Ep. 108: September Recap and Listener Q&A
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And we're back with another episode of cutting the distance podcast today, Jason Phelps and I reunite after a long September, short September. How, how was your September? It was awesome. Um, as long, the greatest month of the year, but it's always, it, it, it seems like it goes by so fast, but this, this year, um, you know, I had two different hunts and, uh, bouncing back and forth between Washington and New Mexico. And it was, it was good. Um,

The elk were tough, tougher than normal. We'll get into it in a little bit. I think that I don't want to be that guy with my tinfoil hat on, but I'm convinced the rut is getting later every year. And I used to be the opposite. I used to tell everybody like they always got a rut at the same time. It's based on daylight and herd health. And like, man, something has got me convinced that it's getting later.

I'm going to write that down and bring that up again and prove you wrong someday. No, I have to agree to that at some point, to some degree. No, it was good. How about you? I know we've talked about it a little bit. You started off with a bang on your son's hunt, and then we both had a little delay there the second quarter of September, and then we kind of grinded it out from the 15th all the way through the end there.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It started off awesome. Uh, good and bad. Um, I like to be in, in the September woods with a purpose. And when your kid shoots a bull on the second day and we anticipated a lot more hunting for the first quarter of September, then that kind of freed up some time. Um, I was, you know, I did make it out and did some scouting trips and whatnot. Um, and it took back, took my bear rifle for a walk a few times, uh,

But, but it's not the same as having a tag in your pocket or a hunt with someone that has a tag and you're, you know, you're trying, you're trying hard. You're trying to call bulls in, you're trying to get close and have some fun, but, um,

But then, yeah, like you say, the second half of the, of the season was good, you know, two weeks in a, in a whole new unit to me and my pals Bradley and Cody. And we, and we recorded a podcast on this. I've already probably listened to it, but it started off with a bang, but then, you know, it kind of partway, it kind of fizzled, started fizzling. And I feel like,

What you just said about the rut starting later, I feel like it started pretty early. Like we, we got the tail end of the, of the goodie out of the rut where we were at. And then by the last handful of days, it was, you know, the last three or four days, it was felt like post rut, you know, the woods were quiet, um,

No bulls bugling on their own. You had to try real hard and be real close to an elk to get them to bugle. You wouldn't get those ones that were half a mile away ripping bugles, you know? So, yeah.

Yeah, it was, it was interesting. Um, you know, going from New Mexico where I really felt the rut was late. Um, and man, even for a giant unit we were in, I, I have a love hate relationship with public land. Like you like to be out there doing it on public land, which is all I've really ever hunted for elk.

But man, even with a giant unit and 250 tags plus or minus the landowner tags, there are a lot of people everywhere. You know, people driving side by sides where they shouldn't be, you know, and you would get on a bull one morning and feel like you had it all to yourself. And maybe you just discovered that bull and you wanted to keep kind of putting pressure on them. And then the next whether it was that evening or the next morning and all of a sudden you have five guys around you.

you know, coming in from different angles and you're just like, gosh, dang, you know, it's, it's part of the, the love hate relationship. You know, you love to challenge yourself, but gosh, sometimes I wish it was just you versus the elk and you had the whole place to yourself, but it's part of the game.

Um, and, uh, you know, we would have had, in my opinion, you know, read enough situations and being able to hear it in the bull's voice kind of when they break or when they're coming in, I think we would have had some, um, you know, more opportunities there in New Mexico. Um, but, uh, just, it's tough everywhere we went, even on my special tag, you know, I did have a couple of days where I knew I was the only one that could hunt the unit, but

All the good and easy spots are occupied. And so I found myself just looking at the maps and being like, man, I hate, I personally hate hiking up this trail that's 2,500 feet elevation, but at least I know it's me versus the elk there. And so, you know, there was a lot of that like mental game kind of coming in on my hunt, even though it was a pretty good tag. I still had to kind of, you know, work harder than I wanted to on these public land hunts. But that's, I guess, why we all love them.

Yeah. Yeah. I kind of run into the same thing. And this area we, we hunted, this was new, new to us, um, completely different kind of, uh, landscape than what we normally hunt. You know, you have the low desert floors, you have the, the 10,000 foot peaks and the elk live in that band of elevation right around that seven, seven to nine, but typically around 8,500 feet. So the air is thin. Yeah.

And a lot of times, you know, you're, you get out and if you're not going to hunt from the truck, you're going to walk for a mile or two in an area. You're not going to see an elk or you'll see some scat from last spring, but you're not going to encounter any elk low. You know, you're going to have to hike, hike, hike. And like you say, you're gonna have to climb a couple thousand feet vertical, get up there.

So it's definitely different. We backpacked in, which is kind of out of character for me. You know, you know, I've done it in the past, but I kind of like a nice truck camp where I can sleep on a cot because I sleep so much better. But man, we the first the first couple nights, two or three nights we camped out.

Backpacked in. I'm like, ah, we're going super light. The weather is supposed to be pretty good. Taking my Kefaru Super Tarp and a piece of Tyvek. We're going to lay on that. Cameraman Dusty and I, we're going to share a shelter. Phelps, you and I have shared that same shelter one time in Colorado. So, you know, it's very spacious, real roomy. Yeah, yeah.

you get to know each other pretty well, rubbing shoulders all night. You don't, you don't both want to roll to the inside at the same time. Cause you might become uncomfortable. Yeah. You might have a moment. Well, this especially, you know, we had a hard time finding somewhere flat delay. So it's like, it was kind of flat, but I know every morning we'd wake up, I'd almost be right in the middle of the, of the shelter and dusty was almost hanging out the side of it.

Um, which wouldn't be a big deal normally, but we had rainstorms like two nights in a row. Like it wasn't just a, you know, a nice little pitter patter. It was full on gale force winds and just rain like a mofo all night, two nights in a row. And then on the third day it rained part of the night and, and, uh,

most of the morning. So it was just, it was, it was brutal. So we stayed pretty dry inside there, except for the condensation inside there, but, um, it made it challenging to get in and out of that little shelter and not get all muddy. And, um, but, uh, but I will say, uh, during that time, you know, we had bad weather, but the hunting was pretty good. You know, the first day we, we called in a couple of bulls and, and then had, it was on another bull and then

Everything was going good. We're like, man, we're going to probably tag out here in the first couple of days and then be going home with what are we going to do with all this time on our hands?

Um, but then as, as, as the days ticked by, you know, like, oh God, we got so much time to get this done. And as you always think, you know, and then slowly the elk sightings and encounters start slowing down and you change spots a couple of times. And, and, um, the first spot we were in, we didn't have a lot of people there. We did encounter some towards it. You know, I think we spent five or six days in there. Um,

We didn't, we seen somebody the last couple of days, but then we relocated to a place that had more elk. And it was a little easier terrain, but with easy terrain comes lots of folks. And elk were easy to see, you know, they were, you could see them walking across hillside. You could phone scope them, whatever. I actually did just scope, I guess we were using an all in digiscope thing for our,

For our phone. But anyhow, you know, it was easy to see him easy to make a plan. But then anytime you try to execute on the plan, you go over and where you couldn't see it. It's like, oh, well, there's somebody, somebody else is already on them. Or you would get on them and somebody else would come join you. I guess that's kind of the nature of the game, public language.

I'm not really used to hunting an area with that many elk. There was a lot of elk there, I will say. I'm used to hunting areas where, man, you got to scratch pretty hard to find some elk, but you don't see too many people either. So lots of elk, lots of people. So it was that kind of a place. But in the end, we came out of there. None of us tagged an elk. None of us tagged one.

The other guys had to go home a couple days early. Dusty and I held on to the bitter end. And it was just, by the time the last day came and went, it was just a ghost town. You know, we saw a bull first thing in the morning. We climbed up to where they were at. Could not get on that thing. Could not get him to vocalize. When we seen him, I bugled at him from a distance. He just looked up and then went back to feeding. So, which was weird, you know, he...

