Ep. 51: Jason and David Frame

On todays episode Jason sits down with his cameraman and good friend David Frame. They answer listener questions about bulls hanging up, how long to hunt an area before moving on, amongst others. They then dive into their past hunts and what made them successful as well as what gave them some difficulty.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome back to Cutting the Distance. Today we're recording from
the mountains of Oregon. The rudd is finally starting to
pick up, the bowls are starting to get pretty vocal,
and the weather's starting to cool down. I can't wait
to hunt these last ten days of September. Here. Today's
guest is my good buddy and longtime camera guy, David Frame.
He grew up in Dayton, Washington, where he became passionate
about photography and began shooting, photographing, and shooting wildlife at

(00:33):
a young age. David has been very fortunate to film
hunts to take pictures all across the US. He may
be behind the camera most of the time, but what
he knows about hunting is second to none. He knows
what he's doing out there. I love being able to
bounce ideas off of him during a hunt, not to
mention once something is down. He's pretty handy with a
heavy pack. Welcome to the show, Dave.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Hey, thanks Phelps for having me on today.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
How's everything going.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
It's going good. Falling the mountains so can't beat it.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah, it's it's awesome. Like I said, you know, most
time you're behind the camera, but I really enjoy hunting
with you. You know, you're just like a buddy, except
for most time you're you're behind the camera and they
got for some reason, my ugly mugs in front of
the camera. So no, we've had a lot of good
hunts together. That's what we're going to kind of cover
today is what we've you know, some of the hunts
we've been on together and what's what you know where
we found the success and we're gonna go over some

(01:27):
of those hunts. I think we've got four or five
hunts we've been successful on since we've started working together
back in eighteen or nineteen. So, like we start all
Cutting the Distance episodes, though, we're gonna start with some
listener questions. These all came in from email. We got
three questions today, and if you have questions of your
own for us here at Cutting the Distance, feel free
to email all them to us at CTD at phelpsgame

(01:48):
Calls dot com, or send us a message on social
media and we'll do our best to get those on
here for me and my listeners to answer. So the
first question today is from Brian Rosen from Butte, Montana.
He was hunting last week in southwest Montana, and he
was able to randomly hear two bulls biggling on a
neighboring ridge. Everything had been pretty quiet up until that point.

(02:08):
He exchanged some calls back and forth for about a
half an hour, but they never seemed to actually move
towards him. He eventually attempted a spot in stock since
they were still responding but not getting drawn in. Once
he was within eighty eight yards of what he says
is a big six point, he continued to grunt and bark.
The bull continued to grunt and bark in his direction,
but simply would not close the distance with bull or

(02:28):
cow calls from him. The bowl eventually casually walked off
into the timber. Brian did not pursue him, is he
didn't want to blow him out of the area, and
it was almost the end of the day anyways. So
his question for us is, how do I get a
bull that will respond to biggling only? How do you
get how do you get that bull within shooting range
given that he will not respond to cow calls, raking,

(02:48):
any of that stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, so, I mean you're gonna have a lot more
knowledge on this subject than I do. Phelps, but I
would think. The first thing I would be trying is
maybe maybe even just get the wind right, figure out
where the where the rest of the herd is, figure
out where some of the cows might be betted or
hanging out, and try to stock in on some of

(03:12):
those cows and get get within bow range or rifle
range and just hang out, sit down, try to be
there as long as long as you can, and hopefully
the herd bowl will come circling around eventually and might
get a shot.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah. And and that's right off the bat, with that
bowl bigling and responding but not wanting to come any closer.
I instantly it's like we've got a herd bowl, most likely.
But I'm also in the back of my head knowing
that he had two bowls over there. Obviously one of
them most likely wasn't heard bol I guess you could
have two herds that had come together and that other
bowl left. But depending on what you're after, how picky

(03:47):
you're being, and what you're looking for, you could have
just sat down with heavy cow calls and it may
take a while. Like bulls coming into a cow call,
a lot of times they're not as vocal. They take
their time a little bit more so it may be
a long game. Yeah, you may hear that bigger bull
responding and he's not coming in, but you may be
able to switch tactics. Now, if you're going after that
herd bowl, sometimes you have to be very aggressive, you know,

(04:10):
try to find a way to approach pretty quietly. And
as Dave said, if you can get to within shooting
distance or the edge of his cows, typically he will
come between you and them. But he won't leave those
cows to come all the way to He's not gonna
leave his for sure thing to come find some cow
that's calling him or a bowl that's challenging him. But
the bowl. You know, now, if you were able to,
if the vegetation and train allowed, and you kept bugling

(04:32):
your way right into him, he's either got two responses, right,
he can leave or he can stay and fight you.
And so it just depends on how that terrain and
vegetation laid out on that ridge. The other thing you
can you know, if it allowed, you know, we don't
have enough information here, but with that you could have
used that ridge dear advantage, like if you knew which
side they were on, you could have stayed concealed on
the opposite side and then popped up. Is you know,

(04:54):
as close as you can. Maybe he did. It's hard
to speculate exactly what happened here without all the information,
but we use that a lot, you know, we kind
of call it the shock in awe. You're just the tighter.
You can get to that bull and leave him no
other choice but to come. In a lot of times
we have great success. Like I wish I could say
it's skill all the time, but there are many times

(05:16):
we're moving through the woods and we catch a glimpse
of a bull. We might be thirty forty fifty yards away,
Like we got way too close. We didn't exactly know
he was there, and we were able to call those
bulls and like my that bull that dirt called in
for me and New Mexico in twenty twenty, we only
called that bowl in ten yards before I shot him.
He was already at fifty yards as soon as we
sat down. He just didn't pick us out, you know,

(05:37):
So you can use that ridge get real close, and
you know, it may have helped. And I think everybody's
you know, and I'm not saying Brian's searching for like
a guaranteed answer because a lot of times we're still
out there. You know, how many times do we on
any given setup, like should we approach this way? Should
we go this way? Should we you know, we're always
questioning what we're doing. And you got the plan kind

(05:57):
of evolves multiple times. You start out with the plan. Yeah,
you know the old quote for Mike Tyson, everybody has
a plan to punched in the face. Well, the wind's
hitting the you know, right now, the wind's hammering us,
and so we go a different direction. And we realized
we wasted forty five minutes because by time we get
to where we want, the wind was actually right, you know.
And so you just every all these plans evolve and
you're always you're always changing as you go. But getting

(06:19):
close to a herd, bulls, cows, or to him is
is going to be to your your best bet.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah, And I will say to that point of being
a little bit aggressive and getting close to animals that
are maybe even a little bit spooked, but don't have
your wind. A few years ago I did spook end
up spooking, spooking a herd, and and and the bull
ended up spooking as well. But the bowl thought that
there's another bowl coming in, and so he just chased

(06:46):
after the cows and the whole herd and he was
trying to get them rounded up again, and I ended
up just following them. They didn't have my wind at
all and ended up bugling, and that bowl just whipped
around and came right in. You have big herd bull, and.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
So yeah, yeah, I've I've bumped cows before. You know,
we almost had the opportunity yesterday. I think we bumped
some cows and I thought we might have still had
a shot with the bull because we were kind of
in a little bit of a bugling battle, and ultimately
I think he ended up going with his cows. But
a lot of times you can bump cows, sometimes that
bowl thinks that you're another bull that bumped him, and
he'll still come over. So not all is lost if
if you're too aggressive. And that's that's how I grew

(07:19):
up hunt Roosevelts. I didn't really know what I was doing.
I was very aggressive and we would bump cows but
still be able to call the bowl.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
In afterwards, as long as you have the wind and
they don't yep yep.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
So all right, thank you for that question, Brian. Moving
on to a question from Levi Molloy out in New Mexico,
he said he just got done with an either sex
archer hunt. I'm assuming it was the first season in
the southern part of the Lincoln National Forest. He said
they weren't running real hard yet, but they were active.
He was primarily losing cow calls and throwing beagles out

(07:48):
anytime he heard a beagle. He said he was able to
call two mature bulls into about one hundred and fifty yards,
but when they crested the ridge across the canyon or
the little ravine from him and his brother, they were interested,
but he couldn't pull them any clear two hundred and
fifty yards. He's asking what should he have done in
that situation. He said, they hadn't spotted them, they were
for sure of that, and they had good wind, but

(08:09):
they weren't able to close the distance anymore. So what
would what would you have done in that scenario?

