Ep. 86: Elk Scouting, Bow Setups, and Shot Placement with Jason and Dirk
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Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance. Today I'm joined with my good buddy Dirk Durham again, who it just happens to be his 60th birthday today. Oh, thank you, Zod. You just called me old. I'm not 60, Phelps. I'm 50. How old are you? I'm 50. Oh, that's like only one number off on the first number. And then technically, I don't know if my math is good, but it's like only 15% different. So it was close. I finally reached my golden years.

It's good. It's good. All the benefits of cheaper meals at the restaurants and reduced insurance and all that. AARP. I'm going to have my car here soon, I'm sure. So it'll be good. You know, I think at some point when you get old enough, your insurance should actually go back up though, right? Because you become more of a danger. So you're probably, what, 10 years away from insurance going back up. Slower reaction times. Kids will take away my driver's license here one of these days. Dang it. Yeah.

So today's episode is all listener Q&A. And I'm going to let Dirk. He's got a new intro to our Q&A. We've got a new partner here. So I'm going to let Dirk kick this off. This portion of the episode was brought to you by Pendleton Whiskey. Letter Buck.

How do you like that? Excellent. Yeah. If I ever fire you, you're going to have a job like the next day doing that. Oh, yeah. Voiceovers. I mean, I'm going to start a career. I mean, hey, if we have anybody listening that needs a voiceover for like the monster truck rallies or any of that kind of stuff, I'm your guy. I can do it all.

No, we really appreciate Pendleton coming on as a partner this year, helping us with the Q&As on all of our podcasts and then also helping support some of our content this year. They've been an awesome partner and we're stoked to continue to get to work with them.

So once again, if you have any questions for me, our guests, for Dirk, feel free to email them to us at ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com or send us a message on social media and we'll do our best to get them included here. So now we're going to jump right into it. So Elk Centric today.

The first question comes in, in areas where you don't have a chance to hunt, how do you scout for elk and identify high probability areas before the season begins? You know, we can all sit, and I think me and you, Dirk, have had the fortune to, like, we know what to look for at some point, right? So I think with high confidence, we can say, all right, I can look at a map, and I'm pretty confident this area has everything we think we need. But let's say...

There are times where I get surprised or the elk are actually in spots where I don't expect them. But how do you go about identifying high probability areas before the season ever begins if you don't get to have feet on the ground? My hunts, my scouting would start at probably a 30, 40,000 feet level on Google Earth slash on X maps. And I'm looking at

Typically, the areas I hunt, I'm looking for the dark green areas first off. A lot of times, the more lighter colored areas are not really where the elk are going to inhabit, you know. Or those lighter colored areas, a lot of times, will be ranch land. They'll be farmland, private property. So, access would be very difficult if impossible. So, I'm going to look for those dark portions, which is going to look like national forest, maybe state endowment lands.

And then kind of zoom in from there. And what I'm looking for

is an area that has a few roads so I can get around and access some of those areas. If, if this is a, if this is not going to be a backpack hunt, I want to have enough roads to where I can access each portion of the mountain range, but I don't want there to just be roads everywhere. Um, where certain areas, you know, that that's the case, you know, uh, some of the more front country will have logging roads everywhere. And some of those places will have, um,

gates on those roads, which you're not supposed to take motor vehicles behind, or there's a limitation on size of the motor vehicle, maybe just ATVs and dirt bikes or something. But, you know, some of those places don't overlook them because, you know,

They, they could be non-motorized and you could walk in and have a fantastic elk hunt, you know, because a lot of times around logging areas, there's a lot of excellent habitat, you know, got a lot of feed. There's probably some older regrowth somewhere there, the elk will want to hold up in. So don't overlook those kinds of places. But typically I'm kind of looking for more of a mountainous, maybe that back country type looking stuff and more of the national forest. So yeah,

i'm looking for large drainages um that have no roads in them you know and a large drainage so from top to bottom so from the very uh start of the drainage where the first little creek seeps out of the hillside and as it gets bigger and then it outlets into make let's say a river or a or out into the front country um you know 10 miles if it's a 10 mile drainage

There's a pretty good bet. There's some really good elk in there, really good bulls in there. Mature bulls. It seems like some of the smaller drainages, depending on where you're at, may not have quite as many.

or maybe the caliber of elk in it that some of that bigger country will. So that's kind of the places I'm going to start looking. And within those places, I want to see all aspects of habitat. I want to see good heavy cover on north faces. I want to see on the south face, north,

And eastern facing and western facing slopes, you know, some good, good feed, whether that's grass, whether that's brush fields, just depending on the state. There's got to have everything. There's got to be, you know, creeks. There's got to be little places for the elk to get food, water, shelter. That's what I'm looking for.

Yeah. You know, a lot of mine is very similar. I come from Western Washington and I typically don't hunt Western Washington, um, as routinely as I used to. And so I'm a lot of these areas, you know, a day's drive away, a day's plus drive away. And so I rely on my, my online scouting, you know, whether it's Google earth, whether it's on X maps, you know, on X hunts on my computer, um,

One thing, and I don't necessarily need to dive in there and I'm not doing it for the idea that to dive in there, but it kind of piggybacks on your idea on like roadless drainages is I do turn on the back country feature, like the roadless feature within Onyx. I just want to know like, where is the, the, the furthest away from the road you can get. And like I said, I'm not jumping right to that spot, but then I will use that and start to look like within that area, kind of work my way back to the road. Like, all right, where can I get from like two to four to five miles to

And then within that ribbon, I, I come from Western Washington where, uh, it is, if you haven't walked through our reprod, our undergrowth brush, this coastal jungle, like I honestly look for places without all kinds of brush, right? I, I, it's just my personal preference. And, uh,

I don't want to go put myself in the middle of a jungle. I don't enjoy hunting in just a completely brush stricken area. Now you will find yourself in those, you know, I, I try to stay away from like never ending mountain alder patches, but similar to Dirk, I'm looking for those, those keys. I like to have heavy timber on the North face if, if ideal, but especially, you know,

Washington or areas where there's lots of water, they don't always need to go to the North face or if the temperatures aren't getting high enough, they'll bet on a South face. So I'm, I do want that North timber, but it's not an absolute requirement. I want to be able to zoom in,

and see that the upper above tree line or areas that are avalanche shoots, like have some trails through them, that the elk are actively using the area or animals of some sort are there and the food source is there. And if I take it to the next level, like, can I go toggle the date of that picture back to September, you know, August? Can I, can I start to see if animals are using that during our hunting seasons? Um,

And then I kind of use all of that to balance. I want some water sources around, whether it's a creek or a river in the bottom or a small pond or a lake. I need to have that water. And then as you're looking at this, you're always remembering that time of September at least,

Or, you know, if it's November, like elk are looking for an area to recoup, you know, if it's rifle season. But during September, those elk are looking to recreate and stay alive. So they need to have some escapement and they need to be able to like live with a herd of cows or however many cows are with them.