We never did hear a lot of bulls bugling on their own. You know, just, you know how you get those bulls just kind of bugling, even just the middle of the day, just laying in their bed, just, we didn't hear any of that. And then the funny part was, man, these things were pretty call shy. And I don't know that they thought we were hunters. Maybe they did.

But I think they're call shy to each other. I think they carve out their six to eight cows and they're like, I'm good with my six or eight cows. I don't need 30. And if, if another bull gets close by, we're gone. We started calling to this one bull and he ran off and we give him tons of space. We didn't push on him at all. And he left, kept going, kept going. Next thing you know, we, we finally, he goes out of your sight. So we,

Go over there about a quarter mile away. Next time we see him, he's crossed the other drainage and running out into the desert. Like he's just like changing zip codes to defend these cows, I guess. He bugled the whole way. He wasn't like, you know, scared of hunters. I don't think he was just like, nope, I don't want to fight. And that kind of seemed like when we first got there.

seemed to be a little bit callable, but then it kind of turned into where, man, they would kind of just, nope, we don't want to have any confrontations. We're good. I mean, not to turn this into a Maverick versus a pink, but did you at least try the pink call to see if that would have... I mean, I'm assuming it would have changed all of these...

around for you? Well, I will say as much as I hate to say it, my guys, you know, Cody, he had a pink one. He tried, didn't hear any replies to it. Bradley, he had your, your go-to the, the green and a pink and a Maverick. He had a little bit, he had a hodgepodge of calls in his pouch. And, you know, every time anything, it wasn't a Maverick. We would get no replies. It was weird. They're probably coming in silent. It,

is what was going on they weren't bugling and running they were they were on their way they couldn't catch their breath to bugle while they were running in so fast could have been could have been you know um you know because they know you know elk know what a dominant force of maverick is they're like nope no that's way too tough for us oh that pink thing i'm gonna go check that out that it's an inviting call it's it's a it's a herd it's a herd call

Oh, it's a, it's a welcoming. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so are you a big in this open country? Are you a, are you an advocate for hunters orange? So, you know, if somebody is over there before you, you head over that way. I am a hundred percent. And this is funny that you say that I was glassing up these elk from like two miles away. I'm like, oh yeah. I watched these like a pretty good herd disappear into the timber and,

We're watching two or three different herds here and different hillsides. And, and then I see a couple of cows coming out and then I see him walking across the hillside. And I look, I'm like, Oh, what the heck? There's some, there's blaze orange on that hillside. And then they're going to, this guy wouldn't blaze orange. And these cows are just going to like meet. They're like on the same contour line. I don't even think they even knew it.

And, uh, they get close and pretty soon I'd watch them blow out of there. But, but it was nice to be able to see that guy over there. It was like, cause I was thinking I'm going to go over there and climb up and try to find that herd where those two cows popped out. Oh, there's probably a big bull in there. And after I seen where that dude was, I'm like, well, I guess I won't think I'll probably not hunt that spot.

Yeah. Um, orange, we on, we'll get to it a little bit, but orange is always a, if you have a little chunk of it or something bright, whether it's white. Um, when I shot my bowl, we walked around and left a guy because it was a big brush, like around home, we have noble Christmas trees. I don't know if that resonates with all of our listeners, but we have Christmas tree areas where it's like either gets planted in Douglas fir, which gets real bushy real quick or nobles you can see and do for about 20 years, you know, up in the higher stuff. And we

We shot it in a kind of an overgrown noble patch way up high and we left a guy and the orange really helped us be able to like, cause it was so brushy, you know, and elk's being big and tall and yellow. You can see, but when we're over there in our camo, like the orange and the bright colors definitely helped us like communicate across the canyon where you didn't have cell service or anything, you know, to communicate, to get on the right spot. So it's a definitely a, a good little tip to have something that's bright aside from the joke of being able to see where other hunters are going to mess your hunt up.

Um, you know, I might, um, if I have to have somewhere like that, there's a lot of people again, I just might throw on a blaze orange hat. I got that blaze orange loophole hat I could put on and then people will be like, oh, dang it. And then I feel like they associate like ignorance or stupidity with a guy wearing an orange hat in September. So that'd really keep them out of there. Like, oh God, that guy might shoot me. You build a bunch of like scarecrows up there all over. So it's like, oh, there's a guy in that range with the orange hat.

Yeah. Just take a box. I'll have the, the folks at loophole send me a box of hats, orange hats. I'll just plant them all over the hillside. You could be one of those like geocaching eventually like after season, you can give everybody the coordinates and then go win a loophole hat, but get a free help. Yeah. Until then you're just holding your spot. That's a great idea, Phelps. I'm glad you brought that up. We got some marketing synergy going here. Great ideas. Um,

Another pro tip, which I'm going to bring up now, is hiking steep, nasty trails is better in the dark.

don't do it in the daylight. Um, I hiked the one trail in the daylight and it was the most miserable thing I ever did, but I do it in the dark and you can't see the elevation. It's just step after step. You can only see your feet. And I'm convinced that whether I'm just weak mentally or something, but not being able to see the hill I'm climbing, it didn't feel like it was anything. And then you do it in the day and you're like, this is miserable. So that's another pro tip. Do all your tough hiking in the dark.

I agree. I feel like it's hard to tell your progress up the mountain and you cannot anticipate, you know, what's coming. You can't be like, oh God, here comes that tough section. You just have to like one foot in front of the other. And then the passing of a time is kind of, for me, it's kind of, it's hard to judge whenever I'm just hiking in the dark and I'm not looking at like a watch or anything. Yeah. Yeah. And.

And to add on to my pro tip, the camera guy. So I had hunted a little bit before early September. And then I came back with a different camera guy and a different buddy that was running the camera. And on switchback number two, he pulled out his phone to look at Onyx. I said, do not look at your phone. The rest is like, this is like switchback number two out of 18. Just watch.

walk. It's deflating, you know, to see that you're only on switchback two of 18. So, um, it's best just to be in the dark one foot in front of the other, take a little break when you get tired and we'll be up in the, you know, above tree line and we'll, we'll have knocked the 2,500 feet off real quick. But those are, those are my pro tips. A little out of,

out of context here, but I wanted to throw those in is some of these areas where we were trying to get away from people, you know, seem to seem to help made things a little easier if, you know, if nothing else, just mentally getting to the areas where the elk were. Yeah. So tell us about your bowl in Washington. So,

for, we've talked about a couple of times, but just for those that may not. So I drew a hoof rot incentive. Um, if you haven't watched me and Cal, um, we just put an episode on a meter over hoof rot. If you don't know what it is, haven't heard of it. I highly encourage you to go watch the episode. Me and Cal just did on her fraught, uh, filmed in my backyard. Um,

You know, hunters and non hunters can't agree on many things, but we can all agree that hoof rot is horrible. Um, heart wrenching, just tough to watch these elk. Um, so go watch that. But the reason I bring that up is I killed a bull last year with a fraud breakdown. Just quick, real quick. What what's hoof rot on an elk? So I'm not going to get into science cause I don't know it, but basically what happens is the hooves start to elongate and what we call elf shoe.

So you'll start to get a hoof that deforms on its own. It'll elf shoe out. It gets very long, skinny and brittle. And then it'll slowly start to break that hoof off and work its way up into the meat and into the bone. Eventually, uh, very painful. The elk all walk with a visible limp. Um, some of the elk in this episode have pretty extreme cases of, of hoof rot and they won't even put the hoof on the ground. Um, uh,

if you watch it's almost like these crows and ravens know that that oak doesn't have a long time left like you'll watch them in the field and the crows are hanging around the ones with hoof rot whether it's the smell whether it's the what it's got a pungent and for lack of any other sensory idea i can come up with has like a human waste type stench to it but very pungent and like

very widespread smell. It's just, it's devastating. You know, and some of the bulls we've killed with it, if they've got like a damaged hoof on the right side of the body, the left antler almost always grows deformed 100% of the time. If they're injured on their, if they've got a hoof rot on their left side, the right horn will be damaged.

you know, non-typical or misformed. That's kind of, it's, it's, it's tough. And we've had it for 25 years and I feel like we've screamed from the mountaintops locally, but nobody really seems to care. And now that it's in the Oregon and the Northern California, and you guys have also got cases, confirmed cases in Idaho, you know,

I hate that it took a little bit of a spread or more of a widespread, but I think it's starting to get some attention finally. And we're going to have to fix it. And I don't know if there is a solution. That's the scary part for me.

