Concerning rut trends, is the rut changing?

sundance1

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I am fairly new to here, but have archery hunted elk here in Colorado for 35 years. Back when i first got hooked on them Rocky Mountain canaries, which became a totally different game when Wayne Carlton tweaked turkey diaphram calls into elk calls, it didn't matter much what you sounded like or when you croaked out some warbles from mid August through September, There weren't walls full of closed or open reed call's to choose from, and vacuum cleaner hose was sold as grunt tubes. There wasn't the specific naming of the variety of sounds bulls would make, and you learned how to sound like one from imitating them.....my first encounter with a growling, lip bawling bull was to just call him Louie, after Louie Armstrong. In those first years, you nocked up just about every time you made a sound back at a bull. Bugling worked so good that cow calling was almost nonexistent. And....you thought it would last forever.

Every September nowadays, even though I can make elk sounds better than I can talk, and can reach out and shake the trees with a bugle, more times than not, I am met with the cold still silence of a September morning. Phantom bugles have me cocking my head, standing on stumps, looking at my son and saying, " what was that". And....it's getting worse every year. We all have the standard answers, some truths and some theories, as to why calling elk is getting harder. Too many people, whether hunters or hikers, is one. The elk are smarter, call shy,, is another. Then there is the weather, the moon, the commercialization and popularity of the sport overall. It is a long list we stick throwers have as to why it is getting harder and harder to get a stiff lipped bull to say "good morning" back to you.

As I filled in a few cold winter evenings watching some Youtube archery videos this past winter, I heard a consensus that the rut was late this year, from New mexico to Montana. I can only speak for the rut here in Colorado, and it has been doing this for several years, and it is getting later and later. Even the pre-rut gather stage is becoming quieter. We locals were salivating when Colorado extended archery season to September 30th.....didn't help a bit. This new norm, from my Intel gathered from trail cameras and covering many miles in September is that if you want to hear vocal bulls, your best bet is the first of August when they are rubbing, or the first couple of weeks in October. It's as if they are slowly, but surely, adapting to pressure and relying on the second cow estrus, more and more, every year. In my part of Colorado, there are more bulls killed during the rifle seasons because they are with cows and bugling their heads off. Conversely, more times than not during the last of September, I find cows without any bulls, small harems of rag bulls, and larger bulls all alone. What rutting that is done still in September, is done on the QT, and fast. What i thought was an outlier several years ago is slowly becoming the new norm.

Elk are timid critters, and are influenced greatly by mans presence and noise. With the state of Colorado, there are too many hunters, the Otc tags are a major problem. And...from June 1 till deep snow, more and more people are in the woods. I wonder what archery elk hunting will be like in 10 years. Will there be a day when we will be reminiscing about how it used to be? I also wonder if we are on the cusp of a time frame where we are going to need to become more vocal within each state, get even more involved, to start addressing the issue of excessive human pressure on elk, and wildlife as a whole? The number of people evacuating into elk habitat is only going to increase. The elk are having to adapt. Where we once had to walk 2-3 miles into an area to find them.,now it is 5 miles plus. Where we used to be chasing bugling bulls all day, now we spend time debating if it is another hunter or just a phantom bugle on the wind. Oh how I long for 1985.

Thoughts???
 

Jon Boy

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I have noticed the same thing over the years and will say I am not one to cry over a slow season or lack of skill on my end. Just flat out been weird the last several years. One thing that surprises me though is it's even weird where there isn't a ton of pressure. Phelps talks about on his podcast as well.

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jpmulk

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They do adapt to their environment. Several years ago, i read an article about the yellowstone bulls and how they kept their antlers longer due to pressure from wolves. Im sure they can adapt even more so to the calling game.

That said, i had an excellent time last year getting into bugling bulls.
 

Jaquomo

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Some speculation that selection of vocal bulls over the past 40 years is producing bulls with a predisposition to stay quiet. Another study of collared elk in ID found there were two types of bulls - runners and hiders. Runners get killed, hiders survive and pass on that trait to offspring.

Where I hunt in CO, we have definitely developed quieter bulls. Very rare to hear daylight bugles on heavily hunted public land, even though the elk are there. Bulls still respond to calls, but silently and very tentatively, sneaking in and staring at the source for long periods before taking another step. Once in awhile we may hear a moan or a squeal, but usually not unless a group of satellites are around a herd with a hot cow. Butbthe older herd bulls are learning to shut up.

49 years ago when I started bowhunting these things, they would bugle at a truck door slamming, and we used bamboo flutes and coiled gas pipe to bring them in, sometimes several at a time, bugling all the way.

So yes, elk behavior during the rut is definitely changing and humans are the cause. And it ain't "climate change".
 