Um, my personal preference is to break an area down. I want a little bit of everything. I don't want like a steep slope for 3000 feet down to the Creek. I don't want it to be completely flat the whole way. Now, don't get me wrong. You can find elk in both of those places, but areas that I feel I've got a higher percentage of knowing there's going to be elk there. I want it to be broken up country. I want,

big pockets of timber that have an avalanche shoot through it and just uphill like there's some there's some alpine and then if they're to cross that ridge they're gonna get into some north timber um so i'm looking for like these these very specific almost like two perfect elk spots but that's just where i found um that that i have more of a chance of finding elk there at least to start and then i can branch out from there like how far will that sign take me and that's

We could probably have an whole episode on this, Dirk. Feet on the ground, being able to read the sign when you get to these spots. Oh, there's a lot of sign here, but there's also a lot of sign that goes three miles down the ridge into nothing but dark timber. Now, as an elk hunter, I'm more educated. I'm like, what's okay to go down in here? We can spend more time down in here.

So yeah, you pair all of these things I'm looking for, make it a little bit harder to get two, two, three, four miles in. And for me, that's been a recipe that just seems to hold elk. Yeah. And as I'm looking at the landscape, once I get there,

I can look at the hillside and just determine, does that look like an Elky spot or what? And what is, what is that Elky spot? So I'm looking at, let's say there's just a big timbered face, you know, there's lots of ridges and, and lots of timber and you're just not seeing maybe little meadows and stuff. Um, how do you know where do you start? Where, where would I even look? And as I look at those places, I'm looking at places where I've found elk before. Um, so let's say there's a really steep ridge, um,

Um, and then all of a sudden it kind of goes up steep and then it hits like a bench. It kind of, the bridge itself benches off and maybe a little, a small saddle or makes a knob, you know, on, on those knobs elk like to hang out on those saddles. They like to hang out in little benches. Um, so I'm looking for those kinds of features and let's say, um,

You did see it like a brush field or a, or a meadow or a high grassy spot. And then there's, you know, some big dark timber and then it kind of drops down and then it goes up onto a little ridge and, and you just like picture where the elk would bed and then where they would feed and the area in between. And I kind of look at that stuff and, um, yeah. Go ahead. No, I was going to say, yeah, the saddle thing, like,

One thing, you know, a lot of people, we talk about this multiple times, like eggs in one basket, like you've got to be able to move and be fluid on these hunts. But, you know, like you'd mentioned benches, saddles, knobs, like I guess we could probably reduce that all to like

distinct changes in terrain, right? If we wanted to just, so like when I get to an area and I want to know if there's elk there, like I'll run a ridge down. If there's a pass or a depression in the ridgeline, that's maybe a two or 300 foot drop compared to the normal, you know, you look out along the horizon, you got a ridge that looks pretty straight, but in the middle you see a depression like that is a spot I'm going to go check. Like if there are elk in the area, I'm going to be very confident that they're using that area or that zone, that spot

to transfer from one ridge to another or that bedding area. Like I'm going to, if I'm going to quickly reduce this area to where if there's even elk there, like I'm going to go hit that bench and check for sign, you know? And, and so very quickly I made a determination, like I'm pulling the plug or anchor on here, or I'm going to invest some more time. Right. And during your, um,

you're e-scouting, if you will, on X or whatever, you know, you're looking at topo lines too. You're not only just looking at satellite imagery, you're looking at topo lines. So you've identified an area that you're really interested in. So you want to take it a little closer look. You want to get granular with it. So you're looking at those topo lines and you have to be very keyed in like,

And if you've been hunting for a while, then you start associating your topo lines that you're seeing in the field versus where you're standing on the ground. And sometimes there's some little benches there, you know, no more than 50, 60 yards wide. They don't show up real well on a topo map, but a lot of times those are just really great spots where elk want to live, they'll bed or travel through. So,

Learning to identify those on your top of the lines is critical. I mean, it will really help you a lot. Yep. Yep.

But one more thing I was going to circle around. We can't, we're kind of, I feel like we're kind of talking about the mountain States or the Northwest, but if we're talking about the Southwest, you know, you're talking about New Mexico, what are we going to look for there? We're looking at tanks, water tanks, right? These are either manmade or natural Springs or whatever. And like when we go to New Mexico,

on the unit we're going to hunt, I go through and I mark every single tank with an icon, with a place mark on my Onyx. The reason why is it's super easy to look at and find and look at tanks really quick. If you kind of zoom in and kind of scroll around, you can find them

If you're just kind of looking for them, but if you go pre-hunt and you mark every single tank, it's very easy to jump from tank to tank, tank to tank and connect, connect the dots of where elk are going to be down there. It's water is, is key. Um, so you really want to key in on where the water is. And, and so I mark, mark all the tanks in one color. And then once we get their boots on the ground and we find that there's water in them, cause sometimes there'll be, they'll

They'll be dry as a bone and sometimes they'll have water in them. So I will mark the ones that actually have water in them and the ones that don't with two different colors. That way I don't waste time looking. As I'm looking at my map again, like if we get stumped, like, oh, dang it, what are we going to do today? I don't see this tank over here and think, oh, we should go check it. Oh, yeah, that's that one that's dead, you know, after you look at like.

you know, 30 different tanks. It's nice to be able to quickly assess and understand where to go. Yeah. And one thing to know is you can identify these tanks

But then like trying to figure out how to hunt them can be very different because these elk, I don't, I hesitate to call them nomadic elk, but they will travel what we've seen them four to five miles to get water. And then that morning their track to their bedding is a four or five mile journey. So it's not as simple as when we're talking about the mountain estates. A lot of times they're going to feed in bed within a half mile, you know, max, maybe three quarters of a mile, as long as nothing disrupts them. These elk in New Mexico, Arizona are,

uh, are moving large, large distances because what happens is you got sometimes multiple herds, oftentimes multiple herds come to that water, big rut fest at night, and then they all turn and go different directions in the morning. And a lot of times those tracks are, like I say, three, four or five miles.

Yeah. Yeah. It's good to know that because if you don't know that when you first get there, you're like, what the heck is going on here? And then you kind of figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. You just, you might just assume that they hate your calls or they sense your presence or something. It's like, no, that's just what they're going to do. They're like vampires, man. As soon as the daylight hits, they got to go find some darkness to go lay down in and maybe five miles away. So they may leave the tank pretty early, you know, before long before first light. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So I think we beat that, that question up pretty good, but yeah, scouting, I love to scout when we, when we get a chance, but a lot of times the, the way our hunts line out, um, you know, and, and we, we just don't get the chance. We've got to make really good decisions before we get there. Um, and, and you've heard us both say it multiple times, um, be willing to go to plan B or C if age isn't, isn't what you thought it was. You cannot stay invested in a bad decision.

