those bulls were, but I had a couple of points marked that were up and kind of where a couple drainages, a couple of creeks came together. I was pretty sure there were some walls up there, based on what I saw on imagery. And so I finally convinced him there was a lot of dead fault there. It wasn't very fun. So. And Mark does great and. But I Mean, it was pretty nasty. I finally convinced. Oh, yeah. Yo, he's. He did awesome. Considering that his quad, like, basically severed. Yeah. In. What was that, February?

Yeah.

And so he was amazing, though. I couldn't believe how well his leg did. But we finally worked up. We crested this last hill where basically a lot of what the calling sequences and stuff we were doing, it was out of the sound shed, right? So we get up past into a different sound shed. I let out two little, you know, kind of what I would call immature calf calls. Not necessarily a cow or a calf. It was an immature cow. And boom. Two bulls respond. And I'm like, okay, game time. So we come up with a plan. One thing leads to another. I get in a setup, I call in a five point to mark. Mark's at full draw, 10 yards. It's just not quite big enough.

Yeah.

And he's like, oh, it's such a great gravy train setup, you know, and he's like, we already got two bulls down. I really want the hat trick, you know, and. But I. I totally get it because there was. You could hear the bigger bull down there just ripping. But we could not get him to come. And so that. That bull spooks off a little bit. We change setups about 100 yards. Get down a little bit more. A storm's coming in. It's raining sideways. All of a sudden, lightning, thunder. It was crazy. Like, everything happened. It was like 4 o' clock in the afternoon by this time. But we've got four bulls now going crazy in this drainage.

Even with that lightning and thunder, it was crazy.

They were going n. I feel like we got them started and then they just carried it, huh? And there was two really nice bulls in there. The mark, the bull Mark shot and then another really nice, heavy, heavy six point. And ended up one of the bulls. He ended up pulling out his bugle tube. I'm calling in the back, raking, doing my stuff. Can't get him to move. And I move back as far as I can. Mark can't go forward anymore because of all the deadfall and just situation. Right. It just drops off and you're naked. And so he ends up pulling out his bugle. And they would respond to our cow calls pretty regular. So when one of the bulls gets fairly close, he just challenged bugles, just rips it. And this bull responds immediately. Mark cuts him off. This bull comes running in and Mark shoots him at 23 yards, rubbing a tree. Comes in, hits this great big deadfall log and can't Come any farther necessarily, it just starts raking this tree and Mark threads the needle and smokes this bowl. Yeah. It was so crazy. Bull went like 20, 30 yards and.

Piled up and wow.

It was like, you gotta be kidding me.

You know, dude, what an epic hunt.

It was amazing, you know, the fact that we hadn't ever been there before, you know, we didn't have any knowledge of it. And we killed three really nice, mature. Six points.

What went right. Why, like, in retrospect, they all seem really easy.

Well, I think you're right. And I tell people that all the time. Last time I was on here, I said, elk hunting is really, really hard until it isn't. Right. Right. That's the way it works.

Yeah.

Like, you could hunt for 12 days and you're like, my gosh, this sucks. And the next morning, you're like, oh, that was easy. Yeah, that was. Just came together, like, hit the easy button. And, you know, I think. And you know, this, it's preaching to the choir, but you have to stay mentally tough. You. You can't get down. And it's easy to do when you don't have a plan or it's not going well. And you're nine days into the hunt. He shot that bull on day nine, man. And you're tired. Your feet are covered in leukotape, and you haven't been to the truck in nine days.

Yeah.

And you're just tired. But you have to know that it just takes the right five minutes.

Do you think it's a matter of over complicating it as you're saying that? It's like, I think when you know how easy it is, you kind of just. You almost throw the same lure over and over, and you don't try to over complicate it too much or like, you know, bull's not coming, we got to go to him.

Right.

Probably wouldn't have worked, but, you know, it's like, well, we can just keep working this. Yeah. Like, I feel like a lot of. I'll call them noobs. A lot of noobs would do something different in that instance, the mark instance, that very common scenario coming. I gotta do something. I gotta make it happen.

Yep.

And I think it is like, when you haven't been in the red zone, you don't have that much confidence. You're like, you're almost rushing it. You're like, oh, my gosh, we're here. We gotta get a shot.

Yep.

Walk me through, like, your mindset in that. How do you change Your. How do you change your tactics a little bit? Like, okay, this isn't working, but you're not. You're not losing your cool.

No.

You're Tom Brady in the pocket, like, waiting for it. Right. You're like, okay, let's just keep tweaking this.

