I don't sit and glass during archery. Most of my glassing is in the timber as I'm moving in on elk. I locate them with calling then move in. I never wait for them to come to me. I'm not very patient, and my hunting shows it. Even if I did wait for them, I'm always moving around so I'd get picked off anyway, so I aggressively go to them to speed things up. However.......you gotta know (or have a really good idea) whether you're running down a satellite bull or a herd bull. Tactics change on the go if they have to.
I hunt like I'm just another bull on the mountain looking for cows to take. Bulls on the mountain don't sit and glass.
I really like these educational threads - here's an illustration because other hunters have done these over the years and they've really helped me learn.
This is a real ridge I hunted on my first trip, to Colorado several years back. A huge herd was in a pattern of feeding basically anywhere on the South facing slope at night, then around 9 each morning right as the thermals started swirling, they would pop over the top and bed in one of the North facing bowls coming off the main basin, likely on the benches, marked "B". This is brutally steep country, and the elk used the few saddles, benches and bowls there were extensively.
So here is what our strategy should have been, and what I learned, from screwing it up. We should have climbed to location "X", which is similar to what Les is saying, to start the hunt each morning. From there, assuming reasonable downward thermals, the herd is still likely "up" the main basin which is open meadows mixed with scrubby aspen type stuff. That puts the herd in reach, but out of your scent stream. As they made their morning move toward bedding, we could try to quarter up and cut them off on one of their travel routes. Right about where I marked "C" would be reasonable camp spot in my opinion, most of the elk were higher than that with still pretty easy access up to the ridge.
What we actually did and what I learned: We were spiked a mile away, so each morning we came in from the main creek to the South and climbed toward where the elk were feeding (we could hear them). We didn't use the topography to our advantage, instead we were constantly playing catch up trying to chase them straight up the mountain. We learned quickly we couldn't outclimb the elk. It was a brutal freaking climb and we had no chance, and we were too inexperienced and had gear too heavy just to move camp to make the ridgetop more accessible predawn. After a couple days of this these elk had basically broken us and we focused elsewhere during the mornings and found a couple smaller groups we got into. On the last morning, I finally decided to venture into the timber where they were bedded and called a nice bull in, but got beat by the swirling winds.
×2 this would be extremely useful