All right, so we're going to jump in. It's about that time everybody should be shooting their bows. Not that I'm the most diligent at getting everything set up. But a lot of people, a whitetail setup versus a small game setup versus... All right, what I consider we're stepping up to big game, like true big game, big bones, arrow stopping power. Walk through...

Your bow and arrow setup, kind of how you determine what you're going to shoot. Is there a speed you're searching for? Is there a weight you're searching for? And kind of then what your broadhead is going to be just just that whole decision tree before you head out on an elk hunt.

Uh, first and foremost on my bow, as far as, um, draw poundage, um, back in the day when I very first started bow hunting, um, it was super trendy to have an 80 pound bow and have that baby maxed out. You want them arrows, uh,

flinging like at light speed. You know, I shot an overdraw on the bow. The arrows were 26 inches long, aluminums. And man, those things were just zipping. But as time has progressed, you know, so do archers and thought processes. And the problem about super fast arrows is they're really hard to tune. And

You really want your optimum, you know, you want that arrow to be flying perfectly straight. You don't want it to be fishtailing. You don't want it to be porpoising. You want it to be super straight. So I want my bow these days to be about...

60, 65 pounds. And why I want it to be that much is I want to be able to pull back and hold on a bull that locks up. Let's say he's coming in and then hesitates and I have to hold that bow for two minutes. Well, I can draw and shoot a 70 pound bow just fine. And there's, I think it's kind of gotten really trendy again to have an 80 pound bow. There's a lot of guys with big muscles these days that like to pull an 80 pound bow, but I'm here to tell you,

Um, I'm more concerned about being able to hold my bow back and then still, still make a great shot. So, um, now over to the speed thing again, um, I've, I've found, and then a lot of other people will kind of say, if, if you're shooting your, your arrows faster than that, 280, 290 feet per second, they get really hard to tune, tune your bow. Um, especially fixed heads. So, um,

I'm not really trying to shoot, you know, like a vaporizer fast type of bow. I want to be able to shoot comfortably, hold my bow a long time and still maintain that, that feet per second. Now I'm, I'm blessed with a longer draw length than, than maybe let's say a guy with a 26 inch draw length now.

Those guys are probably going to have to hit those higher, higher poundage draws and really work on, you know, their stamina holding a long time. But that's, what's important to me on that. Yeah. And even I'm going to, I'm going to touch that and then kind of go back through your points there, but it's like,

I would almost argue that a male pulling a 26, 27 inch draw is even at 70 pounds is still probably going to be fine to kill an elk. You know, I've got to hunt with Kelly Smith, you know, pulling 52 pounds and like full pass through. And so I think there's just this like big macho bravado thing that like you got to pull these monster. Yeah. If you.

trust me, I would say whatever you're comfortable with, like give yourself that extra conservative edge. You know, if I do hit a bone, I hope that, you know, my setup is big enough, but as long as we, you know, control the shot and hit things right and avoid the big bones, we should be fine. You know, with today's equipment and the efficiency of the bows and the design of most of these fixed blade broadheads, like I feel like

you're going to be fine. Like I've been very impressed at some of the arrows that, you know, some ladies have zipped through bowls and it's like, well, 52 pounds and a 400 some odd grain arrow can do that. Like, why do I need to be, you know, faster and heavier and all these other things. Right. Right.

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The only drawback to me that I can see to shooting that lower poundage with a short draw length is your pin gap. Let's say, you know, you just don't have, when, why is pin gap important? Is because, let's say, a bull is 30 yards, 35 yards, and you're like, okay, I think he's 30. You didn't have a chance to range it, and you shoot him for 30 yards.

Um, with a large pin gap, you may miss, you may miss the elk or you may hit really low and not get a vital, vital hit or hit high, depending on how you judge yardage. So it's just, um, so I, I recognize that. And, and there again, um,

We want to talk about arrows and arrow weight. You know, there's, it's kind of trendy in some groups to shoot a, you know, 600, 700 grain arrow right now, you know, the one that's going to shoot through a tree and still kill the elk. But whenever you have an arrow that, that heavy, your pin gap for Western hunting is going to be enormous, right?

unless you want to dial and then you're going to run out of, you know, room to dial on your, on your movable site, you know, rather quickly compared to like a standard, um, let's say 450 to 500 grain arrow. So I go with about a 450 grain arrow. Um, I've shot down to 400 grades back before I even knew to, to weigh my arrows, you know, it wasn't super trendy to, to, uh, measure your FOC front of center, uh, weight. And, um,

Or the overall weight. I'm just like, oh, yeah, this is a good 100-grain broadhead. I got a good sturdy arrow. And I'm just going to go ahead and shoot this thing. And I shot a ton of elk with it at pass-throughs. No real issues, major issues, unless I hit like a scapula or something. Now I'm shooting 50 grains heavier. Still no problems, but.

But, and what I like about that is I still have a pretty good pin gap. It's not super tight to where you get in a pickle and in a rush situation, it's like, oh, dang it, my pins are so close together. What do I do? Or it's hard to focus on one pin, but they're far enough apart to where they're easy to focus on. And if you misjudge yardage by five yards, it's going to be a five, six inch shot high or shot low versus a miss or a bad hit. Yep.

Yeah, I'm very similar. I design my arrows backwards off of my bow speed. So I'm trying to hit that 285. And if I come somewhere between like 283 and 287, like that's my ideal setup. And so we just, we design, all right, the end weight of this arrow needs to be

Uh, you know, lately for me shooting bows, um, you know, I've got a very fortunate to have a 32 inch draw length. Um, you know, I shoot a 70 pound bow maxed out. So it's somewhere between 70 to 72 pounds. You know, most of my arrows end up being very heavy in that five 40 to five 60 range, but I really just, I don't care where it lands as long as my bow ends up shooting at that two 85. Um, and

And then, you know, I, I'm going to agree with Dirk, like draw time will kill way more elk than the extra five pounds will, or the extra 10 pounds. Um, it always has and always will. And I think, you know, it sounds cool when you're, when you're,

telling somebody you shoot an 83 pound bow or that you, you know, you got this monster set up and I'm like, yeah, but that will not kill you any additional elk than a 65 or 60 pound bow for most males, you know, being able to draw, draw weights and everything else consider like that doesn't kill the elk for you. Um, but me being able to hold that bow more comfortably for another 20 or 30 seconds, um, will kill me some elk. So I'm, I'm in that same boat. Like, you know, I, I,