5MilesBack

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49 years ago when I started bowhunting these things, they would bugle at a truck door slamming
As recently as 2015 I had a bull living below my camp that would sound off every time I came back in the middle of the day and closed the truck door. But man, I chased that bull around that year all around my camp and never could actually get a shot at him. I came back one day about 1030 and went into my wall tent and heard a thrashing sound behind my tent. I came out and peaked around the back corner, and that bull was 30 yards away thrashing a tree. It was still early in the season. I grabbed my bow and dropped in below him a little bit and tried to work my way back up to him. With tunnel vision on him, I didn't know he had cows or even see them.....I thought he was alone. They were off to the side, and they busted me, and that was that.

I don't think this is a rut issue........just more of a silent elk issue in many places. The problem is that it's much more common place to find bulls of all ages that have been educated by the masses. There's just a heck of a lot more hunters out there during September, so almost all of those bulls have already had bad experiences with them. They learn, so they get more wary. IMO that's the trend. I still find elk rutting every year based on the cow's estrus cycles all through September. There are still peaks and valleys for that, but the good old days of "easy" bulls every day through Sept are fewer and farther between because of the education they've gotten.
 

wapitibob

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Yea, it's different now than when we started 50+ years ago; lots of Elk generations to get smarter and have behavioral changes engrained into them. I do things different now, no more running after them bugling the whole time.
 

Beendare

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I think Jaq nailed it (as usual)…its natural selection.

I’ve seen this in a spot I fish that has a lot of Rattlesnakes.

Over the decades we see more and more that don’t rattle…in some cases they pop their head up dead still and look at you. its a high people traffic area…the ones that rattle get a rock to the head.

It totally makes sense that all of the hunters calling has created a natural selection situation with elk.
 

Gerbdog

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Saw the same thing this year regarding September harems and lack of bulls with them. Beginning of September all the harems had zero bulls with them, found the bulls still in a bachelor group. End of September .... same thing. The beginning of September doesnt really worry me, but at the end of September still finding harems of cows with no bulls in sight made me scratch my head. Ah well, gotta adapt and overcome.
 

ElkNut1

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As pointed out lots of reasons for the way things are. Key is to adapt to them & not worry about the way it was but instead of how it is! Educate yourselves & not the elk! Easier said than done!

Instead of focusing on making elk sounds focus on their communication & what message certain tones send to other elk! Key in on this & you will find calling elk is certainly doable in the right situations!

Understand outside of heavy rutting action that many elk will show up silent, no problem as they are still callable/killable! Adjust your thinking to present day elk & you will do just fine, problem solved!

P.S. I agree with Jaq on his Climate thoughts!

ElkNut
 
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sundance1

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Some speculation that selection of vocal bulls over the past 40 years is producing bulls with a predisposition to stay quiet. Another study of collared elk in ID found there were two types of bulls - runners and hiders. Runners get killed, hiders survive and pass on that trait to offspring.

Where I hunt in CO, we have definitely developed quieter bulls. Very rare to hear daylight bugles on heavily hunted public land, even though the elk are there. Bulls still respond to calls, but silently and very tentatively, sneaking in and staring at the source for long periods before taking another step. Once in awhile we may hear a moan or a squeal, but usually not unless a group of satellites are around a herd with a hot cow. Butbthe older herd bulls are learning to shut up.

49 years ago when I started bowhunting these things, they would bugle at a truck door slamming, and we used bamboo flutes and coiled gas pipe to bring them in, sometimes several at a time, bugling all the way.

So yes, elk behavior during the rut is definitely changing and humans are the cause. And it ain't "climate change".
Oh ya, the coiled gas line. It worked back then, but now hunters...and even the elk....would laugh a guy out of the woods. There used to be defined quality and pride in mastering elk vocalization with a diaphragm, which is the ONLY way i talk to them, but nowadays call manufacturers have made it so easy for Mr, Urban Wannahunt to sound like an elk. So Mr Wannahunt buzzes out into the woods, goes to yodeling for 30 minutes straight, has a couple of bulls answer back, and away he goes after them, no mind that they are straight down wind.
 
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sundance1

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Agree with all of you. And I think all of us who have logged many miles and years in this love, and sometimes hate, relationship with elk have learned to adapt to these new norms. There are subtle changes though that are troublesome here in Colorado. Locally last fall, with an early snow, the elk herded up some and out of a herd of about 75 head with 7 legal bulls in it, by about the third day of second rifle season, every single bull was dead. The couple of hunters i talked to said they were bugling up a storm, bulls working the cows like it was peak rut, and it was like shooting ducks for hunters to zero in on the herd....and this was the second rifle season. These particular elk's migration path make them some of the same elk that I was hunting in September. The tracks, rubs, a few early morning and evening bugles, were there. But, the first estrus, was a dead quiet one, and I'm a guy who stays late and will go out at 3 am to just sit and listen. These same bulls, 3-4 weeks later, bugled themselves to death, literally.

