The Cow Elk Hunters' Playbook | Solo Round

Foreign. To the Hunt west podcast, here's your host, Jaden Bales. What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Hunt west podcast. Yeah, I know you all are right in the middle of your busy season, either getting ready for a hunt or just coming back from it, or just, you know, getting all of your things squared away for your later season hunts. And I've talked to a bunch of folks who have requested a cow elk hunting podcast. So that's what today's solo round is going to be. It's going to be the Cow Elk Hunters playbook. A lot of folks, I think, are looking at cow elk opportunities as basically the gateway drug to get into elk hunting, especially with the way that the bull tag drawing odds are going. And I think this is such a valuable way to get repetitions, get at bats, as our friend Cody Rich says, and also just fill the freezer with some great meat while you're also contributing to herd management. And across the west, you know, we oftentimes talk about lower populations of mule deer, we talk about lower populations of pronghorn than we want in some places, but for the most part, elk are doing good. It's really exciting. And especially as elk herds are getting into places that they haven't been in for 100, 150 years and, and really flourishing out there, you're, you're finding more and more of these antlerless cow calf hunting opportunities that are available year after year. And especially as someone who is building up the skills or building up the points to go hunt in a specific area for a bull, I think these cow hunting opportunities are invaluable. So let alone the fact that you get to go out there and get a, a sweet chunk of meat that you get to go home and enjoy for the rest of the year, it's well worth the investment in your time and opportunities. I try to make at least one or two cow hunt opportunities happen every single year, especially in the years I don't shoot a bull. So, like last year, friend of mine and I went out in January. We did a little podcast about it, but we went out in January and cow hunted. And that's a very different experience than if I was to be out cow elk hunting right now in the end of September. So I wanted to go through those phases of the different elk life cycles to help you understand what the playbook is going to be depending on what time of year you're out there. For the most part, people ask me about this and expect some really complicated, nuanced answer. For how to hunt elk, specifically cows. But I will say, if you're out there and you're listening to bull elk hunting podcasts, you probably are getting good information to go kill a cow. The vast majority of the time that you're out there chasing bulls, you just end up seeing way more cows than you do bulls. And that's just how a lot of the seasons are run, usually with large populations over herd management objective populations, you're going to have a lot of cows and calves compared to the amount of bulls you have. When you're looking at these limited entry tags, the ones that are hard to get, you'll find that there are quite a few more bulls obviously out there per capita. So maybe you have to tweak things just a little bit. But for the most part, the vast majority of the elk that you see, even in these limited areas, are going to be cows. Now, it doesn't mean that you're going to see, you know, one cow at a time for every two or three bulls you see. The difference is most of these cows and just the nature of elk are that cows live in these herds and they operate in these herds in a way that they're kind of grouped up together. Even when they're in their summer patterns, they're still in herds of 3, 4, 5 as their smallest. And when they, when they calve, they will be off by themselves a little bit, but usually within a close proximity to other elk. But for the most part, again, the idea here is if you're getting bull elk hunting information and you're thinking, how does this apply to elk hunting, like for cows, you can also run that playbook in a lot of scenarios and have pretty good success. What you won't find is the inverse. If you're running the cow hunt playbook, especially in late seasons and you're looking for bull elk, it is going to be dang tough to find a bull, especially the later in the seasons you go after the rut, then you're going to start finding a lot more cows than you are than you are bulls on the average. Again, this is largely just speaking about the general opportunity type hunt, whether it's an over the counter hunt in Colorado or it's a general hunt in Montana and Idaho or Wyoming. Again, the way that the elk herds are managed are such that the bull ratios are generally very low compared to the amount of cows that are out there. And that's why in a lot of places they offer more management hunts, more herd management hunts by knocking down cow numbers, then they do throw in more bull hunts. A lot of the state wildlife agencies also manage on these bull to cow ratios. And if they can offer more opportunity by reducing the amount of cows out there while increasing the bull ratio, that'll