As long as the wind stays good. Right? That's number one. Like, as long as you don't blow those elk out and they don't see you, they don't smell you, like, you have a shot, you have an opportunity, and a lot of it. And this is the part that's hard about elk hunting and how to teach elk hunting is that so much of it depends on where they're at. Right. It's just I had a buddy that used to sheep hunt a lot with his bow, and he's like, sheep hunting is not hard with a bow, Jeff. The problem is 90% of the time, the sheep aren't in spots that you can kill them with your boat. So you have to wait.

Right.

And I feel the same about elk. Like, many times when you find them, they're in spots that are very hard to kill them. There's a reason they're there. But when you find them in the right spot, it can be really easy because you're like, oh, my gosh, the elk are here. The wind's here. Look at that. That's a pinch point right there. I can get over here. I can call to them. They're not going to see me. They. It's laid out just like, you know, Larry D. Jones said, you know, and so a lot of times you're. You're get handcuffed, and then you have to throw a different lure. Right. You have to pull out your challenge vehicle.

Trying to force something is going to work anyway.

Yep. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. You know, if you're in an area like Colorado where you've got 30 trucks at the trailhead, I don't think it's going to work. But we were in an area where really it was kind of off the beaten path. I don't think these elk had been touched yet that season. And it was the perfect rut fest. Like, there was four bulls. Two of them were really small, two of them were mature, and there was a lot of tension. And so in that situation, it works. Mark was on this little shelf where they couldn't see onto the shelf, so it made sense that they would come to him. And setup is so important. Oh, it's crazy important. If a bull can see where you're calling from. Yeah, it's hard. You're better off, you know. And most of the big bull killers that I know, they don't call much.

And I think the reason is, is because you can't choose. You can choose your battlefield. And in calling so much of it is like you're just trying to take the best battlefield you get. Yeah. And you know, I got to. I don't call a lot anymore, but I got to dabble with it this year. And there was a bowl that was like coming up every day. Right. And one of the days we actually got really almost called him in the next day. I'm feel like I'm calling to an elk that's just moving away. And I did that so much growing up.

Oh yeah.

A lot of damn elk that were no shot at.

Yeah.

You know, just like I feel like those morning elk, they're going to bed and so many dudes, they're on mission. And like, especially if they don't have a bunch of elk around them. It's different like to the. To the scenario where it's like, yeah, there's two mature bulls and some satellites that's more killable. That was solo or solo bullets. Got some cows or solo. Like he's doing his thing and unless you are in front of him, like you're not going to convince him. And I think people get excited because that bull's call, he's bugling at him and like he may get a little bit aggressive, right?

Yeah.

And it's like he's just moving away. And unless you can get in front of him, which is very difficult when they're very it. And I think the difference is like a good lesson from like the 3.01Hunter. It's like you have to choose. It's to this sheep guy who's like killing a cheap is easy with your bow if you. If you just make the right one stock.

Yep.

When you go and you're calling elk, it's so you're just trying to make the best of a bad situation or like your bad setup. Right. You're like, maybe here. And you just don't know. You're like, man, if I go over the little hill right here, maybe it's a better setup. It's like so many times I'm choosing kind of park like subpar.

Yeah.

Subpar battlefields, if you will.

Yeah. It's 100 of the time that that happens.

Sometimes you get lucky. It works out done that. But like, man, I think, you know, the older you get the more you're like, let's just wait and choose the battlefield, right? And, like, take some, like, intuition, a lot of, like, experience in the red zone to be like, oh, this is the spot, and I'm gonna make him come here.

Yep.

And I can do that versus, like, keep moving at him. Keep moving at him, bump him. You know, like, you do that enough times, you figure out, like, 100.

And I. I had a guy, a buddy of mine, text me this year. Prime example of what you're talking about is he. He had hunted New Mexico for, I think, eight days. And he text me a video, a little clip, and he's like, hey, I just bedded this bull last day. You know, solid bowl. What do I do? Like, I've screwed up every situation. What do I do? Helm? And I'm like, this is great. I said, you know exactly where he's at. I'm like, yeah. I said, awesome. And how far away is he from you? He's like, 250. I'm like, perfect. I said, why don't you back up a hundred yards, take a nap? And I. I said, grab some snacks, get something to drink. Take a nap. Mark where that bull is. And I said, you give him an hour. And I said, in an hour, I want you to side hill over to him. I want you to get to 200 yards, and I want you to let out some light, light calf calls, break a couple twigs. And he's like, okay. Hour and a half later, helm, big bull down.

No.

He's like, that was the longest hour of my life.