I was there one day when I was young and dumb, you know, shooting 86 pound bows, trying to get these 560 grain arrows going, you know, three 15 or whatever it was just doing dumb stuff. And that bow shot great. And I finally did get it tuned, but in the end it wouldn't have killed an elk any better than, than the current setup I'm shooting. So yeah, that's how I approach it. I, I, we didn't touch on fixed blade versus, you know, there are some good expandables. I just cannot wrap my head around like knowing that,

that there is a slight percentage or any percentage that something could fail. And so in my mind, like that solid broadhead is, you know, or fixed blade broadhead is going to always be what it needs to be. Um, just a little peace of mind. Like I say, I think most mechanicals nowadays are, you know, got a pretty good success rate on opening and doing what they're, they're supposed to. But, um, for me, I, I've still only shot, you know, fixed blade, um,

you know, iron wheels at elk the last few years, you know, prior to that, I was using some slick trick Viper tricks that, that I had some good success with, um,

I've heard stories that maybe some qualities went downhill or something since then. But no, I think you just need to be confident in your setup and have confidence that you're going to be able to put your arrow. One thing we didn't even talk about is how accurate we can shoot these bows. We always joke, our good buddy Corey Miller, he's like, all these guys want to buy their way to better groupings. And he's like, you're not going to shoot your bow any better

because of this $500 rest or this $500 site or these, you know, $400 arrows. He's like, you need to work on yourself. And so that's another thing. Like, as long as you get good at shooting and are confident in your setup, like that goes a long ways than all these other decisions, you know, arrow weight and broadheads. Get good at shooting your bow and it'll fix a lot of these things. Yeah, and that, very good. And it goes right back to poundage too. So it's super comfortable to be able to shoot a bow that's easy to draw. It's easy to hold your...

it's just funner to me. Like if, if you're, if you're having to arch your back and pointing your bow at the sky to draw it, you're doing it wrong. Here's a, here's a anecdotal story from last fall. He's calling in this bull from some private property over onto the public. And we kind of slow playing this thing. And we kind of,

made quiet calls and kind of faded away like we walked off but we didn't go very far and we kind of set down and it was kind of a steep hillside so I had to kind of sit with our back towards where the bowl was kinda and we sat there for like 45 minutes and then finally that bowl came in well I had to I had to draw I had to get up from a sitting position I had to like slowly stand and draw my bow all at the kind of same time and then get turned to where I could shoot and

I will promise you, I couldn't have done that with an 80-pound bow. I probably would have struggled with a 70. But being that I was shooting like a 65-pound bow, I was able to draw. I was able to do it in a smooth, motion-free, you know, it's not discernible to the bull, and I got drawn on him. Now, my yardage judging was another story. We're just talking about getting the bow drawn. Yeah, we don't need to talk about that.

We've also got a story. I don't know how many people have seen this. Our buddy Russ Meyer, our guy that we know, Russ Meyer. I don't know if anybody's seen a video that he put out. What was it? Probably 10 years ago now. In 2012, I think. Yeah. So Russ calls a bull in. And when we watched the video, I think everybody's first time watching a video. If you know who Russ is, you wouldn't have questioned his skill or his decision making. But you're like, what are you doing? You...

dummy, like draw your bow. You know, he got, he kind of got caught off guard. This elk walks in on the same exact trail that he is. Right. And I think,

during the video when you watch it, you're so fixated on the elk, you don't realize what he's doing until you watch it the second or third time. Russ is a pretty strong guy, but this also would go over to you're shooting a bow that you can do this with. He wouldn't have killed this bull if he had to draw his bow like you see most people, like 90% of people draw their bow. They give it a big yank, arrow goes to the sky. Russ literally draws his bow inch by inch as slow as he can pull this bow back.

And next thing you know, the bull gets shot and you were watching it the whole time. You didn't realize that Russ had got his bow drawn back because he moved so slowly and so methodically that you would have never known that that bow was ever drawn. And the bull is in plain view. Like he was in the bull's eyesight the whole way. Like it was incredible. Yeah, it was. It was that video. It's like, all right, I need to be able to draw my bow a little more smoothly and not make such a racket.

um, with arrows bouncing around the cage or whatever it may be like very smooth. And, and like I say, it, it just, it was another example. I probably go overboard on, on making sure everything's perfect. Cause I always want to be able to, to capitalize on opportunities, but it was just one of those things again, like,

He had, you know, his rest didn't make any noise. He was able to draw his bow. You know, all these things he had dialed in to give him that opportunity on a great bowl there. And it just makes you think like you need to need to pay attention to all that stuff and maybe not shoot an 85 pound bow if you don't have to.

Yeah. And practice, practice those, those skills. Right. I feel like Russ, I don't know. He's a pretty beefy dude. Like he's got some guns. He, he could probably, he probably don't practice drawing like that maybe, but for guys like me, I'm, I practice when I practice shooting in the yard, I'm practicing drawing that bow as slow as I can without, without any movement, the very little minimum movement that way.

come hunting season it's just part of my routine right i can just draw my bow back and there are times you want to yank your bull back bow back let's say a bull's kind of running in like yeah you want might want to rank yank it in yank it back at the right time but most of the time you want that thing to be smooth and and no movements discernible so yeah and another thing about practice is similar to practice of drawing slow um i always do it at the end of my routine because it doesn't mess the rest of my my you know 30 or 40 arrows or whatever i'm going to shoot is i do the long holds

Like I, it's a different muscle, like whether you're a gym rat and you work out all the time, like even when I was going to the gym all the time, it was still something different about holding the bow, almost like that negative resistance. Like you're just trying to hold it back. And, um, so I'll do a, you know, I'll set my, my timer on my watch and try to do a minute and a half hold and see if I can still make a good shot or whether it would be a bad shot. And, um, so you, as season gets closer, you start to work on those, um, you know, endurance, uh,

type type situations um as you're out there shooting just see see what your time is and and uh by working on it you get better at it you you get more comfortable you get less shaky you can extend that time and like i say those are the things that are gonna help you kill more elk than than the additional poundage yep absolutely all right so we're gonna that was a good segue into um

ethical shot placement. And I, I, I hesitate to talk about ethical shot placement because I think everybody controls their own ethics, but I'm going to pose a question and we can, we can navigate through it. So how do you ensure ethical shot placement, um, to make sure that you maximize your chance of recovering that bull? Um, and then if you can go into like shot angles, shot distances, and kind of what you're comfortable with and what you're looking for, um, before like Dirk Durham's comfortable in this situation, I'm going to pull the trigger here.

Well, I think a lot of people just need to be real with themselves on their capabilities or at their the distances they can shoot first and foremost in our backyards or at our local range that we shoot comfortably every time. It's just like, man, I can drill this thing at 100 yards. So if I got a bullet 70, he's dead. Right. But that's that's not the same situation that you face when you're hunting, right?