Right. Well, I think, you know, I think who cares is like the, the ground, the grassroots sportsmen, they care, but I feel like sometimes our, our, our cries for help kind of fall on deaf ears a little bit, but I know Washington state, they're starting to like, you know, study this stuff at like WSU and Pullman other places as well. Hopefully they can figure this thing out. Anecdotally, this is something I've never really told anybody. And I, and it just kind of triggered a memory for me when you told me the

these, these hooves kind of look like an elf shoe or whatever. My dad was telling about a big buck, a friend of his shot back in the 1950s in Idaho, back in the Idaho back country. And guy shot a big buck and he said it was the craziest thing. He said that in his mind, you know, it was an old, old, the buck was so old that his, his hooves had kind of grown out and turned up on the ends like an elf shoe. But that was a white tail deer though, back in the 1950s. So I,

I don't know, man. I don't know if that's even related, but yeah. Like I need to be careful because I'm not a biologist. I'm not a scientist. I'm not, I'm none of the above. I'm just an observer, right? That pays probably more attention than most, but we didn't have it until the nineties. It didn't exist on the landscape. So it leads me to believe just being a free thinker, a guy that has a scientific type brain, like what changed, right?

And you're like, well, we, you know, environmental pressures not to burn clear cuts anymore. Um,

like i say i'm just speculating here nothing scientific more aggressive forest practices both herbicide and pesticide fertilizers right elker browsers you go to our clear cuts now and they are literally a brown sheet of brush with green fur trees sticking out of it you know there was there's this race to harvest a tree faster than we used to um there you know is it a is it a

death by a thousand slices? Is it a combination of no burning herbicide, pesticide, like their immune system weakening so they can no longer fight this off? Because my understanding is the majority of these hoof rots, there's like 40 different strains from what I've read and the

They already live in the soil. So it's like, well, if that's the case, then they were able to kind of fight it off for thousands of years. Why did all of a sudden, you know, is it a weakening of the immune system? Like I said, I'm just speculating, but I don't know what we do now to fix it. And it's like, now that they've picked it up and they do carry it, it's transmittable, it's communicable. Like, can we get a handle on it? Do you have to kill everyone with it? Like, what's the...

is there a fix, you know? And so I'm just worried for the health of, of our herd. And this is not scientific data, but I've told you, and I've told a lot of people like growing up, I would have put the densities of elk here in my backyard against anywhere in the world, just for sheer numbers. You're not going to kill a trophy. You're not going to kill, but as far as like a quality elk hunt where you're on legal elk, it used to be as good as anywhere in the world. And I would say we're at probably 20% or less of the elk we used to have when I was growing up.

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It's about finding a place to hunt, fish, explore, or simply sit by a campfire and listen to the crickets. So head over to land.com today to turn one day into today. Because trust me, there's nothing quite like the feeling of standing on your own piece of earth. Well, one thing that kind of resonated with me when you're talking about this and from what I've heard over the years, you know, like you said, elk are browsers. They're eating the brush. They're eating grass.

Um, little tiny little twigs and whatever else. But, um, I know human beings are not elk, but let's, let's look at this at a human being perspective, all the bullshit and the stuff they're putting in our food supply today.

Like a lot of our food is poisoned, right? There's a lot of chemicals and bullshit in our food today. And look at all the problems and the sickness humans have today that they didn't have 40 years ago. Because the food supply, what we're ingesting, little bits of bullshit every day, it's causing all these different problems, hormone problems, all these different sicknesses. So to me,

If elk are eating little bits of poison all the time, it's going to cause a problem. It's just common sense, honestly. Yeah, I agree. I just can't say my medical opinion. I don't have any of those biology degrees, but I agree. Common sense, timelines adding up.

like i'm gonna leave it at that like i've got i've got some other concerns um i'm so thankful wsu's picking it up but i wish i'm just going to say i wish there was some private research being done just because of the way money flows through our state um grant funding um i just you know i always joke like if elon musk had to solve hoof rot we'd we'd have the the research done in a month we'd have the solution in a month and it would be implemented over in the you know in the following month and we'd be out of this in three months it's just

I just wish there was no strings attached to money to grant funding. And there might not be. I'm speaking a little bit out of turn, but I do believe that I don't understand why there's no...

Um, like the progress isn't being made quicker, I guess. Like I say, I, I don't want to undermine what WSU is doing in their research and, you know, they've got a prestigious vet program and everybody there's experts. I just feel like it's 2024, like things can move faster, you know?

And I think they have their hypotheses of what the problem is, but, you know, sometimes proving it without a doubt, a hundred percent, you know, through the scientific manner, you know, that that's accepted, you know, the standard is probably so difficult, you know, like all these common sense things says, yeah, that's the, that's what causes it. But proving it like, where's the proof in the pudding for to, to, to have action taken at a state level to, to ban something.

Certain practices, they probably have to be so cut and dried and beyond reproach. They have to have so much information. So whether it's grant funding or just like we have to prove this beyond reasonable doubt, just like anything, it seems like scientific. Everything has to be proven. Yeah.

So yeah, that was a little extra background on the hoof rot, but I killed a bull with hoof rot last year. And WDFW working with WSU are providing what was called incentive tags. So if you kill an elk with visible hoof rot, you were supposed to cut the hooves off way down by the dew claws, basically just at that bottom knuckle, put all four hooves in a bag, submit them with your GMU data kill, some information, and they would pick

picks, you know, 19 of the people that submitted. And I was lucky. I can remember I was at my daughter's fast pitch game in Napa Vine and the email ding through the, Hey, you've been selected for one of the hoof rot tags.

And then there's a little bit of luck involved that, you know, out of the 19, you were picked in order. So I happened to be number five out of 19. And I thought for sure the unit I wanted to hunt would be gone in the first five, but fortunately it got to me and there was a tag available. So I ended up with an incentive tag for a pretty good area, um, in Washington, um,

And this tag allowed me to hunt September 1st to December 31st with any weapon as long as there wasn't an active season. If there was an active bow season, I had to switch to my bow. If there was a muzzleloader season, I switched to my muzzleloader, which was fine. So basically a multi-season tag, but I can use a rifle if there's no other seasons. I had the New Mexico hunt from the 15th to the 24th, which really kind of bit into some of the real good days of

of being there like I could have started hunt with a rifle on the 20th so I didn't show up until the 26th again so we've talked about the beginning um the unit's very migratory for the bulls the cows seem to live in there the bulls seem to come from adjacent units uh nothing big you know a 270 type six point and so I elected to not I was going to come back um

and we just struggled to find legal bulls the the day i got back on the 26th i think we ran through nine bugling bulls got to put eyes on all of them and they were all

Well, there was one little six point. Everything else was basically five point or better. You know, we either called them in, you know, a lot of this unit's burnt, like moved to see them. Just couldn't find a big bull the following day. You got on three or four bulls, all five points sat on me and Tyson. My buddy sat on a growler all day long, thought, oh, this is the big one. Finally, you know, I had some decent five point satellites and he came out and he was he was a seven by six, but real small framed and use some kickers to get there.

Dang it, just not what I want. But I knew the next day I had to switch back to my muzzleloader because that muzzleloader season had kicked off on the 28th of September. So back to my muzzleloader I go and just kind of weeding through bowls, got trapped in what I call a meth trap.

Um, on that one, I was going to try a new area. I'm going to, this kind of surprised me. And usually I'm a little more aware than this. Like you're driving up a road, you know, early in the morning on the weekend. And I'm going to, I'm going to diverge here for just two minutes and then I'll get back on, on the story.