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, so, I mean that that's happened to me so
many times. I mean, it happens all the time, but
I think, just looking back hindsight's twenty twenty, I would
have I would have tried to use that terrain, use
that ridge and maybe parked myself, maybe just just on
the other side of that ridge in the direction the

(08:34):
bulls were coming, so that they had to as soon
as they had to look over that ridge. You're sitting
there at twenty yards or yep or whatever, just a
little bit of cover using that ridge.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yep. We we talk about that all the time. Is
you know, don't don't try to set up or don't
try to call that bowl until you're within shooting range
of where they're going to show up. And if you
knew ahead of time where you were standing you wouldn't
be able to approach where you thought they would, then
you might as well not call again until you can
get your set up a little bit better. You don't
get that vegetation, get that terrain, whatever you're using to
your advantage there, you need to be within bow range

(09:06):
when you start calling, you know. And and you know,
one thing, like I said, we're speculating on this question,
like was there a way you could have backed out
and made a big circle, Like you know, as much
as I always wanted to be point A to point
B to get to get to these elk, like is
there an alternate route? You know that that revolt you
know involves a big circle or a big loop that
keeps your wind right, you know, and maybe that was

(09:27):
your chance to move in closer.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
You know.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
It depends on how how aggressive you want to be
or how much you know, work you want to put in.
But there are sometimes where it's like, oh, shoot, we
gave up some ground. We can't move anymore, but we
can back up, and it might be a mile or
a mile and a half loop, you know, to get
back to where we need to be. But hey, we
can get behind this ridge, we can get over there
and hopefully they're still willing to play at that time.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Yeah, And that's just one of those things when a
when a bull gets to a spot where it expects
to see the cow or the bowl buggling at them,
whether it's a challenge, whether they're coming to find a cow,
they're kind of done closing distance at that point, Like
they expect to see the bowl, they expect to see
the cow, and if it's not there, they're like, well,
life came as far as I'm gonna come. If you're
really here, like they've announced their position, they're up on

(10:11):
the ridge like you come the rest of the way,
and that just seems that, you know, it's how nature
works anyways, and we're trying to interact with it. But
when we set up things, you know, maybe I would
say wrong, But if we set things up a little
bit different than than nature's intended to work, we'll get
those hang ups quite a bit. Yep. So our last
question comes from Michael Blanchard. I believe I didn't write

(10:31):
down where he's from. I thought he said he was
from Arkansas. But he's going on his first elk hunt
in Colorado this year. It's a first rifle season, which
I did a little bit of research. Looks like it
opens on October fourteenth this year. He has What tips
do you have for a first time elk hunter?

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, I'd probably I'd probably be looking at finding high
point in the area and pulling the spot and scope
out and just glassing the hillsides as much as I
can day light to dark. I mean, sometimes you'll get
lucky and they'll still be beigling that late in the year,
but I mean, honestly, yeah, I'm mid October, I'd be

(11:09):
looking at I'm sitting on a high point and trying
to glass up bulls.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yep, yeah, get high, cover a lot of ground, and
I think you're still gonna until the gunshots start going
off in the mountains, You're gonna still have those elk
rutting a little bit, you know in Colorado. But what
I would be looking for is where can I find
that bowl with his cows as they go from the
ret But what I'm really wanting to know, if you're
not lucky enough to get it done, where are these
hard to reach places? Where's where these brush holes? Where's

(11:36):
their food? You know, these bulls come off of the rut,
they're going back to replenish. They're going to eat a lot.
Are they going to be in secluded timber pockets? Are
they going to be in these you know, hidden meadows?
Are they going to be in rough, nasty country. I'm
looking around where I may find them, you know, leading
up to the opener or you know, day one or two.
But where are they going to go right after that?
So not only might like you said, I'm gonna get
up high in glass and just try to figure out

(11:56):
the country, figure out where I could maybe shoot from
or where you know, those stocks are all going to
work but then where am I going to go once
once those bulls start to break off. I'm paying a
lot of attention to down on X as well as
when I'm on the ground, like where am I going
to find those elks? So, you know, his second question
kind of rolls into this that do I recommend just
pounding the dirt and covering a lot of ground?

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (12:21):
I think.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
I mean I've never hunted Colorado first rifle, but I
think I think initially i'd be trying to set up
in one area at least me personally, and and really
really get to learn it and see try to figure
out the habits of the critters that are that are
in there, trying looking for burned areas edges of those burns. Yeah,

(12:48):
and just really anchor myself down in one spot, I think,
and just see what I can turn up. But then
after but be willing to change after a couple of days,
if you're not seeing in any an almost or anything,
be be willing to start covering country. Yeah, but I
like to initially try to try to anchor myself to
one spot and learn it a little bit, and then

(13:09):
and then go out from there.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
Yeah. And I think going into a hunt if if
you're new to this area, if you don't have any
tips on where to go, you do a lot of
e scouting. Right, you go on with us a one, two, three, four,
five list where you think looks good. You know, you
go there first, you scout it. If you know, you
give it an evening and then maybe even a morning,
like make sure you've given it a good time. Now,
I'm assuming you can go scout now. If this is hunting,

(13:31):
you're doing the same thing, like you go to that
spot first. If your Spot A just isn't going to
pan out, you need to move very quickly to spot
B and go see if it pans out. And what
I like to do is my spot A may be
a little bit easier to get to, but I think
it's got the right things for ELK. I think it's
in the right spot b C. Because the season goes on,
I'm starting to get maybe a little deeper, a little

(13:51):
bit harder hike in, you know, and I'm I'm trying
because these other easy spots are going to be hit.
So I'm progressively going too harder to reach spots and
checking them out. And you just keep going down the
line until you figure out where the dang elk are
at and and you know, be able to hunt him.
Will elk be bugling around the first rifle in Colorado?
We touch on that a little bit. It's really hit

(14:12):
or miss from year to year. You know, you had
mentioned you you have one hundred first season Colorado. I've
been around in that time and and they could be bigling,
they may not be bugling. It's just really hit or miss.
But I would say for the most part, you're gonna
hear bugles that time of year.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
So it's always a good idea to carry, you know,
a beagle at least for the first part. Now, if
the elk aren't hammering, but you see him, like, if
you know for sure the rut's not going, I wouldn't
be you know, the odd bowl out out there just
cranking beagles off everywhere. I'd kind of try to fit
in with what nature's doing, for sure. And we touch
on this a little bit. But his last question of

(14:50):
the of his four how long should he glass in
one area before he moves on?

