New Elk Hunter- Best time to burn my two weeks

[Jesse Jaymes]

General thoughts on elk hunting- I know NOTHING. Hunted big game my whole life at 50+. Never had a hard on for elk. I hunt solo almost 90% of the time and have for decades. Taken lots of bears, mulies, and WT. Handful of legit backcountry hunts. I simply decided that:

1. The few elk hunts I ever pissed around with....seemed like a poor use of my vacation time. Big Time waterfowler, and with deer and bears....I never put elk on my Bingo card.

2. Never been on a good one that I was in elk and got "the bug". It was generally a Misery Fest with little to no elk seen. So I never got switched on.

I have central Idaho A tag. Elevation ranges 8400ft to 4400ft. And I've seen elk everywhere in between.

Spikes are legal. I would really like to take a dink bull vs tip a cow. But this is all before the struggle starts.

Question is: Race to get out the first two weeks of the season and try to beat the rush and use the Holiday as a free day?

Or play it cool and let things heat up and hit the last two weeks of the season 15-30?

Do I look at the moon? Does it matter? Does temp matter?

I was racked out in SW MT at 7000ft two weeks ago and had 4+ bulls bugling around me at 0500 hrs. I've seen elk on the side of the county roads in NE WA banging cows at 95 degrees end of August.

Any thoughts from Pros....

 

[Gerbdog]

This question comes up a bunch and some folks swear they have it all figured out, moon phase, rut times, etc. etc. etc.

Far as i can tell with real life experience... just take whatever two weeks work best for your own schedule.

Ive seen bugle rut fests opening weekend, ive seen bugle rut fests no matter the moon phase, ive seen bugle rut fests every week in september.

Then on top of that... it all changes drainage to drainage.... One drainage is full of elk having a rut fest and the drainage over is full of quiet elk

Its completely unpredictable:
cant control: Weather, other hunters, the elk

The only thing i do nowadays is try and not put a lot of stock in that opening holiday weekend. Its just packed with hikers, bikers, mushroom pickers, and hunters..... One weekend later and like 75% of the crowds are gone

 

[IdahoElk]

Where I hunt in Idaho the elevation is between 8-9k', Typically the first week or so the temps are too hot for me to get an Elk out and not worry about losing meat, By the 18th the heard bulls are gathering cows, I really like hunting hard from the 10th to the end and usually by the last week we get weather, some years there has been too much snow to get into the backcountry but for the most part it's just cold. To answer your question, I like the second half of the season, the big guys are bugling and active..