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???
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???
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
