The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 131: Calling Elk

Episode Date: August 28, 2018

Bozeman, MT- Steven Rinella talks with Jason Phelps of Phelps Game Calls, along with Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew.Subjects Discussed: rippin' bugles; herd bulls, satellite bulls, lead cows, and their impact on herd dynamics; dissecting the five parts of a bugle; 90% bugles to 10% cow calls; the good fortune of listening to bad elk callers; getting more locater bulls; lunch bulls and nap bulls; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwear-less. We host the Meat-Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. That's nice thank you uh but do you find like you know a lot of bulls have crazy bugles yeah i mean they're they're spread across the

board from you sometimes you have some bull he'd be like you know the ones that sound like they broke their uh larynx somehow yeah we were in not to diverge too quick too fast but i was in the bob marshall in 2012 and the place is untouched basically in some of these areas and we have a bolded beagle that sounded like an owl that i would have never believed it if he didn't answer me like five you know within that five second range and he did it again and it was like an owl hooting i'm like what can you give me a example i almost can't and then the just do it without a call but just just do it or come as close as you can to mimicking what he's doing but you're not even really that thump it's just kind of a an owl who sound and then on that same day we walked a half

mile down the ridge and one sounded like a donkey and it did it twice like a hee-haw type sound i'm like wow this is i felt like i was in some crazy land like this these aren't elk anymore but we called them both in to 25 yards and like no they were elk and they bugled that way the whole way in just crazy all kinds of sounds when you're out you know that's kind of what i guess i'm getting at is like we talked about this bunch this spring when we were all hot on talking about turkeys is you work so hard to get the right sounds you know you work so hard to get like high level turkey calm like which i'm not great at but then when you're out in the turkey woods birds will come in doing stuff that you know yeah just crazy like we had a guy after we had this conversation we had a guy send us a video it was the hand that comes in and like um i think he yelped like 27

times in a row oh i thought it was in the 60s it wasn't it's just it's just like non-stop where everybody's like well you should never yelp more than you know yeah and if i was seven times and if we sat if we sat out in the woods and we're leaning against a tree and my body's going to start calling and he gets gone and he hits 60, right? You'd be looking at him like, what in the world are you doing? Yeah. So in the bugling thing, like when you're ripping bugles like that, do you mess around with doing the crazy ones or do you think it like do you think it's it works best to have like that clean really like quintessential escalating topped out pitch bugle like the perfect bugle so do you rip crazy bugles too so when i'm locating so that's just my standard walking down the ridgeline i try to get that high note that rings your ears and i do that one the

same every time you know call me boring vanilla ice cream just i'm gonna get that high note i'm gonna get the high note i'm gonna get the high note but once i get in on a bowl then i try to and that's where i think becoming a good caller may help is i try to mimic that bull exactly if he is that weird donkey bull or whatever i might mimic him or do you really if it gets that crazy maybe not but most of your bowls that i would say within your general sounds like if they're a lip baller which is the bugle i just did that real knocky bugle through the center if they're a high note with two chuckles I try to match him so I just try to kind of match the bull I'm trying to call in and mimic him once we get once we get into that situation but but for

my location bugles when I'm trying to just get something to answer I'm pretty just plain Jane two or three note as high as i can get you know send it down the canyon and then listen if you had to okay if you had to choose for locate note if i said you can bring your binoculars you can bring optics or you can bring a bugle you're going oh man that's a good question so all and all the seminars i do my preferred way to spot them i'm going to give you the the easiest answer ever here i'm going to tell you why each i would love give it to me from the game caller perspective no i would love i would much rather spot elk with my binoculars any day over top of of uh you know then then locate them with a bugle that way they don't

know i'm in the world i can sit and watch them and figure out what's going on that's a good point but if i had to leave my locator bugle, if I can't spot them within the first half hour of the day, then I'm screwed because now I need that location bugle the rest of the, you know, for the next two or three hours of that morning to try to get something going. So neither of them are good, but I would say, man, I would probably leave the optics. If I had to pick, i'd take the location bugle yeah and and again did i think two things that would be major factors would be like is it september or is it november yeah right no no no i'm talking like september hunting man yeah so i'm the only reason

i'm hoping that if i bring my location bugle i can either spot them with naked eye is there elk out in the middle of a opening hopefully close or they're going to be sounding off on their own so i don't want to necessarily leave that location bugle at the truck i'll leave my binoculars yeah and to add to that i feel like again we're going to make a lot of uh call that call us the turkeys but like both of those animals are like much like sort of more fun and easier to hunt when they're making sounds and when they clam up you're like it's completely two different things right and sometimes with elk you really have to be hammering to get them to start talking yeah you know what are the when you do a standard your standard locator bugle well first can you explain what you mean by a locator

bugle just so people are tracking so you know and we can get into the science and i don't claim to know i don't even mean like i'm gonna have you dissect a bugle but i mean like when you say like locating just tell people what you mean by that so uh it's the idea that i'm gonna pronounce that i'm an elk i'm up here on this ridge line and i'm just looking for a response and it's kind of a territorial thing that herd bull or even that other satellite bull you say hey i'm up here i'm and he'll answer i'm down here kind of that marco polo game you know so to speak like marco polo all right now i got you that's you know you didn't know i wasn't a real elk so now i can start the game you know

figure out where the wind's at and so you're just looking for a response you're not trying to call them in you're not trying to threaten them scare them anything at that point it's just kind of a just get their gps yeah just a quick clean all right now i gotta i gotta pin on you we'll figure out how to you know try to get on you know and that raises a couple other questions uh real quick tell people what a satellite bull is so satellite bull um it's just that bull that's kind of hanging close to that herd bull. The herd bulls, typically, they've got their pecking order figured out. That herd bull, anywhere from, you know, it could be a single cow, two cows in some places when the bull to cow ratio is high, all the way down in my area in coastal Washington, you have herds of 25, 30, and it's not even unheard of to to have more cows

than that where that one big boss bull is kind of running the show yep or like the you know there's like a lead cow running there's a lead cow who's saying like we're going here yep but pestering them and corralling them and defending them from all comers yeah she's like the chief bull yeah she tells them where they're going he kind of tells them how they're going to get there um sort of who's going to come along yeah yep and he keeps them rounded up but then these satellite bulls are your you know subordinate submature sometimes even mature bulls you know if you get into some of these spots you might have a giant satellite bull body-wise and age-wise maturity-wise but that herd bull is big enough and more dominant enough to keep them just kind of on the shadows of this herd. Well, what happens throughout the day and throughout September, these satellite

bulls come in and try to pick off a cow or two from them. And so this herd bull spends a ton of time like running them off. And you know, when you run off a satellite bull, now there's, you know, there's sometimes multiple satellite bulls. They're, they're coming to pester from the opposite direction, almost like they're working against him to, you know, pick cows out of his herd. So you got these satellite bulls and it becomes very, very fun elk hunting when that happens because that herd bull becomes very, very active, very, very talkative. The satellite bulls get very, very talkative and active and it kind of creates that rut frenzy that just, you know.

I've heard guys talk about, I haven't seen this personally, but I've heard guys talk about like a herd bull being so fixated on chasing and harassing other bulls that they're watching as all these other bulls are slipping in and breeding a cow yep and instead of just like breeding the cow he just can't help himself but just chase everyone all over the place and just open himself up yeah to having like the very thing he's trying to prevent from happening he's basically allowing it to happen by running other bulls 100 yards in some direction all the time yeah and we've watched them from across the canyon it's almost like they pay they've got that herd bull pick out one or two he really doesn't like you know like us he got his worst enemy and he'll spend more time he'll let those other bulls get so much closer to his herd and spend more time on

that one bull it seems like man you're just you're letting these other ones slip in it's just i don't know what goes through their head but some are yeah some are like they're like fighters and not lovers yeah yeah what uh so what do you think about this like if if you're out locating, Kane, I presume you'd like to be up high. Yep. Where you can broadcast down as much ground as you can. When you see a bull, I'm trying to think of how to ask this.

A bull doesn't go up high. A real bull doesn't go up high and rip out bugles just to see who's out on the landscape right he's doing something different yeah he's not like hey where are you because i'm gonna come 400 yards over that direction and beat your ass you know like what is he communicating when he's bugling so what we're trying to mimic in my opinion with that ridge running you know or fire road running whatever that that get high so you can really use the terrain to your advantage. Satellite bulls will do that, especially those somewhat mature satellite bulls. They will run ridges looking for those cows.

And so when we had the chance to hunt them. What are they bugling for? They're just trying to locate cows. In the real world, us removed, that satellite bull is running looking for, like, hey, I'm here. And without us being involved, that cow would come to him. Oh, so you think they really are up there cruising, bugling, and bugling trying to find elk, not just bugling as a way of being, I have them, and I'm going to hang on to them. We were in the blues in for 2014 down there in southeast washington where it's a little bit different of a you know it's a special

draw um the elk are a lot more active there's a lot more of them we've molt on multiple occasions we would be in the timber and heard that happen where you could hear a bull run a finger ridge up run the main ridge out run a finger ridge down and he was just bugling as fast as he could run by himself and we ended up calling him in um and calling that bull in and the shooter missed it a couple times um we watch it across talking the blues in washington yeah yeah we watch the same thing across the way you would watch a herd bull just and you could hear him you would watch him just run a ridge line and beagle every couple hundred yards i think he was just flat out looking for cows he had none um just just running ridges looking for looking for elk so he's like a like a boss gobbler out i was just gonna say it's

amazing the similarities well yanni doesn't like it when people say he doesn't he doesn't like when people say that elk hunting is like turkey hunt no no no no no remy doesn't like it because admittedly there are some enormous differences yeah yeah right just the gut pile right just the gut alone yeah a little different yeah some of these western hunters some of us western hunters not us me included but some people have some issues with that that comparison the whole elk versus turkey but but as far as the but there's more dude more dudes hunt turkeys than elk yep and when you're hunting turkeys you're out being like there's a vocal male okay there's more dudes hunt turkeys than hunt elk. Yep. And when you're hunting turkeys, you're out being like, there's a vocal male. Okay.

