Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting How to simulate that opening day shot on bull -A Tutorial

This is a how to. How to simulate that opening day of elk season. Completing this program will get you prepared as one can humanly be.

Part I. Start at sea level with two day growth, B.O., and a can-do attitude.
Part II. Starts at 10,000 ft 24 hrs later.
This is part II.
1. This section begins around sundown give or take a few hours- beer is good, micro brews exceptional. Topped off with your choice of bourbon, scotch or top shelf tequila.
2. Drink enough to stumble into the creek while peeing, both boots must be soaked to proceed to next step.
3. Before going to sleep put boots by fire to dry off, close enough to melt by morning.
4. One must stay up on at least to midnight, bonus point for 2:00 A.M.
5. Passing out in front of fire is optional.
6. Set alarm for 4:30 A.M.
7. Rise at 5:00 A.M. You're rising late because you screwed up setting the alarm last night-go figure.
8. Put logs in stove. Dress quickly. Curse the cold.
9. Consume minimum two strong cups of coffee. Followed by chew and ibuprofen. No time for breakfast your late remember.
10. Begin jogging uphill until sweating and gasping for O2. Stop :30, repeat until drench and approaching passing out.
11. Stop, kneel, pull rifle off shoulder, take safety off, aim at 200 yd target, pull tigger...click...nothing. 12. Now load rifle repeat pulling trigger.
13. Take out bag of blood from back pack, smear on hands, pants, and face.
14. Load backpack with rocks.
15. Hump it back to camp. You only made it 100 yd from camp during step two, so this step must be repeated 42 times in under four minutes to get the full Monty.

There are other steps I may of missed, so please, share with your fellow elk hunters the benefit of your wisdom gained form experience.

exercise every other day with 70 pounds in a pack at 200 feet ASL. Run bleachers with pack on, and walk/jog with pack on as best you can. Alternate weights on off days.

Do this starting 6 months or more before you go.

Start taking aspirin a few weeks out to help, and up the dose as you get there. Ahead of season. Hit it hard the few days before it opens, and get your legs under you.

Eat well, drink a LOT of WATER. Turn in early the night before. No alcohol in camp. Get up at 230-300 to get ready and hump it in a few miles with pack and rifles. Find elk at daylight. Within 50 yards or less but no shot due to thickness of timber/vs visibilyt of lack of headgear for a cow....

Trail herd all day long to only bump them around 4pm. No shot. THen back to camp by 10 pm and at it again the next day.

Really nice couple hour long nap mid day while trailing.

There's two decent options...

My choice:

Have all my stuff together 3 weeks before season.

Show up in hunt area day before, set up, enjoy company.

Up at 4:00am, take leisurely 1-2 mile walk into hunt area that I know well.

Cruise around all day, if find what I like, shoot, bust azz for next 2 days.

Otherwise, repeat as necessary until season ends.

Most importantly, enjoy time with hunting partners that only see a few times/year!

Hopefully, get lots of snow and very cold temps, perfect

Doing it the hard way is one way...

One item you missed- while walking to your area in the morning, walk off the trail a bit to answer the call of nature. While your pants are down around your ankles, your son walks up the trail 100 yards and shoots an elk. Try to see how quickly you can get your long johns, wool pants, wool shirt, belt, backpack, and rifle back on so you can hurry up and catch the herd of 40 elk running away and get a shot off.

(This actually happened to me)

Bob

For the training regimen I always tell folks who live down near sea level to do 90 minutes of intense cardio at least six times a week for three months ...

... And oh by the way, you should do that cardio while breathing through a plastic straw to mimic the whole altitude thing ....

... or better still, do the cardio with your pack on while breathing through one of those skinny plastic sticks you are supposed to stir your coffee with.

If they survive until Elk season they just might do okay when they hit a steep uphill trail at 10,000 ft at four in the morning opening day only to spook the elk into running downhill into the dark timber below, just as they have done for thousands of years.

Us locals? We sleep till around 8:00 am and then park at the gate of a flat, level, closed N.F. logging road that meanders through that same dark timber. We walk a strenuous 200 yards to a natural funnel that the elk have used since the days their ivories were actually tusks and they were running from saber tooth tigers and such. On a good day the wind will setup such that we'll be able to position oursleves so that we can smell the elk before we see them and so that the elk will give us nice broadside shots before they run 198 yards back towards the gate where we parked our truck and fall under a tree with a perfect branch upon which we can hoist them up and commense with the field dressing -- all while we listen to some classical music broadcast by Wyoming NPR playing on the radio in our truck parked next to that same tree. Yes, Wyoming NPR is the only signal available on that mountain in northern Colorado but nothing beats jamming out to Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, performed by the Vienna Philharmonic with Wilhelm Furtwangler conducting -- especially when you are elbow deep in bloody elk guts and looking forward to tenderloin for lunch, perhaps with a nice cabernet.


Inspired by true events

A popular way to hunt elk seems to be to drink yourself stupid during the evenings, puke your guts out until 2AM, then get up late and get into the woods around noon.

Then wonder why, when you can barely get into the woods under your own power, you don't have any 'luck' finding elk.

I had the misfortune to hunt with some folks like that once, left for home in disgust after two days. We've seen people like that many times over the years. Never understood it at all.

They don't go for the elk... I don't get it either.