be something they oftentimes lean towards. For many people who are used to hunting whitetails and understanding whitetail management, it's a similar type of dynamic. But the amount of country that elk use, the amount of damage they cause when they are grouped up in their winter herds, is immense. So it obviously is on a different scale. But you will also notice, like, there's a lot of the same conversations about bull to cow ratios, knocking down more of the cows so that you can leave some pressure on, off of the bulls. Because obviously the majority of us who are out here, we would like to have a sweet bull on the wall. Like, I'm not going to stand here and say that that's not the case, but when it comes to just getting good reps, getting good meat in the freezer, getting to learn new places, I think it is one of the best opportunities going right now, especially when you look at the drawing opportunities across the west. So let's get into this playbook based on different phases of the year. And we're going to start here by talking about basically this time of year, mid late September and into early October, basically the rut timeframe. Most folks have probably heard Cody Rich and I talk about using these cow elk hunts during archery season, especially as an awesome training ground because they can allow you to get into some places where you can either A, learn what the bull elk are doing and the cows are doing all at the same time that you're going to be listening to bugles and trying to sneak in on them and building skill sets so that you can go bull hunt effectively, or b, you can go have an awesome experience in some place that is super hard to draw for the bull tag, but you can get out there during the rut and chase cows and spikes, like in a Utah situation. Or there's even some of these in Oregon and some of these in Wyoming. Just last year, I had a hunt west client of mine named Justin, He. He came out and he hunted in a max point elk unit in Wyoming. And he just was like, I just want to go have a great hunt with my dad during September. And he went out and he was talking about how you just could hear all these bulls bugling. They went out, had a great hunt, and he ended up shooting a cow elk with his bow. Funny enough, I was also in the same unit at the same time frame. He was on a different end of the deal. I was using some private access while I was guiding a guy. And I swear it was probably the best rut activity I'd ever been involved in. And it just was a blast, man. It's one of those scenarios where as you look at the rut timeframe, you know, let's just end it at the end of September, because the majority of the archery hunts end at the end of September. The idea there is essentially going to be that you're locating bulls and you're going to see if they have cows with them. Most oftentimes, especially in these general opportunity, over the counter opportunity type hunts, there are going to be so many more cows than there are bulls that most bull bugles should have a cow somewhere nearby. I was not going to say it's always the case, but it's a pretty good rule of thumb. If you hear a good gnarly old bull bugle off into the distance, I would probably be chasing it and trying to get in and see what kind of cows he has. It wouldn't mean that I'm trying to challenge people. That bull, I'm not trying to call that bull in. I'm trying to have him keep talking so I can sneak into the herd and get close. And once you're in that close proximity, there's usually enough racket, there's usually enough animals moving around. You'll be close enough to those elk that you can kind of sneak around and try to get a shot on one of the the herd bulls. Cows. That late September time frame is also a great time to be doing a lot of glassing. Just there are some bulls there or just some elk in general at that time frame in late September that are going to be call shy just because they've been run around. They've been be bugle that they've been called that for almost until entire month by other hunters. So busting out the optics and just getting up high and glassing is going to be critical. But keep in mind that most cow, elk in particular cows and bulls, they're going to be really focused on feed and they're going to be really focused on security during that time. So you're going to be looking for places that might be a little bit tougher to get to in the archery season, but you're also really honed in on the feed. Like, where's the best feed? Oftentimes in September you'll still have some really good green, you know, valleys, parks, Meadows and you'll have some, some elk that are using ag fields and coming back off into public. Those are the types of things that I really key in on. You're not necessarily trying to get into the biggest, gnarliest canyon in the unit because you're not looking for the biggest, oldest bowl that's living there. And you'll probably going to be finding, you know, a smaller herd bowl or raghorn that's running a herd that isn't too awful far from the roads. When I say that though, that doesn't mean that you're hunting off the road system. Like