Fresh snow shines on the Rockies…frost shimmers on a golden meadow…cows mew…a rut-crazed bull lays back his rack and cuts loose a bugle, filling the crisp autumn air with his smoky breath and ringing the valley with one of nature’s wildest sounds. Elk hunting is all about beautiful images and supreme challenges. One of which is how do you call that big 6-point out of that meadow and away from his harem and into bow range? Here is one expert’s plan.

Making The Move“I think many people begin their calling repertoire way too early in a hunt,” says Will Primos, the boss at Primos Hunting Calls and one of the finest game callers in the country. “Once they spot or hear a bull a mile away, many bowhunters get all excited and start bugling. I think that’s a mistake. Chances are a herd bull isn’t going to leave his cows and come all that way to fight. And the truth is, the lead cow usually dictates what goes on in a head. If she hears you calling from afar she is liable to take the herd, including the bull, the opposite way. In the rut a lead cow wants nothing to do with another herd of elk.”

The key is to close the gap BEFORE calling to a bull. You can’t always do that, but try. “Watch or listen to a bull and sneak as close as you can,” says Primos. “Move down or up, circle, come over the backside of a ridge, whatever. Play the wind and watch for cows so you won’t get busted. The best-case scenario is slip within 150 yards or so of a bull before making a peep.”

The Setup and The Right Notes
Primos, who hunts mostly with a bow and films his encounters for outdoor TV and videos, prefers to tag team a bull. “The shooter slips as close as he dares to an elk and sets up,” he says. “The caller backs off 75 to 100 yards and tries to set up where he can see the action. But the caller should also pick a spot where he can hide and move around, bugling and cow calling not only out front, but also to the left, right and behind. That sounds like elk moving around back in the timber, and it’s realistic.”

Primos likes to start a bull with a simple mew. “If he strikes that I hit him back with what I call a hyper-estrus cow sound. I use our Hyper Lip Single, an open reed call, to blow a wavy, high-pitched ‘NAAAaaa, NAAAaaa.’ It’s the most urgent sound a cow can make, like when she’s coming into estrus. It often drives a big bull crazy.”

After floating his first calls, Primos reads a bull and plays the game. “Each situation and each bull is different,” he says. “Some elk respond best to lots of cow calling and bugling. Others prefer softer and more sporadic calls. Just be patient, listen, read each elk and give him what he wants.”

Common Encounters
Say you’re set up close to a bull that is responding hotly to bugles and squeals. “Give him more of the same, challenge him,” advises Primos. “He might come in all fired up, thrashing trees and ready to fight. What a sight!”

But what if a bull seems touchy, wary of your bugles? “He might be a herd bull that doesn’t want to leave his harem and come to you,” notes Primos. “Or he might be a satellite 5- or 6-point that doesn’t want to come in and get his butt kicked by another bull. In either case back off the bugling and stick with cow calls.”

Okay, you’re a couple of weeks into the season and the rut is winding down. “I’d use less bull calling and more cow calling,” says Primos. “Bulls are tired and have lost a lot of their aggressiveness, and they’re more apt to come to less threatening calls.”

This summer Primos jumped at the chance to bowhunt Tule elk in the coastal mountains near Yukiah, California. “Tule bulls rut earlier than elk in the Rockies, but hunting them is basically the same,” notes the game-calling whiz.

On August 10 Primos spotted some cows—and then a big 5×6 bull! “We were a mile away and rather than calling to him we make a big loop and slipped within 150 yards,” he recalls. “I set up while my wife and a guide moved back 75 yards. They started cow calling. The bull bugled 4 times and here he came. Man, I can still hear his high- pitched squealing! Somewhere above me a cow began making that wavy, hyper estrus sound. The bull kept walking. He moved by and I took him quartering away at 20 yards. The elk, the calling, the shot. It was one of those great times when everything just came together.”

http://www.eders.com/categories/26-primos/

Check out the Primos Elk Calls at eders.com

A video of a close encounter elk bow hunt is below…cool video…TERRIBLY SHOT CHOICE

In my early elk hunting years, I never had much luck bringing elk within bow range by bugling. In fact, in nearly every instance a bull would answer to the first bugle, but before we could close the gap he’d almost always slip silently away. Perhaps much of this was due to the fact that inexperienced elk hunters had already flocked to their summer time feeding grounds trying to call them up. I’ve found that calling elk is much like hunting wary gobblers, you may call one in once, but after that the odds start plummeting. Calling elk during the open season is fine and dandy, but to do it beforehand only puts you and all others at a disadvantage come opening day.