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Man, Yeah, that depends on a lot of factors. I
think weather and temperatures and and just what you're seeing.
But I'd definitely like to at least give a spot
a morning and evening is where I would start, and
then just see see how you're feeling about it. If
if you're seeing critters, then you might want to stay

(15:18):
stay there longer. If you're not, then then start thinking
about those B and C options.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Yeah, it's really hit or miss. It's how much time.
You know, if you've got the scout, you may want
hit a whole bunch of spots and only give it
a morning or an evening, you know, hunting, And it
really depends on the sign. Like we all want to
be active hunter, active participants in the game. Right Like
we're you know, we're we're walking on Oregon right now.
We haven't had a chance to scout a whole lot
and things have moved since we've got good information. But

(15:45):
we as we hike, we're like, oh, there's fresh elk
tracks here, there's fresh rubs. The same thing happens in
rifle season, like where the rubs at? Where where are
the tracks at? Scat And then you eventually just put
it all together and and it's one of those games.
You know, we all played it when we were younger
with our parents answer friends. It's like warmer colder game,
Like all right, you eventually keep following fresh tracks until
it gets better and better, or is it starts to

(16:07):
get worse. You're like, all right, I'm gonna back up
into that zone. I'm gonna try to figure out where
the heck those things went, because it's obvious they were here,
you know, within the last twenty four hours, forty eight hours.
It's the best information we've got, and so use that
to add into some of these things what you're seeing, like, hey,
there's a lot of elk hent aroun here. Maybe I'm
just not picking them up, whatever it may be. But
be an active participant on the landscape and use any

(16:29):
information you've got. You know, some people may frown at this,
but it's just it's adding information to your your tool
your toolbox is you're going through a hunt, is another
thing that you look at is where are other hunters?
Like or I mean even if you're just using it
for like elevations type of areas, pockets basins, Like if
there's twenty hunters stacked at a trailhead, I'm probably not

(16:51):
going to go in there, but it lets me think,
like what does that look like? What other spots in
the unit are kind of like that, what elevations do
I get to use that sort of stuff, you know,
to your advance.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Well, yeah, and like on this hunt even or or
kind of checking spots off. But I never like to
completely erase them off the whiteboard. I like to I
like to keep them in the back pocket still and Okay,
two days later we might come through here and see
what there is.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
Yep. Yeah, you elk move in and out of spots.
They're not necessarily just just gonna stay there. As they
get pressure, they move, they move in, or you might
go in there the day after somebody else was in
there they got pressured, so they're not talking or they're
not there, but that may be where they want to be,
and they're going to be back in another day. So
it's it's it's a weird balance. It's a i'd say weird.
It's a delicate balance of burning up time chasing ghosts

(17:36):
versus is it a good area that should hold elk
because they're print you know, they're they're annually there during
the rut, you know, and there's evidence of that, versus
they're just gone. So you're you're trying to always balance,
you know, that that equation on using up precious time
that we have out here versus trying to find elk
that may or may not be in an area at
all that year. So well, thank you all for the questions.

(17:59):
Once again, if you have questions for me or my listeners,
feel free to email them to us at CTD at
Phelps game Calls dot com, or send us a social
media message. We'll do our best to get those questions
on here for for me and my guest to answer,
so we really appreciate those. Now we're gonna dive into

(18:27):
some of our past hunts Dave and go over a
few things that have worked in those situations as well
as what didn't work. So we went I think our
very first hunt was kind of our trial around. You're like,
I think you're like, I'll do it, because you were
what fifteen minutes from yeah yeah to Dave. I think
he was. He's like, if this doesn't pan out, I
can just leave these jokers up on the mountain and

(18:48):
not have to ever talk to him again. So we
were in his backyard on a spring bear hunt with
my good buddy Charlie Smith, and it worked out good.
I think you know you you joked right with the
crew you were, it didn't take long to integrate in,
you know. We Charlie ended up being able to kill
a pretty little cinnamon blonde on that hunt, and from
then on that was kind of our was that our

(19:09):
only hunt we had you on that year was kind
of just a trial run.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
We weren't filming a think so yeah, I think so.
It's hard to all the all the hunts blend together,
but I think so.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah. And then eighteen we had kind of a busy
schedule with multiple guys on multiple state trips, and we
started to utilize you a lot more on our hunts.
You know, everything you did was great and turned out
for us. I think that year you filmed John and
Charlie on an Idaho l hunt yep, and John was
able to kill I think Charlie called in a pretty
big five point for John pretty early in the hunt.

(19:39):
There were some other bowls around, so you hunted with
those guys. And then later that year you ended up
going to Nevada with us on my Dad's meal to
your hunt, where he killed a pretty good buck on
the second day of that hunt. And then we then
we kind of started el hunting together. We had kind
of just you know, it had hunted together when it fit,
and in twenty nineteen, we had a pretty big plan together.

(20:03):
I think you stayed with me for almost all September.
I think we started here in Oregon at the end
of August. I think you had some stuff going on,
or maybe you were doing your own hunt then. I
can't remember, but we went to Wyoming shortly thereafter, beginning
of September, to the Big Horns, and then we came
back to Oregon. So let's kind of let's relive that
twenty nineteen Wyoming hunt. You know, we were in the

(20:26):
Big Horns, and leading into that hunt, we had got
a bunch of information that and I don't ever trust
this information, but everybody's like, you don't have to scout
a lot, like there are elk literally everywhere. And I
remember we got there, we got camp unloaded, got everything set,
and I think we were there. Were we only there
the night before? Did we show up a day and
a half before? I think it was a day and
a half.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
Yeah, I think it was the day and a half.
So we did quite a bit of scout.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
Yeah, because we we went in and we scouted and
found some elk the first night, and then the next
night we found like a you know, if you haven't
been to the Big Horns, there are these crazy cliffs
that separate the tops and then like the mid slopes,
and so we were able to find a way through
that to get a lot closer to where we had
spotted those elk. And it was unbelievable. The night before season, like,

(21:13):
I could not move my spotter to a meadow or
an area that didn't seem to have elk in it.
So that's it sounds super cliche and extremely obvious, but
you can't kill an elk without having elk there. But
this place seemed to be unreal. You couldn't move without
being an elk, which was every elk hunter's dream, right.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah, that's the most elk I've ever seen, still still today.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah, the night before I think if anybody goes back
and watches the video, I'm all grind because I'm just
like you, even I can't screw this up. You know,
we were going to have elk no matter which basin
which ridge, and then you actually have a little bit
of a problem because you're like, well, I don't know
where to go. This ridge had an elk on it
this ridge, you know that I really like that bowl

(21:57):
and you're kind of looking through bowls and you really
kind of picked that way. We ultimately found a ridge
that we thought would be a little bit harder for
people to get to, and so we elected to go
down in their opening day. That was I don't know
if everybody remembers. I had lost a bet with my
buddy Dirt Durham that year who would sell more diaphragms,

(22:18):
my personal signature diaphragm or his, and I think he
ended up beating me by a couple thousand diaphragms, and
my for me to pay up on that bet, Dirt
got to pick out a whole Cogain outfit that I
got to hunt in, which was real humbling. And so
my intention going up on the mountain was to not