you're not road hunting expecting to stumble across cow herd. You still got to get off the road and get into some security habitat where you're going to find more cows and bulls that are kind of staged away from hunting pressure. I think one of the biggest mistakes, and this goes for all of the cow hunting seasons, but one of the biggest mistakes is you hear about somebody driving out shooting one from the truck and having a super easy cow hunt. And the vast majority of all cow hunts that I've ever been on, that is just not the case. It is pretty physical. And even if you're glassing them up from the pickup, you still got to get a pretty long stock to get around and get in, in front of the cows to make a good play. A couple of years ago, I was, it actually was how I started learning this hunt that I'm in the middle of guiding it when you're hearing this. But I started by learning this unit by deer hunting and then having a cow elk tag in my pocket and I would be glassing for deer. I'd see some cow elk with, with a bull, they go bed in the junipers and we try to put a stock on them to try to get one of the cows that's in there. It's a super fun way to do it. But like, again, keep in mind, like, even on those kinds of hunts, you know, I, I've got my Onx pulled up here so I can cheat. We're still hiking in a mile, mile and a half to get into where the elk are. And they have all sorts of other hunting pressures. So even though it's cow elk hunting, you still have to put in the, the type of hunting effort that you would expect from hunting pressured elk. Because whether other people are chasing bulls or they're chasing cows as well, they're going to be trying to find sanctuary areas even in September. Then you kind of move into the next phase. It's the the post rut, late rut type phase, let's call it early October through the mid part of October for the most part. You can also approach this in a similar way. If you hear a bugle, you know, see if you've got a cow herd that's with it and be doing that. But because the bulls are generally, you know, except for maybe in some places in Montana or some, some odd exceptions, the bulls are generally going to be waning on how much they're bugling. This is going to move into an even more spot and stock glassing type strategy that I would employ once you hit that October time frame. Most of the different states are going to be running a rifle season for October cow elk hunting. So keep that in mind. You're also going to have more hunter pressure in a lot of these places, unless you're in like a first season rifle elk hunt in Colorado where they are limiting the hunter pressure. But you know, in a place like Wyoming or Idaho, you get a lot of rifle elk hunters that are just in the field in that early to mid October time frame. So security is going to be even more important during that time frame. As these elk get pushed back and into some nasty holes, they're going to be more focused, I would say, even on the security than they are on the feed like they were in September. Again, feed is really important. They got to have a place to go. But you'll find elk moving a lot of distance at night to get to their food and water and then go back into some security area for bed. And I just, I think that that is one of the biggest things that people mess up is they don't give elk enough credit for moving a mile or two miles every single night to get to their food and then doing that same thing in reverse to get back to their bedding and to the security areas. So be thinking about that. You're going to probably put a little bit more miles on your boots. You're going to use your glass to walk, you know, a mile, two miles, three miles away from roads and glass up elk at distance. The other thing that's important is the big snowstorms haven't really hit. So you're also going to be looking for cow elk that are up high on the mountain, oftentimes in these upper alpine basins, depending on what mountain range you're in. And you're going to be, you know, you're really going to be hunting these cow elk like at the tops for the most part. Unless you know some herds that are hitting some Ag fields down low or in some gnarly canyons down low where they have access to good feed. I would largely like. This is a good example with first season rifle elk hunting in Colorado. If you're looking for cows, I would largely be looking for the high elevation stuff, the best feed that's well away from a road system to be consistently in cows. Now that's not to say that there's not going to be some elk in it. And if you're in a good unit that has limited elk hunting pressure, then maybe this changes a little bit. But for the most part, again, you're looking at ways to find it to, to find some elk herds that have really good security in order to stay in them and to stay in them consistently. The most important thing that I keep talking about here is consistency in finding elk. You know, granted you're not going to necessarily need as many at bats. You're not looking for the one, you're looking for a cow elk. I would still want to be in the most consistent