After a considerable amount of deductive reasoning and another year of going home empty handed, it became painstakingly obvious I was doing something wrong. The third year, I slipped within 40 yards of a bull bedded amongst a harem of cows. Only a couple of cow mews later, the bull stood up and my dry spell ended.

The following year, Craig Owens and I arranged for Nigel Frazer of Ute Creek Lodge to pack our equipment up to an area known as the Flattop Wilderness. We had chosen the area mainly for its remote and difficult access. It wasn’t until afterwards that we realized few hunters are in good enough shape to withstand a week of grueling torture climbing up and down the steep canyons and foothills.

After loading our equipment on packhorses, we made our way up the mountains to a location I‘d hunted before. Late that afternoon we had our camp setup and ready to do business.

We were up well before dawn that next day, trekking back to an area I’d scouted that summer in a basin shaped similar to an amphitheater. Just as we climbed high above the timberline near the flat tops, the bugles of a raspy old bull resonated off the canyon walls and across the basin. I must say it was sweet music to our ears.

Craig and I split up, going in separate directions in order to cover more area. Shortly after reaching a small plush meadow, a bugle rang out from above. Moving quickly through the timber, I cut the distance in half and setup. Letting out a spike squeal, he answered before I could finish.

Pack horses are a must on a wilderness hunt, especially if you want to hunt where most other hunters stop long before.

Clicking hooves and branches snapping told me he was quickly approaching. I turned and squealed again, he stopped and bugled back. Hearing what appeared to be an elk tearing up a tree, I grabbed a big stick and started mocking the bull by racking a tree. Obviously irritated, he paced back and forth just inside the timberline bugling at will. After three or four seductive cow calls, the bull was on the move.

The adrenaline rush had me gasping for what little oxygen there was available as I waited for the bull to make the next move. My heart was pounding like a base drum and I could feel every beat through my throbbing fingertips on the bowstring. As the 5×5 charged into the meadow at 20 yards, I focused on a mud spot behind the shoulder before letting the string slip free. The Easton 2315 sporting 125-grains of Satellite disappeared behind the shoulder, sending the bull on an 80-yard death run.
Preparation

Perhaps you’ve already heard the same old stories of missed opportunities that I have. Nevertheless, it seems when the moment of truth arrives, many relate they either shot over or under their quarry. If you’ve experienced this problem, then you shouldn’t feel alone because it’s typical to most beginning elk hunters. If it wasn’t, success rates would be much higher.

Hunting the wilderness areas of Colorado offer challenges beyond comparison.

However, there are a few simple things you can do for improving your odds in making that shot. For example, I’ve found that range finders are advantageous to those who have trouble judging distance. In most instances (but not always) you’ll have the time to shoot a few yardage markers before your quarry arrives. Becoming proficient using a range finder is very basic, but nevertheless knowing the distance is definitely a confidence builder and therefore stacks the odds in your favor.

Don’t be so naive to think a range finder is the answer to all your problems. The old saying, “practice makes perfect” couldn’t be truer than it is here. I’m sure you’re thinking you practice enough, but the real question becomes, are you going about it in the right way? Personally, I’ve always believed that it’s best to practice shooting targets as close to life size of the animal you’ll be hunting. Since most 3-D outdoor ranges have at least 1 elk target , I for one get my monies worth before a hunt!

Many whitetail hunters that venture out west in pursuit of elk fail to understand your best or only shot might be at 40 yards. The last time I heard, the average shot on a whitetail is between 15 and 20 yards, which means if you practice at that range, then it’s probably safe to say you’ve cut your odds in half. I can’t stress the importance of practicing at longer ranges and from different positions since the likelihood of getting a shot from the standing position is probably slim to none.