But, this has to be taken within the context of remembering it is Colorado. Muzzle season is a killer for archery hunters. Bear hunters, grouse hunters, fall turkey hunters, are more of them every year. The elk, their response is to zip it shut, maybe breed a few of the older cows. But when that second estrus comes around, their herd characteristics really kick in and they just as well raise a red flag for the rifle hunters.

I have several friends who are outfitters and to a man, they say their designated guide areas are being ran over / ruined by this new norm of the younger generation hunters who go into an area with five or six of them fully geared with all the latest greatest gear and hunt out a drainage until all the elk in it are either dead, or 6 miles away. It's the Youtube / Rambo / biker gearhead turned hunter generation that hunt like it is a video game.........anyway.....times are a changing and my change button is broken
 

Bbell12

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I have noticed the same thing over the years and will say I am not one to cry over a slow season or lack of skill on my end. Just flat out been weird the last several years. One thing that surprises me though is it's even weird where there isn't a ton of pressure. Phelps talks about on his podcast as well.

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What podcast and episode is this? Would love to give it a listen.
 

Deadfall

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Rut definitely changes over time. Everybody on YouTube making the same sounds in same sequence with same pitches.

Idk, maybe elk just aren't retarded.

The guys I know who understand what they saying and why they saying, just don't have any problem conversing with them.
 

Ross

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Kind of, sort of, maybe agree🤣 like many of you decade experience here and can remember many years where September was not so vocal and October was. So many variables and things are always changing. This is one reason I like october rifle seasons. I know I can and have called them in till the very end of October in deadly screaming matches for them🤙 The more tricks you have and the more days afield equals better opportunity to call them in👊
 
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Pressure shuts them up, simple as that. In the area I hunt, the weeks prior to ML are the best. Once ML starts, bulls are dead, or staying dead quiet.

Example, we camp right near the elk. Most times I'm hunting 5 minutes from the tent. One night, after running and gunning a certain drainage for a day with not one bugle or elk seen we were questioning where the elk were. As we're sitting out side our tent cooking, several bulls were going off less than 75 yds from where we were sitting almost all night. We had hunted this area, and guys walked through it as well. As dawn approached, dead silence. We knew what the elk do in that area got positioned, and killed one that morning as he was passing by.

Also, guys say it's a late rut, the elk aren't bugling. etc. Go down near one of those private ranches the first week of September when all the elk are stacking up, and see if you think the rut is late. Don't forget to bring your ear plugs!
 

Raghornkiller

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We hunt 2-3 states a year and I have noticed in Colorado it's not great until about the third week but everywhere else elk hunting is still good if not great.Last year in Montana it was 90 degrees opening week and every spot we hunted the bulls were screaming.Everyone we talked to said they hadn't seen any and they weren't bugling.Even in Colorado we are in elk every day and I have been in serious rutting action during the first week although its rare.I know it's not what it used to be but I also don't feel like it's as bad as people say.
 

Dave_

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For you guys that see groups of cows without bulls later in Sept. Do you think there are just not enough bulls to go around, avoid certian areas all together, or you think they are solo just laying low/quiet some place nearby and waiting for a cow to come into estrus?

I have observed this in a former OTC unit in CO the 3rd/4th week of sept and it blew me away. Elk were dead silent so I did alot more still hunting. Saw a half dozen small groups of cows/calf with zero bulls. Only bulls I saw/heard were on private lands elsewhere bugling their heads off. I hunt another former OTC unit and they are typically quiet but the bulls are definitely there with cows, they still just get pushed around by hunters and you have to find them.



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Gerbdog

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For you guys that see groups of cows without bulls later in Sept. Do you think there are just not enough bulls to go around, avoid certian areas all together, or you think they are solo just laying low/quiet some place nearby and waiting for a cow to come into estrus?

I have observed this in a former OTC unit in CO the 3rd/4th week of sept and it blew me away. Elk were dead silent so I did alot more still hunting. Saw a half dozen small groups of cows/calf with zero bulls. Only bulls I saw/heard were on private lands elsewhere bugling their heads off. I hunt another former OTC unit and they are typically quiet but the bulls are definitely there with cows, they still just get pushed around by hunters and you have to find them.



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cant speak for anyone's experiences but my own, but all through September i saw bulls off in small groups or solo and nowhere near the groups of cows i saw this year. I ended up tagging a cow the last weekend and eating well out of one of those groups, but the bulls i got to bugle this season only responded to location bugles and then went quiet. Wrong place wrong time? Poor calling skills? Tons of pressure? all factors im sure.
 
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