numbers of elk, not just trying to chase this one herd that is really hard to get to and is really tough to predict what they're going to do day to day. There's I keep thinking back to a couple of guys who I know who are hunting down in southern Wyoming right now and it can be dang tough to find elk during this time frame without the bugles and without good glassing areas because they're so they're going to be holed up in such dense cover up high, still on the timber, and they're tough to find. So oftentimes still hunting through really good bedding areas that are not too far from feed and cover is going to be pretty critical. And that can be dang tough. If you got really crackly dry ground or you got a bunch of deadfall, it can be awfully tough. Sometimes it'll just take getting in there, finding some fresh elk sign and just sitting on a meadow and seeing if they come back out for the evening feed to, to really consistently getting get a rifle shot, especially where it's a little bit flatter and it's a little bit thicker. So be considering that when you're looking at the October early kind of cow elk hunting, especially with limited bugle activity, then we move into like another phase, basically totally post rut phase. You've got late October, early November and your cow elk herds are still going to be in the, you know, 10, 20, 30 group, 30 individuals groups and those, you know, 30 head or whatever that are Running around together, they're even more going to be cons, you know, concerned with the pressure. And oftentimes we've had a hard time finding any elk at the very, very top of the mountain. Once you hit that mid to late October time frame and I start looking more in the canyons and the interface between agriculture and trying to catch them coming off and coming off of some fields that they might be attracted to. But I'm also understanding like they're going to be spread out enough like the big storms haven't really hit, hasn't totally pushed elk on to winter range. At this point I would expect there to be, you know, pockets, like I said, of 10 to 30 elk that are still running around on the mountain. So you can stay pretty mobile and try to hunt different elk herds and try to keep finding good fresh sign and keep in them. I really like the idea for this late October time frame of timing a storm and then it is possible because those elk will be moving out of the high country to be driving roads after a storm and looking for elk tracks. Once you find fresh elk tracks in this cow season, you'll be able to see that there's a whole herd of elk that are moving and you can go hop on those tracks and try to track them down. I think the late October time frame essentially is, is bookended or really highlighted by those important snowstorms that get elk moving off the mountain and get elk moving around in the timber that allow you to track them and allow you to glass them in any sort of predictable way. I'm not going to. There's no holds barred. If you are cow elk hunting in mid to late October to early November, it can be dang tough when they're in the thick timber. It is awfully hard to sneak up on a big herd and it's hard to glass them up as well. So again, if you can find burns or if you can find some sort of features that allow you to look into some bigger canyons and glass up these elk herds, I would be doing that in this kind of mid late October time frame. Once you get into November again, you're still talking a lot more about weather dependent elk movement. But you can usually get some elk that are betting on south slopes and even in some thicker country you'll find them out on opening speeding a lot longer into the day. Your your night temperatures are going to get down into the teens, maybe even the single digits depending on the storm or the the weather cycle. And so I do like this November timeframe for really pouring the coals to doing some cow elk hunting. The downside is you're getting past a lot of the opportunities for bulls. So you're going to, if you're trying to use this as a training hunt for future rifle seasons, you're starting to lose some of that value because the bulls are going to be separated off far enough from the cows, you're just not probably going to be in bulls. Once you hit November and onwards, you might find some rag horns, you might find spikes and maybe even the trailing nice, nice bull still with a big herd. But for the most part you're going to start just finding cows and spikes and you're not going to be hunting where the big bulls are at. The other important thing you think about, like a state like Montana where there's so much hunting opportunity that occurs in November, you'll find people who are chasing, who have the general tags or who have the rifle tag for the area they're going to be chasing. And I'm doing air quotes here. The elk and oftentimes chasing the elk means chasing the big herd that has a couple of small bulls in it. Keep that in mind. Like as you're running around, you're probably going to be finding a lot of hunter pressure. And as especially as these elk get more visible, they're going to be down in