Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Confession Time... I suck at elk hunting

The trick of hunting thick timber in bedding areas is to move slow enough and smart enough that you don't "kick" them out of thier beds. In the last ten years,I have probably shot three elk in thier beds. A few years ago,I sent another buddy into the area as he wasn't very mobile.He killed a cow there on Wednesday and I went back on Friday and killed another cow.


Bulls after rut will typically find a hidey hole to recover.It will have water and grass close by and they won't move around much.Hunt it right and you won't spook that bull out of there. Huntit wrong and some hunter 10 miles awyay will get a shot at it

Don't believe that hogwash about SaddleSore only killing dumb elk. He's probably forgotten more about elk hunting than 90% of the guys on here. I can tell by his dress and how he sits a mule he is a serious hunter. He knows his elk and the areas he hunts. If there was just one guy I could go hunting w/on the fire...it would be him. powdr

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So, I'm sitting here feeling defeated and am wondering what I can do for next year. We're not lazy - we hunt (ie go for a freaking walk!) hard. We get up early, hike - we don't road hunt. We did 5+ miles last Mon w/o even cutting a track. We went up above tree line, well into deep snow - never saw tracks. We went low, nothing.

-NA

One of my partners, age 70, is an expert on glassing for elk. He can find them 3 ridges over where no elk has been for 10 years. I don't know how he does it. However, he always finds them at long distance, seldom close enough for our geriatric hunting crew to go get them. We saw close to 150 elk this season and a good number of them were the ones he spotted at howitzer range.

I once tracked a raghorn into a thicket of hemlocks about 40 yards around. I spent the next two hours gently working my way downwind and sweetly cow calling, pulling grass, generally making wonderful girl elk noise to the boy. As I made the circle around the thicket his tracks never emerged, nor did he make a sound to reveal his presence. Of course, if I had been an actual cow elk, I would have smelled him having circled downwind, and I'm sure he knew that.

So upon my closing the circle, I decided he had somehow slipped past me. I undid my pack and was shuffling around for toilet paper when he exploded about 12 yards away. He had been there the whole time.

Right then I discovered that post rut bulls do not want to be disturbed and I had almost zero chance of ever seeing one if they chose to remain concealed. That has proven itself true on every post rut rifle hunt I've ever been on in Oregon wilderness. Tough, tough game.

Don't feel bad, elk can be very difficult to locate, especially in thick habitat like we have in Oregon. At the end of each season I am the guy that knows all the places the bulls are not.

Which is nice.

Don't feel too discouraged. 85% of hunters in CO don't punch their tags. 10% of the hunters shoot 90% of the elk and they do it every year.

First I would advise, start hunting cows. Get a few under your belt to build confidence and figure out what is going on.

3rd rifle you can really get screwed by the weather. Switch to 2nd. The 1st is too short, but there are more elk and they won't be pushed back into their hidey holes, but if you get any bad weather, that 5 day hunt can turn into two.

Hunt every day, you can kill an elk on the last day of the season just as easily as the first day.

As soon as there is a rifle shot , the elk move into thick timber or onto private land and it's hard to get them out of there.

I can't help much of "Where to go" as all my elk hunting is in areas that you need horses or mules to access.

Where abouts in PA you from. I left SW PA in 64,never looked back.I have missed darn few elk season since then.

It took me 7 years of elk hunting before I shot my first elk. Now, I shoot one about every other year, I even shot one with a bow at 20 yards last year.