chukar_chaser
Lil-Rokslider
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2016
- Messages
- 143
Screaming bulls on your hunt didn’t meet expectations? They don’t just stand in meadows waiting to be shot. Most of my elk hunting is in heavy timber areas, which is most elk country. Gotta learn to get in front of them, change tactics etc if your not getting shot opportunities. All you can ask for is them talking, you gotta do the rest!I hope he had a better hunt than me! The reason I was curious is that I just returned from hunting the muzzleloader season, which did not go nearly as well as expected. I was only able to scout the last day of rifle season and then hunt the first 5 days of season before we had to get home. Fully expected that to be enough time to have an opportunity on a good bull, but it's tag soup for me. During our time in Manti, across the dozens and dozens of hunting camps we saw and people we met, we only saw three dead bulls total; one in the back of a truck on the last day of rifle and two at a camp a couple days into muzzleloader season. Nearly everyone we came across was struggling. Everyone we met were Utah locals (I'm a non-resident) and they all said the same thing; it USED to be the type of tag where you'd see big bulls running around everywhere and get to take your pick. We were willing to do the hard work of hiking as far in away from all the OHV roads as we needed to so that we could get into elk. Indeed we did get into elk and had some really fun experiences being surrounded by bulls bugling back and forth, but they stay so timbered up and the brush gets so thick down in the bottom of those drainages that I never once had a shot opportunity. The closest we got was on opening day when a nice 6 point chased his cows past us at 19 yards, but they were downhill from us and I could only see him from the neck up. We never saw him again. I think if you pay attention to the harvest success data, we're going to see a huge decrease in 2023. Overall, morale seemed pretty low but most of the hunters we met were extremely kind, welcoming, and helpful. One guy had eaten his archery elk tag there in 2018 but said he wouldn't trade the experience for the world. So it does happen. Some of us didn't get to notch our tags.