You know, an area that's, it's got some, you know, people around, you're close to the bigger cities and, you know, a big bonfire is burning at four in the morning and U-Haul vans kind of parked everywhere. Like what the hell is a U-Haul van doing up in the woods? Um, what, and backed up to these big bonfires, like a normal person wouldn't park their car that close to a fire. That's huge. Um,

um, just, just weird things. Well, we had passed two of these U-Hauls backed up to a fire and there was a corner coming up and I could see like reflectors on a rig and like, Oh, it's just hunting season, right? Somebody might be pulled over here. There's a clear cut. Um,

Well, we get pulled up right next to that rig as I'm going around the corner and somebody had cut down a bunch of trees on the inside of that. And now I'm a little nervous because I've got, I'm parked right next to somebody that obviously they're not hunting. They've been sleeping in their truck because there's dew all over the, you know, moisture all over the inside of their windows. I'm now pulled up side by side against these guys. And I've now got two U-Haul vans 50 yards behind me on the road where I'm stuck in the middle of the road with like nowhere to turn around.

And I'm like, this is, I thankfully, and I don't know if anything would have happened or not, or maybe they just didn't want to mess with us. Um, I had a buddy with a vehicle that was following me up. He had to go down the hill that night. He was going to hunt with me. So it was nice. We had two vehicles, multiple people. We were able to kind of get turned around and get out of there. But when we got back down, we kind of talked about it and we're like, I think they're probably cooking, cooking meth or something on the other side of the trees. And

And then they're using those guys as lookouts to let them know, like, Hey, you know, cops or somebody is coming up the hill. Yeah. But it was a white. Yeah. Yeah. It was our motor home there. So, uh, anyways, we, we didn't get to hunt our, our spot and, you know, there was a ton of hikers on the weekends, uh,

So once again, we just I kept finding myself like the best plan I could come up with in my head was to hike back up the steep nasty trail Nobody was hunting up there. The hikers don't seem to like that trail. It's you know, it's too much work for the views that they're looking for So we went back and and kind of kept crushing that one area we knew there was a decent a

you know, a couple of decent bulls in there. Um, and just kind of kept hammering that area. Like eventually it was going to have to happen. You know, the rut was still going on, but it was just these smaller bulls were running the herds. Um, and so, uh, joined up with, uh, you know, my buddy, Matt, um, Schmitz, uh, and he brought a buddy and then we, my camera guy got sick. So I had to reload. I was in complete disarray there for a bit. We reloaded and went back up the nasty trail. And, um,

Had some bulls going that morning, just got up to the Alpine, had good wind. And we were calling back and forth to a bull and he slowly just, we didn't push him. He just slowly wanted to go up and over the ridge to bed on the north side. We had about 800 more feet to go. So we, we be bopped up the trail and got back above them.

you know, it was still early morning shadows, especially on the North side. So we knew we had to be a Ridge away, um, got them to, to kind of, to, to re, you know, respond and, and kind of get the game started again. And, um, there were two bulls being going back and forth. They had kind of, they were kind of doing their own thing, fighting for the herd. And, and we kind of use that time to slip in, um, and get a shot. And as I mentioned earlier, they were

They were in a bunch of Christmas trees with very limited ability to shoot out and very limited ability to shoot out when they were standing in the right spot on the other side. So it was like, I felt like we had a 5% chance that number one, the bull is going to get close enough to shoot with the muzzleloader.

And number two, that like when he did get out in the open, I would be sitting in the exact spot that I could shoot through like the little teeny hole that I had and have a rest and do everything I needed to. So Matt was able to keep that bull bugling and cranking for most of the morning. And then as the morning gets, you know, a little bit on 930, I don't know if you've noticed this, but I think most hunters will like a lot of times your very first bugle, you get a bull to respond, right? He'll respond.

And then if you keep bugling, he will slowly stop answering you. Like he doesn't want to respond to you every 20 seconds or 30 seconds. And, but then if you wait for five or 10 minutes, bugle again, he'll typically rip right back off. Um, so we had, but we'd kept them pretty active for,

an hour, hour and a half as he was rounding cows and pushing the five point off. And we were kind of just waiting our time for him to see a lot of times you couldn't see him 90% of the time, 95% of the time he was behind trees. He would just disappear for long amounts of time. And then you'd see a cow bus back out of one of the openings like, all right, he's going to be following her and played that game for a while. But

he finally started to slow down, even though we were still seeing a move over there. He just wasn't interested in responding to the bull across the Canyon anymore, you know? Um, and this is why we talk certain bulls want certain things. I would crank out the easy estrus and he would answer instantly on that. He wanted to hear that, that mature buzzy cow call. And so every time he wanted to like, make sure he hadn't went up and over, cause there were ways he could slip out of that Canyon. Um, we would hit him with the easy estrus and he'd respond. Um,

So we sat there for a while, knew he was still there. Um, ended up like, you know, stacking one pack sideways, one stack on the, you know, one pack on its end. So we could try to get like a real stable rest. And, um, finally the bull slipped up and came out and stood in an opening for long enough for me to get a good range, me to make a little adjustment on my scope, um, and, and get a shot. So, um,

it was, you know, these new muzzleloaders are a little bit more accurate and got a little more range than what I'm used to. And so we, we were able to shoot this bull, you know, across a small Canyon. It wasn't a big Canyon by any means, you know, a pretty, pretty decent muzzleloader shot. And, uh, we seen him take off, but it was so brushy. We got to see him maybe for two or three steps and then disappeared. And so one thing I, you know, to, to explain to the listeners, one thing we noticed that we, we knew we got a good hit. We rewatched the video, but

a cow that was with him stood above his location for over an hour looking into his location. So if you ever see that, that's an indicator that that cow, you know, either seen him fall, heard something, knows he's down there and, and is kind of unwilling to leave him, which gave us some, you know, gave us some confidence that he was dead right there or in that pile of brush. And the second thing was the, the remaining cows after they heard the shot over about the next 15 to 20 minutes, uh,

gathered up and left aside from this one cow that was watching his position very you know intently not moving her eyes for over an hour and a half the other cows all walked by the pile of brush he went into or the group of trees within about 20 yards and we were all thinking like all right if he's still got anything left he's going to get up and follow these cows or if he's not hit um

we kind of watched it and all those cows walk up to the ridgeline and he doesn't follow. So, you know, two pretty good signs. A cow that's watching his location is, in my opinion, he's either over there laying wounded and he can't get up or move anymore or he's laying over there dead. And then when the cows left without him, it's like, all right, that's another great indicator that

you know, he's likely not on his feet anymore. Um, and we were just patient. We actually sat and watched that group of trees for over an hour to make sure, you know, you know, put our, put our binos on tripods and really just like tried to pick it apart. We're looking for any little horn, um, kept an eye on it. And then when we, some other tips, um,

I'd like to share is it's very brushy over there. So we took multiple pictures of that hillside before we went over drew lines, like from indicators, like, all right, what's our best indicators over there? Like, all right, there's a clear Ridge. We drew a line down that, like I drew on my picture while I was over there, like it should be here. We should have this yellow tree, you know, whatever it may be, you know, drew really good pictures. And then one thing that, you know, not just giving, you know, one of our partners a plug is I've got the new loophole.

5,500. I don't want to get the name wrong. The new loophole 5,500 RX, I believe. Is that? Yeah. I don't think it's a 5,000. I think it's a 50. It's RX 5,000. 5,000. Okay. That's why I didn't remember if it was a 5,500 to the 5,000, but it's got the ability to go into their app and I would just pin, you know, the elk. And we did it from multiple angles and multiple shots and, and,

It was pretty accurate. So you zap the range finder on the spot and it communicates via Bluetooth to your OnX and puts a place marker on the map. Yep, it gives you a loophole pin. So within the app, you just say pin next.

Um, so it knows that your very next range will be, um, it'll transfer you to on X. It, it, it gives you three dots for a little bit, why it's thinking and calibrating or, you know, figuring out the coordinates and that drops a pin on there. Um,

I will advise, and I think there's been some updates. I've got a pretty strong magnet in my fob, and I'm convinced that you get better results when that thing isn't very close to your chest. I believe that even from your chest to your eye is close enough. So the technology works great, but I would advise if you're trying to get a very accurate shot and brush like this, maybe take off your chest harness.