the, in the valley bottoms and they're going to be a lot easier for folks to find on the average. But in a place like a Montana where you'll find a lot of big cow herds that are socked in on private and hard to access and everyone's staring at them from the road, I would consider trying to look for more places where you have some escapement that is lower elevation where they're going to be staging right before getting on in the winter range and looking at some more rolly hills. And oftentimes you'll be glassing a long, long ways come November looking for elk in particular like the cow elk. It's not because like you're not looking a long ways looking for bulls, but what oftentimes lends to what oftentimes happens when you're cow elk hunting in November is they're going to be on like the foothills of the mountains where you're looking for them. And there's going to be north facing of timber, south facing, kind of rolling slopes of grass. And especially if it's cold out, I'm going to be sitting there at first light looking at the south facing slopes where you can catch elk feeding across moving into some dark timber if it's a little warmer out or just bedding out there on the open, on the south facing slopes if it's cold and snowy. That time frame is, is probably where the most rifle cow elk hunting opportunity occurs. And I think one of the things that you can think about regarding this November time frame is again, looking at the private public interface, working it backwards just a little bit. You might end up, you know, walking a mile or two around a private piece to get back to where the elk are. That is, they stage right before they, they do flood down onto the proper winter range. And obviously if you get a big snowstorm, you gotta be prepared for that in November in any of these Rocky Mountain states. And at that point you are expecting them to get pushed down into the low stuff. And you're really going to be assuming that, you know, once you get those big winter storms, they're going to be balled up in some big herds. That takes us into the winter cow elk hunting. And I know that there's again, like Montana has a lot of these, Wyoming has a lot of these winter cow elk hunts. I know Idaho has a handful of them as well. There's some sweet muzzleloader cow elk hunting opportunities in Idaho. And I'm trying to think, I think it's. Clay Hayes has done some awesome late season muzzleloader cow elk hunting videos on YouTube. They're well worth the watch because they're, they're definitely talking about what we're talking about today, where elk are balled up in big enough groups that they're kind of hard to stock. And you'll see especially they're hard to stock when you have a muzzleloader in your hand. But oftentimes you'll find them on these big open slopes that are, you know, hanging a couple thousand feet above the valley floor. And you got to figure out a creative way to get in there without them seeing you. So as you move into the winter time frame, it's not as much about how much, how about seeing the elk, it's about seeing them in an accessible place where you can stalk, especially with that many eyes. This time frame essentially is when you get the big amoebas of elk. The big amoeba of elk would be like 50, 60 to 2 or 300 elk that are all together. I really like hunting bulls in this timeframe and I've guided a lot of hunts for bull elk in late November, early December. And the classic thing that we always talk about is if you're bull hunting, you got to go to the top of the mountain. If you're cow hunting, hike to the top of the mountain, sit down and turn around and look at the flats, because that's where you'll oftentimes find the bigger amoebas of elk. Just last year we had this happen. I was scouting for my guy who was coming out and we got up there, I. I was hunting by myself. So I got up there on the mountain, I turned around, and it's so wide open in these big open winter ranges. I sat down, looked out there, and you could see in this one draw, just a whole mob of elk that were just bedded in the draw out in the flats and in the sage brush. I just ran the little line on onx from where I was sitting to wear those elk were. It was 6.7 miles. And you could see them in your binos because they stick out like a sore thumb. At first you'll think like, oh man, there's a bunch of cow, you know, cattle out there, a bunch of livestock out there. And then you get your spotter out. You're like, no, no, no, those are, those are elk. And then you got to figure out how you get close to them, which I think again, getting close to that many eyes in the winter time frame for cow elk hunting is the hardest part. So what you end up with is oftentimes if you're in some of these units, you'll find that the elk are just bedded out in the BLM land in the, the flat, you know, sage, brushy, grassy stuff. But there's also a lot of times where there's going to be a ton of private. And the cow elk tag that I had last year, we hunted it in January and essentially all the elk had conglomerated on a handful of private pieces. It's not that there's not elk to be chased, it's