Um, let's say you've been hunting and you haven't had an opportunity to shoot and it's day seven of your hunt. You're dehydrated. You just hauled ass up this hillside, this steep hillside, you know, 150, 200 feet straight up vertical and you're, you're, you're breathing hard. Your heart's pounding. You have a pack on your back and there's the bull and.

I figured, let's say I normally want to shoot at 50 yards. That's maybe, that's kind of where I draw the line personally. But at that point right there, I may cut that to 30 or 40 yards. Cause you know, you, you pull your bow back, man, you're, you're on a steep hillside. Everything is not easy. Your bow form is probably not the best. Um, just because the angle that the elk is above you or below you, whatever the case might be, everything is not perfect. And, um,

That has, you have to kind of be real about it. Be like, well, if this is my backyard, I drill that sucker. But now that it's not, I'm going to wait for the, for the, for the best opportunity.

And then that kind of goes with that training you were talking about, holding your bow for a long time. You might even do some like wind sprints back and forth to your target and get out of breath, then do your bow hold. But make sure you have your pack on and stuff. And this is on flat ground in your backyard. You know, raise your heart rate, get out of breath, shoot from a precarious angle.

And you're going to see it's going to cut your lethal distance down quite a bit. So acknowledging that and understanding that is how you can perform ethical shots. Like everybody has their own ethics, right? But I think everyone can agree that we want to take a shot that's going to end with a mortally wounded animal that's going to die quickly and humanely. So-

understanding your capabilities like truly understanding them is is important so yeah yeah i've always thought that like walking out in my my loafers or my my street shoes no pack on you know shorts t-shirt like i'm cool i'm comfortable is it was practicing until you get out there you have your pack on you have a chest harness on um you realize that your pack

squeaks when you go to dry your, you know, all these things that, you know, or whatever it may be, it may not be a squeak or that something like binds you up or your harness is really close to catching your string. You know, if your forms off, you know, all of these things, like you need to test that out and, and confirm that it's going to be okay. You know, one thing that,

I used to have an issue with is when I used to use a wrist rocket, you know, back in the day is I would anchor under my ear. Well, if it was an early morning hunt, I would forget that I had a hood on and I couldn't get my anchor like up in my ear and it would frazzle me. Right. Cause I needed to get to that spot. And so just all of these things like is, is goofy as it may seem, you know, my wife laughs at me cause I'm out there in my, you know, I I've got my chest harness on my backpack on the middle of the, you know,

late, late one evening. I'm like, she's like, what are you doing? I'm like, well, I'm making sure all this stuff works together. Um, you know, now, fortunately I've switched to a thumb release. So I, I'm more comfortable with hoods on, but like all of those things pop up and I'm just one of those guys that I want to make sure this is, I reduce all of these little gremlins that are going to pop up in your hunt. Um, like,

I, I, I just want to take care of that at home, not out in the field. Like you said, on day seven, eight or nine, like if that's what costs me, I'm going to never forgive myself or be real frustrated with myself that that was the little detail, um, that, that didn't, um, you know, that, that cost me a bowl. Uh,

Yeah, hardly happens. Hardly ever happens on day one on a nice flat place where you're, you're like well rested and feel good. And, you know, you're, you're not like excited. And so it hardly ever happens that way. So, yeah, you should definitely practice.

prepare. Um, one thing I always notice, especially when I throw my pack on, especially, you know, not just my pack, but with it weighted down with the normal amount of gear, I have it, uh, whether that's a bivy hunt or even a day hunt is when I, I drop back. Um, uh, so my right shoulder, the one that supports my bow, uh,

I have to like really like focus and like kind of give my shoulder a little bit of a boost to hold it up right because that pack is drawing down on it completely different than when I don't have a pack on. So you have to identify this stuff long before season. That way, when you do get the opportunity to draw your body, you're like, what's wrong with my shoulders not working right? So that way you make the best shot.

Yeah. And I'm not going to, I'm not going to pass my ethics on to anybody, but I'll, I'm going to give an example of like what I, how I determine my, my ethical shot distance. So I use a matrix target for those of you that haven't seen them. It's basically, I believe it's seven hexes that are all put together to make one big hex. It's science. Yeah. It's, it's geometry, but you gotta, you gotta read a book.

Um, so I have one hex in the middle that is basically about an eight by eight hex, you know, with the, with the corners cut off and then I've got the eight hexes around. And so when I'm getting everything tuned, I won't do this right off the bat when I'm getting broadheads already. But at some point I will start to like walk back with five arrow groups. And at the point where I can no longer keep all five inside of this six to eight inch

circle, like, all right, that is my range or like what I'm comfortable for the year. Like it's not four out of five, you know, there may be an occasional flyer or something that I know that I screwed up on. Like I dropped my bow or I didn't, you know, whatever it may be, but like, I want to know that five out of five times, I'm going to be able to hit that eight inch circle at any distance. Now let's say it's a good shooting year for me. And I've had a few of them where like, all right, I'm able to do that at 70 yards, keep it inside that eight inch circle or,

Then I subtract back. I'm like, all right, I really don't even want to shoot that far because of movement or things that are out of my control. Let's bring that back. And for me, we talk about sliding sites and all this stuff. I shoot a four pin and a lot of people are like, well, I don't know why you waste your time on a 20. Well, because for me, like if I can just anchor a pin, I don't want to, I don't want to drop a 30 pin lower than it needs to be. I just want to be able to aim. But anyways, I have a four, four pin site, 20, 30, 40, 50.

I'm not going to lie. Like I do not, I, I consider the dial on my bow is like a backup backup, a follow-up shot. Yeah. I'm going to shoot my elk at 20 to 50. Now there was a time in 2019, there was a bullet 55 and I just kind of stacked pins and went up. I wasn't able to roll it. And so I was confident that year that I could make that shot. But, uh, that's how I established like my own

um comfortable shot distance so to be honest most time i'm shooting good enough that it just defaults to 50 like i'm not shooting a bull if it's not within 50 yards and and i've been fortunate that i've been able to like hold up to my end of the deal minus the one at 55 yards in oregon there in 19 but um now we may get into we haven't really even touched on the ideal shot angles and shot distances um anybody that's listened to my stuff before watching my hunts knows that i'm a big

I always got to go into this a little bit squirmy gingerly. Yeah. I'm a big fan of frontals. They're very, very effective and they will kill elk faster than any broadside shot I've ever taken. But with that, here's the big asterisk, the precursor, the whatever, like I need to now hit the two inch white circle inside of my hex.

before, like, that's my distance. I'm comfortable. Like I need to have a blade strike that because I'm now just limited my kill zone to maybe a three to a four inch wide by about a 10 inch tall. And I can't, I can't afford to go left or right. Um, and I even put more pressure on myself. I've really got to hit about a three by six area, you know, above the sternum, above that collar, that bone structure up into the neck. Um,

and I really need to be shooting good. And a lot of times that means I'm limiting myself to 25 ish, maybe 30 on a real good year because a frontal shot gone left or right or low or even high can can turn bad really quick. It can be the greatest shot in the world. But if you miss, it's not going to turn out very well. And a lot of times that bull is going to get away.