There's a vocal male who's territorial, who doesn't like other males, who wants hens to come to him. You're making the noise of females. It's like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But there's like some similarities yeah more than in duck hunting no one says elk hunts like duck hunting no as far i i think you're exactly on point as far as the calling aspects and kind of what's going through your head what's going through their head they're pretty dang close you know i think the the the similarities are you know the terrain

you're in maybe how difficult the hunt is. But there's some tough turkey hunting too. Shitloads of differences. Antlers. Yeah, right? There's all these things. And it's funny because I would never, like, let's say I hung out with some dude who had always hunted elk, okay? And he's out for his first turkey hunt.

I wouldn't be like, bro, it's just like hunt, right? It only goes the other direction because you're trying to invite people who have a familiarity, the millions of individuals who have a familiarity with turkey hunting. You're kind of just trying to invite them to start thinking about the whole thing. So it's not meant to be an insult. Like I said, you can fit a turkey's gut pile in your pocket, in your back pocket. The elk, you got to have a wheelbarrow for that thing. A lot of the tactics, I feel like, if you're strictly talking the hunting, the calling, it's pretty similar.

Yeah. But back to the cows, though, responding to, I've twice had it running ridges, bugling away, and a bugle. And like the last thing you think you're going to hear is, yeah. And sure enough, like, you know, less than 100 yards away, I have a cow answer me. Her coming into the bugle and like the last thing you think you're gonna hear is yeah and sure enough like you know less than 100 yards away i have a cow answer me her coming into the bugle but what's interesting both times that happened i mean it was right on the back end of that cow call is then the bull that was with her went was like uh-uh yeah you know yeah yeah so yeah and both times i heard crashing away that bull took that cow and was like we're

going that direction came up hooked her and took her the other way so let me ask you this then both you guys have you seen many instances when you're out ridge running what do you call it you just out locating on the ridges ridge running have you called in many bull-less cows doing that not i mean we have not a lot um i say you're just looking for that location because typically we get that location because we bail off towards him but no i would say but get what i'm after yeah yeah if that's the way that real life works no and i think i think even the satellite bull and it's just my own thoughts on it there's not a lot of loose cows running you know or un unherded up cows running around i think but for that satellite bull, and this is just my own thoughts on it. There's not a lot of loose cows running, you know, or unherded up cows running around. I think, but for that satellite bull, it's worth that last ditch effort to run those

ridges and just see what's out there. Another thing, a reason that, and they could be very similar to us, that somewhat mature satellite bull could be looking for a different herd. Like, hey, I can't take that guy down there's cows. Cause he's a big, you know, he's the toughest guy on the mountain but maybe there's a herd bull on the other side or down here in a different pocket that's maybe not as tough and i have a chance at him you know so there's there may be a couple different reasons he may be searching for you know loose cows or or a different herd bull to go try to fight yeah that's easy for me to

picture is that he's just out ripping bugles. And when he hears something, he's like, what the hell? I'm going to go over there and have a look, see what's going on. Maybe it's some dinky little shit and I'm going to clobber him. And then he'll be up running ridges and I'll be down here playing grab ass. Yeah, he already did the hard work for me. He's got these things all rounded up. I just got to scoop in.

My friend Brant would talk about up in Anchorage, Alaska. He would talk about these big mallards that would hang around on campus where they had some open ponds and stuff. And they'd be out there and they'd just get fat, you know, these huge big mallards. And then the migratory ducks would come up and they'd just be emaciated, you know, from that long migration. He said they'd land in that big local duck and be like, I'll take them here, boys.

And then just take over all the hens you know yeah this is totally fat and happy what are the um what are the parts of a bugle so there do you think about it in that way i do and there's there's different ways to mix and match kind of there's your opening you can um you know a lot of the people start off with a growl. I say we should talk about real bulls. A real bull will start off raspy or growly, which we can mimic with adding some voice in with our throat. Yeah, do the whole thing, and then I'll have you break out some parts.

We haven't had you rip one since we started talking about it. So here we'll do kind of a standard challenge. We'll all try to think about the different parts that are in there and at least what i do and then we'll come back and try to explain them i'm gonna try to count how many parts i think are in there i like that and man because when you're watching one do it and you see his belly just yeah drop yeah it's cool and they're pissing all over themselves yeah look when they get like that and man because when you're watching them undo it and you see his belly just yeah drop yeah it's cool and they're pissing all over themselves yeah look when they get like that man they look like they'd be eating meat you can picture them just like killing a rabbit and eating when they're up ripping those out of their belly just going and yeah it's like you're like yeah

at some point you'd switch diets almost man no so you got like the the yeah there's that opening which i typically don't do the growly i usually just start clean um clean into the escalation yeah yeah and then you kind of you kind of transition really quick into your high note so you can kind of there's that intro the transition into the high note i hold i try to hold that high note for you know one or two seconds and it depends on what bugle maybe we should should, so there's that location bugle, which is just a two or three note high note and then quit. So there's only maybe two or three parts of the location. The challenge bugle I just did.

And then halfway through that high note, I try to drop my voice back into the call. So, and then you try to like get growly there towards the end. And that's just kind of my idea of adding some aggression back in. And then I finished with the grunt. So intro, get to the high note, add some voice back in, then i finish with the grunt so intro get to the high note add some voice back in either finish with some chuckles grunts or you can just kind

of pop the bugle off and end it there and you found like on the locations like when you're doing locators you found that that that like extending prolonging that highness the high note can fire them up more than when you don't i would say extending it i would say it's it's that tone you reach get making sure you get that tone that hits your ears because it gets that somehow gets their attention i don't like to and the length of it i actually don't like to be that long i want to be like two or three seconds because there's a chance that bull may do a weird grunt or do like a weird little answer or a cow may answer somewhere in there and if i'm ripping a beagle i can't necessarily hear that you know like some of those the those ones in the bob marshall for instance they were very quick because

i don't know if they've ever heard a beagle in their life or a you know or there's not a lot and they were answering like literally i would barely catch a tail end of their responses and i'm like what the heck was that again you know that's a good point so you want to keep that beagle in my opinion two to three seconds and then listen but but talk about what you were telling me with you and a buddy watching elk and trying to get them to respond which which story was that you were just talking about you guys were doing different types of bugles and there's certain such and there were certain types of bugles that would make them fire up and some that he would ignore yeah so we run in areas it's obvious as we're running these ridgelines like there's elk here you could see fresh tracks you could smell them they smell like a one of those big black markers

you know that you could they just have a unique smell you're like man there are elk here they they can hear us from right here they were here this morning it's like a barnyard with like kind of a sweet nice yeah and then the big bulls i think when they're flat out going there's those big like super 44 black markers that have that just pungent smell like that's what i always imagine like there's a there's a big bull here somewhere that's funny you say it man because i always say the antelope like pronghorn antelope they smell like frito corn chips man when you put your nose up to their fur, you know. Black marker for elk. Yep.

Black, big, that big Magnum 44 marker, whatever the heck it is. It's like, anyways, that's just what I think about it. I get you, man. I get you. But yeah, on that hunt, we knew there were elk. And so me and my buddy, we're just experimenting like, hey, you, beagle, he's not quite as loud as me,

but beagle and then, but don't get the high note. Like just stay somewhere in the middle. And he would do do that and nothing we'd maybe let him do it twice and then i would come in with that high note that just kind of rattles your ears rattles your buddy's ears makes you kind of want to plug your ears during that bugle because it's just that resonance is that one that drones in your ears and we get an instant response like all right let's let's do this scientifically we need to switch up so next time i'm gonna go just hit a mundane mid note just boring and then you'll hit the high note just to make sure it's not volume or something else that we're doing and sure enough uh i wouldn't get a response on a mid note bugle he'd hit the high note and bam just the instant response and and

i think there's very very good data just from our own selves and you hear a lot of hunters like yeah until i can get that high note, we just don't get responses. So there's something about it that makes them pay attention to it. Yeah. Maybe it penetrates better through the thick brush. It travels better. Something is better about it that gets them. Maybe it's just internally like they hear that note and like, hey, I'm going to answer that one.

Yeah, because that's the funny thing about it. You'll never know what kind of tripped around. You'll never know what kind of trip they're on. Yeah. You'll never know. Like, when they hear it, what are they hearing? I've mentioned this before. I was talking to a friend of mine who's done a lot of research on turkeys, right? He's talking about the iridescence of birds, you know?

And he believes that when a bird looks at a bird, it sees something very different than when you look at a bird. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. It's like you can't compare your impression of what a turkey looks like walking through the woods to what it might look like a turkey. With his vision, what's in his mind, the iridescence of the feathers, the way he picks up that color. And it's like, it's just two different worlds, you know. Little things can sort of give you a glimpse into it, just two different worlds you know little things can sort of give you a glimpse into it but you just don't know what kind of trip they're on yeah how they're

you don't know how they're like analyzing or processing yeah the information around and there's a there's a i kind of cater more to the temperament of the elk in my calling style i kind of let the i react to them um there there are quite a few guys out there that have, you know, kind of broken down elk language or maybe what some of this stuff means and they're successful. So I'm not necessarily going to argue with them, but I was kind of a nerd at this stuff when I was growing up, you know, 18 to 25, I spent way more time than a single person should ever spend just watching elk, you know, from mid September to midember to mid-october back when i was a rifle slash muzzleloader hunter i just want to know everything about them why are they

doing this and i would just watch bulls day in and day out and you know some of these sounds they say mean this i'm like but i seen them do complete opposites you know when when he chuckles that means that he's trying to round the cows up to take him somewhere else like well i seen a satellite bull come down the ridge and he went and chuckled at him like so some of these things like it may it may be but it could just be his temperament it could be the way he communicates it could be um so why like i said they these guys have been successful but i don't know if i necessarily it's 100 that this sound means this or this sound means you should do this um it's tough and i don't know if we'll ever figure it out. Can you do, I want you to make a, the bark, a warning bark. But then I also want to ask you like in terms of

people are like, oh, so chuckling is this. Chuckling means I'm sending my calls. But then you're like, well, I saw a bull chuckle at another bull so maybe that's not what chuckling means so do a warning call but also tell me have you ever seen a warning bark used for something besides saying hey there's a coyote hey there's a dude hey i smelled something funny hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in canada and boy my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers

get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking.