In all honesty, I normally practice from the kneeling, sitting, standing, and from tree stands out to 50 yards. As the season approaches I rarely shoot from 20 yards at all. When practicing, my first arrows are usually launched from 30 or 40 yards and then I move back to 50. Not only will this drastically improve your confidence, but also the ability to judge distances.
Tone Down
Every year I make it a point to speak with the local outfitters about the area I’m hunting as part of my pre-season scouting efforts. Too often the same old story unfolds of how the pre-season scouts busted the herd up by calling too early. Therefore, because of this early bugling, by opening day any bugling whatsoever might be too much, sending the bulls scanting across the mountain.

The author took this 5x5 bull on a do-it-yourself hunt in the Colorado Flattop Wilderness.

Personally, the only time I use a bugle is to first locate a bull and then I put together a plan for moving closer using the wind to my advantage. It’s usually best to stick to natural vocalizations such as that of the cow or calf.

Dogging a herd bull using calls that might threaten the takeover of his harem is risky business. It’s a safe bet that he will gather up his cows and vacate the area all together. Since nearly every herd bull has 3 or 4 subordinate satellites constantly trying to steal the cows, it only stands to reason that you want your bugles to sound like a whimp that he can whip. Keeping this in mind, I wouldn’t recommend using raspy herd bull bugles, but rather stick to immature spike squeals and grunts.
Two Man Setup

I’m thoroughly convinced the most productive means to harvest an elk is by utilizing a tactic known as the “two-man setup.” Like rattling for whitetails, one hunter sets up on the upwind side of the other, maybe 20 or 30 yards apart. Generally, the hunter out front is the designated shooter, while the other calls from behind. It’s usually best to have this worked out beforehand!

When a bull comes in, he’s likely to be preoccupied trying to find the caller, therefore, the shooter stands a better chance of getting a shot off without being detected. In most instances, the bull will try to circle down wind of the caller when he gets within 50 or 60 yards, giving the shooter a 20 to 30 yard shot.
Scouting

Other than fresh tracks and droppings, wallows are the most reliable piece of evidence that implies you should be hunting here!

Generally speaking, elk are fairly easy to locate, providing they are bugling and you’re able to find the open meadows where they graze. Two of the best ways I know of are glassing small park meadows and high open areas near the tree line. Early morning and late evening are normally best for setting up with a spotting scope or a set of quality field glasses (10×50) from a vantage point.

Perhaps the next best thing to getting a visual on a bull will be listening for their distant bugles. As mentioned before, I seldom use bugles, but it’s a good way to locate silent bulls that might not otherwise answer.

In addition, during your daily jaunts across miles of rough terrain, it’s best to keep your eyes open for fresh sign such as elk droppings and tracks. I say this because most are less likely to cover the same territory twice, especially if they haven’t found rewarding sign.
Thermals

Typically elk like to use the wind and thermal drafts to their advantage. As the sun heats up the mountainside, warm thermals carry your sent upward, therefore elk normally move downward into the rising thermals toward their bedding areas below. Once in the cooler areas of the dark timber, the shifting wind currents can get tricky. In shaded areas, the scent streams move downward and when they hit open areas where the sun is able to penetrate, they’ll sometimes reverse upward, causing a rolling eddy current effect.

It’s been my experience that elk favor these areas with fickle winds for bedding during mid-day. For these reasons, it’s sometimes best to stick to hunting the outer fringes of the dark timber in the morning, catching them before they bed. Feeding elk normally travel the opposite direction in the evenings. As the mountainside starts to cool down, the thermals reverse direction and start to drop. On morning or evening hunts, it’s best to stay vertically parallel with suspected elk travel routes. In doing so, you’ll stand a better chance of staying out of rising and falling thermals.
Wallows & Rubs

Much like whitetails, elk leave similar sign that can help us locate their whereabouts on occasion. Take rubs for example. Hunting rublines during the early season will be a pretty safe bet for whitetails, but I’ve failed to find the same type of correlation in elk habits. However, elk make rubs for many of the same reasons as whitetails, such as, removing velvet, scent posting, signs of dominance and to exhibit their aggressive behavior brought on by the rut. Unfortunately, rubs are often sporadic and rarely indicate the direction of travel such as with deer. Rubs can be found around the outer edges of bedding area, meadows and wallows, but to setup an ambush and expect the bull to walk down the prim-rose path on a daily basis might be too much to ask.