just that they're in huge chunks of. Of huge herds. And therefore, if they're not on the accessible pieces, you just have no chance at addressing the management perspective of this. Right. There's only so much you can do if they're on a place that doesn't allow hunting. Last year there was one herd that was basically flirting with this hunter access area that we had permission on. And unfortunately, they just didn't cross in a way that we could get access or get one killed. So then we went knocking on this other guy's door. We glassed these up for from the road and they were a couple miles back. But we knocked on the rancher door he, he wasn't having it. I think getting good access is going to be half the battle. When you're talking about late season, like December, January, cow elk hunting. I know in Montana there's some really good access areas that you can look at. I think oftentimes people will treat those as like, oh, this should be a slam dunk. What you will have to do though, whether it's a BMA or it's a walk in access or it's access. Yes. In Idaho or any of these other places, you also still have to consider the fact that they're getting pressure from other hunters. So that might mean that even though you have this suite access area that allows you to park up and sign in the slip or park in this area and go hunt it, you're still probably going to have to hike your butt back in there and look down into some different drainages and, and look into some different hidden pockets that are on the access areas. Because if they're standing out there wide in the open and it's November, December, January, when other cow elk hunters have their tags, they're probably getting run around and shot at from the truck. So you still have to be treating it like, where are the pockets that other people aren't hunting and where can they get pushed to? Doesn't matter if it's a December, January hunt or if it's one of these general season October hunts, you gotta be thinking about it. But the terrain looks differently when they're on the winter range. Obviously it's a lot more open and you can see them for miles. And then you're trying to get creative with how you can go get them killed. One of my favorite hunts that I did with a cow elk hunt a couple years ago, again, it was that, that unit that I've hunted a whole bunch, and we just kind of drove around in glass. My buddy Kane was out and he reached out a whitetail and we got a lot of snow that year. So we were like, let's go see if we can fill the freezer with the cow. And we drive out there and you can see them from the main highway and you're just like, how in the heck do we get there? Looking at my onyx here, I've got it pulled up. These elk were two miles from the main highway and you could see them back there. But there was kind of a patchwork of private land between us and them. So we studied onyx, we looked at the roads, and we got our butts a little bit closer, and then we still had about a mile hike to get down into this little valley where they had. Where they had parked it for the day. And then I ended up missing my shot, actually. But that shot that I took that I missed, it was about 500 yards from the. From the private boundary. And the elk that we had stocked, you know, I. I missed it at like, it was 420 or something. I just shot over its back. And I did that intentionally. I was. I was holding high on the shoulder. Look, let me back it up. I did not miss intentionally. Let me just clarify. That was not my goal, but I was trying to miss high. I was trying to high shoulder it because it was close enough to the. To the private land there that I just wanted to drop in his tracks. So I missed high. And so basically, like, they just ran right into private, and we're like, well, shoot. Time to wait for another snowstorm before they come back out or move around, do something different. That is such a classic Lacey's Nelk hunt example. I would just expect that to be more of the norm than not. One thing you will find, though, is a lot of people will just drive around and you'll be tempted to do this too in the late, late season cow elk hunt. So be attempted to just drive around and expect them to stand out like a sore thumb. But one time, it was in December, we were driving to Cowell hunt, and there was like a. This area that led down to a feed ground in Wyoming. And we were like, well, maybe there, you know, the feed ground area is shut off. You can't hunt that. But maybe we can catch some elk that are outside that boundary and see what's around there. So we're driving up this road, and we're just kind of bebopping around, looking out the window, and come up on the game warden, and he asks us, checks our tags, does the whole thing, and then he goes, by the way, did you see guys see those elk that you just drove by? We're like, what? No. And sure enough, down in the flat in the sage brush flat, the elk had bedded, and all you could see were their heads sticking out above the sage brush. And actually, the warden had told another hunter about these elk that were sitting in the sagebrush flat and they had gone into Stockham