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Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. So you want me to bugle first?

Or do whatever order you want, man. I hate that noise. I hate that noise even when you make it. That's why in the seminars, I'm like, besides the wolf howling, that's about the second least favorite sound I'd like to hear in my elk hunting spot uh with wolves being first but uh so that that sound i probably i'm more confident in what that means uh they typically when they smell you they're gone that you don't even get the warning but it's one of these they've

seen something they don't like or they've heard something they don't like um you know if we're tromping around through the woods and we're cracking sticks, all of a sudden you think you're an elk and you get hammered with an alarm bark. I think it's one of those sounds that, and I'm fairly confident in this, that they want you to show yourself at that point. Like we've seen or heard something that doesn't make a lot of sense. We're a little bit worried about it. Come show yourself.

And I think that's why in response to that alarm bark i alarm bark back like well i heard you i heard you or i seen you you come show yourself and a lot of times you can at least prolong right prolong her running away or him running away alarm barking the rest of the canyon letting everything know hey there's something weird going on over here but sometimes we've been able to alarm bark and have like the cow come around the tree really you know some stuff that could have potentially saved that if it was a bull or an elk i wanted to kill do you remember oh go ahead i think it can kind of almost confuse them because she is i feel like most of the time it's cows i've heard a couple bulls mostly

mostly cows like they're they're saying one thing and then when you bark back at them they're kind of like oh what but wasn't expecting that oh there's an elk, and then when you bark back at them, they're kind of like, oh, but wasn't expecting that. Oh, there's an elk barking. And it kind of just like, I've seen them not really relax, but like you're saying, instead of just like getting the hell out of Dodge barking, they sort of just like end up just filtering slowly away, and you maybe have them blowing your cover. We definitely confused whitetails and confused antelope

by doing their bark back at them. Right. You know? And then they're kind of, yeah, they linger more. Yeah, they just kind of hang out. confused white tails and confused antelope by doing their bark back at them right you know and then they're kind of yeah they linger more yeah yeah they just kind of hang out it's not necessarily you didn't save the whole situation but it gives you a chance yeah but you know you remember those uh you remember the the bite and blow like the primos bite and blow that everyone in the world had like in the mid 90s yep i think that that was like enough people had it and it made such a consistent sound every time i'm not joking when i say this we would blow that and cows would respond with an alarm

bark good yeah they're like that means one thing that means there's some dudes there's some dudes in the woods man yeah. And that was like, having that experience a couple times of like, get all set up, everything's perfect, wind's perfect, okay, we're going to call the bull in. And hit that, meow, you know, on that bite and blow,

and then be answered by, rah, rah. Bark back. Dude, it set us back. I got to say, before you chime in on this, that like, I had that call, I might to say, before you chime in on this, that I had that call. I might even be in that Tupperware over there, and I could just never master it. I could never get it good.

It was too finicky. It was kind of like you never could. These external reads that you make now, I mean, you can... Yeah, but you got to be good to use them. I think people like that because you could be a shitty caller and kind of make a noise,

but every shitty caller was making the same shitty noise and that's the thing it necessarily wasn't making a good noise yeah and that's that's like my dad he can't he still can't use my easy estrus you know everybody else in the world can but uh he could use the bite and blow so like steve said you throw him one of those all you do is bite and blow on it you're you're good bite and blows are like crossbows right it's like some dudes being like man i don't really have time to figure all this shit out yeah right i'm just gonna get one of those and yeah go hack it out yeah i i ran around with the i think it was the loman version a little green barreled one the bite and blow and i that's what i used growing up rifle hunting just to stop

one or but yeah you could not change what you sounded like you sounded like everybody else had one yeah and they just tune in especially if you're in a high-pressure area. Yep. But that's pretty interesting, man, that you've, I would never in a million years have thought to hit them back with the warning bark. Yep, yeah. Do you guys call it a bark in your neck of the woods? You know, alarm bark. And we've had enough experiences where we've tried to like,

let's just mew at them, and that seems to never work as good as alarm bark. So we've experimented like, well, if we call back to them, maybe they just want to hear that there's an elk it was an elk that made the sound so if i make a good enough elk sound though but it doesn't settle them down as much as the alarm bark they're already committed to the idea that something's amiss yeah a funny thing about elk too i'd be curious to get your perspective on this is it seems like like if you picture a group of whitetails i feel that the hierarchy in a group of whitetails, I feel that the hierarchy in a group of whitetails isn't as,

I'm talking the females, so does like whitetail does. I feel like the hierarchy isn't as rigid as it is with elk. There's more fluidity with the groups because a thing that I found with elk watching elk is there's some elk that you can alert. Like let's say you're putting a sneak in on a group and there's some elk that they, they pick up and something's not right, but no one cares that they think something's not right.

You're spot on. They got their head up and they're like, bro, I saw something, man. I know I saw something. And the other elk are still feeding. There's some elk,

they lift their head up and everyone's head comes up. Exactly. And they're like, something's amiss. Because old Bessie, old Bessie ain't happy. When she ain't happy, nobody's happy, right? No, you're exactly spot on. And we've got hundreds, if not thousands of, you know, a calf or a yearling can pick their head up. No, something's not right.

She can run to the front of the herd and nothing cares. But if you get one of those more adult cows she'll run up bump that that lead cow and it's all over or if the lead cow sees you you don't have a shot but sometimes these younger cows may not have as much influence i don't know what it is but yeah a calf will pick you up she'll run circles in the herd try to get them all and nobody you know none of the other cows care nothing nothing happens so i think they're street cred yeah yeah i've mentioned this before on the show but these researchers are doing a thing with monkeys one time where they destroyed a monkey's credibility in his troop by recording his warning cry and playing it all the time and after a while

when he would do his legit morning cry no one would pay attention because they gave him the reputation of the boy who cries wolf that's crazy and these things had a pretty elaborate language where they would have a warning cry for something on the ground and a warning cry for something in the air because there was like some guy can't remember what it was or some one of their primary predators their leopards were a primary predator and there's some just big avian predator and they would have that noise and they could make it that people lost their faith where his troop lost their faith in him i don't think that probably happens with elk but they haven't earned it yet yeah or they're like jumpy maybe they have a reputation for being jumpy yeah that old old bessie she's always she's just a crazy one she didn't see anything again because

there's nothing that feels better when you're putting the move on something well what feels better is not spooking one but you're putting the move on something and he pegs you and you freeze and all of a sudden it goes back to feeding and you're like oh man you know yeah back in the game you know but they're still in their head they're still like acutely aware yeah right they're still nervous but you like bought a minute yeah you bought a kind of a second chance you know yeah yeah that lead cow though there's there's no i wish there was a way that you could like tie a big pink ribbon around the lead cow and then she could never be killed because i around home there's been some bad like the whole herd just loses their sense of who they are where they're safe and like you see like some of our cow seasons where that lead cow gets shot that entire herd is in trouble

um from groups of hunters because they just they forget how to be safe whatever the second and so that's like my conservation like i wish there was a way we could tie like a pink ribbon around all the herd cows or the you know the lead cow's neck and she can't ever be shot. She controls so much of their safety. There's cows out there that have 18, 20 years worth of experience. They've been through the season that many times. They've been through winter that many times. You wouldn't think, though, because there's got to be, you know, if she's there with her offspring and the rest of her,

there's got to be the next class, right, that's 16 you would think yeah i mean in that age bracket but it's it's funny we've we've seen it enough around home i live in a very small community with a very you know small tree farm in my backyard the the warehouse are south there in pl and you know like in those muzzleloaders or some of the late archery seasons when that herd that lead cow gets shot it's it's a mess like and then you'll just hear of like six or seven or eight cows that get taken out of that herd just because it's even though there may be you know maybe a cow her same age older younger you know i don't know how they that pecking order is determined but it's just like dang that new one wasn't very good you know the second or third one wasn't very good at keeping them safe yeah or hadn't hadn't done it yet and the other ones haven't paid attention yeah

do you uh when you're hunting are you kind of watching do you find yourself watching to try to see who the lead cow is when you're trying to work a group elk it's got a bull in it a little bit like more from afar when we're in the timber and stuff getting in close we eat and it's tough it's tough to figure out which one is because they're kind of spread out mingling um yeah you don't yeah until they're in action or moving but if we if we spot one across the canyon we're definitely paying attention like how much control does she have is she just kind of is she setting the pace how long till they get into the patch of timber where they're going to bed so we'll pay attention to her or is she more just slowly grazing you know a little bit but not a lot to

what that lead cow is doing once you're up and let's just walk through and say like you're up you're doing your locating and lo and behold not terribly far off but still far off you get a reply what's the next piece of information you want to know? Or like, what's the next thing you do? You know, real quick, I'll look at maybe Onyx maps. Maybe if I can't see exactly where that came from, like, is there a bench down there? What's going on terrain wise? What time of day is it? Are my thermals switched for good?