What Was yours? Top one hour.

So 45 minutes to an hour, when a bull beds out, like, he watched that bull bed down.

Okay. Yeah.

And so when a bull beds down, he's not going to get up right away. Usually, like, it's very hard. I've messed up too many times where I see a bull bed down, I move into position. I call, he doesn't get up. I call, he doesn't get up. I move in closer, move in, hunt to failure. Boom. Blow him out, right? Like, oh, that didn't work, you know? But multiple times in the last 10 years, I've gotten a spot where I've even. I've done this before where I've called to a bull, he responds. I'm out of position because I was really just trying to locate him, not call him in. And he'll move 300 yards looking for us. Come in looking for us, but we're out of position. He goes back to the same spot, and I Will give him an hour. Then I will move in halfway in between where he came, and I will call again. And I've called that bull right back. You know, a lot of times it's earlier in the season, you know, where they're in that situation, but you. You have to give that bull time to settle down. And so, you know, that was one of those times where I'm like, oh, man, my experience paid off, you know, and from failures. Right, because you screwed up over and over and over again. And I think a lot of times for me, I love that situation where bulls bed down and then I give them a little bit of time. And that midday, you know, is a great time to kill those bulls, because you can get in and side hill, and the thermals are going up winds in your direction. So you literally can call those bulls out of their bed a little bit.

Do you like calf or cow calls or. And you can call cow, calf or bull sounds.

Usually it's cow calf. Yeah. Because I don't want to fight. I just. Now I will if. If the bull is right. It's so hard to kill a. My biggest bulls have been from no calling at all. And I'm great with that.

How do you know when to play that card first, when to call?

If I don't have to call, I won't. A lot of it is driven by the topography, the terrain, the, you know, the trees, you know, all that other stuff. If I'm in areas that I don't have to call, they're. They're not coming out. I mean, you talk to guys like Dan Evans, Sean, you know, different ones that kill big bulls year in and year out. You know, the. The calls don't come out right. You know, and. And that's fine because I would prefer a bull doesn't even know I'm there. Right.

I think I will argue. I will argue to the cows come home. Like, what Sean does, what dan does. That's very 301. And I 100 agree. Put the calls away. But I also disagree when people are like, oh, you can't call it. Because I'm like, you want to kill a random 6.0. Not that hard.

Not that hard.

Not that hard.

No.

You can calcul six points all day.

Long, especially that fifth to tenth time frame.

Oh, 100.

It's. I love hunting that. And so when people ask me, well, what's your preference? I'm like, I like it all.

Yeah.

Yeah. In a perfect world, I want to kill one spot in stock, and I want to Kill one. Calling in. You know, it's so much fun when you get a bull that rips in your face and then you throw an arrow through it. Like, that's so much fun, you know, and so why can't I have it both, you know, so.

No, I 100 agree. I mean, and then just, you know, my. Well, John Gabriel, he killed a bull kind of spot in stock this year.

Oh, great.

And he's like, it was actually kind of cool to be like, you know, ninja bull.

Didn't even know he called in a big bull this year, too. Yeah, he did, but really big bull for his buddy.

Yeah. For Nick.

Yeah.

Yeah, those are.

And that's a herd bowl, baby. That was a giant bull. Yeah. So they can be called. Especially when you kind of know what you're saying. I'm not saying we know exactly what we're saying, but you kind of know what you're saying and you can read that. Because I'm convinced that guys that only call the bulls, they cut out 60, 70% of the bulls, you know, that they won't have opportunities at. Because not every bull is so aggressive that they're going to come in.

Yeah.

A lot of the raggies and stuff are, but when you talk about nice six points, you know.

Yeah.

Especially when you get over the 350 range, like a lot of those bulls coming.

It just depends on the day, the situation. Yeah. Do you think you guys were more successful because you were remote and those elk were less meth with.

Yeah, we saw. We didn't see a single hunter on foot. Yeah, everybody was on horses and. And a lot of them were calling from the horses like they weren't even getting off to call. And so it was funny. I. I taught, you know, Dan Picar.

Yeah.

He's an elk killing machine.

Oh, yeah.

And I talked to him. I'm pretty good friends with him and have a lot of respect for him as an elk hunter. And I kind of walked through what we were doing and stuff and I asked him, I said, so how long is it going to take for us to get find elk and kill him? And he goes, how big of bulls are you wanting to shoot? I said, I'm just looking for a good representation. Nice six point, you know, and we're doing a video hunt. And he goes, five, six days, tops.

Oh, wow.