and. And blowing it all up. So those elk ran right out of private, and we're out of our lives for that day. So there's a couple themes here that I think you can pick up when you're thinking about how you craft a cow elk Hunt as you're getting ready for, you know, some opportunities that are happening right now, this fall, or opportunities that are happening into the future. One, if you're wanting really good archery elk hunting practice, getting a cow tag during late September is a good move. Getting a cow tag before the bulls have joined the cows, like, let's say late August, early September, that could be pretty. That could be pretty hit or miss. And I wouldn't consider that maybe quite as good of training for an archery bull hunt as I would the late September time frame. In late September, I would chase bugles. And I'm not trying to call those bulls in, but I'm trying to keep them talking so I can get close. Once you move into the October, early October timeframe, be thinking about the fact that all these elk had been pressured. There's bulls still with cows, their bugling is not as frequent. But I would really consider finding ways to get away from hunting pressure in the October time frame, the early October time frame. Going high on the mountain and checking these high alpine basins because elk will still be up there before the big snowstorms have hit. The mid and late October time frame, just to recap, that is pretty tough. It's pretty tough because until you get snowstorms, elk will be in the thick timber. They'll be in the thickest kind of areas to hunt and glass. So it's really tough to consistently get into them unless you've got a unit that lays out well for glassing into a burn or glassing into aspens that the leaves have fallen off of, or glassing these big open units, like in a desert unit like Wyoming. Once you move into November and December, you're going to get bigger herds of elk that are showing up on the winter range and oftentimes a stage right above the proper winter range in the foothills. You're going to be glassing long distance, and you might still find a handful of herds that are in that, you know, 20, 30 animal range. You're going to be making big stocks and you're going to oftentimes be working around private in that December, November time frame. And then that's especially the case in December onwards when you're hunting for, like, a winter range elk. The winter range elk can be some of the most frustrating because they're in giant groups. Uh, you will have hard times getting access to them, whether it's access because there's so much snow your vehicle can't get around, or it's access to private land where they've holed up in their sanctuaries. But if you stay consistent with it, if you stick with it, you can usually end up turning up an elk that crosses a line and gets onto some accessible ground. I just would not expect to go out there and have a two day elk hunt for cows unless you've got some primo access that's lined up and you know that the elk will load into there at some point in the year. Now there are some important pieces to cow elk hunting that are a little bit different than bull elk hunting or deer hunting that I think are important to think about when you are trying to be sure that you're doing a good job of cow cunning in a bunch of different facets. One of those things is when you're setting up for a shot, it is really easy to want to just shoot the first cow that you see. But nine times out of ten when you're cow hunting, they're in herds and you're going to have to take some extra time to make sure that you wait for a cow to step away from a herd and present you with a shot where you're not shooting two at one time. And especially can be a common mistake once you get into the the big amoebas of elk that occur in maybe late November, but definitely in December and January. Another piece of the equation here is you're still shooting a 500 pound animal. You gotta be still thinking about ways to get this elk out in quarters. And you know, a lot of people will talk about using a sled or some other sort of way to get it out in the snowy seasons. That can work pretty good. But also just be thinking about how much physical toll it's going to take. When you're talking about knee deep snow and trudging across these giant sage flats or whatever the case is, you it, it is worthwhile having a pack out crew for a cow elk hunt as much as it is for a bull hunt. So make sure that you're thinking about how you're going to get these critters out. The other nice thing about cow elk hunts though is oftentimes the rifle hunts are occurring in later parts of the fall, so you're going to have plenty of time to get that thing out without it spoiling. Especially if you can make sure it's bagged up and it's away from birds and that kind of thing that are going to get after it. Coyotes, bears, I guess in a lot of places. So be sure that you're thinking about how you're going to be able to Take care of this cow, too, once you do get it down. The other thing is, a lot of people, like I said, they, they talk about having sleds. I have