If it takes me an hour to get down there and that's when the sun's going to hit the canyon, am I going to get caught in this wind swirl? And then where are they going? Is it, if it's right at daybreak, they're probably going to feed, you know, typically for a little bit and then head to bed. So I'm trying to figure out, all right, they're, they're maybe heading this direction. I've got this much time to get there. But first of all, I want to make sure I don't get the wind screwed up. What am I going to have to do to get the wind right? Do I have to scoop under them? Do I need to run down this ridge another 200 yards, go down a finger and then get under them

um should i just sit down and wait for an hour for the wind to fully switch and then go straight down on them you know it's some of this stuff all kind of time of day um but typically i'm bailing off on every elk i hear i don't say oh that one sounds like it's not very big i'm going to just find a bigger one i'm going to at least go check with my eyes um see what's down there so we're pretty much diving after every bugle um if that's all i can hear if i can't see let me give you let me give you a couple like competing scenarios okay let's do the first the first scenario will be like the one that i like the one that i would like least it's 10 in the morning it's hot you rip a bugle and then from the nastiest patch of black matchstick timber seems like it's right in the middle of the nastiest patch of black timber

are you like man i'm just gonna wait or do you think i'm gonna go in there and try to work that bowl how can i get close to the black timber without making a whole bunch of noise? Yep. All right, I'm going to go down. It's like a north-facing slope, and there's a patch of black timber in there that's, I don't know, hundreds of yards tall, hundreds of yards wide. I'm going to go down and sit on the edge.

I love killing elk between 10 or 2 when that bull bugles out of his bed somewhere around noon one or two uh it's they're very let me uh let me preface this with if you're trying to kill that big herd bull so he's trying to kill it yeah you don't give it let's just i mean this whole conversation you don't really okay just just any bull i would still go down there and sit on the edge of that herd wait for him to get up he'll typically sometime in the middle of that bedding session get up and check on all of his cows so if i can get up uh you know get as close as possible to them without spooking them if it's a jack stride blow down mess i might just say i need him to come back out of there i'm not going to make it in but if i can get somewhat close i mean in the timber yeah if i can get

close to that edge or where it's you know without being a complete mess and making all kinds of noise and and letting them know i'm there. I'll go down there, sneak in if I can keep the wind right. Like sub 200 yards. Yeah. Yeah. You know, ideally as close as possible.

If I can get to a hundred yards, great. But if I can get to 150 and be comfortable there, I'm just going to go sit down and wait. So let's say, okay, so you creep down in, you got an uphill wind.

There's nice elk trails cutting all through the timber. You start creeping down in there and pretty soon you can just smell them. And it's not the smell of yesterday's elk. It's not elk piss. It's you smell elk. Yep. Like living, breathing, there now elk. And you're like, it's got to be that he's 150 yards away. What are you thinking then?

Can I go any further? How much further? It just depends. So there's a lot of times where we've spotted the cows before they've spotted us. We used to live by an old saying, we're not so much anymore, but if you're not bumping elk, you're not hunting elk. But you don't necessarily want to bump every elk you're trying. So it's not a good saying by any means, but we want to,

ideally, I want to be within 100 yards. That way, as soon as he rips a beagle out of his bed, I can walk on top of him. You haven't made any noise in a perfect world. You ripped a bugle. He located. You're like, I got you pegged. I don't want to make another sound. And now you're 100 yards away from the first cow.

He's in there somewhere. You don't know where he is, but you can see a cow's ears sticking up. You still haven't made a noise nope i i in my opinion if you try to make elk calls in between them especially if you're bugling you could maybe make a cow call and get away with it but if you're trying to bugle to him you're basically announcing hey i'm a big bull that's going to come down he'll round up his cows and it's that cat and mouse game from then on and i did it so many times where i don't think he wants the risk of a bull coming down in on him so because he already has what he wants yeah yeah i mean he's

trying to you know procreate and live and that's his two uh you know in september that's all that bull wants to do i'm tracking so i don't want to you know alert him of me coming down he answered my my locator i was far enough away it didn't mean anything to him he doesn't know i'm coming in and then i'm just going to sit and wait for him to bugle out of his bed he's going to come check his cows he does not like satellite bulls to bed anywhere close to him so if i rip a bugle at that 100 or 125 yard mark he's going to come he usually comes and checks you out he does not want you that close to his bedded cows because he can't necessarily see them all at the same time so he's kind of just trusting that there's you know he's getting up checking them yeah he's kind of just trusting that there's, you know, he's getting up, checking them. Yeah, because they kind of filter

into those bedding areas. And everybody takes, yeah, like, you know, if they're in a line or in a little ball going into a bedding area, they don't like march in single file, then all line up in there. Yeah, they're, you know,

they mingle around and time goes by and they lay down and get up and lay down and move around. And by, you know, pretty soon, they're just occupying a wide area. You can wind up down, you can sneak down and realize you wound up in the center of them. Yeah, they can bed 80 to 100 yard,

you know, in a 800 yard circle and just be scattered everywhere. And you'll notice that when you're just walking through the timber and you're like, yeah, they bedded here last night or two nights ago. And by the time you're done walking up the hill, you're like, they're still bedding.

This is probably that same group. They were just spread all out because they were you know pissing the beds um like yeah they were here last night but yet they were from down there to up here they're 150 yards scattered up here so you so you've gotten where you snuck down and like i was saying like you can see some cow ears whatever you're 100 yards away can't get any closer because if you get any closer you're gonna you know you're gonna bump one you're then gonna you're saying then you're gonna do another bugle only after he does i'm gonna let him him lead the game even if you gotta wait yeah it's very tough i'm not a very patient hunter especially if i gotta sit there for two or three hours and i'm you know if i've

seen the ears i know i'm on the oak which you could probably get away with the bugle at that point just because he's gonna most likely want to come check you out but in that scenario I like to let him lead the game off and then I want to walk right on top of him you know or bugle as close to right on top of his bugle as possible I've only killed one bull with a bow and the one bull I killed with a bow I did just that found a bedded cow she was 40 yards away and i sat there and waited and eventually the bull just doing his deal came over and i shot him standing above that cow yep like basically came up to stand above her just as he's doing his little thing you know yep comes i have a i have a video well some screenshots off a video last year when we were

in montana on the on the land of the free series with Born and Raised and those guys. I spotted it was a nasty day. We were walking through some black timber, just get to the edge of it. And I'm like, there's a cow bedded. We sat there and froze to death for like 15 minutes. But then sure enough, middle of the day, that bull, you start to see him working his way through, comes over to the closest cow, bumps her out of her bed, noses her out and then checks on her. And then that's when I got my shot.

Yeah, but I think now I got lucky, I think at 15 minutes, I could have been standing there for two hours. You know, I just happened to maybe get lucky that was his time to make his rounds and bump her out and check on her. So let's say you do, how long would you sit in this scenario we're talking about?

The black timber bedded cow right how long would you sit before you're like okay i'm gonna try something i'm gonna try a cow call i'm gonna try something it depends i would like to say sitting here that i would i would be comfortable enough until the cows get up and started feeding about so you're not you're not just i can't believe that you as a dude who like lives and breathes game calls you're not just gonna run in there and start just like meow so i have even though i love game calls i like killing elk more and so i i kind of know i kind of know like when to call it you know and just kind of let things play out um that's the same thing you know one of my best tactics is instead of just calling them in is more of the ambush and call them in a little bit.

So you can call an elk in from a mile or I can go get in front of the elk going across the mountain, wait for him, maybe call once or twice and kill him. I'll take the ambush and call all day long if that's what I need to do to be effective instead of saying, oh yeah, I called this bull from a mile away.

Like I'm not, I don't need any awards for, I just want to kill that thing. Okay, so you're so so you sit there and two hours goes by and eventually he bugles then what do you do i'm gonna bugle right back at him right on top of him yep and and i'm trying to paint that picture that you know i'm really close to your cows you're over there somewhere i can't maybe see you i'm closer to your cow maybe than you are you better come take care of me or try to run me off, you know, I'm really close to your cows. You're over there somewhere. I can't maybe see you. I'm closer to your cow maybe than you are. You better come take care of me or try to run me off. Like, you know, we talked a little bit earlier about that satellite bull and those bulls spending so much time running them off. At this point, he doesn't have the chance to round

his cows up and run away from me. He's got to come try to run me off at this point. Like it's, you know, it's came to head at that point. And so you're trying to paint that picture i'm close to your cow she's right here i'm right here come run me off okay he bugles you bugle he doesn't move maybe bugle again i this is where it gets tough i mean sit you know sitting here doing a podcast it's like well are the cows making noise can i hear sticks breaking what's yeah there's there's a bunch of this other stuff that comes in. And you're like, all right, I'd probably beagle again, maybe do some excited cow calling, just kind of see how he responds to that,

to that perk his interest, and just kind of see what he does from there. Yeah, you need to factor in a ton of things that I can't provide. Yeah, and that's where it gets tough. Even doing these seminars and doing all this stuff, like there are so many things that come in you know i you teach this prescriptive thing but you know if there was something that takes off up the hill

after i bugled then i'm like you know but that cow doesn't what's going on here um there's so many variables let me hit you another one well but i think the thing to note here though is that there's like the guys and i feel like it's kind of become, this is going to go off on kind of a tangent, but like you're the guy that is going to bugle first almost every single time, right? But there's a lot of dudes, and I feel like that's kind of changed in the last 10 years. I feel like when I was guiding, there was guys that didn't even carry bugle tubes. It was just kind of like, no, you have to call as quietly and as little as possible. Don't even bring the bugle tube.

And I almost had to, like, break out of, like, and just be like, you know what? I want to just try. I know you guys are saying this thing, but I just want to at least go out there and try. And, like, I got good results, right? But, like, speak to a little bit about like why start with you know bugling instead of why start with cow calling so as far as like when i'm not saying scenario yeah or any well let me let me hit him with another let's i want to bring it out of him through the scenario okay so let me try one more scenario because i think that this is going to be a scenario where he's going to where he's

going to cow call if not we'll just'll just ask, when do I cow call? But let me just hit you with another scenario. It's pre-morning darkness. You're on a ridge. You know below us there's like a nice lush meadow that they've been hitting. Not even light out. You're like, I'm going to see what's going on down there. You rip a bugle, and lo and behold, sure enough, you get a reply.