And I was like, wow, that's pretty good. And he goes, yeah. He goes, you know, there'll be a lot of hunters. He goes, I've actually hunted in that area before and there's A ton of hunters, so I haven't hunted in there in years. But he said, you don't have horses. He goes, you're gonna get off the trail. You're gonna find them. You're gonna find unmolested elk.

Right.

And unmolested elk are a lot easier to. Especially the first. That five to tenth. Oh, baby.

This is glorious.

It's glorious.

Some of my most epic calling. Calling experiences is in the wilderness. Five to fifth or. Yeah. Five to 15, five to 10, evening. And, like, just as soon as it turns on, it's like these elk have never even heard. It's like throwing a, you know, a spinner into the fish pond.

Yeah, exactly. Here they come.

Yeah. It's just glorious. And I do think that matters. One of the things, you know, I heard this season, I hear it all the time, but it's like all the elk weren't talking. If they're not talking, don't. Why are we trying to call?

And.

Well, there's two. There's two sides of that coin. I would say, like, there's lots of ways to kill an elk when they aren't saying a dang thing.

Yeah.

You have to be flexible. You have to be active. You have to adapt. I like, straight up, didn't have elk on my Montana season. It was like, couldn't buy a vehicle. But I went. I forget what the number is probably on blind call setups, I think I went 4 for 6. Calling it like 4 for 5 or 4 for 6 right in a row.

Yeah.

Of calling out, do they come in silent? Totally. Yep. Yeah, they're there.

Yeah.

It's like you're seeing sign. I'm just not talking.

Yeah.

Like, they're there. And I like. To me, I was like, oh, yeah, that still works. 100. I think a lot of people to.

Miss that in that situation. I'm less aggressive, and I'm more picky on where my setups are. Like, I want that setup to be dialed to where. Okay. I'm pretty sure the elk are going to be right here. I need to be right here. Don't randomly throw stuff out.

Yeah.

Be very surgical in how you set up. And there's more often than not one tweak, snap one something, and you're like, oh, here he comes.

Yep.

Yeah, I love that. To me, that's fun.

The bull we killed, I didn't even hear. And it was. And so I grew up where. I grew up hunting a lot in Oregon. It was very similar to that where, like, these old grassroads have never been used.

And.

And this was on private, but we, like, hadn't heard anything. We actually got into, like, some heavy moocows, and I was like, well, we got to move farther past, and the moocap is right where I want to be. And they bumped. So I was like, let's go farther. So we ended up going quite a ways farther, and we got to this road. I'm gonna try to visualize. It was like a v where I could see two roads. And I was like, oh, perfect. You know, I was like, I'm gonna set up here. And I put jared kind of out there. I was like, I want to be able to see both. See both these roads, and I want you to be 30 yards from the road on either way. And. And we set up like, a. A call where I was like, if I call too short, that means check your right. I forget what it was like, too short. And along was whatever it was, you know, So I like a call like, hey, it's going to come. I knew that bull was going to come quiet, Knew able was going to come dead silent. And it happened three times in a row. And so I'm like, I'll. I'll. I'll give you the signal. You just got to keep your eyes out. And sure enough, not five minutes in a call sequence, I just see a butt move through the trees. And I was like, oh, he's here. And I was like, did that, too, you know, too short. He'd already seen him, you know, So I was like, yeah. Yes.

That's so awesome.

Isn't it? Like, never. He never said a word.

Yeah, they do that a lot, Especially in areas where there's heavy hunting pressure or the rut's not on fire.

Yeah. And it's like, you got to adapt to what the rut is. And I think I hear so many people like, oh, the rut this year was this. I'm like, it's different everywhere.

Yeah.

You get what you get.

You do. Yeah.

We got to kill an elk.

Our idaho hunt, we hunted for eight days and heard three bugles in eight days. Wow, That's a lot of ground to cover. And. And we called a fair amount. We glassed a fair amount. And we. And when I say we heard three bugles, it was two bulls. One bugle. One bull bugle twice, you know, and both of them. Both bugles were like, fu. You know, as they're leaving, you know, and taking his cows.

So how did you change tactics? Yeah, obviously, you went into that, and you said, okay, we're going to call that. Didn't work?

No.

What was the dates on your idio?

It was great. It was like the 15th through the 25th.

Supposed to be great.

Should have been the. The moon was perfect. Everything was perfect. It was cold. Like, everything should have been fantastic. So nothing. We switched up and went to more open country and spent a lot of time glassing. And then we killed. We went two for three. And both of them were spot and.

Stock, really, like in the wide open or pretty much.