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You all know that Jason Phelps is a nerd, right? He's like this engineering nerd. But I don't know if he's a movie nerd. And I think I know the answer to this because he says he don't watch movies. But Phelps, you ever watch Empire Strikes Back?

No, I've never watched any of that stuff. I knew you didn't. Of the Star Wars series. So there's this big, huge Death Star thing that's like basically a man-created planet that's full of bad guys. Anyway, the mission was they had to fly down this trench and they had to shoot basically the proverbial frontal shot on a bull elk. But they're going like, I don't know, 50 million light years of speed down.

And anyway, they have to shoot and it has to go down this like ventilation pipe. Right. And I kind of, I always picture the frontal shots on elk are the same thing. I'm like, if you do it right, I mean, this whole damn thing's going to explode. You know, you're going to kill that elk. No problem. But if you don't do it perfect, it's a bad deal. And will the elk die? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on where your elk or your arrow hits. Um, if it's not inside the perfect circle. Um,

Why is that a big deal? Let's say, well, I don't really care if I kill it or not. You know, some people maybe, but I think we're all, we all want a humane death for the elk. But, and also you could spend, you know, the next day or two searching for your bull on your buddy that didn't shoot on his day to shoot. You could, you could spend a whole day on his day to shoot and not, you know, it just takes, takes you guys out of the game. So I feel like not only,

You owe it to the elk for a quick humane kill. Also, you got to owe it to your buddy to take good shots. You start taking risky shots, pretty soon you're just chasing blood trails when you should be just hunting, you know. And I found, now I'm not a huge, I am not a huge fan of a frontal, and I'll tell you why, just because I know that

how emotions can run high in people. I know how abilities and kind of like what we talked about, you know, you, you get, you get winded, you got your pack, you, you're, you're, you're in distress, you're shooting in distress. And a lot of times, um,

Um, when, uh, let's just, let's just be honest, a big bull elk walks in frontal. It's pretty intimidating. You know, he's a, he is a big animal. That thing's his, his face is about your level. You know, he's probably six feet tall at, you know, when he's standing there at normal stance and that thing's walking in, it's pretty intimidating. And then to kind of hold your crap together and make that perfect shot.

It can be remarkable for a lot of shooters. It's a tough shot to make, just that in itself. Then you have to consider, okay, is this elk uphill from me? Is he downhill? Like, what are your angles? Is he perfectly frontal? Is he not perfectly frontal? And when you're a little excited, it's kind of hard to determine those things. So, yeah.

I don't recommend it. I typically won't take it. I will say if, if I had my bow drawn this and a bull walked in and he, it was the right yardage and he's on the same plane as me and everything was perfect. Um, and it's close, let's say 10 to 20 yards away.

I would probably take the shot, but if it wasn't exactly perfect, I would not, you know, I've, I've taken, I've taken two, I've taken kind of a quartering frontal and I've taken a full frontal and the full frontal, he died within 40 seconds. He had left a blood trail that Stevie wonder could follow. You know, it was just, it was amazing. The other one, it was kind of a quartering shot, which I watched Jason Phelps take that same shot and, and,

His bolt died like quick as can be that one, uh, Idaho when you and Charlie were down in that crap hole. Um, I'm like, oh yeah, this, this, this is like the same Sarah. So I took that shot and I don't know, my arrowhead didn't hit the right spot. It didn't penetrate. And I never did find that bull. Um, he was bugling again, uh, two days later, but, uh,

That was a heck of a monkey on my back, man. Once, once I had that, once you have that happen, it's like, oh man, you got to walk around with that monkey on your back. And it makes it really hard to draw your bow again and not think about that monkey and make a good shot on the next time. So I, I try to avoid it myself. Yeah. While we're on frontals, I'm just going to,

We've did a lot of these on social media, like where would you shoot the bull? And we show a frontal. And everybody or the majority ends up aiming too low. I don't understand it because then we will show the bull. Basically, we twist it 90 degrees and show you like, well, your arrow literally just went through the bottom eighth of the elk. Like if you were to...

The vitals, like you still want to imagine. So if the bull's walking uphill, you would maybe want to hit a little lower. But if the bull's walking downhill, like downhill to you, you would want to hit a little higher. And if it's on plane, you need to be like, you need to intersect the center

of that, you know, we're trying to hit that connection between the heart and the lungs, like the mass, you know, the, the, the entire, you know, pump of the city, you know, everything that's making everything else work here. And it's a, it's a pretty small section, but it's, it's located about halfway up the bull's body. And if you're going low where most people end up

wanting to always pick, you're going to like, maybe if you can get through the sternum and all the heavy bone structure there, you maybe will catch the heart, but that bone structure is going to protect the majority of the heart at most of your angles. Like you got to get up into the soft tissue and get up into the heart where the heart connects into the lungs. Um,

And so that's, that's one thing on angles that I think a lot of people not understanding the angles and where the vitals are at. Everybody seems to aim low on a, on a, on a frontal, which is, is not going to work out very well for you or the elk.

Yeah. And I want to bust a myth right here because a lot of people say, oh, you want to aim at the hair transition where it goes from light to dark or whatever. And just the fact is every elk is different. Their hair is not going to be exactly in the same place. The transition is not going to be in the same exact place. And as a bull's come walking in on you, it's

It's going to be tough to recognize that spot. So you have to understand anatomy to hit that thoracic opening, which is going to be about halfway. If you return that elk's broadside, it's going to be like if you were to cut, make a line halfway between top and bottom, then that line would go straight out to the thoracic opening. And that's where the line has to be. Above that, you're going to hit him in the neck. Now you may kill him. You may not. Below it, like Jason said, there's that...

all that bone mass down there is going to be really tough. Can you shoot through it? It has been done, but to shoot through it and hit, you know, the heart or something vital it,

It's tough. And if you hit high, you know, you're going to hit in that, the neck part of the spinal area. And that's some massive bones to try to penetrate through too. So you just have to really, you really have to study this and really understand elk anatomy and also understand your, your shooting ability. Yeah. And I'm going to one more point on, on the frontal and then we'll switch to broadside angles. I'm going to tell on myself a little bit here and it's not really telling on myself that the bull died within seconds.