And because of your familiarity with the area, you're like, they're down in that meadow. I was watching them last night. Now what do you do? Are you going to cow call at all today? I don't know. Right now, the wind's probably blowing down to them, so I'm either going to try to get out of my spot

or get down the creek on the ridgeline. That's going to be my first thing. All right, make sure. You know the wind's washing down valley. Yeah, washing down valley, down slope. So I'm going to try to get below them. Whether that means I got to run down this ridge 400 yards, and then I'll be safe and angle down in the creek and then come up on them.

Whatever I need to do. Pre-morning darkness. I, you know, almost light out. So you're getting close enough. I'm probably going to try to get to the edge of that meadow. And I'm going to be very careful. A lot of guys set up and I've did this multiple times and I kick myself every time I do it. And I'll still do it to this day. I will go set up on the tree that is on the edge of the dang meadow. You know, if they're not in the meadow and try to call them in there. Cause I can, Oh, I can see everything. Well, there's that elk or that bull, when I'm trying to call it in, we'll try to get to the edge. And we've talked about how nature works without us being involved.

He'll expect that cow to run across the meadow because he should be able to see him. He should be able to see her. And, you know, we're trying to trick this whole, you know, glitch the game a little bit. So I will get get try to get wind right on that meadow and then i will try to walk down the side of the meadow towards the direction he's at on that edge of the meadow and try to be in the timber a little bit and get off the edge of that meadow and try you know however these angles work out try not to call him to that meadow if that makes any sense like i want to keep him out of open space because that gives him a terrain break or a vegetation break where he thinks he should be able to see me on that scenario i may go in and open up

with a few cow calls and just see how he responds versus blow him out if i can get in there i still want to be close i'm going to maybe open up with a you know a needy whiny cow call let me hear it so and this is one thing we talked about musing just here yeah your normal mu a lot of times when i elk hunt and people can say whether there's a such thing as an estrus buzz i use these real whiny drawn out up and down cow calls versus just cry yeah your estrus wine is what i call it has names for everything but it's more of an up and down wavy cow call it's not your perfect cow call but it's giving us good results oh there's a little waver in there man and so we've we've had seen cows do that uh multiple times just watching them and and that

bull will typically always go check on her it's just that whiny and we've called i hear that little like yeah yeah there's a little bit of a flutter and we've did that in burns where like, it's kind of cool calling in a burn. Cause you can see that elk for so long coming in, but it was almost the more we did that, the faster he would run those, the slower we would go, the more he would slow down and we're like, all right, we'll just stay on it. And I I'll do it on, this is on the external. I, I use this a lot for this specific call. So it's just that whining. Really?

Drawing out. And then it really, really overemphasized that nasally sound at the end and that call might have that could be so seductive so titillating that he would uh be like man i know i got three four cows out here in my meadow with me but i'm gonna take a mosey over in the woods and see what exactly is up with this newcomer yeah because he's got a pretty good idea where his cows are at and they're but look in this scenario do we know there's cows there no right we got to say i i always go into everyone assuming that there's sure i just assume um that there's cows so but let's say that bull he's checked on his cows all that morning he's been with him all night he knows about where they're at whether they've already come into the first estrous cycle whether they're're close, he's checking on them all. If that for sure thing, and she sounds needy and needs some attention, he's maybe willing to go grab her. And I think that's when people say they cow call

bulls. And that's kind of what they're, they're playing on is that you sound needy enough, or you're, you know, maybe something he should come check out. Cause he knows his other, you know, six ladies aren't ready for any fun so he's going to come grab grab her and so that's kind of why we we play that direction let me hit you with this just something that came to my mind but it's not really in order of what we're talking about have you found a good rule of thumb or anything helpful to explain to people how to tell how far away a bugle is. I remember when we started hunting bugling elk,

we would oftentimes think they were much farther away than they were. And in going even to get into the zone, wind up stumbling right through the elk, thinking that they had to have been farther away this is particularly down like big valley bottoms you know not where you're like on one slope looking at another slope but where there's an expanse of there's an expanse of like flat country timbered flat country whatever and you hear a thing our early thing was that it's much farther away than it actually is.

Is that something that is only learned through experience, or do you have a way to explain to people how to tell where a bugle's coming from? I don't even know if experience helps you. In 2016, I was in New Mexico, so I'll kind of start. I grew up hunting coastal jungle of southwest Washington. That's all I knew. Coastal rainforest. Yeah, so you were chock-full, dense. In in that scenario that's kind of where i learned how far elk were

uh they were typically closer than than you thought in that scenario um so we kind of got good at judging that until that elk turns 180 if he beagles at you and if he turns 180 degrees and beagles back at his cows or up the hill the other way i don't care how good you are you you he sounds like he's double the distance or half the distance yeah you think there's two bulls sometimes yeah and i'm like so that is always going after you and back to the turkey thing a lot of elk bulls that we call in especially when you're trying to pull them from their cows they do that strut zone they come towards you 100 yards they bugle and they will go back and then you may do

may get them to pull back again but they will never get past that point and so you've got this basically elk on a track that's running 100 yards and so you're trying to judge you know whether he's facing you whether he's 100 yards away and then in 2016 my eyes really got opened up I went down to New Mexico and uh rolly juniper country country and being a seasoned elk hunter I thought oh yeah this elk's right around the corner and we chased bugles for miles you could hear a bugle for two miles away plain as day and I got we got our butts kicked I mean I would say butts kicked from a standpoint that we went a lot further on every bugle we heard versus like dang this thing should be a half mile away no this thing's two miles away.

Just the vegetation. Yeah, just the vegetation. The quality of the air too, the moisture in the air. Yeah, of course, elevation always helps. If that thing is just sitting up on a point high enough where he can project down that valley. There were a couple of times and we looked at on GPS, like we could be at this water tank

and we heard this bull bugle went up there, called him in and he was a mile and a half away on the gps you know it's just crazy wow yannis is much better than me at uh telling where a gobble or a bugle is coming from i don't know if it's like a quality of ear thing right like i've been exposed to a lot of like the noise but he just is more like i would trust his opinion about was where it was better than my opinion about where it was yeah we we've been walking down a trail get a beagle you know hunt with maybe two or three guys and all three of us point 120 degrees in different directions like oh boy we're gonna need another one at least we need at least two people you know convinced that it's a certain direction they're just

it's crazy sometimes depending on what you were looking at, where your head was when they beagled and we're all like that way. And just slight, a slight roll. If that elk is just over that roll, you know, like even like here, we're sitting next to this gully. That bull would probably sound louder if he's across the gully on the other side than if he's down in the bottom just 50 yards below us just because of how that sound is going to travel to your ears you know here's another scenario for you

but it's different you give me your best scenario give me the scenario where you're like i'm gonna kill this bull just a satellite bull feeding on an open hillside first thing in the morning. Really? Like I'd have a lone bull feeding by himself first thing in the morning. Well, you said we weren't just killing herd bulls anymore. Because we only have so much time, right? So I just want to focus it on just elk. If I've got a semi-mature, maybe three and a half to six and a half year old,

maybe three and a half to five and a half year old bull just feeding first thing in the morning. By himself. By himself, wind coming downhill and I'm below him, I'll take that half to five and a half year old bull just feeding first thing in the morning. By himself. By himself. Wind coming downhill and I'm below him. I'll take that. You're feeling cocky. I'll take that. Okay, tell me how you're going to work that bull. Paint the picture for me.

As long as his eyes can't pick me out, if I can move using terrain or vegetation to get within even him, I don't even got to get that close now because he's- You're down below him. Yep. Wind's coming down because the day hasn't heated up yet.

First thing in the morning. I know from maybe hunting the area a day or two before the sun's not going to hit this drainage until you know the two hours i've got plenty of time um i just want to get two three hundred even maybe 400 yards away from this bull and just calc all them in i won't even touch my bugle so then you're not worried about getting 100 yards away no i i can i know from past experience that we can pull that thing with a lot of heavy sexy cow calls from a lot further away okay so give me the uh so so there you are you're down in the creek bed but it's an open slope and you're looking up and you can just

see him working around feeding yep and i 300 yards up the hill and i want to be able to see him if i can see him and see how he reacts to the calls the better right what does that happen with first do you start heavy duty or you just take his temperature first i'll probably just some white cow calls just see how he responds let's hear it once he uh once he gets going then i'll probably pick it up so this is the first noise out of your mouth and just maybe those two and then you watch him just watch him he's most likely going to pick his head up and then his next step's either going to be go back to feeding or he's going to turn and come down towards me once he turns it comes down to me and i don't want to be cocky but at that point i would say we have a 99.9 chance he's coming he's going to come on okay when do you

feel that it's 99 once he takes that first step in your direction so if he was feeding left to right and he goes from he's straight down the hill um i would be pretty confident that at least we're gonna get a shot at him what's your cockiness level just seeing him i prefer confidence so confidence level yeah you just okay it's just 50 yards um i'll just set that. At 50 yards, I'm going to say we've got a 90% chance that he. No, no, no, no. I'm saying like when he's still 300 yards up the hill.