(22:38):
see anybody, and we were just gonna get through the
first day. We're gonna film it, and then I was
gonna edit this film, so I was gonna put very
very little of that in. We had, We had a
pretty good morning. We ended up bumping the herd that
we wanted to have about I think it was still
one hundred head plus or minus. We got him into
some thick stuff and ended up seeing legs and never
did see him. We chased another little bugle for while

(23:01):
and then everything everything quieted down quite a bit that day.
I think we sat for what five six hours that
day up on the mountain, taken a nap, we did.
We were, as we mentioned, there was a lot of
elk elk rich environment. We did not want to keep
bumping things until they started biggling again. You know, you
want of those shadows they get long. You wanted to
get up out of their beds at four thirty five,

(23:23):
you know, somewhere in there and start biggling. So we
we hung out there and started to work our way
down the mountain where we saw maybe the next best
bowls that morning, and uh, I think we we finally
it was pretty close to dark, we were able to
get a bowl to locate and he was high. He
was actually in I don't even know what the name
is where those cliffs kind of fall out and make

(23:44):
a flat bench blow him and you know, and they're
kind of scattered with rocks. He was in kind of
a shelf below the cliff, but he wasn't cover he
wasn't covering any distance I think we had tried to
call in a couple of different setups and and when
we when we talked talk about this over and over.
If a bull will not move his location or doesn't

(24:04):
seem to be moving his location over a said amount
of time, that seems like he's going to close the distance,
you need to move yourself. And we had set up
a couple of times and and he was very responsive.
He would be agle back, but he would never move locations.
And so ultimately we looked at each other and like,
we got to go. We're running out of time. Both
we were. We had the clock ticking against us, and

(24:25):
uh so we were trying to move fairly quickly. We
were very aggressive. We we crossed a little rock ravine.
He was bigl and kind of as we were still running,
we were kind of picking up on that. But we
had I had this spruce tree kind of that we
needed to get to. That was going to be the
one where you know, I could shoot through the limbs,
I could kind of see through him, I can get

(24:46):
a better feel for what was going on. That was
one of those times where we were just talking about earlier.
I think we showed up about fifty five yards away
from the bowl. Yeah, so we had to. We had to.
We had to call him very little. But this is
what happens. I believe this bull hurt us coming. He
didn't hear us biggling because we stopped biggling. This was
one of those times where I knew he was there.

(25:08):
We knew we didn't need the bugle because he was
biggling on his own, so we went silent. We closed
out last two hundred hundred and fifty yards without making
a peep. But I elk can hear very good. We've
even seen it on this trip. We've had elk bugle
at us just walking down a road or down a trail.
They hear us and rip off, you know, so they
will bugle just at the sound of your feet. This

(25:29):
bowl started biggling and biggling more, and we I think
we did start finally biggling back and forth at him,
but he would not budge. I could see bits and
pieces of him through the tree, but he would not move.
And on this one, a lot of people talk, you know,
we talk about all of the different sounds that bowl
elk make. One of the sounds is an alarm bark

(25:49):
or a nervous bark. He knew that we were there.
But basically, when when a bull barks, he asked you
to show yourself. Right, I everybody always ask me how
we hold our bagle tubes. I typically, during a shooting situation,
keep my bugle tube. If I'm on my knees, I'll
keep it between my legs. If I'm standing up, I
pinched my bugle tube between my legs. That's just how

(26:11):
well he barked at me. And I was all because
he's kind of in view, kind of not in view.
And I can't remember if I picked my two Do
you remember if I picked my tube up, if I
just barked with my voice or just like barked without
a tube as focused on the view fan, So Dave
was focused on getting the shot. But I think I
barked with a diaphragm, but I didn't lift my tube up.

(26:32):
So basically he said show yourself, and I said, no,
show yourself. And just like clockwork on that call in
that bowl, as soon as I barked, we had been
in a ten to fifteen minute stalemate, stand off, whatever
you want to call it. That bowl walks fifteen yards
to the right and plane site, very good bow range.
I think it was thirty yards and made a great shot.

(26:55):
And this is one of those times where sometimes people
can celebrate and maybe get two loud after a shot.
We kind of kept our composure a little bit. I
he as he was running back behind the spruce tree
where I was gonna lose sight. I had actually stepped
to the right. I didn't spook him. He never saw me,
but I was trying to watch and I realized he stops.
I think I cow called or we called right after. Yeah,

(27:19):
the bull was lethally wounded. He was hit perfect. I was,
but I'm I was taught, I was raised, and I
will do it probably till the day I die, until
some bad experience or some other some other studies show
that you should never shoot him twice. I was able
to call that bowl back in. He didn't come all
the way to the same spot, but he came out
in the open a little bit more and I had

(27:41):
a little bit of a of a of a not
decent angle. He was a little bit quartered too, but
I put it just on the back side of the
shoulder and shot him again. Now some people may say,
you know you don't want to alarm or to spook
a bull that's lethally wounded. But I'm of I'm of
the sense like, even though I know that SHOT's perfect,

(28:01):
I would assume his lungs have another hole in him.
Oh yeah, And that bowl was good evidence of it.
He tipped over forty yards down the hill from where
I shot the second time, or where he got hit
the second time. One of the most you know, I
don't say disgusting, one of the dirtiest breakdowns ever. That
bowl had found himself a wallow during the ninety degree

(28:23):
you know, early September heat, and he.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
Was completely covered head to toe.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yeah, we tried. For those of you that that I
haven't talked about, like my dad and uncles were all
raised in a butcher shop and it's been passed down
to us, like your meat's kept very clean, no hair,
no dirt. And I looked at Dave. I'm like, man,
I cannot keep my hands under the hide. It's just
going to be a disaster. And we looked at each
other and we were both running pretty low on water

(28:49):
because it was so hot that day, and we had
a we had a river about a mile down below us.
We decided that it was worth dropping everything but our water,
water bags or bottles or whatever we had, and we
went down there and filled every one of those up.
It took us about an hour to drop in film
up and come back up. But we had to keep
our hands clean, keep the meat clean, and it worked out.
It was gonna be a disaster without it. So in

(29:09):
that time, you know field care. You know, sometimes it's
nice to have water hand you know, back then we
didn't pack like the hand wipes, the wet wipes around.
Now we would have had those we could have helped
out with. You know, this was an instance where he
was so muddy, like rubber gloves weren't gonna help at all,
and everything was slick. I think rubber gloves would actually
hurt in that situation. But you know, we did everything

(29:30):
we could, you know, on that one, and on on
that calin I think we were we were very aggressive.
You know, some people would have been like we were
too aggressive.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
But yeah, when I was, when I was running after you,
chasing you down, I was thinking we were on the
edge of too aggressive.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
When it worked out. Yeah, So this I'm glad you
said that because if there would have been a spruce
tree or a good tree. The vegetation. We talk about
it maybe too much, but this this is another idea.
Like I knew that was the tree. I could see
it from one hundred yards out, because everything else was
going to put me behind a little teeny green, you know,

(30:07):
a piece of brush out in the wide open, and
that was a tree that was going to allow me
to be concealed, get my bow drawn, everything that was
going to need to do. And so we probably were
about you know, if you want to say we were
thirty yards too aggressive, but I needed to be at
that tree. Otherwise it didn't matter how far we stayed
back or where we played it cautious, we weren't going
to get to the right spot. Yeah, we didn't know