They were in little. Little coolies. They would bed in these little coolies and little pockets of brush, basically, really. And we would see them, you know, early morning and afternoons and stuff. And so we would just parallel them, bed them, and then move it like the bull. I shot that one with the big dropper. It was funny story. We actually took and we saw that bull headed to go to a different area. And we saw him up on the left. We were headed to the right, so we changed plans and we booked it up this gut trying to get ahead of him. And that bull actually ended up catching us and came, pushed a spike, pushed over. So we dropped down. I'm in front. Donnie Drake is back like 40, 50 yards behind me. So we drop down, Spike is looking at us forever. Ends up turning around, but it was too late. The rest of the herd was coming. Did not let out a sound, but he pushed 15, 20 cows, lip curling, no bugles, but lip curling, doing everything, and ends up coming just in, in front of us, basically over top of us. And they were 30 to 40 yards. No, it was perfect. Like, we really lucked into that one. And we actually, we were headed up to the area to get in front of them to bed, and they just caught us too quick. And it was like 8:30 in the morning.

Oh, perfect.

It was perfect. And thermals were pulling down. It was great. And I thought I couldn't see Donnie well, because, you know, he's 40, 50 yards behind me and I couldn't see him that well. He. Maybe he was closer, but it was a ways. And literally the bull comes behind a tree, a little bush. Cows all get past me. I draw back and then I bubble out. And as I'm bubbling out, Donnie cow calls, stops the bull, and I finish bubbling out. Shoot. Right when I shoot, it was like, foo foom. We both shot the bull.

No way.

Yes. It was the craziest thing. And so I shoot the bull. I. I hit him right behind the shoulder. Smoked him. Donnie hit him right in the butt. Got an antenna like 3 inches of penetration arrow hanging out of him. And I was like, whoa. And Bull runs off and goes out of sight. And I look at Donnie and I'm like, hey, man, you shot too? He's like, yeah, I didn't know if you drew back, like, because they were all over us, like, we couldn't move.

Yeah.

And he's like, man, I didn't know you were going to shoot or I wouldn't have shot, you know, And. And he's. I'm like, that's all right. I said, did you look at your bubble? And, like, all the color goes out of his face. He's like, no, it was super steep. Like, super steep. So. But Bull went 50 yards and piled up. And I walk up to him like, so, Donnie, whose bowl is this? He's like, well, yeah, I hit him in the. But this is your bowl. I'm like, okay, no biggie. But it was so much fun, you know, but we had to switch our tactics.

Yeah.

Because if we were strictly counting on, you know, calling, it wouldn't have happened. Yeah. And so it was just. And it was a hard place. I mean, it was not the unit I wanted. It was a really. I will never go back to that unit again. There was a lot of people, a lot of four wheelers, a lot of people just running UTVs all over the place, calling everywhere. Like, everywhere we went, we ran into people. And the only place that we didn't run into people was out in this really steep country. That was deer country. It was deer country. It was chucker country, so. But we didn't see that many big bulls. Like, really. The only mature bull we saw on that trip was the one I shot.

Interesting.

And he was just a cool six point with that club. 15 inch club.

Yeah, it's cool.

Oh, yeah, yeah. But you have to adapt, you know, If I would have done the same tactics that I did in Wyoming, we wouldn't have killed anything, you know, so.

If you could go back and give advice to your younger self, any good time, like, early in your elk hunting killing career, what advice would you give yourself?

I mean, there's a lot of advice I give myself. We're talking about elk hunting, though, right? Strictly when it comes to elk hunting.

I would say buy Bitcoin and you'll hunt ranch.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, stand on the shoulders of giants. You know, the one thing that I think that I do better than most is I'm not too proud to listen to killers, like, to predators, you know, And. And I know you're a fan of those guys, too. Like, when you find somebody that kills bulls every year, it's time to shut up and listen. Like, there's a reason that, you know, guys kill a bull every year because I don't know if I've ever been on an easy elk hunt.

Right.

The archery anyways, you know, never an easy one. And so you have to listen to people that are consistent, and especially when they're consistent in multiple states in different places, and guys like Jared Lyle and Dan Evans and, you know, there's just so many people that you look at that you're like, oh, they're killing bull this year. Like, it's not even a question.

Right.