30 seconds. But any of those that watched my hunt with Ronella on Netflix, I think it was season 10, episode six or something like that. Everybody's always like, what happened on the shot? Like we never showed it. Well, I was so I was so locked in on where the vitals were. I didn't pay attention to anything else. The bulls walking downhill to my position at about a 30 degree slope. So not super steep, but pretty good downhill. And the bulls he was walking was bouncing his head.

But I was locked in on where I was, you know, not really peeking around the side, but kind of like, where's everything lining up? Like, what are my angles? And I paid no attention to anything besides where I had to get that arrow in, in to kill it. And as he's doing that, he dropped his head on one of his bounces, you know, as he's walking along and, and that arrow actually went in just below his cheek. And it was, it went in through his neck and,

But the veins were hanging out by his face and it looked like I had shot that bull in the face and Steve just elected to not

I thank him for it because it didn't look good. It wasn't a good visual, but that bull, the arrow went to the exact right spot. I've never to this day seen more blood. There's been equal bloods on frontals, but that bull literally twirls, stands there for about four or five seconds, walks over, and we can hear his horns hitting the rocks. Within a minute, he's dead, expired. But it was one of those things where if I hadn't been paying full attention to angles and vitals,

I would have just to avoid hitting him in the neck or the face, I would have aimed low, which would have been a bigger mistake, if that makes any sense. So I'm just giving some examples, like real-life examples, like the arrow didn't look like it went in the right spot, but if you can imagine an elk walking downhill, you hit him high, and that arrow basically goes in...

horizontal, like we hit all the right stuff at that angle. So just another example of you just really need to identify and understand how everything lays up in there. And at the angle that you're at, the angle that the arrow is traveling, the angle that the elk is, and it's really that difference in angle of the arrow's path and then the bull's body's

path, like how and where you need to intersect vitals. So I'll diverge from frontals and we'll maybe go into some broadside shots and what you're looking for there and what your approach is to avoiding bone and all of that. A frontal shot. One last thing. Frontal shot to me is basically the difference between a frontal and a broadside. Broadside shots are like shooting free throws in basketball.

Frontals are like that buzzer beater at the end where you're at the weird end of the court and you just hail Marriott and hope it goes in the hole. That's about the same amount of odds against you, maybe. I don't know. Maybe not. People will probably argue that, but I don't know. I'm not a fan, but...

Okay. So the old, the old bread and butter, the broadside shot, um, you know, ideally sometimes it's tough to get the elk to do this when you're calling yourself or you don't have anybody else able to kind of turn the bull for you. A lot of times what happens is that bull will come into a yardage where he expects to see the bull or the cow. Um, I don't want to say get nervous, but it doesn't see what he wants. And then he'll like

you know, he does that, like I'm leaving dance, right. Where he kind of twirls and moves and, you know, may do his dance or maybe he's traveling through, um, the area on, on his way to the call in, regardless of what it is, you'll end up getting a broad side or a slightly quartering to, or a slightly quartering away shot. Like what's your approach? What are you thinking about, um, on all of those and what's your preferred, um, shot there? Yeah. A lot of times they'll have them come in and they'll kind of pause or if, if,

you can tell by how their, their eyes look or their demeanor. They come in, they'll pause. They're looking for that other elk. And then if they don't see it, then they'll start, they may, they may come in frontal and then they turn sideways. And I'm waiting for that, that sideways shot typically. And, um,

Where I'm going to aim, you know, if you aim right in that crease, right, very close to the shoulder blades and scapula, if you, there's kind of a little V there where the scapula comes up and then the leg bone kind of comes down. There's almost makes kind of a V there, right in that little pocket is like the most deadly spot to hit them.

But if things don't go right, let's say the bull moves at the shot. Let's say I'm torquing my bow. Let's say I don't execute the shot. Perfect. It's very easy to hit that shoulder blade. So I typically don't aim at that little pocket. I'm going to aim away from it a little ways, maybe six inches away from that pocket. I don't want there to be any...

Any issues with penetration whatsoever. So I will kind of aim a little further back, but not too far back. I don't want to try to aim, you know, back to where that's like, now I'm, I'm shaking hands with liver and lungs. I'm, I want to, you know, there's a, there's a happy median there. Yeah. I I'm in the same boat. Like,

you know, we, we can argue over all day, whether you want to hit high lungs, so it dies quick and don't get any blood, low lungs, you know, it lives a little bit longer, but you get a blood trail, you know, do you go hard, but I'm in that same, I go about halfway up the body, which is maybe just a little tighter, you know, a little higher than that crease. Um,

And then I come back from it three to six inches typically is like my ideal aiming. And the reason for that is it gives you the most margin for error, right? I can go three to six inches to my left and still not hit that bone. I can go up six inches and still catch the lung. I can go down six inches and catch heart or the bottom of the lung. And I can go back six inches and still catch lung, right? And so that's,

it really just gives me the largest, the biggest margin for any air that may affect, you know, if we're going to be able to kill or to quickly kill that bull. And so that's, that's been always my approach, like, you know, slightly below, if you get real nitpicky, slightly below half, six inches back from that crease, three to six inches. And that's always on a broadside shot. That's, that's been a good location. Now,

you get that i love a quartering away shot as well but we need to start being smart hunters and once again working on those angles like as that bull starts to to quarter away my arrows go

going eight inches back from the crease, 10 inches back from the crease, 12 inches back from the crease. And what, what a good, you know, rule of thumb and you've heard it, you know, you're not hearing it from me first is try to imagine where that arrow is going to cross through and come out the other side. And you're trying to put together once again, you know, using all this geometry, like where does that going to line everything up? Where are you going to hit like through the middle of the lungs, through the heart. And so is the more that bowl quarters, the more that arrow has got to come back to a point where, uh,

you no longer want to hit him in the hind quarter, right? And so that's my limit. Like, all right, I'm no longer shooting at this bull because he's turned too much. So that's kind of how the quartering away and then quartering two, you get a little margin of error, but at some point, if he gets turned too much towards you 10 or 15, you can't catch him on the frontal. You can't catch him. You can't really catch vital because of the leg bones behind it. And so you're really just kind of stuck waiting for a better shot opportunity at some point on a quartering two.

Yeah. Yeah. The querying too is tough. Um, you can squeak it in, in front of the shoulder if you have the right angle and, you know, um, it'll work great if, unless it don't, you shoot behind it, you could catch one lung and liver. Um, typically a liver shot's pretty deadly. Um,

There's not going to be a lot of blood and they some sometimes they die fast. Sometimes they don't die fast. It's just you never know. And then that quartering way shot, you have to be super careful. Let's say you execute the shot. It's it's really severely quartered away from you and you enter the pond. Your arrow enters the punch and it continues and then lodges on the offside shoulder. Yeah.