(30:28):
if it was a herd bowl or a satellite at
that point, you know, herd bowl. We were going to
have to get that close. So yeah, we literally ran
the last three hundred yards, got very very tight to
this bowl. And it was still a pain in the
neck to call him out from behind that tree. You know.
It took us twenty minutes of back and forth, and
finally a bark was what was able to pull him,
pull him away.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
Yeah, and that's what's school about El Kinnie? You can
chase him around and yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yep, yep. And then we finished up on that hunt
we hunted, so that was day one I was fortunate
enough to kill. We hunted with our buddy Corey for
another eight days and we called in a few bulls.
One lesson And I'm not picking on my buddy Corey
at all. And when we talked to a guy on

(31:13):
this hunt, what was his what was his line about
drawing his bow? I don't remember he was. The guy's like,
I can't. He's like, these bulls won't let you draw
your bow. I'm gonna have to draw before he ever
sees me. And I'm not talking anything bad about like
I said, this guy, not Corey didn't say this, but
the other guy. And we're like, yeah, drawing your bow

(31:34):
is and when to draw your bow is maybe the
most important decision you're gonna make on a call in.
You need to you need to be very in tune
with the bulls movement. How much has he stopped on
the way in, how quick is he moving, how aggressive
is he been if he's coming in tiptoeing really quiet?
Like man, you depending on if you how long you

(31:56):
can hold your bow, but you might want to draw
the very last second, Like find a tree that you
can draw on.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
A tree picked down beforehand, I'm gonna draw there.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah, if the bulls like just hammering through brush and
like storming in, you get a little more lead. Way,
you can draw a little bit earlier because you're not
gonna probably get stuck hold in as long. It's a
fine art. But you know, back to the Big Horn Hut, Wyoming,
we had a pretty good six with a real good
front end, maybe not super strong up top, but this
bull got out into a meadow and he actually did

(32:24):
what we say doesn't work very often. We didn't have
a whole lot of vegetation in front of us, but
we kind of got pinned down because he we were calling,
and I think we all kind of looked up and
we're like, oh, he's on the edge of the meadow.
We called a little bit more and this bull sprints
across the meadow and that was one of those times
where if I and I think Corey was a little
bit on the edge whether he wanted that bowl or not.

(32:44):
So maybe he wasn't super interested in and drawing at
that time, but within about twenty seconds. That bowl covered
two hundred yards, oh yeah, and he was right on
top of us at twenty yards broadside. But you know,
once again Corey wasn't able to draw his bow because
now the bull was locked on you know, me and him,
the caller and the shooter, and we were kind of
just pinned down. So we chased a lot of bulls.

(33:05):
It was a lot of fun, just you know, a
little bit later in the hunt, we had a bigger
five point that you know, came in in a kind
of a weird direction, and then he started his frontel
walk at about seventy yards coming up an old cat trail,
and Heinstein's always twenty twenty if you know, we talk
about this when you set up, you should be able
to guess where a bull is gonna want to come up,

(33:26):
and if he's going to come up like an old
grade or an old like a very clear path, you
should maybe set yourself fifteen to twenty yards up on
it and not be in a straight line with that path,
you know, because I think if we were just ten
to fifteen yards off number one, that bowl wouldn't have
finally seen us in the road being set up or
Corey in the road set up, but he would have
walked past us or at least up that road enough
to get a shot, and so we would have avoided
the eye to eye contact and been able to get

(33:49):
a closer broadside shot. Yeah. So yeah, think about all
that stuff when you when you set up. We finished
that hunt up, we came back to Oregon. I think
we were September eleventh or twelfth we showed up here.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
Yeah, that sounds right.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
And that year this unit just seemed to be somewhat dead.
I mean, we were getting on bulls every day, but
it just wasn't going. They weren't interested in being called
in real reluctant to be you know, even cow called
to bugle. Just we would see bulls, they weren't bugling
a whole lot. And so we were still kind of
early in the rut. We chas we chased some smaller

(34:27):
bulls seemed to be rutting a little bit more. We
chased some bulls pretty deep, you know, on a few days.
It was very weird to me for the unit when
we were hunting that year that we ran into a
herd with a bigger five point and a very small
six point. Is the herd bulls and a deep spot
that should have had something special in it. So on
hunts like those, I think you need to you just

(34:48):
need to wait your time. But that year, that season
I believe closed off on September nineteenth. Yeah, And so
you're balancing being patient and letting the rut kick in
versus you need to get it done now. Even that
pre run. So with that said, we were still pounding
a lot of ground. We were just trying to find
a bull that was either with the herd, you know,
that that had a cow that was in and they

(35:09):
were excited. And the other thing that was real weird
about this unit is all the big bulls like to
hang out together. So we had found a couple of herds.
We spent a lot of days chasing bulls that just
they were outsmarting us, outrunning us. And we invested a
lot of time, you know, on some very very good bulls.
And then finally we had to make the decision all
of us after being beat what four days in a row,

(35:30):
three days.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
In a row, I think it was four, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
And similar routines, different routines. He could do whatever he
wanted and beat us. It seemed like we just were
at a disadvantage. We just had to pull the plug
on him, like, yeah, it was a great bowl, was
one that we wanted to go after, but we had
to change plans. And so you know, fast forward, you're
like September fifteenth or sixteenth, you don't only have four
or five days left. So that's where you have to
make that decision on do you stay with them potentially

(35:55):
burn up all your season getting beat, or do you
need to go find one that's more callable or in
a more callable area. Yeah, that hunt we had, we
were we had got soaking wet the one day we
chased the five and the six point out and you
had wear your I think you'd worn your socks two
or three days.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Yeah, one too many days in a row.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
So they've had hoof rot ye or a foot disease.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
As on the bench for twenty four hours.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah, Dave, da've sat September sixteenth out seventeenth sixteenth, and uh,
I went out with my other buddies and that was
the day. It was literally like somebody had hit the
light switch and told those elk that day that you
need to start bigeling. We had called in three different
bowls to under sixty yards, just didn't have any shots.
We were watching a three twenty bowl that day and

(36:45):
one of Brian's one of his I think it was
his brother, one of his buddies, came up and found
us on the mountain and said, hey, you guys got there.
The big bulls are down low, and so we adjusted
our hunt. We came down out of the mountains, we
got we had some permission on some pre it there
and we chased. You know, I love hunting the mountains
more than anybody. It's where I'd rather be. These bulls

(37:06):
down low or uncullable when they're out in the fields
like that, because you can't hide. You you're basically trying
to ambush them, get in front of them and wait.
But it's hard not to go hunt a group of
elk with three or four bowls that are all big,
mature bulls. So we made the decision to do that,
and then we got to hunt elk like I don't
like to hunt elk for three days, just trying to

(37:27):
get in front of them all the time, you know,
ducking down drainage ditches, you know, running around. But ultimately
was able to kill a really good bull down there
and and the low stuff. But you know, all of
those bulls had dropped out of the mountains, you know,
and went down there, and then you had you have
to hunt them where they're at, right we we just
mentioned the whole, the whole. It's it's very obvious, but
you have to kill bulls, big bulls where they're at,

(37:49):
and that's where they all were at that time. So
we made the decision to drop down. I'm not ashamed,
Like it was pretty nice to be able to get
a tractor to the first bowl of my life and
not have to quarter it up and pack it out
on my back. But it's one of those things I'd
like to reserve or save for my wife and kids,
and I just assume put that thing on my pack
and get it out. But it was pretty nice. One time.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
I had a blast down there on the fields because
I mean, you're you're getting to see them out in
the open and get and getting close to them and
seeing how bulls heard cows around and it was it
was still fun hunt.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
Yeah, it was, it was. It's it I think it
makes you a more rounded elk hunter, like trying to
figure out what you can get away with being seen,
you know, multiple eyes. You know, we took a few risks,
you know at some points getting into these you know,
different tree rows, into these like Christmas tree type patch.
You know, it's like what can we get away with?
How close can we get? And it was a fun hunt.