Like, they're killing one. Yeah. You can just count on it. Yeah. And yourself, you know, like, you're gonna kill one, you know, and. And you know that now, granite. Some years you may not have the best units or one tag. And, well, life happens, right? You got kids and you got, you know, responsibilities. The Bridger, you know, all these things pull on you. But at the end of the day, there's people that, if they dedicate 10 days plus to an elk hunt, Gabriel, like, dude's a killer. Like, you can just count on it. He's going to kill a bull. He's going to find a way. Yeah, I don't care. Public, private, doesn't matter. He's killing a bull, he's going to find it. Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico.

He's.

He's killing one. And so I would say, listen to people like that. Search them out, and then don't be too proud to ask questions. And, you know, I was fortunate. Like, Dan Evans and Jared Lyle were the ones that got me into elk hunting. And, I mean, I've known Dan for 25 years, and so I picked his brain a lot. I picked Jared's brain a lot.

What was the best advice you got from Dan?

What was the best advice I got from him?

Maybe the best lesson you learned.

Two things. Number one, watch elk. Like, Dan knows elk. Like, he knows what they're going to do because he has logged so many hours watching elk, you know, through glass. That is one thing that's crazy. You watch him, and he's incredible at patterning and figuring out what they're doing, why they're doing, how they're utilizing a piece of property, you know, public or private. Like, he knows how to figure it out. And. And so I would say watch elk. And then number two is, you don't have to call to be successful. My second bull That I killed ever was almost 20 years ago. And I'll never forget, we. We found this bull. It was like a. It was a seven by seven. And the guys I was hunting with, I had hunted with before. I'd hunted with them for years. They were all buddies of my dad. And we found this bull, and he was with cows. And we called and called and called and called and called, and he bugled at us, but he wouldn't come. He ended up pushing like seven cows up onto this ledge that was fairly open. And he betted. And I'll never forget it. My buddy looked at me and goes, well, we might as well find another bull because it's wide open between here and him. Like, we can't. We can't go any farther. Like he's going to see us, so we might as well go find a bull we can play with. And I remember thinking, hearing Dan in the back of my head going, you don't always need calls to kill a bull. And I was like, I got kind of crazy idea. I said, tom, why don't you sit here? Like, this is. We were in a really good pinch point bottleneck. I said, I'm gonna back out and I'm gonna do a big loop and get above him. And if I can stalk into him, I'm gonna kill him. But if I bump him, which is probably gonna happen, he'll come right to you. And he's like, that's a great plan. I said, all right. So it took me like an hour to back out, get around him. And in the end, he was bedded right on the edge of these rocky. It was really a rock ledge. And he was next to this great big boulder with a few intermittent trees. I ended up getting to 40 yards, draw my bow. And it was a wide open rock, one rock between me and him, and I just started walking at him, full draw pin on him. I walked into 17 yards, and at 17 yards I was like, pony, to get any closer you could boom. And I shot that 344 nice and just smoked him and all. So all the cows he got up, I'll never forget, I hit him so hard that his chin hit the ground when he tried to get up and he went down. 30 yards piled up, and all the cows filed past my buddy at 20 yards. And after they did, and the. The woods went quiet, he was like, you can't. He yelled up at me, you killed him, didn't you? I was like, yeah, can't believe it, you know. And it was obviously the biggest bull I'd ever killed. It's like, second bull I ever killed.

And it was because of Dan. Nice.

I just remember thinking, instead of listening to my buddy saying, well, we can't. We're done. I was like, why are we done? Like, that's the bull I want right there. And let's just come up with a different plan. And, yeah, it took time and took a lot of effort and trying to figure out. This was before mapping software and stuff. And I'm trying to mark rocks and.

Oh, by the orange one.

He's by the orange one, you know, and you're trying to figure it out. But that was such a huge lesson for me that I don't have to call bull to kill him. And, you know, it's stuck with me ever since. Like, there's so many times that. And I. I heard a guy, a buddy of mine this year that he elk hunts not a ton, but he's like, yeah, we came around the corner and There's a bullet 80 yards. And, you know, so I pulled out a cow call, you know, had no.

Idea it was feeding.

I pull out a cow call, and I've cow called to him, and he ran off. I was like, well, if he's 80 yards and feeding, why didn't you just walk up 40 yards and shoot him? He's like, I never even thought about it, you know, And I think a lot of times we're trained that when.

All you have is a hammer, all you see is nails.

Exactly.

I did. And it's. It's true. Like, when all you have a hair, when all you have is a hammer, all you see is nails. It's like you get into that bugle tube and you just want to blow it all the time.

Yeah.

I think I'll just reiterate because I think it came out, but I think it's one of the most important lessons to ever get on this podcast. Between what you said about the sheep hunter and what you said about Dan. I used to. I remember I was in Idaho, and I was trying to kill a giant bull. I remember thinking, like, what would Dan do? What would Dan do? In retrospect, what Dan is really great at is knowing where the elk are going to be. And I think we get so busy chasing elk that we forget to just go where they're gonna go.