Of all elk sign, wallows are most interesting. During the peak of the rut in September, bulls are on the move and often get overheated chasing cows and sparring with rivals. In the process they visit mud wallows to cool down by splashing, rolling and flinging mud over themselves. Even though you could catch them frequenting them at anytime of day, the best time to ambush an elk at a wallow might be during the mid-day hours when it’s the hottest.

In addition, not only are wallows used for taking a good mud bath, but also as a calling card to cows and a warning to other bulls that the territory has been spoken for. Quite often they’ll urinate on themselves and in the mud puddle, then roll in their own toilet water.

If you’re unable to visually locate a wallow, then it’s probably best to just follow your nose. Generally the pungent of odor of a well-used wallow can be smelled from some distance away. Perhaps the best places to find established wallows are at the base of seeps, drainages, or near springs in grassy park meadows. Daytime wallows are usually found in shaded areas where elk lay-up during the mid-day. Some wallows are only the size of a single animal, but others are enormous and exhibit years of use. Most would agree tree stands offer few advantages to elk hunters. But, setting up an ambush near a wallow could be well worth your efforts.
Rattle Up A Bull?

Usually when we hear about rattling success it’s often associated with whitetail hunting. Although it’s been some years ago, I’d tried rattling elk with a set of whitetail antlers, but without avail. After hauling the noisy things over hill and dale for nearly a week, I figured it was a fruitless effort to carry them anymore.

Needless to say, when Gene Goddard of Atalissa, Iowa told me his successful story on rattling elk in 1992, I was intrigued to say the least. Although he hadn’t tried rattling in his previous years, Gene figured if it works on whitetails, it certainly couldn’t hurt giving it a whirl on elk.

According to Gene, they had glassed a rather large group of elk with a herd bull and a half-dozen satellite bulls that morning. They dogged the elk bugling, but that didn’t seem to work, therefore, he then decided to setup and rattle the bones. Slamming the big mule deer sheds together, the first rattling sequence brought a 5×3 bull running to within 15 yards, but he held off hoping to irritate the herd bull enough that he would leave his cows. Eventually two other satellite bulls came in to his rattling setup, but the king pin refused to leave the girls.

Working his way closer toward the herd, Gene gave an immature bugle and followed up with a little seductive cow talk. It wasn’t long after the bull answered from just 25 yards away. The bull passed through three different shooting lanes, but each time Gene wasn’t able to get a shot off. As the bull started to meander out of bow range, he turned quartering away. Using the Bushnell 400, he estimated the distance to be 35 yards, so Gene drew his Hoyt bow and settled the pin behind the last rib and hit the release. After tracking the bull another 200 yards, Gene found the big 6X6 piled up.
Conclusion

Hunting today’s educated elk can be tough and the rewards are sometimes few and far between. However, I’m quite confident that if you follow these simple tactics, you’ll find success too! Good luck and happy hunting!

That mid-September trip was enough to produce a lifetime of lessons in the humbling world of bowhunting for big bulls. Halfway through the hunt I had to radio for a Medi-Vac chopper to fly in a quart of adrenaline because I’d already used up all of mine! It was a roller-coaster ride I’ll never forget and a great opportunity to study elk hunting under the tutelage of several of the very best guides in North America. Here are some of the lessons I learned.

Don’t Be Afraid To Make Noise

Elk are noisy animals. They are used to noise in their world. If you are moving in a bull and make some noise it will not signal an end to the hunt. Simply make a cow call and keep right on going. You can hunt elk much more aggressively than you can whitetail deer.

The hunt took place on the Floyd Lee Ranch in northwest New Mexico under the guidance of United States Outfitters owner George Taulman and two of his best guides, Griz Montoya and Tony Rivera. The three men traded off guiding me. Apparently I was too much of a load for any one of them to bear for more than a day or two.

