All elk talk eventually, personally I don't mess with bulls that don't talk much and I find areas where they are more vocal. Currently, in OR I can move unit to unit with a general tag, and a lot of times we will drive an hour or more to find vocal elk.
Find a hot cow and I don't care how pressured an area is the bulls will bugle, they might run away doing it but they will bugle just the same. We successfully hunt some of the most pressured units in OR and get into bugling elk almost every single day.
This last season on the last day we went to a know spot where there are always elk, there are also always people. The tactic is to drive this drainage and call, once you get an answer you go after those elk. It's a well known tactic in a well-known area, this was my sons first-year archery and it was a last resort after many blown opportunities. We played the game and got a bugle, we started working the bull and then heard some hunters cow calling from above, we decided to walk down to the skid road in the bottom of the draw and hope the bull winded the people and pushed down to us since whoever was dropping in from above first thing in the morning had no idea about thermals. After a few minutes we had two more guys walk up from below us, I happened to know one of them so we chatted for a second and I headed to the truck. We drove around the corner and let out another bugle and heard a bull make a low bugle from just down the ridge from where the guys dropped in above us. I drove around to the upper road and marked a saddle where I thought we could access the bull, as we were getting out of the truck there was a guy that pulled in and jumped out with a chainsaw to start cutting firewood. We started working our way down the ridge and the guy got his saw started and started to drop a tree. After walking a few hundred yards from the road and waiting for the saw to stop we proceeded to let out some quiet bugles each being answered by a really quiet lazy bugle. We would sneak while the saw was going and stop after the saw stopped and call. We finally got to a small rim rock on an old road cut and figured the bull was under it, we figured we would sneak to the edge and find a small rag horn, to our surprise when we got to the edge a 300 class 6x6 and 3 cows stood up staring back at us the bull walked out to 50 yards and my son drew his bow. He then looked at me and asked if he could shoot because I told him I didn't want him shooting anything past 40 yards. I told him to go ahead and take the shot but to make sure to execute a good shot, the bull started to walk off and he slowly let down. He said it was his best experience of 2020 getting to draw back on a big bull.
Anyway, my point of the long-drawn-out story is that elk are elk and will tolerate people way more than we think and if there is a hot cow in the area they will bugle. Some areas hold elk all of the time, this particular spot has elk in it every single day for 80% of the year until the snow gets too deep. It gets hammered by people every day too, all summer long, camping, firewood cutting, mushrooming, huckleberry picking, and hunting. It is still a great spot to go and we always get into elk there, I cannot tell you how many bulls I've called in there. I've split a bull from his cows there one time with my pickup, my boys and I jumped out and I let them start bugling at him, he sat there screaming at us and my rig while my wife tried sneaking in for a shot, his cows finally snuck around us and they split but there was no way he was leaving them.
I would be curious to what your currently doing? Maybe it is just cows and calves and no bull but not likely. If your seeing elk be more aggressive and move in on them. Elk bugle the most before daylight and the last few minutes before dark. They mostly bugle the most during these times because that is when they are moving from one spot to another.
My buddy killed this bull in that spot a few years ago, he answered from the rig and we killed him 200 yards from the vehicle. You just have to hit them at the right time, I spent 10 days prior chasing elk around this area and my buddy killed this bull the very first evening he showed up.
LOL...just kidding Good advice.