100.

And it's. It's as simple as that really is. And so when you watch elk, when you really just figure out what they're doing, why they're doing it, where they're going. And don't get me wrong, okra. Now whitetail. You can't pattern them. No. Like, as soon as you think you got it figured out, they'll change 100. But the. The more you can just be where they want to be and at least do a 90%. Like, it's easy to call on that last little 10%.

Right.

But if you can get in front of them and maybe you don't do it the first try, maybe it's like, you know, you try to pattern these things for multiple days. But I think a lot of guys get in the habit of chasing elk.

Yeah.

You're just doing that, chasing elk.

100. I felt like that so much. And I. I know I've told you this before when I hunted with Ryan Carter six, seven years ago, and. And I really picked his brain. When I got done being down there in Utah for the month, I thought to myself, holy cow. I am a bull in a china shop on the mountain. Like, I am wrecking this place. Like, the whitetail hunter in me that used to hunt the back 40 would be so pissed at me because I'm just going out here and I'm rattling everywhere and grunting everywhere. And when the truth is, the deer are here and here, you know, and that's how I've been elk hunting.

I've.

I just would never do that in the whitetail woods. And yet I will do it in the elkwoods. I will chase elk and chase elk. And since then, I feel like I have been a much better hunter because I'm like, okay, exactly what you said. 70 to 80% of the landscape isn't going to hold elk.

Yes.

But they're going to be where they're going to be. And if you're in those places, slow down, slow your roll, Figure out, pick up those little things. So many times you're. You get in a spot where you're like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna take a drink of water right here, just because it looks really good. And I just want to sit here a few more minutes.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden you're like, oh, brow time. You know, and just those moments where you pick it up because you got to go slow to go fast sometimes. And other times you're ripping. Right. You're like, bull is there. I know he's headed to that saddle. I've got a hustle. And I think a lot of times people mess up on the cadence of what they need to do on the mountain, and they just. They don't Understand that when you get in those spots where the elk are slow down, pay attention, you're in the red zone. Yeah. Like, if you do the right things there, you may not even have to call. That bull could just walk right into you.

Right.

You know, it's. I love that about it, though.

I. And I call it race pace, but it's not like going fast. It's like it's going fast and going slow, which is the hardest thing in the world about elk hunting. We get into this, like, cover ground, cover ground, and. And you can get into that mindset. And it is very much a hammer nail thing where it's like, when you're covering ground, it's easy to screw it up because you're in this mindset. One of most people wouldn't have picked this up, but one of the things you guys did on that Wyoming you had mentioned, you know, you had said the sound shed, and you're like, well, we did this calling sequence and we're out of the sound shed. It's easy to work up in your calling sequence and then go to the next sound chat where nothing had heard you before, and you start at that same aggressive, you know, loud pace where it's like, nope, you have to reset. And I'm guilty. But it's like as soon as you get out of that next sound shed, you have to go back to a couple of soft count calls and work up. You know, it's like we just spent 30 minutes calling sequence, and it probably ended with a lot more cadence than it started with. Like, it starts slow, works up, but as soon as I move 200 yards, we are in a new territory and I have to start that over again. But it's a very easy to just go. And it's like, well, that elk didn't hear the first one. So all I heard was like, you get randomly super. Like, there wasn't 30 cows just going bananas.

Exactly.

You know, in this, you know, quick span. And so, like, just thinking about those things, you know, a lot of people. I don't think a lot of people do, but it goes back to, like, being a bull in the china shop. Don't do that.

Don't do that. Right. Take time, because you don't know that bull could be laying 150 yards from you. Yeah. You know, and so many times that's happened. And I think I learned that lesson a lot of times in Colorado where they're so heavily hunted. And so I learned how to call softly.

Yeah.

Two reasons. One, the elk would respond to it usually quietly. But two, I wasn't calling in hunters.

Yeah.

And so when you're in heavily hunted areas, if you call too loud, whisper, you do. Like, it's crazy. And so all those years, like, as you put in, you know, I'm sure you read the book Outliers. Malcolm Gladwell talks about how to be a master of your craft, you need 10,000 hours.

Yeah.

And so you take someone like a John Gabriel or, you know, Dan Evans, they've mastered it. Like, they've spent so much time, you know, doing this and even yourself, I mean, I'd hate to know how many hours you and I've spent. Like, it's a lot. But you start to figure out. And so now it turns into an instinct and you're like, oh, no.

