doc holiday13
WKR
But then what?
I'm not chaising elk this year, but last I left Elk to find Elk. It was hot the 2nd week of Sept. and My buddy and I hike in 3-4 miles, setup camp and start doign boots on the ground scouting. We find a bunch of old tracks. We split up and hunted a few points of interest, but no sightings and no bugles. The next morning we're up early and tried bugling locating 2 or 3 different locations over a hiking trail of about 3 miles. Still nothing so we head back to camp. On the way back we discover fresh elk tracks directly on top of our boot tracks. This was both of our first time hunting elk, but we talked ourselves out of staying to try to find these elk. Our logic was that they definitely would have picked up our scent and we likely spooked them because we didn't know they were there. We went to another location to try to find some bugles.
So back to my original question. Technically, we "found" elk at our first spot. Since there were no bulges how should we have approached/pursued what we had? They weren't talking and there wasn't any amazing glassing points. Should we have just been patient, burned some shoe leather to find some other fresh elk paths of travel?
I do 100% believe had we waited 36-48 hours they would have been talking because a storm system did move in and we had bugless not long after the storm system broke we chased a bull at another location.
I'm not chaising elk this year, but last I left Elk to find Elk. It was hot the 2nd week of Sept. and My buddy and I hike in 3-4 miles, setup camp and start doign boots on the ground scouting. We find a bunch of old tracks. We split up and hunted a few points of interest, but no sightings and no bugles. The next morning we're up early and tried bugling locating 2 or 3 different locations over a hiking trail of about 3 miles. Still nothing so we head back to camp. On the way back we discover fresh elk tracks directly on top of our boot tracks. This was both of our first time hunting elk, but we talked ourselves out of staying to try to find these elk. Our logic was that they definitely would have picked up our scent and we likely spooked them because we didn't know they were there. We went to another location to try to find some bugles.
So back to my original question. Technically, we "found" elk at our first spot. Since there were no bulges how should we have approached/pursued what we had? They weren't talking and there wasn't any amazing glassing points. Should we have just been patient, burned some shoe leather to find some other fresh elk paths of travel?
I do 100% believe had we waited 36-48 hours they would have been talking because a storm system did move in and we had bugless not long after the storm system broke we chased a bull at another location.