When you're calibrating the compass and everything inside the range finder, make sure you take that chest harness off and put it a long ways away. Yeah, they even recommend stay away from your vehicle, anything metal.

avoid anything metal so you know walk 20 30 feet whatever away from anything metal calibrate that thing and yeah and even when you shoot I think you should stay away from metal like it's it's a little bit of a pain but like hike your gun away or you know hike some of these things with batteries and magnets in them away and then take your shot but I ended up taking three different shots and through some triangulation I'm like well these three shots are you know 30 feet apart which gets you really really close over there but

from the center of the point, I'm like, well, I'm just going to pick the center of this. And it ended up being 15 feet away from where we thought, where we last seen the bull. Um, so we walked around using the pictures, using a guy that we left over there and using those pins. Um, cause it was brushy. Like it was very, very brushy, hard to tell where you were at. Um, so I was able to ultimately take, you know, a very good mature six point, which is kind of what I was after. And I

I think there were bigger bulls in the unit for sure. But when I've dreamed of hunting this place, I dream of hunting it up in the mountains. Like it's,

When you go hunting, you can go try to kill the biggest bull or you can kind of hunt the areas and the places you want to. And so I was able to kind of mix those. I really wanted to do it off my back, kind of more that backpack style. And so I was able to kind of mix those two, find a really good mature bull and do it kind of up in the mountains where nobody else that I had seen all year was hunting and was able to get it done. And I was thankful. That was the first day we had four guys hunting.

up in that country. So I was real thankful to have four people to, to help, you know, pack, pack that thing out. And, uh, you know, took a lot of pictures and, and broke it down. And, uh,

We're going to get some muzzleloader experts on the podcast here coming up soon, but man, these new guns are dang good. Even with 1X scopes, I shot this bull at 300 plus yards and had a full pass through, hit him right in the lungs and with a good rest.

What kind of bullet were you shooting? So I shoot the Fury 320 grain bullet out of this one. It's got a ballistic coefficient of .26. It's a big old .50 cal bullet, but...

It's one hole in, one hole out, hardly no meat wastage and hit him perfect. And like I said, the bull literally took three running steps and tipped over dead. Nice. I think that bullet performance is so key on muzzleloader because I know a lot of the guys that just shoot

you know, the all lead bullets in Idaho, we forever, we've had to use all lead bullets and, and they're just kind of subpar for performance. You know, you hit them just right. And they, they tip over dead, but if you hit them a little bit, I mean, not even just perfect, um, you've going to have, you're gonna have a trailing job and it's, it can be tough.

I, I've, you know, we had to use, you know, bullets in the past that didn't perform. You hardly ever get an exit. You hardly ever get blood out of the entrance. And muzzleloaders have always been like real frustrating. And I'm not a huge copper bullet fan. You know, you've got the barns is, you know, last year I used the federal Borlaug. This year I'm using the Fury, which is an all copper bullet.

system, but I feel like muzzleloaders are where getting a hole out the other side is the most important thing. And so I am willing to use, you know, the pure coppers, whether it's Barnes Borlaug or this year, you know, the more I learn about muzzleloaders, you want something like the Parker or the Fury 320 or something that's more of a, of a board of fit, you know,

you know i don't know how people say sabo or sabbats or whatever people want to call them like i mean i'm not too i'm not fancy enough to call myself so i call it but i think i do too but i think everybody that's in the know calls them sabo but i also say quesadilla and salsa as well so so we're gonna we're gonna dive into this more in a future episode but like these boar like

specific bore size bullets, you know, getting them to touch the rifling, getting the plastic out between them and the bullets. Like when you're trying to really, you know, we changed out the breach plug in my Remington ultimate, we've got more powder than anybody says you're supposed to use in this gun. You know, we're getting that 320 grain bullet up to 2,100 feet per second. And so, um, you know, we were able to add one X scopes to our guns this year, which I just feel like aside from the one X, that's the only thing limiting you. Um,

You get a good rest. I, I, uh, we have a real good gun range here in PL. It's all in meters. So it's a 300 meter shot, which basically ends up being 330 yards. And there's a little, um, 10 inch high by 12 inch wide gong at 330 yards. And I hit it both shots, you know, just dial my scope up, um, dial to a certain to shoot twice at it and ting ting. And you know, the, the red dots kind of covering the majority of the 10 inches at three 30, but you do a little finagling know that you're in the center of it and it's just

These things are very effective. Oh, this was a Red Dot site. Yeah, it's a Red Dot 1X. So... And I...

I had sighted the gun in on the lowest setting because it makes the dot the smallest, right? With the less flare. Well, I was shooting from the shade to the sun and had to crank my dot up a little bit, um, which then made it grow on the elk, but still, you know, the yardage I was at, I still had plenty of room to know I was, you know, at what, what vertical level I was in and, um, you know, able to make a good shot. But, um,

So they're very impressive. Me and you talk about this all the time, like technology changes that may limit seasons. I'm a little worried with the ability of some of these muzzleloaders and a lot of guys getting more into it that

um you know that season date and placement you know and it was a special tag so usually in the rest of the the units in washington state you can't hunt with a muzzleloader that early so i think you know with our elk now kind of being you know slightly getting out of the rut um it's it's maybe not it doesn't have that big of a of an effect but i always worry um you know do these do these muzzleloaders ultimately affect take and do they affect season dates and and lengths and

you know, in the future, but, um, they're, they're doing good. They're, they're way more effective than the old muzzleloaders. I used to shoot where I'd have to aim for five seconds to see if I was going to have any hang fire. And, you know, the gun goes off to two seconds after the primer or the percussion or the musket cap goes off. So yeah, by that time, things like that, you know, I like to think I'm tough and don't flinch, but there's no getting around it that I flinch after that thing, you know, eventually clicks off and

But no, it was, it was good. You know, big bodied bull got a, got a ton of meat off of them. The neck gross were like 15 pounds a piece. I think by the time we chunked those things off and like I said, I'm glad I had four, four guys and, you know, two of them were firefighters. So it's a, you know, I took a hind and a head and one of the guys grabbed the hind and the other guy grabbed, it was, it was a lot of meat and got it packed out. And the knees were, were barking at the end of that 25, the reversing that 2,500 feet down. But yeah,

it was good. You were probably happy for those switchbacks on the way down. Yeah. Yeah. Instead of straight down. Yeah. Yeah. The switchbacks were good. You know, no big steps and the little celebratory Pendleton at the truck was nice. You know, sit down with all those guys and

And my new buddy, Andy, came up to the trailhead and he wasn't able to make it that day, but had been helping quite a bit. And so it was a good time. It's so cliche to say, but there's nothing like everybody sitting on that tailgate one after another, like unloosing their belts and letting that pack fall down. And to have a little Pendleton down at the truck together and celebrate was pretty awesome. Yeah. Well, speaking of Pendleton, I think we have some Pendleton whiskey here.

Q and a, uh, time to, to dive into. You got time for that? Yeah. Yeah. We're good. Yeah. Great. Uh, let's see. These, uh, these questions are called into our hotline. And if you guys ever have any questions and you don't want to send an email, you just want to pick up the phone and, and call us and ask us a question. You just dial 2 0 8 2 1 9 7 7 0 1.

And we'll read your question here on air and answer it best we can.

Or if you're more of an email type person, you can always email us at ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com. Shoot us over a question or a comment. You know, you might just say, you know, the pink call, Jason's favorite call, the one with the little juggernaut on it. You know, it's not as good as he says. You know, it's more of a maverick type of a thing you like to use for the show.

For your hunting. I'm just kidding. I got to give you a hard time there. I know. I'm going to try real hard to see if you can hear these questions. And me too. So here we go. Question number one. Hey, this is Brennan with Sappo Tours. I'm just wondering about trailheads. Where do most people park? What's the best area to go for non-motorized vehicles? If you guys can give me an input, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I'll let you answer this question. I'll let you start with it. I know we have some ideas on this. We've been to the mountains of Colorado before. So, yeah, parking at trailheads, like some...