(38:43):
It was great for viewing Elk and like you said,
just being a student of the game. We're always trying
to learn, but just getting to watch them and how
you know, when these three or four bowls all come
together and what would be like a rut fest quote
Mega heard kind of a situation like how the pecking
order was established and why they maybe let it each
to get away with a little bit when I think
like normally a big herd bow would run them all out. Yea,

(39:04):
It's just it was interesting to watch.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
Yeah, fun as a cameraman getting to film that stuff too.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah, yeah, it was. It was a lot of fun.
The next year, you came with us and filmed our
Wyoming Elk hunt. Tyson, Drevnock, Daniel Duncan, myself all drew

(39:32):
Wyoming tags and we showed up there those guys. I
was on a different hunt that year. Oh, I was
in New Mexico with with Dirk and and I finished
up a little bit late. You guys were there early
archery hunting, and I showed up late. And then we
had found some bulls. Two days of archery season left,
and this was one of the tags that turns into

(39:54):
a rifle shortly there after, you know, after archery, and
we decided not to necessarily, as much as I love
archery el hunting, there was too many elk, too many eyes,
and too much open ground for us to like get
in without risking busting them. So we had made the decision,
let's leave him here, let's just keep tabs on them
until the rifle opens up. Went back in there and

(40:18):
everything you could have set your watch to these elk
right when they were fighting, when they were coming out
to the meadows where the big bull was gonna go,
where the you know the they were also very big
satellites where they were going to go. Well, guess what
also correlates with the opening day of there was a
deer season that started in there on the same day,
and so hunters showed up. We've seen hunters that we

(40:41):
hadn't seen the whole time, and other people coming in
different trails. Well long, and I'll blame myself, you know,
I use my range finder a lot to figure out, like,
all right, these elk are at eighteen hundred yards away
from me, that little noles at fourteen hundred yards away
from me. If we're comfortable with a four hunder yard shot,
we can get there well somewhere. In opening day calculations,

(41:02):
we were way too far and we couldn't make a shot.
The bowl was there early, and so we ended up
playing a cat and mouse game. We pushed them way
high into a basin, way high in the mountain and
ended up having to kind of sit there. We watched
the bulls walk in. We were able to We knew
where they were at, We knew what patcha timber they
went in, because they couldn't have got out. It was
an isolated pocket. And we did a little bit of
a you know, a western, a western move where me

(41:24):
and Tyson decided we would just still hunt through the
patch of timber and then Daniel was gonna be where
we thought they may kind of release out of there,
and so we did a little bit of a dry
you know, I went It wasn't a drive we were hunting,
but we we came down through that piece and I
remember early we were about halfway through the patch of

(41:46):
timber when I had one of the medium six is
run through me, you know, like a three hundred and
twenty at six and I couldn't get a shot, like
it flashed in front of me, but it let me
know which direction they were coming from. I wasn't on
the right ridge. The elk were on Tyson's ridge. Tyson
had either bumped him or was pushing them. So I
ran down and all of a sudden I heard a gunshot,
which I couldn't tell if it was Tyson or Daniel.

(42:07):
And then it was it was almost self defense because
the entire herd like came running by where I was
at and I was trying to, you know, find horns
and trying to just trying to figure out what was
going on, and the pant you know, it was just chaos.
And I figured you can hear when a rifle hits
a cavity, right, it's you get the big thump at

(42:28):
the end. So I knew we already had to pack
one bowl out of way. Well, I had a little
five point stop by it like seven yards. He didn't
know I was there, and like, well that's close enough,
and we already got to pack one out of here.
We're going to bring horses and mules in. So I
was able to get a shot on that bowl. And
then it was the longest I think, most miles, most
elevations I've put on in a single day. I think

(42:50):
we ended up doing twenty two miles and three hundred
and forty feet elevation three and forty yeah, yeah, so
thirty five hundred, yeah somewhere in there.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
Yeah, that sounds right.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
It was a long day, and we kept getting turned
around on the way back and that are yeah, yeah,
it was. It was a disaster. And then we were
all pretty beat. But we had one day left where
we had to go home, and Tyson still had his tag.
He was unable to get a shot that night. The
next day, lokate Elk right off the bat we here

(43:21):
in bigland, not very far out of camp. We'd climbed
up and this is one of those times where we
almost called the bowl in too fast. We located the bowl.
He was on an adjacent ridge, but on our slope
that we were on, we had some of that dead timber.
It wasn't burnt, but just dead beetle killed timber below us,

(43:42):
and we thought we needed to get that bull's attention
and keep it. But just like the bowl with Corey,
that bull decided he was going to sprint to us. Well,
Tyson and Daniel and I believe you already had walked.
We were walking down there, but you guys weren't gonna
walk as fast as that bull was going to get there.
And Cody couldn't see. But Cody Wilson was in a

(44:03):
spot where he could not see how fat. So he
was still a calling and I'm over there giving him
like all the you know, throat symbol, like stop, cut
it off, knock it off. You know, he finally stops.
But I think when you guys popped out of the timber,
Tyson said, he looked up in the bowls like it
forty or fifty yards away, like we had called too fast.
So in that scenario, until you know exactly how that

(44:24):
bull is going to react, I guess what would we did? Though,
if you guys would have waited with us, you guys
would have been even further behind. So it's one of
those things where it was just it was fortunate that
you guys were able to get there just in time.
And Tyson was able to make a good shot on
that bowl. But that was one of those things I
think about that if you've got to get to a
spot and you've got a secondary caller, use use call signals.

(44:47):
You know a lot of times if a guy's ahead,
when he's ready to set up, he'll give like three
quick cow calls or one, or he'll say, I'm just
gonna cow call when i'm ready and then I'm going
to be quiet. Right, give yourself some signals so that
the guy that's maybe calling, or if you're not ideally
you're always within, you know, seeing distance of each other,
so you can give each other signals like what's going on,
beagle cow call, whatever. But if you can't, you gotta

(45:07):
have some sort of idea what's going on, So make
sure you can communicate without communicating. We almost called that
bowling a little too fast. Yeah, what other hunts? I
think twenty one rifle. Yeah, you were with us on
that one, Yep, that bowl. The whole story is if
you know he's around, he's around, right. We spent We

(45:31):
had some guys. You know, my good buddy Brian was
watching him for a couple of days. Knew he was
in the area, But the night before season he had
dropped over from a south facing slope to a north
facing slope, So it went from where he could see
really good to where you couldn't hardly see anything. We
knew he was there. Opening morning, we found all the
satellite bowls that was with him, but him, all his cows,

(45:52):
And then you start to wonder how far as he went.
Did he cross the entire canyon? Did he, you know,
go up the ridge? Did he go down the ridge?
You're you're really starting to question. We get all the
way through that day nothing, We go look at a
different bowl that just wasn't quite what we were after,
and then the next day we spot a big heavy
seven that we didn't think was quite what we wanted,