But you know for absolute, you know it might not be possible in real life. Let's just say you knew for absolute certain that that is a lone bull by himself. And the wind's right and you're 300 yards below it. And we know that it's the rut are you thinking man there's a you know before i even touch this call i'm saying there's a blank percent chance that that bull's gonna step in my direction 90 oh really if i can see him from across the canyon no he's all by himself um feeding and i would say that number is pretty similar even because a lot of time these satellite bowls will kind of herd up together and hang out i would say even if you have a group it's

still probably 85 one of them or two of them are going to break off really yeah maybe the more mature out of those two or if there's a couple that or maybe a little bit better than the spikes or the this you know the two and a half year olds typically those bigger ones in the group will break off and come towards you sometimes together so let's say you're on a glass and a half year olds, typically those bigger ones in the group will break off and come towards you, sometimes together. So let's say you're on a glass and knob, or just a ridge, and on one side, down one side of the ridge, you've got,

and all these bulls are the exact same size, in this scenario, they're all the exact same size. But on one side of the ridge, you've got 20 cows, there's seven bulls, everybody's going bananas, okay? on the other side of the bridge is just the same bull but he's just hanging out feeding you're like i'm gonna go work that bull now you're really playing with the reason i elk hunt so you've got all that action on the one side and that's what i'm here for so now i need to weigh is killing the bull more important or am i here for that that action to throw in so that's that's where it gets

really tough now you've kind of split me down the middle because even though i love i love filling the freezer full of elk meat it's you know that's what i came out here for i also come out here for something a little different like that action like you're like i want to go in and throw in with that group yeah yeah so even though i know there's probably better well that many bulls running around with 20 cows there's still gonna be a lot of action you're probably gonna have a chance but that that satellite bull is gonna be pretty well pretty good odds right and then you have the 50 sets of eyes versus the one set of eyes you know that always helps but you're seduced by the action it is it's it's uh in the learning experience and everything

yeah so i'm probably bailing towards the bugles just because it's gonna be funner i go down there and bugle a little bit more and and then i'm also thinking in the back of my head like i screw this up i can go after that one later yeah i'll find him tomorrow yeah oh or eventually he's probably gonna come on over to the join the party anyways give me another okay now uh hit me with this is make your own scenario um hit me with a a great scenario that involves cows cow calling or no this involves like because you're saying like okay it's a bull two three bulls whatever no cows around out feeding so let's say it is that it's it's a big herd bull he's got five cows seems to have some like spike in the mix seems to have some raghorn bull in the mix we're kind of pestering

them what what is the moment throughout the day or the moment when you're like now's my like if i'm going to make this work i'm'm gonna make it work when x happens i want to catch them if i can the most optimum time if i can catch them when they're going through from feed back into their bedding cover i want to be somewhere in that 100 to 200 yard range of the cover so they just come out of maybe feeding in an open meadow and a old burn and an avalanche shoot whatever that area is their feed and they're going back to bed i would love to catch them in that 100 to 300 yards inside that timber you're waiting in there that's where that ambush slash uh you know a little bit of calling comes in like all right

i've watched them this morning it was right at daybreak i had an hour and a half to get up i know they're gonna feed in about on contour they're gonna go to that bench you know i'm drawing all this up my mind where i think they're going to go if i don't have any past experience i'm going to go sit right there 100 200 yards inside that timber and wait for them and just do some real minor calling when you hear them see them see them hear them yeah i'm pretty impatient so i might start to move around a little bit you know trying to figure hopefully ideally that bull's maybe making some sounds on his own the more you know in the morning if not uh you know i might let a cow call it here there if i kind of think i lost them or they should be here by now i got you i feel like the cows a lot of times you

get that sort of like tea party almost we used to always call it when they're leaving that big metal boston tea party not like the not like the tea party no like a bunch of like uh gals at a tea party just yeah yeah throwing tea into boston harbor or electing right of center anti-establishment politicians or neither of those two people drinking tea at a party should have been uh should have been more clear but almost like a cacophony and really a lot of times there's not even that much bugling but those cows are just as they're moving up towards bed you know they're just you know going off and i love to have calves in the herd like if i can look cross-eyed two or three calves like them little noisy suckers are gonna let me know they're coming oh is that they're pretty vocal especially the moms once they start moving like that yeah the the moms will talk to

them because they're not always right next to each other and so there's a lot of you know cow to calf communication just as they move they start their journey back to bed and they'll they'll be pretty vocal let me hit with another scenario this isn't to make your own i'm giving you this one all right okay whatever the hell happened you have your morning hunt gets all hot you just know nothing's gonna happen you're headed back toward camp you're passing through a timber patch. Okay. Unfamiliar terrain. And all of a sudden surprises you,

but all of a sudden, a hundred yards off down below you in the timber, a bugle. So you have no context. You have no idea. Just don't know what way it's going. You don't know who it's with. You don't know anything. I'm going at all you don't know who it's with you don't know anything i'm gonna start that one with cow calls right where you stand yeah see if he answers back to

that he might ignore me or at least where's he out on cow calls is that gonna is that gonna work um you know 100 yards away i should be able to hear some sticks breaking if i can't see him if he's coming towards me if he doesn't respond A lot of times they will come in silent too. So you got to, you know, like, ah, can I hear sticks? But I'm going to start that one with a cow call. I figured on those, I don't have a whole lot to lose if he doesn't answer. So maybe five, 10 minutes of nothing develops, or I can't hear anything moving. I might just do a little weak little bugle, just something, knowing he can hear it because he's close um just trying to get a response so i can kind of engage whether he went the other way whether he was in his bed if he's still in his bed you know did he move towards me

let me hear the cow calls let me hear the light bugle oh just a real nice little light little you know no one that he can hear it um you know when you're trying to locate i'm trying to be you know as loud as possible to kind of hit as many ears but yeah just just something really kind of in the middle not getting really high just how's he going to respond to that but that's your softest cow call no that's a that's a fairly heavy uh bugling read we've got some really light some really light make sure i get it so that's the other thing i hunt with one call so the the really my i this is my personal call and i use it for almost everything i grab one called this is the phelps signature so it's just and that's what you've been ripping the bugles on well i've been using the maverick as well too so those are the two that i i typically use but mine's a little bit softer on the cow call see i don't think of that as a soft cow call man

so i guess who am i to say but that strikes me as like a that's a cow call it i mean we can go really soft but by the time you're trying to call through the the trees and the vegetation if you got somebody like you know we've called a lot for our buddies and like dang then things get drownded out pretty quick we're not near as loud cows just making like you hear cows just making the slightest little sounds yeah it depends that's not really in your hunting repertoire though not the calls that i make i will i'll never argue they don't make them um you know they make subtle you as a hunter you don't need that yeah i don't i don't use it um i will calf call which is more that high pitch chirp if i'm trying to communicate let me hear your uh what a calf okay so you don't really have they don't really have the deep part to their call just more that

high pitch uh shut off um well i'll calc i'll calf call a little bit but yeah most of my cow calling is loud uh and during september it seems they will communicate softly but a lot of times you know the whole tea party when they get going they're fairly loud obnoxious like yeah they got those loud drawn out cow calls and they get going. And it's like, well, that's what I want to, I want to be one of them. And so we try to, like last year, the bull that my wife called in, there were probably 40 cows in that herd with a couple of different bulls. And then the one larger bull.

And when they got up to feed that we kind of shadowed them the whole morning or the evening excuse me and they started to come up they they just started going and it sounded like a thousand you know different elk going off because it's bouncing off the walls and they were all doing loud it was it was pretty impressive just the amount of sound and noise and volume that group of 40 cows could make it's like as many cow calls and as fast as they could go they were they were letting them fly that makes me want to hit you with another scenario okay you hunt all morning right you're all dejected nothing happened you get into a shady spot you decide to have a it's 11 a.m you decide to have a sandwich okay you decide to take a little nap you're fighting the urge to go home everything sucks and also hear a bunch of sticks snapping rocks rolling and for whatever

the hell reason off to your sideways here comes just a herd of elk you can't tell are they spooked are they what what's going on but they're just kind of rumbling down the hillside maybe they got bumped maybe whatever i don't know maybe the bulls harassing them they're gonna pass out of range do you just watch them go and be like huh that was interesting or do you be like i'm gonna make some kind of crazy play hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our

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As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com. onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. I might try to cow call, slow them down, but I'm not going to necessarily chase that herd as they run away. If they were just passing through fairly quickly, we'll just kind of let them go. Just log in your head where they went.

Yeah, yeah. Was I able to see what was there? I might try to get up, grab my bow and release and cut them off, maybe to have a shot if there is a bull there I want to kill. But if they're moving like that, it's going to be tough to call them in because they're going somewhere. They've been scared by something, or it was a predator or a human. It's going to be tough to call them in. Okay, let me hit hit you with one more then you can hit me with a scenario if you want

it's evening time it's your last day of the hunt okay and there's just a gigantic open sage flat very open and just out in the middle of this thing like a thousand yards across yeah and out in the middle of this thing is a couple bulls a bunch of cows and they're just happily feeding away with a rifle you'd be loving yep but they're not going anywhere they're gonna be out there till morning it's your last night you can't it's not really plausible to do a good sneak on them and you got you're like i don't know i gotta try i gotta try something i can't just let this right i can't just let this one pass and it's all you got last night yeah and you can't get 300 yards away without uh you can't get 300 yards away without spooking them

you're gonna have to just i mean you're gonna have to try to call them in see it's just that you know take their temperature as soon as you let that first uh probably cow call really loud cow calls if they're 300 yards away what's your percent chance not good 10 oh really under 10 so you're just like, I don't know. I'm pretty. Under 10. Yeah, I'm not liking my odds on this one, but you got to try something. Yeah, yeah.