Like how you build your gut intuition.

100 and so many times when I'm hunting with someone that I'm trying to help them kill their first bull. And we see elk, I'm amazed at how many times they're like, okay, let's go. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second. Yeah, that bull's going around here. Going up here. We're not going straight at that bull. We're going around.

Yeah.

And you're like, I need to go where that elk is going. I don't need to bird dog that out.

Yeah.

And because it's so hard to catch an elk, but if you can cut him off because of where he's going and what he's doing, it's huge. But you get those instincts by getting those reps and screwing it up.

Oh, totally, Totally, man. I think one of the most interesting things, you're one of those very, very well rounded hunters, like, obviously killed bulls in four states that could not be more different just even this year. But you also have, like, so many mentors. Like, you've done a really good job of, like, surrounding yourself with great elk hunters and, like, learning that information. I'm very similar. And I, I appreciate that, appreciate that about you, which is like, you know, you are willing to try new things.

Yeah.

Test new models. Yeah. Dabble. You don't have, like, your way. And I think most elk hunters should mimic that, which is like, how does Dan hunt? How does Sean hunt? How does John hunt? How do, like. And then you find what works for you. It does matter where you hunt. Like, if you hunt Oregon, this is the reason your tactics are different from Texas to Oregon.

Right.

Like, those are very different types of elk. Right. And so you could say, here's what Dan Picard does, right? Yeah, but that's high country. Wyoming, very different. Right. And so, like, maybe find the person that, like, hunts those elk. Maybe were in a similar terrain.

And I love the variety of it.

Totally.

Like, and I, you know, I'm sure you probably know Ben Sandel, another guy I have so much respect for. That guy's a big killing.

He's never been on the podcast.

Dude, he's awesome. Yeah, he's amazing. And he does live in Arizona. That obviously helps. Yeah, you know, he's in big bull country. But just listening to him, you know, at the end of the day, Ben is a humble guy. He's a family guy, loves his kids, loves his wife. Like, I just tip my hat to guys like that that are mastering the craft and just enjoy it, you know, on a deep level. Not for the likes, not for anything else.

It's.

It's in here, you know, in his heart. And so when I find those people, I latch on to them because I can totally respect results. And, you know, I love when I get around people that are students. You know, I'm sitting here looking at your book death, all these books that I've read, and I'm like, you know, part of what's hard, I think as us, as men, if we're not careful, as life beats us up and stuff, we can choose to be bitter or better. And I think that with books, we can stand on the shoulders of giants. You know, same thing when it comes to hunting. Like, we can learn from other people's mistakes if the soil is soft, you know, if our. If our heart isn't hard, if our head isn't, you know, hard, and we can learn from them. And so you take a guy like, you know, Jared Lyle, that's born and raised in Idaho and hunted elk so many years, and you just. I love hunting with him. I really enjoy it. I'm gonna try and go on an elk hunt with him next year.

Nice.

And I just love hunting with those guys. Like, I don't need to lead. I just watch and listen. And you get into a room with a Ryan Carter or Cody Rich or whatever, and you just. You listen. Because at the end of the day, you cannot knock results. You just can't.

I've always respected guys that like the guys that can do it in multiple states, too, and just different terrains. That's so hard to do. It is, I think, like, it's. I don't want to say it's easy. Like, there are guys in Montana that can kill giants every year. And they got great access, you know, like. And, like, for what is what it is. And those guys are good killers, too. It just like, man, when you realize someone who can kill Roosevelt and, you know, Rocky in the same year, every year. Yeah, it's pretty. Pretty sweet.

I love it, bro. I'm addicted. I'm addicted. That's why I love Roosevelt so much, is I think that they are in such crazy terrain and they're just so unique. And I'll never forget the first Roosevelt that I killed was, you know, like six years ago. And I killed him in a huge standing virgin grove of blm. And it was incredible. I mean, ferns up to my nose, and it was just insane. And he let out one bugle. It was just a. You know, just one of those light, like, where are you?

You know?

And, man, those moments, they just. They cement in my mind. And I don't know what it is about the coast. I just love it. I actually want to get one in Washington, too.

All right.

I've never killed one in Washington.

I think it's tougher in Washington.

I think so, too, but I'm gonna try, y'.

All.

Yeah.

Yeah, dude. Thanks for coming on.

So.

I always enjoy our conversations and they blow by so fast, but you bet. Do it. Do it again shortly.

Heck, yeah.

Congrats on an epic year, man.

Thanks, sir.

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