(46:13):
but we deserved the closer look. So me, you, Dirk,
and Brian I believe walked way out, way down this
finger ridge, way down in there, the biggest rookie mistake
of ever. I don't Brian blames me. I blame him,
but I know who was on the spotter at that time,
and it wasn't me. But no Brian, Brian's an awesome hunter.
I'm just giving him a hard time, but I still

(46:35):
give him crap about this one, because you know when
you're when you're looking through a spotter, and we could
see just like a piece of the elk in a
little bit of horn, like he was tucked away in
some brush, and I was getting kind of tired, and
Brian was looking well about I don't know, a minute
or two went by, and I think he puts his
eyeback in her. I actually finally duck down into my
spot and we're both like, he's gone. Never seen him move,

(46:59):
never seen him come out to where it was no
side of this thing at all. And we're kind of like, oh,
that was That was as bad as it gets. Like
we screwed up big time. You know, we shouldn't have
let that happen. We're fairly experienced, we're pretty good at
this thing, but completely botched it. And we decided, all right,
it's the walk of shame. We're just gonna walk out this.
We were probably fifteen hundred feet down in there, maybe

(47:20):
a little more.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
Yeah, at least we're like.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
Oh boy, the walk of shame back up and about
halfway and I I'd been hunting a lot already. We're
we're in the end of October, maybe early November. I
don't remember it was it was. I had already had
a lot of hunts that year and I got this.
I don't know if it was a migraine or what
tech was going on, but I got a crazy headache
that I did. I don't you know, hadn't had to
deal with too much. And we had took my pack

(47:43):
off and I think I'd had some talel in there
and some might beprofen or something. Took it and about
the time I had dropped one of those like jail caps,
I think Adville jail caps, and when they get wet
or any moisture, they puff up in they're no good.
So I had just picked it up and threw it
off the ridge, and I think Brian or Dirk or
somebody think, Brian yell, that's the bull, get ready to shoot. Well,

(48:05):
I love my gun, but it's a it's a big,
single fed three thirty eight edge. It doesn't have bullets
in it. The bullets werell in my pocket. I had
my scope cover on. I think I had about five
seconds to figure out where my bull was, where to
get it in the gun, and then that bowl came
through the opening. But he came through it too fast,
and we all gave our war cries just to stop him.

(48:25):
Like that's one thing that will sometimes work. It's not
a hunting sound, it's nothing, but you yelled a bull when,
you know, right prior to where you need him to
because it's gonna take a while for the sound to
get there. We've stopped animals a lot right just by
a you know, a big yelt across the across the canyon,
and that bull did not stop. And it was just like, ah,
that was him right. He had been there the whole time.

(48:46):
We just never laid eyes on him in the canyon
we were in, yeah, a pretty tight you know side canyon.
Never seen him and we're like, oh, shoot, and I
think Dirk somebody said he's coming back for some crazy reason.
His boldie sides. He didn't want to go up that
ridge and come. I don't know if he caught our
wind off of that, but he comes.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
Back down and switch backing.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Yeah, maybe he comes back down the trailley went up
and stops at that gap at four hundred yards. I
was able to make a shot and the rest was
a long night with a migraine or whatever the heck
I had going on. But that was one of those
times you know that trust trust the latest knowledge you've got,
until you've seen that bowl somewhere else or no, he's

(49:27):
out of there, you have to assume he's in that country.
You know, the same with the archery seasons like we're
in right now. You know, if a bull was seen
there somewhere during the rut with cows, you have to
assume unless he just gets completely bumped out of the
country or moved off somewhere, he's probably still there.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
Yeah. Yeah, And one thing that stands out to me
is I remember literally like thirty forty five seconds before that,
Brian is like that bull that we're looking for is
going to be in a patch just like that, and
that's where he was ended up being.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
Yeah, he's just he's holed up there, right, he's super thick. Yeah,
recoup from the rut. He's trying to feed without anything
seeing him or laying eyes on him. He wants that security.
So yeah, that's it's a great A great point is
that you know, look for those garbage holes. Just what
we talked about the guy on the Colorado hunt. Uh,
if you're these bulls don't want to be in the

(50:14):
in the wide open anymore. Once they're done rutt and
once they've kind of given up the pressures too much,
they're gonna they're gonna drop those cows. And you know,
they may still check on them at night, but they're
gonna hide the rest of the day. They're not gonna
hang out with that heard, you know, twenty four hours
a day. Yep. You got to hunt with Dirk a
little bit last year on his Utah hunt. Was a
pretty special place. Yeah, tell us a little bit about
like the bold of cow ratios there and just how

(50:36):
you guys, maybe maybe how he hunted it a little
bit different than you would a spot where you're dealing
with cows and and whatnot.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Yeah, Yeah, that was that was special place. I think
the bold of cal ratios are like eighty eighty bowls
to one cow or something something crazy in there. I
think for the first three days all we saw were
bulls and there. Yeah. I think I think Dirk stuck
to his guns pretty much of just bugling a lot still,

(51:04):
even though I mean, yeah, we we hardly had to
get them bugling though, I mean you would they were
they were, They were bugling everywhere we went, So just
a lot easier, easier on us. There a lot of
bugle and to do and but yeah, so then I
think once we were dropping down into those holes and

(51:25):
knowing where the bulls were, it was just a few
cow calls and those bulls were headed our way. Again,
just super special place. So it's it's not it's not
your typical public land, yeah, hunt.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
Yeah, And I think I don't want to make a
correction if you were right, but I believe the whole
unit is what eighty to one hundred?

Speaker 2 (51:43):
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
Yeah for the but the area that you guys were in,
it didn't seem to have a lot of cows in
at all, so it might have been eighty to one.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
No, yeah, yeah, it seemed like eighty to one. But yeah,
you're right, eighty to.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
One hundred for the whole the whole area, which ye,
which is off the charge. You know, you're you want
to be in units with their do you do one hundred?
You know? And that's that's pretty dang good hunting you
And what it really comes down to is like herd dynamics,
and the reason those bulls were so callable is that
none of them had opportunities at cows, and some of
them are really good bulls, but they just don't have

(52:14):
any cows around at that time, or the bigger bulls
and they have all the cows. This unit is pretty
special too, because a lot of the cows went to
a certain part to rut, and so if you were
in the higher mountains before those bulls decided they needed
to drop down, you were hunting pretty much bulls still
at that point.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
Yeah, I think it was. It was just a special
part of that unit where where the bulls are all
bachelored up and just figuring out, you know, figuring out
who's the boss. And we were there early too, so
that made a difference as well.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
Yeah. Yeah, well I wasn't on that hunt, but I
wanted to touch on it a little bit with some
different bowl of cow dynamics and and how a unit
can change and where, you know, we preach a lot
you know, bugle for aggressive you know aggressive bugling for
herd bulls. I think in certain units in certain areas,
you know, cal caul is all that's needed, or if
you find the right bowl cal callings all it's needed.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
So yeah, no, it was. It was pretty easy just
to let out of calcool and locate them and getting
close to them.