never had great luck sledding an animal an elk out. A friend of mine shot a cow elk in. It was like a late October snowstorm, and we brought a sled down in there and then realized, like, pulling the sled out of this drainage where he shot the elk was way more effort than just if we had hiked it out on our backs. It ended up being a pretty, pretty miserable pull out of there to get that elk out of the basin. So, you know, sometimes I will say I ended up riding the sled down the ridgeline on the snow, and that was pretty fun. So maybe it helps you get into the elk faster. If you're riding your sled, bring a saucer, you know, so you can ride it down, but then just put the saucer in your back and hike out to meet just like you would a normal pack out on your. On your frame backpack. Um, the other thing that you can be thinking about is how you can anticipate herd movement. Cows oftentimes are going to be either stuffing themselves into some timber or they go into private. And again, I know that you've. We've talked about this a lot just in setting it up, but I just wanted to emphasize that one way you can get a cow elk is by trying to watch where the. The herd is going and either a be setting an ambush in ahead of them, waiting for them to come by, whether that's coming out of the timber or leaving an ag field, going to bed, or you can also just make sure that you. You try to cut them off. It's awfully hard if you got deep snow to cut off a whole herd of elk, but if they're feeding slowly and you can see where they're going, you can kind of anticipate where the whole herd is going. And especially if you get there in time to catch the last couple, that also can solve your problem of having them bunched up. When they're on the move, they usually line out in the string, and that can make them a lot easier to pick one out and make a clean shot. The other thing, and just to emphasize this point, a lot of people, unless you're September archery, elk hunting, I would leave my calls at home and be okay with it. I mean, sure, you might find some situations where you can use them in, in maybe early October, but for the most part, this is a glassing and it's a tracking and it's, you know, an ambushing type operation. Very little calling is going to happen for cow elk hunt. So if you're looking for a cow kind to get into some bugling bulls, you're going to be really needing to make sure you're more in that September timeframe. Otherwise I think you'll be pretty disappointed. All right, that does it for this week's cow hunting playbook. I know it's just a short episode, but I wanted to get this out while people were asking me about it. Again, if you're listening to some bull elk hunting podcasts, you could do worse than to go run those playbooks to cow elk hunt. Especially when you're talking about some of the the local ideas on how to hunt elk in later rifle seasons. Gosh, if locals are telling you there's elk in a place, I usually assume that they're probably talking about the big cow herds that are easy to find. And I would go hunt those elk. Okay, if you have more questions or would like to pick my brain more about this, I'm gonna just punt it to the AI Hunt buddy. My hunt buddy is free for everyone to use during the fall season, and I hope you all get good use out of it. A ton of people have been asking questions and getting responses, and I'm also going back and checking as I can and making sure that there's not any bad information given out. So appreciate everyone for giving that a shot. It's been kind of fun to see how everyone can get a hand here, and especially when I'm out of service, people can get good answers without me being able to respond. So that's awesome. The other thing I'd like to let you know as far as housekeeping is concerned is I have revamped my booking process for the 2026 season. There's like a Google form that's on the website, so if you'd like to book a 2026 tag strategy, a session, or a hunt plan, you can do that now on the HuntWestPlanning.com website and you can go in there and just let me know what you're looking forward to. I'm going to do 50 deposits down to hold a spot for a specific hunt. As most of you know by this time, I don't book two hunters in the same hunt in the same year. So it's going to be important for people who have high aspirations next year who want to get something planned to book early so that you get that spot reserved if you want an extra hand making sure that you make the most of your hunt when you get out here. Okay? That's all I have for you for this week. I hope that you all are having so much fun out there in the woods. For those of you who have been out already, I can't wait to hear how it all goes. For those of you who are just getting geared up and getting ready to head out of the woods, good luck. I'm rooting for you and I would love to hear how it goes. So feel free to reach out. Jaden Huntwest.net or you can shoot me a DM on any of the social media platforms. We're there too. Thanks again for listening and I hope you guys have a great, great fall. 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. Sa.