Unless you got enough time left in the night to go find something else. Yeah, I was going to say. So if you had enough time to go find something else, you might be like. Well, I'm probably going to try to screw this up as fast as possible. And then go find something else. That way I say at least I gave it a shot. That's tough uh i usually like to to put it and maybe i shouldn't put a number on it but i'm pretty confident that in the mountains and normal hunting i'm gonna get to at least see 75 to 85 percent of bulls i hear you know at a fairly close range maybe not all within archery range but i'm gonna see them in

the timber like at a point where i've called them into a spot or i've snuck into a point something like that like i'm gonna be i'm probably gonna see him at the closest point i'm gonna see him as they're walking away like i'm not gonna probably turn that bull i'm not gonna get him to turn around but you'd hit it with a cow call probably just see what he's see if something crazy happens yeah do you always with every group you work with every group elk you work are you like i'm either going to call it or spook it or do you sometimes just say like i'll find you tomorrow so i'm not a i'm a how what's the quote i'm a i have a trophy hunter's mentality with a meat hunter's trigger finger you know and so i i just want to kill elk but there

have been a couple occasions when the headgear has gotten me to a point like i'm not going to screw this one up yet i've got 10 days left in season this bull is a giant i'm going to give him one more you know a couple more chances before i blow him out of the country into a different drainage into a spot he's not familiar with um that's always bad sometimes i would rather hunt a bull after i spook it so he's not as comfortable in his surroundings uh but most of the time i'm gonna bump them um and a lot of times when we bump them they haven't they haven't necessarily smelled us in my opinion them smelling us is our we've kind of screwed that up for a while is that right if they just see us or hear us um i'd rather them see me personally walking towards them than to smell me that's what that's the thing i've said to people

a lot is like i feel that they they don't always trust their eyes and they don't always trust their ears but they always trust their nose yep and and even their ears so like well you call to them a specific way like my buddies they can all tell if it's me calling. I can tell which one of my buddies is calling. We all have our own little unique style. And I'm always like, can they tell? Like, do I need to switch calls? Do I need to switch my style?

Because I was calling to them that way last night, and then they seen me walking through the woods with my bow and my pack towards them. Like, did they associate my calling with that? So if we go get on them again, do we need to switch? I don't know if I'm smart enough, like we will just because we have a different call or let's say hey i was shooter last time but we're going after the same group i'll call you shoot this time just to give them a little bit different of a style but i also believe if you sound enough like an elk and a quality enough sounds then does it really matter because elk always going to sound like elk so can

you can you fool them again the next day and we have but i would assume going with a little bit different sound do you guys ever uh you and your buddies do you guys ever tag team on calling we do is that advantageous especially when the the whole the the multiple cows get going and they're creating some excitement and we feel like we're losing some excitement to what the bull already has we'll we'll get going back and forth um to pick it up we don't do the primo style like guy drops 100 yards back calling style though because the way we hunt that caller which is now the the elk so to speak is now 200 yards away from this bull and that might give him the chance to leave dodge because the elk he thinks there isn't a threat that bull would maybe round his cows up and leave so a lot of times that collar is right

on my hip and it gives us a chance to communicate like hey i can see something he can't like stop bugling right stop cow calling if he's 100 yards back um you know i i love all the truth videos i watched them all 100 times but the way that we have to hunt on public lands isn't the same as they got to hunt on the hill ranch yeah you know that's a funny thing man because i was talking to a guy last night about him and he was talking about this this world record elk and it was like everybody knew it was there and it filmed it eventually a guide finds it it's hiding out in some private land hidey hole they call a client on the phone he books a trip to come out it's like that's all great and good but that's not reality man yep you know what i mean it's just not reality yeah that's that's

called cash yeah and yeah so we as much as i love those it's just sending the sending the caller way back has just never worked well for us a lot of times and to this day my buddy charlie did call me in a bowl but to this day i've still called in every bowl i've shot like i've never and when we do call for each other we're usually right in each other's hip pockets um and it's it's really to create that that uh that threat to that bowl like i'm here i'm on top of you i'm on your cows you have to come you guys are you guys are you're like bugling so much more yeah which is why you probably have to maintain that off. You guys are bugling so much more, which is why you probably have to maintain that pressure distance.

If we had to put a number, I know Steve loves numbers. If I had to put like a- No, no, no, man, I don't. No, if I had to put a- I'm like 90% Bugles, 10% cow calls. There's two kinds of people. 90% Bugles from the day I leave the truck to the time I get back in September to 10% cow calls,

I would say probably represents what I- You rip nine beagles for every cow call. For every 10 cow calls. Yep. 90 to 10, nine beagles for every one cow call, especially when we're locating. Oh shit, really? I mean, we may let it, maybe I'm a little off on my numbers. I might cow call just to say I did before I rip a beagle,

but usually I'm going to maybe cow call twice from a spot and then I'll rip a I really want to locate from this and are you do you mostly hunt in high pressure areas high pressure units I try to get into some areas within those high pressure units maybe that don't have as many people um the spot we you know we we hunt Idaho we hunt I don't have a Washington for a while now Montana we hunt a lot we're in units where there's lots of people down by the road but if we get two or three miles in we're typically fairly alone but you might run into a hunter or two or a set of boot tracks here there but um there's a lot of hunters around and these elk may have been called too but it's yeah if there are a lot of hunters i might not locate bugle as much and that's one of those other things that you draw on in hunter yeah you can't even factor in

like if you're in a high pressure area like do i tone my location bugle back because you know some everybody within two miles can hear me up on this ridge line i don't necessarily want everybody on my ridge line you know or i say mine or on the ridge line at the same time i am so you're like well maybe i just cow call the locator maybe i I tailor back or or cut back my location bugle so not everybody knows I'm here or do you get into a pass on a ridge line there's been elk here like I'll start to pick my points a little bit more wisely like all right I can smell them I can see their tracks will bugle from here but then I might not bugle until I'm out at the end of the ridge next we had a time hunting me my brother where we were hearing this bull just going nuts but it was like the one road in the area it was

like calling from the road the ridge that the road is on and i'm like dude that's a guy you know and we argued about it argued about it he's like that's elk i'm like it's a guy and then let's just go so we start walking down the road and pretty soon walked into a group out. Yep. It can be hard to tell, man. I take a lot of pride just because of how you own the call company. I don't ever want to get called in by somebody. And there's been multiple times

where I was about ready to bail and my buddy's like, let's just hang it out a little bit. They won't know who we are. We could sneak out of here. And sure enough, we call a bull or a whole herd in multiple times. And so now I'm a little more likely to hang it out. Like even you could be fooled.

Yeah, your pride might be hurt a little bit, but is it really worth, you know, risking not getting a chance at this bull because you think it's a person? So I'd rather hurt my pride a little bit. But you generally know. Yeah, you do. And I've called a ton of bulls in with my primos terminator too but like now if i hear that thing you know flute across the canyon like i know

exactly what that is you know the make and model yeah it may still it may still fool a bull but i i can i can pick a primos terminator out you know almost anywhere at any time um even most people call her that are even some that are good on diaphragms. Like there's just some things they can't mimic. Even I can't mimic from a real bull, like the depth, the gut, the guttural sound. If you listen closely enough, sometimes you're like, ah, it's a person. But then there's some really bad sounding elk

that sound bad and they're real. So it's just tough. It's tough to pick out. We try to spend all this time sounding as good as we can. But in reality, the elk are a lot of worse worse than what we think you're supposed to yeah yeah what uh what's your uh i don't know if you got one or two or three or whatever but like your deathbed elk tips like your elk tips that sum it all up where you're saying like man if i could tell you one thing or two things that are just generally applicable around elk calling what would it be okay i'll give you three okay um first is setup i get the chance and i i call it the fortune of listening to a lot of

bad elk hunters uh you know in the position i'm in like hey your calls were awesome i called these bulls into this and then I didn't get a shot. So number one, when you set up, whatever direction that bull is going to come from, make sure when he shows himself, either through vegetation or if it's on a terrain break coming up the hill to a plateau, make sure you're within bow range of where that break, terrain, or vegetation's at to make sure that you get a shot. That's your setup.

So many people can do everything setup that you need so many people can do everything else right but so many i think fail on this setup they want to set up in a pile of brush or they want to set up 100 yards away from this spot and as we talked in reality that bull's going to get to that spot say that i should be able to see you somewhere out here and he is going to stop and that is that hold up position it's pretty funny to mention, that was my dad's big elk story. He's from Michigan, but he went out to Colorado to do an elk hunt

with my older half brother. And they had a bull working and he said, I never thought about the fact that I had to shoot the bull. And he climbed into a tree, not into a tree, but like nestled into a tree

and the bull came 10 yards away. And he realized that that's the thing he forgot. Yep. That he has to be able to shoot his bow. You jump in a pile of brush, you realize you got 25 inches of arrow sticking out front. You got a stabilizer sometimes. And if that thing doesn't come where you want, you got to try to swing in there. And you got your elbow, your pat getting hooked on brush.

It's just, so yeah, set up. I set up out in the open, let the, you know, the terrain break me up behind, but really just get close to that terrain break or vegetation break. I got burned. It's funny, nothing like mule deer hunting in Nevada. Two years ago, I got where I had these bucks coming up and I'd snuck in on them and I had a,

and I was up against the bush and I committed where I had my bow on one side, right? Didn't get a shot, and they passed through, but then they're super close, and there was no way without doing major movement to be able to get my bow to the other side of that and trying to do it, spook the bucks. And I just had, and I was like, I'm 100% in on this angle, and I'm 100% percent in on this angle and I'm a hundred

percent out on every other angle. Yep. Or just stupid stuff as a right-handed guy. I can't turn to my right at all. Right. We can't. And there's been multiple times where like you expect the bull to go to the left and he goes to your right.