I don't want to oversimplify it. Sometimes there's nowhere else to park but a trailhead. Depending on how you're going to hunt, if that's your way into the area, you're kind of limited. You've got to get on that trail. It's going to make it most efficient. It's going to make it the easiest way in. The trail is usually the best way. There's no trees in your way, especially...

In the area you're talking about, um, there's blow down jack straw, burnt trees everywhere going off trail in there to make ground up when you're not hunting is, is going to be like, uh, the most non, you know, inefficient way to move about in there. So you're going to want to take the trails to get to an area until you can get up and out of that brush. Um,

One thing I do different is I don't like to use trailheads if I can avoid them. If I can figure out a different area to get into a little niche basin or into a slightly different drainage and I can get away from all that pressure on that trailhead, I just feel that that pressure at the trailhead pushes elk into areas that may just be off from the trailhead, one or two ridges, finger ridges away. And as long as there's a spot big enough for me to pull my truck over and people can get a horse trailer by or

or their own vehicles like you're you're allowed to and i don't know if i'm getting to the exact question you're allowed to park wherever you want on forest service as long as you're not interrupting traffic um flow up and down that road so some of my favorite spots might just be a half mile off of a trailhead or a mile off of a trailhead may get me into the same general area but does give me a different look or a different hunt on the way to that area um so i

I don't know if there's anything to add, Dirk, but that's kind of my take. If I need to be on that trail, I'm going to park at the trailhead. If I'm hunting the area around the trailhead or areas adjacent to the road, then I'll just park wherever I've got the ability to and go. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. And I have to apologize to our caller that we weren't able to answer this in season. I know he was on his way to hunt elk right when he sent that.

that question but unfortunately we were we were out hunting too and didn't have access to internet so we could listen to these questions and then record in a timely fashion but hopefully this will help you for next year and um but yeah you're right and then he had a question about you know um identifying non-motorized trails and stuff so if you get your get out your onyx maps

and go through the different layers. You can select the state and then select the different features on the map and trails and roads and such. You have some options there to where you can identify quickly and easily which trails are motorized and which are not. And you can click on those trails or roads and...

A little screen will pop up there and it'll let you kind of read about it. Some trails, you know, during certain times of the year, they do allow motorized travel, but it'll have the dates on there for the most part. So, you know, maybe August 30th.

the, the, the motorized use discontinues and then it's, it's foot traffic or horse traffic, um, from then on out for the rest of the year. But you can identify those things pretty quickly, pretty easily. Yep. Um,

Um, and I will say just because some of these on X trails, like Dirk says, a seasonal one, sometimes on X may or may not pick up the seasonality of those. They may just say it's motorized and you get there and it's closed on September 1st on some partnership or, um, it's sometimes worth if it's for a service to, you know, or whoever it may be, the owner is to go do a little research on that trail, um,

on the forest service. Like if I've got my game plan down to spots A, B, and C, and there are certain trails in that area, I will go to the forest services page and say what, you know, go to their recreation tab and go see what it says that trail could be. Because that's where it'll give you the seasonality of those trails.

And it just lets you kind of double check on X's because on X is right. 99.9% of the time. But I believe the way that the, you know, some of the old forest service trail maps may feed the system. There's sometimes a little bit of, uh, there could be some discrepancies. Yeah. There could be a, an update that's changed everything. Uh, wildfires too, uh, this year, man, wildfires, uh,

created a lot of issues for folks hunting just because, um, different areas were shut down, different road systems and trails were shut down. So, um, yeah, absolutely. Like Jason said, go to their website. And, um, if there's no trail, if there's no well, wildfires threatening the area, um, a lot of times what I'll do is, um, also you can request a

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Caller number two. Hey, Jason and Dirk. This is Riley from Colorado. I'm doing my first season of bow hunting for elk. And the question that I have is, at what point do you decide to move on from a specific area because of too much pressure from other hunters or you're just not

seeing any elk. You know, I'm on day two or two full days in a specific area and I've seen barely any sign, but

I just, nothing's talking. I haven't seen anything. I just want to know like what your thought process is for when you determine that a specific area just isn't holding any elk and when you want to move on to somewhere else. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate the podcast. Uh, it's been super educational for me and keep doing what you're doing. All right. Bye. So Riley from Colorado wanting to know when to move on. Do you want to, I take a little crack at it and then you want to add to, okay, sure. So,

For those that don't know me, I've probably got a little bit of low-grade ADHD, and I either need to be an elk or I need to be moving on. Sometimes I think it's to my benefit. Sometimes it might actually be to the detriment, but

I feel that with, unless there's, there's like a deeper area, let's say, you know, some of these areas you go into, like you can't cover the whole thing within, you know, a five day span. It's just, it's too deep. But if let's say it's a three to five mile hike, I know within that hike, um, if I hit the right areas, if I'm hitting the ridge lines, if I'm hitting mid soap trails, and if I go check out the meadows or the fringes or the wallows, like if I've, if I'm able to identify low passes in the ridge, um,

Meadows where they should be feeding or alpine areas where they should be feeding water. And then on some of these fringes, I know within a day if I'm going to hunt there again, or if it's worth my time, um, regardless of bugles, like if you, let's say I don't hear a bugle, like I could be very confident in an area if I do or do not hear a bugle. Um, there should be scat on the ground. There should be tracks on the ground. Um, there should be this year's rubs or, you know, last year's rubs in the area. And, um,

There should be some sign. If you're at a wallow, they should be used. It shouldn't be crystal clear water with no recent tracks around the edge. And I'm out. There's somewhere else in that unit. There's somewhere else around me that the elk are being active. And then the bugles are just kind of icing on the cake. That's the guarantee they're there. And if I've got bugles and there's enough elk... And then I also weigh in pressure. There's...

As Dirk had mentioned earlier, some of his Idaho spots, I'm not willing. There could be a hundred elk and a hundred bulls bugling, but if there's a hundred guys also hunting, I'm going to go find the one or two elk that are bugling and maybe nobody's hunting because I feel like, honestly, that's my better chance at killing a bull. We don't talk about this a lot. We did it in New Mexico a lot. We do it. I did it on my Washington hunt. The best checkmark or the best way to test is

bugle into the area at night. We don't talk about it a whole lot, but if you can't get a bugle in there from when it gets dark to about an hour after, and I've found that that works better than in the morning a lot of times, I would just leave the area. I would go find somewhere else. That's my answer on that. I'm quicker to pull the trigger or pull up the anchor and move on than most, but I just want to be in action every morning and every evening.

I agree a hundred percent. Yeah. Like, like you said, you know, you're checking all the boxes for sign and stuff. When I look at an area, I look at all the likely places I'm going to find an elk, especially in September. What's usually kind of warm. You got some warm middays. Evenings can be cooler, but a lot of times it can be really warm. So I'm going to, I'm going to target those North facing slopes and,

uh, on the landscape. And I'm going to, I'm going to check the boxes on each one of those North facing slopes in an area and make sure. So just because you go to the first North facing slope and there's no sign, no fresh sign, no bugles, that doesn't mean the one around the corner is not going to just be loaded. So, but if you're, if you're looking at a mountain range or an area that you can effectively hunt within a two or three day period, if you had to spend some major time in there, um,

you could, you can maybe touch those, those bases pretty quickly. Like the last two days of elk season here in Idaho, we went and, um, we hiked in, we earlier in the year, we had earlier in the season, we had a backpacked in, but I'm like, you know, it's not deep enough to where we have to backpack in. So we're just going to go light. We're going to go fast and we're just going to go check everything we can and then dig in. Um,

So we'd left no stone unturned. We got high, got up on top of the ridges. And then once you had that elevation, start checking off all those little, every little north-facing pocket. And this area was easy because the north faces all had timber and everything else had grass and sagebrush. So it's easy to identify those places. So you go there and check those spots off. And if you're just not hearing bugles and not seeing fresh sign, fresh scat, fresh rubs,

we move on. And within a short amount of time, you can be like, yeah, I'm not gonna waste any more time waiting for more elk to move in. Now, some areas, a lot of elk will move, come and go. They're pretty nomadic.