Speaker 1 (53:10):
Yeah. Yeah. And then aside from that, the hunt that
we're on right now, the last time I got to
n with you was on my Washington twenty two Bowl,
which here's a here's a shameless plug. It will be
on loopholed Optics's YouTube channel. It's actually airing today, which

(53:31):
is September nineteenth. But uh, you know, by the time
this this episode drops, you can go check that out.
And it was a fun hunt. But I would say
the lesson that we pulled away from that is the
unit we were in was extremely rugged. It's it's some
guys may be able to hunt that day in and
day out and do it right, but a lot of
guys aren't going to be able to go top to bottom,

(53:52):
top to bottom multiple times in this unit without burning
themselves out. So the game plan, which may seem like
some is a lazy plan or a boring way to hunt.
But we've been there before, we've hunted it before. We
did not put a bunch of effort in. Aside from glassing,

(54:12):
we did make a you know, we had a good
idea on one decent bowl. We made a little hike
in there, so we could see down in, but it
wasn't a ton of work. We were trying to stay
high and look. We spent a lot of time behind
the glass trying to just find the bowl that you
wanted to go after. You didn't want to waste energy on,
you know, just getting into areas you can, you know,
if you could hike to certain points in the unit

(54:34):
so you could glass a lot of it. There was
a you know, there were one to two mile hikes
where you could get into and glass a lot of
it without having to drop into it. You can see
a lot of these faces. You may just have to
change positions over time. And one thing about that unit
is those bulls are for the most part, there were
a few mature bowls with calstill, but the bigger bulls

(54:57):
had moved off and then up in that steep stuff
a lot of it. There was one herd of cows,
but the majority of there are just bowls up there right,
so you're most of the elk. You see your bulls
up high. The cows are going to stay down low.
They can get out the nasty stuff. We were just
picking through bulls. We were you know, the day before
it was pretty wet and miserable and snowy up there,
and we couldn't see great, but when we could, we

(55:18):
were spotting lots of elk, you know, ten to twelve
out all bowls, you know, fourteen bowls, whatever it may be.
But you're really just picking through the bowl that you
wanted to go after. And so I think what we
got through all the wet the opening day was beautiful,
we spotted. It was a little windy, but we spotted
the bowl we wanted, and then basically halfway through opening morning,
the snow and the rain and everything came back in.

(55:40):
We spent two and a half days like barely getting
looks in the little slivers of country. You know, the
wind would blow it out maybe at midday and then
it would fog back in. You wouldn't see the rest
of the day. So we kind of spent our time.
We had found a couple of bulls we kept checking on,
like we couldn't tell how good they were, and then
finally we're able to find my bowl. The third, fourth

(56:01):
night and we were looking at to the spotter, a
couple other guys had showed up just kind of like
him and haw around, and this is one of those
you know, a successful hunt is made up by a
whole bunch of decisions that you make along the way.
And we were sitting there contemplating whether that bowl would
be in that spot in the morning or we had
two hours a.

Speaker 2 (56:21):
Day light yeah left, I think, And we were sitting there,
him and Han maybe not even two hours.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
Yeah, it wasn't a whole lot of time. And we
were sitting there just trying to figure it out. And
I heard I don't even remember which one of the
guys said it, but somebody said, I know what I
would be doing if I had to tag. And that
was enough, Like I've got a very competitive spirit. And
it's like, well, this guy thinks he could have got
down there and shot it. Like, let's go. So we
ran back. We all geared up. Our good buddies, Chris

(56:50):
Cook and Hunter Cloak were with us, Me and and
it was just me and you, right us four and Pete,
Oh yeah, Pete with loopold Yep. We took off and
it was as fast as I've ever dropped twenty five
hundred feet as fast, and then we the other thing
we had to do was keep track of the bowl
for ourselves. Is we're going down right? Because we need
to get ourselves to a spot where we can shoot

(57:11):
where the face is going to be open. And we
get we probably dropped fifteen hundred feet and you had
your spotter as we're going down. We were able to
relocate him. All right, we're good here, Like, get down
another five six hundred feetle's relocate him, make sure we're
still in the right path. And then we're also doing
our thing, like if we get to this point, we
should have a shot. But when you're not in a
perfect line, there's a lot of guessing that goes on,
Like I think it'll be this far of a shot,

(57:33):
and then we're even pulling out on X right, if
we get on this ridge where we think he is on,
his face should be about this far of a shot.
And I said, I think we made it down there
in just a hair over an hour.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
Yeah, probably it was.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
It was a fast, fast hike. Yeah, I'm I like
to sweat a lot as I hunt anyways, but this
was the most I've ever sweated on a down down hill. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
Yeah, And I think that's the ass I've ever lost elevation.

Speaker 1 (58:01):
Yeah, that we we boogeyed on down. Ultimately, that bowl
got a little bit tied up behind what I was
calling the jack for I remember when in the spot
or like he's behind the two jack first, because I
just wanted to make sure everybody was on him, whether
I could shoot or not. Like, once you're all on him,
it just eases the situation, you know, because nobody's waiting,
and we got we all got on him, and finally
he took a step out to the right. I shot

(58:25):
high and and this is crazy steep country and uh
I had shot a whole bunch at home leading up
to it, very very comfortable at the range, you know,
not not a lot of work for my gun. But
it was such a boxy straight up and down canyon that, uh,
I don't know what the wind was doing.

Speaker 2 (58:44):
Yea.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
And I took another shot and hit him and he dropped.
And at that point, now you're committed, right shot again.
I shot againner two more times and was able to finally,
you know, hit him and kill him. But uh, man,
it was one of those times where it was a
little bit humbling, like no matter how good of a
shot I think I am, and I thought the wind

(59:05):
was right in our face. There was something crazy going
on across the canyon and it was one of those
times where I'm glad it worked out as quickly and
as ethically as it is. But it really questions like,
you know what, you know, what sort of conditions we
should be you know, shooting in. But no, the everything
worked out great. It was in a spot where the
pack out was real, real bad. We did Hunter who

(59:30):
you know, Hunter and Chris who grew up there hunt
every year. They were a little unsure how we were
going to get to him and finding like a trail across,
so we decided it was real, real cool outside, so
we decided to wait and uh, you know attack in
the morning. We're able to find you know, some horses
to bring it out, which was awesome. You know, just
some of the greatest guys in the in the world
just you know, drop what they're doing, you know, just

(59:50):
as just as good guys like we just want to
be involved. And I think, and this is this sounds
super pretentious and it's not meant to be, but they say,
guys that were willing to do it. You guys just
did deserve to have a bull packed out, you know,
And so I think they're like, we want in. Oh yeah,
I was I was nervous because they were all heading
to Cody Johnson concert. I think that next day they
were they knew that their wives had one extra day
they could they could haul haul on Elk out, but

(01:00:12):
they needed to be on the road first thing that
next morning. But super awesome guys. Really appreciate all their help,
and you know, we've had some great Elk hunts together.
We're we're all you know, I love your willing to
go anywhere. How can people find out a little bit
about your photography? Look at your prints, you know, your website,
your Instagram and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
Yeah, my website's just David Frame Photography and all my infos.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
There gotcha Instagram, Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
Yeah, David Frame Photo perfect on there as well.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
Well we're here Elk Camp. We're recording mid day. We're
gonna get this wrapped up and then go out and
start chasing bugles again. Perfect. All right, thanks thanks for
filming following me around, and hopefully in the future we
can talk about this episode or this hunts being another
successful one we've got to share.

Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
Yeah, thanks Pelts, thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
Take care