So you're going to get all the goodies, but the problem is, is the entry hole, you're not going to have an exit wound sometimes. So the entry hole is going to be the only hole that thing has. And again,

It's going to, the guts, a lot of times some fatty material, sometimes just gut material is going to clog that hole up and you're just not going to get a good blood trail. I've been involved with that before. I had a friend that shot a bull like that and we tracked it and tracked it and tracked it. And we didn't find it until it was too late. That was a good...

a very lethal shot, but did not leave enough sign to recover him in time. So you just have to be really careful, um, with those, those coring angles and maybe air on the side of not having it coring too far away, uh, to at a too steep of an angle. Um, so where your, your rib, your air will enter the rib cage on, on your side and then, um, lodge in that front shoulder or in front or exit the cavity in front of the front shoulder. Yeah.

Yep. Two, two holes are always better than one for sure. And yeah, it's, we can, we can get into the nitty gritty, like people that have shot enough bulls have seen it like high lung bulls.

probably is one of the quickest kill shots as far as like the bull, but it leaves, you know, blood. So where I hunt in the jungle, like there have been times where I've hit a bull high. I'm like, gosh, dang it. You know, you start to think like, I'm never going to be able to track him now, but thankfully they've died in 10 or 15 steps. You know, it's, it's that quick at times.

or yeah, the bull may live a little bit longer, but if I'm hunting and I'm trying to pretend like I, I've got this down to a science where if I'm hunting brush areas, like, all right, I'm going to hit the bull low now. And if it's wide open, I'm going to hit the bull high. It's not that I'm not that, you know, uh, uh,

you know, detailed in it, but there are times where it's like, all right, the lower heart, lower lung type shot is going to make sure I've got good blood. He's still going to die. And I'm going to be able to find him and make sure that you can, you know, bring all the meat back to your, your cooler versus like, all right, I'm going to take a risk on it and hit him a little bit higher. You're playing with that, that void, you know, along the back, you're playing with not a lot of blood, albeit it will die quick. But if that, if you give that bowl, uh,

you know, a hundred to 200 yards of, of ability to sprint, like it just become really difficult to find. So another thing that needs to go through your head is, you know, keep your shot low. And at times, um, if, if you're in the right terrain, then a higher shot will be just fine. But, um, like I say, I, I usually aim for below the half line and that, that guarantees I get good blood, um, expires quick and, um, just seems to be the best of all options there. And, um,

without, without watching videos back, like what it's been real, really valuable to, to film our elk hunts over the years, because what you think happens at the moment of truth, when you fire the bow, when you release that arrow, um,

versus reality are a lot of times two different things. What, what you see and perceive, because everything moves at such a fast time and you're so hyper-focused. But for instance, I shot this bull in 2019. I had, I injured my shoulder that year and I shot, I had to draw my bow with a mouth tab. And you can look that up on my YouTube channel, Mouth Tab Madness. I think it's episode 10 where I shoot the bull. But anyhow, I,

I was aiming below the, below that center line, you know, like we talk about, and this bull was just kind of coming. He was pissed off and he was not, uh, at least the least bit alert. He wasn't looking for danger. And I had, I had my pin on him and I, and I released the arrow and, uh,

It hits him. He runs off and then pauses and then he takes off again. But anyway, so I just know, I just crushed this thing. I'm like, I just, I, I know I hit the perfect spot. There's no way I didn't. The shot felt good and everything. Well, we find the bullet. He didn't bleed real great. Well, he bled internally because he, it, it, the arrow had hit above that center line. I'm like, man, I,

I hit really high, like eight inches high. Like, that's crazy. Well, you watch the video back and at the shot, that bull that was not really, you know, looking for danger, he dropped. He dropped about eight inches. So if it wouldn't have been for that,

It would have hit perfect. So, you know, giving yourself that room, aim just, you know, a bit below the center line, not too close to that shoulder because anything can happen. Those, you know, and then the next elk you shoot, when the bow goes off, nothing happens, but the arrow just burying right where you aim. So it's hard to anticipate exactly, but aim to places where even if the animal reacts, it's still going to hit good vitals and you'll be able to find them. Yep. And piggyback on that a little bit.

you know, should you, you know, similar to whitetail hunting where people like go to the lowest, lower edge a lot of times of the vitals, right? Knowing that that gives them more margin above. I still, would you ever aim, you know, low on an elk or would you just assume that the majority of the time they don't drop? Like that was a little bit of an anomaly or you, you're just going to aim,

your normal spot and then you know with an elk being as big as they are we still have that a bit you know that room above it to still make a vital hit but you just like you did ended up with a little less blood right right i'm going to aim my normal spot yeah but that normal spot is just below center line so you don't want to aim at center line because then if they react and drop too far you may not have enough blood to follow yeah i'm

I'm in agreement there. Well, uh, appreciate having you on always nice to chat elk with you. And, um, yeah, like we, like we're talking here a lot, it's, it's middle of May. It's time to start, um, you know, shooting your bows, getting everything dialed in. Um, for me, I usually get my stuff dialed in about this time and then kind of really go on cruise control, try to shoot 20, 30 arrows three or four times a week. Um, and just kind of, and then I go on rewatching.

real cruise control as it gets towards season, like maybe shooting, you know, five to 10 shots and really, really concentrating on every shot's good, but, um, get your setups figured out now. So there's not a big panic before, make sure everything's, you know, tuned for broadheads already. And, um, yeah, that's what we got on, on the,

on this episode of cutting the distance. Thanks for joining Dirk. Yeah. I was going to tell everybody one more thing. Um, if, if you, if you're, if you want to really check out, you know, find the, the, your weaknesses or your chinks in your armor, go to the total archery challenge here in one of the Western events, you know, where it's real steep and, and excessive distances and, and high elevation and stuff. And that, that is a great warmup for elk season to, to, to identify, uh,

your strong points and your weaknesses too, because, um, we didn't even talk about third access access on your, on your, on your, your sites and stuff. And that's it. That's a place that's going to, that's going to find it. And, uh,

It's really hard to find that, set that third axis in your backyard. You'll have to go shoot that in at a steep angle somewhere out of town if you have that opportunity somewhere. But yeah, hit up those extreme 3D archery shoots and that'll really help you out for season this fall. Yeah, it'll frustrate the absolute hell out of you when you can't figure out how to deal with your third axis and get it tuned in. So it'll be, it's a great learning experience. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

And it'll, it'll really humble you that like, maybe I should keep my shots inside of 40 or 50 when it gets steep. Yeah, exactly. Stuff goes haywire quick. Um, yeah. So if you guys ever see pictures of me shooting off the tip top of my roof down to the target, just know that I'm not crazy. I'm just trying to get my third axis dialed in. All right. Uh, thanks a lot, Dirk. Uh, have a good one. Happy birthday. And, uh, we'll check in later. Thanks. Yep. Yep.

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