but I'm not going to probably spend a lot of time waiting for elk to come back into the spot. I'm going to, I'm going to quickly move on to another spot to where I'm finding fresh sign and or bugles. Yep. And I'm, I'm always making mental notes. Like if I go into an area and kind of check it and it's, it doesn't have elk sign, but maybe it has some old stuff or, you know, we've did it enough where it just looks like it should have elk. I won't write that off for the whole season, but I might give it a week and then come back. Like, like Dirk said, um,

if it's got the things it needs, they just might not be there right now. Or you just never know, you know, is there pressure? Is it somewhere they're going to move into later in the season? So you're trying to, but that really takes, it's taken me a long time to get comfortable knowing like, I'm not writing that off first. I'm going to write this, but off, you know, spot off and I may come back later. It's just, yeah, it's, it's,

I'm also not hunting like low density. Like let's say we did a two or three day loop and we got one bull to bugle. Um, I'm probably not gonna like,

I want to go find a higher density. I want to have more options than the one bull that beagled, you know, seven miles in on my big loop hike. You know, I'm going to go find something better because I feel like I need my odds to be higher than, than screwing up on one bull, unless it's the one, you know, some guys are out there looking for specific elk, you know, you might be willing to stay, but for me, I'm going to move on quicker than, than, than most.

And another thing to do is identify how old the sign is and how relevant that is to when elk are going to be back there. For instance, in Idaho, we found some places. I don't think I've ever seen so many rubs in my entire life. Literally, these areas, these bedding areas had rubs.

Every freaking tree rubbed from like olden days to like recently, it was, it was insane. It's just like you get in this little pocket on one of those North face slopes on a little flat and the hell could destroy the trees in there. I was like, we got to kill, we got to kill an elk for the sake of the trees. Nobody's looking out for the trees, you know?

But anyway, but you couple that along with how old is the scat? Well, the scat was probably three, four weeks old. So in my mind, the bulls wintered, they summered up in this area, spent most of their summer. They kind of did that pre-rut thing where they got, they were hanging around each other. They were rubbing a bunch. And then once wintered,

that first sweet smell of, of September, the cows coming into heat, they all vacated the area and hadn't been back. There was no fresh sign that had been there. And then one thing that kind of proves my theory as well. Um, in this one spot, I found some dude's trail camera and he didn't lock it. So I didn't tamper with and bother other than I did pull the card and look at his card and you could see there hadn't been anything on there within the last three or four weeks. Um,

So that just, that made me think, yep, they're them things were here. We were, our timing is wrong. If we'd have been here opening week of season, we probably would have been in some pretty good bowls, but at the end of season, those elk are not there and they're probably not going to come back until the next year.

So looking at those signs and kind of doing that little bit of, you know, the art of deduction like Sherlock Holmes would do, you could would kind of lead you to your next plan of next plan of attack. All right. Caller number three. Hey, Jason. Brandon Smith, North Idaho. Hi.

Hunting is deep and deep. I just got a question. Kind of revolves more hunting elk around grizzly country. Bumped into a sow, three cubs. Still alive, luckily. Just when you're going in areas like that and how often, I guess, I don't know, would you guys even know? Do...

G bears usually typically hang out around the same areas. I mean, I've been back in there after a herd bull called him in 70 yards hung up right behind the tree. And yeah, it's just a little eerie going in there. Haven't had, um,

any run-ins with her lately thank god but just uh yeah do you guys know if bears kind of just hang out around the area i mean obviously there's elk in there and they all love the same spot um regarding that anyways thanks have a good one bye grizzly bears

and herd bulls and whether they hang around in the same spot. So thanks for that question, Brandon. And I'll, I'll preface this whole answer with, I'm not a grizzly bear expert by any means. But you play one on TV. Yeah. I do hunt grizzly country a lot. I've, I've tried to become a,

you know, bear aware. I'm always paying attention. I'm always looking. Um, but I think this time of year, you know, within a season there, their, their food source isn't changing much. The area they're probably inhabiting isn't changing much. So it might not be the answer you want, but I'm assuming that grizzly bear is going to be in that general area for, for the foreseeable, you know, a little bit until the weather starts to hit. So, um,

A pretty short answer might not even be the right answer, but as a hunter, I would always assume that that sow with cubs is going to be in that same general area for, you know, during that September season into, into early October before she, you know, move spots, but Dirk may, may have a better answer.

Yeah, I'm definitely not a grizzly bear expert at all. I'm just going to regurgitate some information I've learned from other people just because I've never had the privilege of living around grizzlies, even though I've hunted around them a couple times. But North Idaho, my good buddy Tom Schneider, who lives in North Idaho, they've hunted around with grizzlies their whole life.

in the area they hunt. And he said, there's very, there's a couple of specific areas that they know. He's like, I can go up there any day in the fall and we can see a grizzly to multiple grizzlies. It's just, they really like certain areas probably in the fall. And I'm, I'm wondering, you know, if it's due to the berry crop, you know, the huckleberries there's obviously some food source, maybe, maybe even, you know, maybe they're just away from where people are going to really bother them too much.

Um, there's a few different factors there. I would imagine. I do know bears, grizzly bears can wander a lot too. You know, I feel like male bears cover a lot of ground. I'm wondering like the age of the, of the cubs, if they're real young, they may, may not travel as much. They may just kind of have their little home homestead staked out there to where they, they feel safe and maybe, um, they don't have to move around as long as it's got enough food source. But, um, I know, um, other friends who have talked about, um,

I just did a podcast with my good friend Ron Najolik out of Wyoming. You're going to want to listen to that one. If you haven't listened to it already, you're going to want to listen to it because he encountered 41 grizzly bears this September, 20-some under grizzly.

30 yards, I think, or under 50 yards. It's a crazy story. He had a wild September, but he talked about

encountering a grizzly in a certain spot and then a few days later encountering them again in the same spot. So I feel like they kind of have their little hangouts where they like to be just from information I've heard from other people, but they will travel quite a bit. But I would definitely anticipate seeing if you've seen grizzlies in one spot before, you'll probably see them again.

And that's probably not the answer you wanted to hear. He's wanting to go back in there after that herd bowl, but I'm like, I'd be looking for a grizzly bear if I went back in. Oh, yeah. Definitely. All right. Last question. Caller number four. Hey, guys. How you doing? My name is Ron Hoppe. I work and live out here in southern Wyoming.

Wanted to know your thoughts on early season bulls when you find them and get into them, you know, early September and then middle to late September. A lot of them bulls are gone due to pressure. Curious your thoughts on how far do you think they go from their original bedding area? You know, a draw or two over, do they go miles or...

Or do you think they stick around closer to their home turf than a person may think? So I know a lot has to do with it with pressure, but curious your thoughts on how far they travel once they get spooked or pushed or smell a human. So I'd like to show, appreciate it. Thanks. How far they travel once they get pressured? Yeah. So yeah, I'm going to wind this back to before they get pressured. And it really depends on how...

close everything as they need to their food, to their bedding or security, which we're talking now about their bedding and security because of pressure. So food, water, bedding and security are the three things I always look for when I'm looking for elk. So unpressured, it depends on how close those things are. In the Northwest, it can be really tight because we seem to have food

everywhere we seem to have um you know water everywhere and mainly timber and i don't know if that's exactly i i've never hunted up north with dirk but i'm assuming it's fairly similar your your food your bedding and your water is all fairly tight now you go to new mexico

Your water is now two miles from your bedding and the food may be scattered anywhere in between. And so those elk are already moving a mile, two miles plus, you know, a little bit more of that nomadic style. They're so dependent on their water. The water's in only so many locations. And then there's got to be a mix of all of that, right? So it's just that proximity. When they start to get bumped, I feel that elk for a day or two will forego or give up

Some of those things now they may still need to find water. They may still need to have food and they still may, but they're, they're now prioritizing security, right? And they're willing to give up a little bit of their best food source. They're willing to give up the absolute best water. They may go get it for, you know, in, in the dark. Um,

It really is hit or miss. Around home, the elk won't really go anywhere when they're pressured because they've got so much timber, they've got so much cover. I've been up in some of my spots in the Cascades of Washington or I've been in Idaho, Wyoming.