And you're like, Oh, like I'm going to have a lot of movement here. Cause I got to actually now move my feet around. He's at 25 yards. Cause I can swing way back to my left and still shoot with decent form. to my right i'm like you know you're you're stuck and uh so all that on setup like i stuff i used to not think about until it cost me a lot of times yeah you keep adding to the setup thing forever but my little tidbit on that is that we used to see a lot of guys like they want to crouch and get low and like you're saying people get like inside of like the branches of a fir tree i'm like dude how are you ever gonna get your bow drawn back but i think a

big thing is always stay on your feet yep don't kneel don't crouch down like just trust that your cam is gonna work stay on your feet because that just gives you so much more like uh you can take a step and that might be that gets you the six inches for the window you need right yeah and if you're on your knees you're not doing that just do you always stay on your feet i do i i was just getting i somebody asked me the other day um on in a seminar like how many i've killed one bull off of my knees um out of however many i've you know 30 plus bulls i've killed you know archery i've i've been on my knees like one time um and that would end up being like a six yard shot and the only reason i killed him off of my

knees i wasn't supposed to be the shooter i kind of carved my buddy i was calling the bull in for him he got to like four yards of my buddy but had him pinned and you could tell by his actions he was going to get nervous and leave and i'm like well i'm only eight yards away and i've got a bow and i've got a tag so i actually knocked my arrow with him eight yards away and as the cameraman shot him but uh that's the only one i've ever killed off my knees and that's because it was an accident so you're like making a little sacrifice on hiding in order to get an advantage in mobility and in good shot form yep but i and this is the goofiest rule ever i don't ever look at elk in the eye as long as you don't look at elk in the eye three tips no this is this is this is bonus don't look

them in the eyes like it i've never had an elk pick me out as long as i haven't looked at it seems like you make an eye connection and something weird happens and they know but if i keep my brim and my hat down i've never been picked off by an elk i mean i know they're smart they can see good but in that setup like as long as i don't move and like make eye contact with them, we're good. Number two is if you're struggling, don't commit to spot number eight, you know, Google Earth, Onyx Maps. And don't be afraid. It's kind of a combo. Get out and use the nighttime to night locate.

Everybody wants to be in bed, eat dinner. The magical hour, if you cannot get something going, go out and bugle from 10 o'clock to midnight, somewhere in your unit. And I guarantee you, you have a play or two or three or four for the next morning. Everybody's, I'm like, hey, I'd much rather take a nap under a tree from 10 to noon if nothing's going on, save my energy, eat dinner, and then either go drive around go hike a ridge out go hike a trail and just rip bugles from 10 to 12 and i guarantee 10 a.m to midnight no no 10 at night so night so i'm gonna take my nap in the midday instead of hunt to make sure i'm not tired but

i'm gonna go bugle from 10 at night to maybe yeah i got you so you'd rather sleep 10 a.m to noon in order to make up for the fact that you're out bugling 10 p.m. to midnight. Make sure when you get one to respond, do not resist the urge to keep bugling and getting him to sound off. It's night. You cannot do anything about it. You know he's there. Nobody else is crazy enough to be you out bugling at night.

You've got him located. Typically, he will be within 400 or 500 yards max of that area. He's usually out to feed then. He'll be there be there in the morning. Um, it gives you a for sure play make, cause we only got so many days and mornings. You want to make sure you have a play every morning and almost every night. So that guarantees I'm at least on an elk that, that next morning. Okay. Um, was that a side tip or a tip? That was my, that was one of my tips. Like it's not necessarily a, you know, a do this, but it's something that everybody should be doing unless you're just covered up in bowls all day long

and there's no need to do it. Number three, it all comes down to wind. We're back to setup. And this is really where- Setup and approach. Yeah, I think everybody fails in that setup, but the wind, we always get the wind right. And if you have the wind perfect

on your nose, that bull is typically going to come in straight on. If you can use the wind as a steering wheel to help yourself out. So if I have the wind that hits, say my cheek at a 30 or 45 degree angle, I still got plenty of, of conservancy built into my setup, but I'm now just guaranteed that if I'm facing the bull, the wind's hitting me in the right cheek, that that bull is now going to come to my left. And we'll sometimes... Because he wants to circle downwind. He wants to get wind on you. And so by doing... A lot of times we'll even make a call and then move a little bit. So we'll make a call and then move into the wind. So we know that he's going to basically J hook or half moon right into us. So that's something in the setup. Or if you have a caller, say that same wind's hit my

right cheek, if that caller backs up maybe just 15 yards to my, to my, you know, four o'clock, my three 30 from where I'm located, he's going to drag that bull right into me. Now, albeit we can't control whether that bull wants to make 150 yard circle, a hundred yard circle or a 50 yard circle, you know, it's, it still may not be enough but i can at least guarantee that bull well guarantee most of the time um that that bull is going to come broadside through my shooter's location you know um just for setup and that's going to help a lot of times because i honestly think a lot of hunters out there they've got the locating down they're in good areas they can do everything right they can even call decent enough to call these things in

they just fail at the setup. And you hear these story after story, like, we had just everything nuts. I just couldn't get a shot all year. Kept calling bulls and couldn't get a shot. Yeah, either hang-ups or just stuff's not working. And so I really think it comes down to that setup and then using the wind to get them to a spot

where you can get a shot. Any last thoughts? No. We're going to tell you, you can do a good elk tag this thoughts? No, we're going to talk. You can do a good elk tag this year. Yeah. I got a quick one. I got a quick question.

Just like, how do I get that higher pitch that you're talking about? It's going to help me get more locators. What do I need to do? So as a caller, there's two factors that play into, there's air that you can put across the reed and there's pressure you can apply with your tongue. Yeah. So it's kind of, and a lot of us call with a balance of that you're applying a little bit of

both so you're gonna want either more pressure but if that locks the call out right you need to you may be it locks out you like breaks yeah you lose your you lose that note yep so then you're like well all right i can't add any more pressure i need to just put more air across if that doesn't work i would highly recommend moving the call in your mouth a little bit, either forward or back and finding a spot that maybe allows some pressure to hit it a little bit different. Can I give you one? See if you can tell me which one I need to do. So this is Yanni ripping a bugle.

Brand new Phelps. Out of the package. Signature series. Out of the package. Brand new Phelps signature series out of the package. Brand new Phelps tube. I like these Bugle and Tubes that are like a smaller, more packable tube. Because a lot of times you look at the damn tube, right? You can carry this thing in your cargo pocket.

That's where mine might be. It fits in. I designed it to be the same size. It will fit in a normal, just a small water bottle pocket. Oh, you made it so it'll fit in a water bottle holder on a backpack yep and then and then it'll you don't even need anything else attached it'll literally just stuff in a water what's this new little one called the unrivaled tube unrivaled here we go let me tell you a good yana story that we're hunting out down in kentucky loud enough high enough you got i don't know if it was a read the one you beagled on before this started

hit a lower pitch but that one seemed to definitely go high enough well yeah that it's a year old read you know it's been used no that was that was good really yeah you might you probably made me just sound bad yeah oh come Oh, come on. Let me tell you a story. We were hunting elk in Kentucky. And one day we're just out. It's kind of got like middle of the day doldrums, you know. And we sat and like ate lunch. Not being, because we were in like kind of like checking out this other area that we weren't even like serious about.

We just happened to wander in this area to see what's going on. Sat and ate lunch, shooting the shit. Okay. And then he just decides to rip a bugle more just like whatever and all of a sudden elk walks into us he'd been laying there listening to our conversation it just comes right in and then here's a special kentucky elk and here's a bugle and all of a sudden stands up and all of a sudden someone hears a noise and this elk just walks up to us that's awesome. Yeah.

We've had a lot of lunch. Matter of fact, that 2000. A lot of lunch bowls. A lot of lunch bowls or nap bowls where we're just napping and like one of us, like, do you hear that? How's the raven? No, it wasn't. Get up, maybe let a little cow call and then he hammers back. You're like, oh shoot.

You know, everybody's running to get set up, but we've called multiple bowls lunch. You're just, cause you're a little more, you're just listening hanging out and you get a bowl to answer and you'll call them in right there where you're eating lunch it's just it's crazy um you know when and how but that midday if you can get a bowl to answer 10 to 2 your chances are good it's just like hunting turkeys sounds like you're hunting turkeys sorry rami a quick question on this uh this tube why is it not just a straight pipe on the end why does it roll in is that for like reverberation Sounds like you're hunting turkeys. Sorry, Rami. A quick question on this tube. Why is it not just a straight pipe on the end? Why does it roll in?

Is that for like reverberation? For back pressure. Back pressure. So you can take a one and a half inch diameter PVC pipe and blow through it, but there's no resistance. You can go down to a one inch and there's no resistance or three quarters. And you, or you can take like my big tube or that new Unrivaled tube

that's a four inch diameter tube. And you have to blow a quarter of the air through this as you do a one inch piece of PVC pipe. It all has to do with the back pressure. And what that does is when you get up and grab that high note that we were just talking about, it just kind of sits there for you. It's easy to hold that note instead of wavering versus if I had, you know, a straight piece of corrugated pipe, it's very, very difficult, even for a guy like myself that can control that high note to sit there and hold it and put enough air across that. So that's why we kind of, you know, one of the things we've did on both these tubes is we kind of overcut the end

to provide the right amount of back pressure on the little tube. It was a little more difficult because you don't want to give up too much volume. The smaller you make that hole, the less volume you get out of it. So it was kind of a balance of let's make sure there's enough back pressure that we can run the call versus still get enough volume that it's effective enough to pack around in the in the woods and you're just selling calls like a mofo right now like people are ordering right now it is absolutely we're thinking about it it's it's awesome i i can't can't say anything else uh my wife and mom, I think, are ready for the middle of October

since they're managing most of it. But it's been an incredible year for us. When do people start getting fired up about buying calls and when do they kind of forget about it? July. I always say the 4th of July is kind of the big bump. And we can see it in our numbers for the last four years. People light off all their fireworks and then go buy an out call.

They're ready. You see a little bit of a bump um you know when the draws start but draws are kind of all across the board so you also people start pulling tags and ordering calls yeah they get serious all of a sudden um july and august have always been our best month so august has been the best month the last two years so it's right now is really at the height of um and then you've got the difference in we sell to vendors versus selling off of our website. The vendors have already kind of preloaded a lot of their stuff. They needed it in the store now.

I was thinking about the difference in that. So the vendors may start to tail off a little bit where our website, they're kind of crossing. So it's been good. I'm ready for September, though. I'm not going to lie. To go hunting. Yeah, to take off.

Jason Phelps, Phelps Game Calls. I'm ready for September, though. I'm not going to lie. To go hunting. Yeah. To take off. All right. Jason Phelps, Phelps Game Calls. As usual, thank you for coming on, man. Thanks for having me. It's always very informative. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that

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