The most memorable aspect of their various hunting styles was their common aggression. When a bull bugled they moved fast and close. They were never happier than when they could get right in his face before they started calling back. Elk are noisy animals, so it is nothing out of the ordinary to hear running sounds, rolling rocks and breaking branches. I was amazed at what we were able to get away with. In fact, a little extra noise at times only added realism to our set-ups – as long as we weren’t seen or smelled.

Of course, the Floyd Lee has a bunch of bulls. If you bump one early in the morning there is always another screaming at the top of his lungs in the next drainage. If we’d been hunting a small ranch with only a few bulls I’m sure our hunting approach would have been a lot more subdued. But the intensity of their pursuit, under the conditions at hand, was shocking.

Stalking Vs. Calling
When hunting herd bulls we had the best luck when we forgot about the calls. In fact, the biggest bull I’ve ever seen while elk hunting was almost ours on that hunt. And we didn’t call to him one lick. We spotted the old white-sided monster from the distance as he closed in on a breeding party of bulls surrounding a hot cow. It was a frenzy of bugling and sparring, but once we saw that giant we never looked back at the tempest of pounding turf and clashing antlers behind us. He was that big.

By stalking in on a bugling bull you can often catch him circling the harem on the downwind side to round up stray cows. Once you get close a cow call may be all that's necessary to bring him into bow range.

After making a wide circle through the oak brush flat we had gotten between the bull and where he wanted to go. He was coming down a shallow draw right to us – we could see his antlers above the meadow grass – when a small 5 X 5 pushed several cows into the drainage right in front of him. Another 100 yards and he would have been in our laps. Instead, he took up with those cows and followed them off in another direction.

Once more we got in front of him, still without calling, and once more luck turned on us. At the last second, just as the cows were drawing into bow range with the big bull behind, we crawled a couple extra yards so the cameraman could catch all the action. (Of course my failures were being filmed.)

The cows didn’t see us but, unbelievably, we jumped a huge mule deer buck that pogo-sticked right across in front of them. The elk turned and followed the deer over a hill. So close but yet so far – twice! We never caught up with him and hunted the area for the next three days without seeing him again.

George Taulman calls as little as anyone I’ve ever hunted with. He would rather get in front and let the bull (or the herd) come to him than to risk tipping them off. Griz Montoya feels that a good stalker could get every bull on the ranch if he could only resist the temptation to use his call. Keep that in mind next time you’ve got an old herd bull pushing his harem up the mountain. Silence is golden.

Double Up When You Call
Double-teaming was another tactic that really made things happen on the satellite bulls. One afternoon I had the luxury of two guides: Montoya and Rivera. We got close to a herd but couldn’t get around in front of them. The cameraman and I set up while the two guides split and dropped back 75 to 80 yards and split up about 50 yards apart. As they cow-called back and forth to each other it sounded for all the world like a couple of forlorn cows that had gotten left behind by the herd. Of course, every satellite bull in the area instantly converged, but the herd bull simply stayed put and bugled back at us.

As the bulls approached, the guides moved from side-to-side to keep them coming right at the camera. As it turned out, five bulls came past within easy bow range, but, every single one was a medium-sized 5 X 5. We had set a goal for a bull that would at least meet Pope & Young’s minimum of 265 points so I never raised my bow. It was as exciting as bowhunting can get without releasing an arrow.

Every Ride Has To End

It is much easier to stalk or ambush a big bull working a harem of cows than to call him away from them. Satellite bulls, on the other hand, are much easier to call in.

The hunt ended without my getting a bull, though I did get one shot at a giant 5 X 6 we nicknamed Holyfield because one of his ears was nearly torn off from fighting. It hung down uselessly along the side of his head. He was unmistakable and we were able to get on him two days in a row. He would have scored in the 325 range. We got between him and the cow he was following in one of the ranch’s big oak brush mottes. An exciting game of cat and mouse followed. He rubbed a tree for 20 minutes as we edged closer and prepared for his next move. When he finally took off we had to do some quick maneuvering and never quite got into position before he was onto us. I got what I thought was a clear shot but a limb deflected my arrow. It was two weeks after I got home before I fully recovered from the adrenaline hangover I took with me from that incredible hunt.

 Some of The West’s Best Elk Hunting
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