And you put some pressure on elk and you may see them moving three to four miles over the ridgeline, but they're going to a spot that they either know or they're that they've already been that has those same three things, water, food, and security escapement bedding to, to go and get away from the pressure that you've provided. So it's,

I know I'm answering the question without answering your question, but I don't think it's as simple as these elk might go two minutes away or these elk might go two miles away. It's really just hit or miss on where those elk think that they can survive without pressure and get by.

Yeah, I agree 100%. Now, you answered kind of pressure. I'm going to talk more about move for the rut. So sometimes that first week of season, you'll find those bulls may be solitary bulls.

spread out and where they pretty close to where they spent their summer. Once they kind of, once they have their little argument with all your, their buddies and split off from each other. Um, and then once they leave from that, it can be who knows where. So typically for me, for me, where I've had trail cameras around the 10th to the 15th of, of August, um,

Once I see one bull on camera, let's say I've had like a whole bunch of bulls on this camera all summer long. And then the first bull I see on there that has his velvet shed, I typically don't see any more bulls. They like, once you see that one first one, they let, they leave, they're gone. They, they leave mid August and I may not even see them again until October, November back on those same cameras. So yeah,

And there's, there's some of these areas I've had in places where there's pretty low elk densities, but I've had a lot of bulls in the summer. Come September, you try to find them. Um, I don't, I don't know where they all went. Like you would think, oh, the next ridge over the next drainage over there's going to be plump full of bulls. No. Um, I think those things, um,

They go out to seek their fortune. They're going to find, um, some cows somewhere else. And especially if there's not a lot of cows in the area, you may, they, they may, they may scatter to the wind pretty far. Uh, each bull may disappear, um, quite a ways. Um,

If there's a lot of cows around, they may not have to go very far at all. They may just go, you know, a half a mile away or a mile away. So just depending on your elk densities could depend on where they're going to go. Now, I do have a buddy who had pictures of a giant bull down in southern Idaho.

Um, every year he'd been watching this giant bull, like a three 90 type bull every, every year, but about about every year, about the same time, the thing would disappear. And they just, they looked high and low throughout that unit, trying to turn that bull up and you could never find it. Well, a couple of years later, he met some guy in from Utah and he,

The guy from Utah was showing him pictures of this bull and he's like, whoa, that that's my bull. That bull literally changed mountain ranges and States. It went from Idaho to Utah, go to Utah to rut every year. Um, you know, it was like a 25 mile trek over to where this, this bull was at. So, um, yeah.

You just never know how far those things are going to go and turn up. But one thing, if you can, if you can get your trail cam game going is find the cow groups. It's fun. I love seeing the bulls on the camera. Cause Oh, look at that one. Oh, I'd like to shoot him. But you know, cows are kind of boring to see on a trail camera, but if you can find that the cows in the summertime, um,

and kind of figure out where the cows spend their time, you're going to kind of know where those bulls are going to disappear to come September. Well, I think that wraps up our Pendleton Whiskey Q&A. Do you have any other thoughts, Jason, on any of these topics?

No, I think we covered it pretty well. I'm packing today, so as soon as we're off here, I'm going to load the trailer up and the side-by-side and all my gear again. Is that why you're giving me that funny look like, hurry up, I want to get going? No, no, no. I had this reserved until...

till now so we're we're good yeah um no just just on to the next one um this one is a mule deer slash elk combo going with my good buddy tyson and i'm since i've already killed an elk i'm kind of just back up elk hunter and then really just kind of focusing on mule deer but um if the hunting's good and the elk cooperate might might have a chance at another elk there but i'm not you know i'm going in with with the intent of a muzzleloader and being an elk packer spotter for tyson but um

everything, everything goes right. Might, might get a chance at an elk. I at least have an elk tag in my pocket, a mixed bag, if you will. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We have 10, 10 days in the back country of Idaho. Um, this one's going to be a little bit more spike out, you know, live off your back, live out of a tent for, for 10 days. So even though these ones aren't as luxurious as, as most of the, you know, the camps are, I always look forward to these ones that are just a little more rough and, um, you know, um,

it's fun. I like, I like mixing it up. So this will be more of our backpack hunt, um, for this year. I'm surprised Tyson will go elk hunting or just hunting with you in general in Idaho. Cause I know the last time you guys got together, it was like, you almost froze to death. Yep. Um, and almost got snowed out. Yeah. But last time we elk hunted together though, he killed that great, like three 30 bull. Um, I called in for him and then he didn't return the favor and call me one. And so I shouldn't go to Idaho with him anymore. What a jerk.

No, we have a lot of fun. He's a skilled glasser, so he always challenges me to really stay in the glass and make sure he doesn't spot everything before I do. Or I spot stuff before he does so I can get a shot at the deer. No, it'll be fun. Ready to go hunt hard and see what we can't maybe dig up.

Yeah, I'm on that same mode here. As soon as we hang up on this call, I got to start getting my poop in a group and getting packed for Idaho deer and then elk as well.

Um, with a rifle. Um, yeah, looking forward to it. Um, I'm going to try to do kind of a hybrid. I'll probably spend some days, some nights on the Hill, you know, camped out and bivvy style or spike camp, and then probably have some nights in a, in a base camp too. But, uh, looking forward to, uh, maybe reaching out and touching one with a, with a rifle, um,

Um, I'm hoping I hear a bugle or two, but who knows? Yeah. I think they should still be bugling a little bit, maybe to start the first couple of gunshots will probably shut them up real quick, but hopefully they'd be able a little bit to get the game started. Yeah. Last this last Saturday. So it wasn't any hunting season at all. Um, my, my brother-in-law Randy and I were out on a dirt bike ride and doing a little, little bit of scouting too, if you will. And I said, yeah, there's this one spot I really want to go check out and bugle into. So we hiked down into the spot and.

bugled nothing about the third bugle i heard a down on the bottom like oh yeah so we just kind of sat there bullshitting a little bit and did a little bit of mark holland and we just kind of talking and looking of course neither one of us brought binoculars because we're dirt biking right and uh

I looked down probably 200 yards away. I'm like, there he is. That bull walked right out. Like, dang it, man. If it was rifle season, we could have just shot that joker. But is that how it's going to work seven days from now on the 15th? Man, I hope so. If I could be that lucky, I'm going to go buy a lottery ticket. Well, you, a couple of years ago, you called them in for your wife, right? Oh yeah. So, I mean, it can happen. We've kind of, kind of a curse on that. Um, and that area where I called in that one for my wife, you know, I don't,

she missed this bullet like 40 yards. I'm like, did you hit it? And she's like, oh yeah, I hit it. I'm like, oh yeah, where were you aiming? She's like, oh, I don't remember. Of course she missed it. And my son missed one at about 40 yards in that same place, big six, both big six points.

And then I missed one at about 75 yards in that same area here. But unfortunately, I'm not going elk hunting in that spot this year. Get out of that. Get out of that dirt or the Durham Triangle. Yeah. We got to get out of that place. But there is a curse upon calling in elk and missing them with a rifle. So, yeah.

Though I did say, well, I will say I did call in a bull to my tent in Wyoming here a few years ago and shot him from the tent. So that was cool. I think that thing was blind and dumb. Yeah. Well, good luck on your Idaho hunts and we're going to go give it our all and hopefully we see if we can't, see if these apple maggots can't bring a couple Idaho deer and elk back to our state. Man, you better hide those horns or you can drive through this state. Yeah.

People will be throwing rotten eggs at you guys. I love it. All right. Well, good luck, and we'll catch everybody next time. Outdoor adventure won't wait for engine problems. Things like hard starts, rough performance, and lost fuel economy are often caused by fuel gum and varnished buildup. Seafoam can help your engine run better and last longer. Simply pour a can in your gas tank. Hunters and anglers rely on seafoam to keep their engines running the way it should the entire season.

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