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Down time in town? Maybe that's the differemce. And once again, sorry, I didn't realize that yet another thread was about you and your hunting prowess, superhuman that you are. As far as my advice to the OP, assuming he's a mere mortal, I would echo Dan and say that over a long season of backpack hunting in the Rockies plan on at least an hour or two of down time.

Speaking about fitness. I played collegiate ice hockey in total with junior ice time 8 years continuous. I could out hike or out climb anyone on earth for those years. Elevation gain did not mean much, but I could watch others with me fold and give up all the time.

After college hockey ended, I needed to retain fitness. I took up running. Several Marathons a year. Frequently 30-50 mile weeks. My climbing ability was gone, vanished, I was a pathetic normal human. My superpowers to fly up mountain sides was gone. My thighs were burning and I was unable to get to those same places now without being exhausted and burned out.

What happened? I had to look at the hours and fitness goals that were different between hockey and running. I started playing inline on a team in Seattle. For 4 months I played several days a week. Wow, my climbing ability returned like magic!

There is a huge, no..... Gigantic difference in the training of muscles between running and skating. My coach in college made us ride the exercise bike for countless hours. It was brutal and monotonous and made me want to quit every day. He tracked our miles and time on the electronics. If your times/miles slipped you did not play, no ice time!

So riding was the key. I went to a sports medicine guy and had this chat when I separated my right elbow. He chuckled and said it's no surprise. The skating and biking was a quadriceps workout just like climbing. Running was all leg biceps.... Completely different muscles.


Long description here, but bag the running get a mountain bike for fitness if you want the power and endurance to climb. It's all about the quadriceps guys! My best days are behind me for elevation gains without breaking a sweat. But I still have at least a decade and a half left to spend packing into beautiful areas to hunt.

Tabata steep hills at elevation , that will get the up muscles going and the lungs burning. Seriously, I'm not an expert hunter, a guide or anything, but sometimes I think you are better served taking some down time and going after it at another time or another day. Case in point, last year, I hiked in and sat on a ridge, and spied 25 plus elk across a drainage and near a series of finger ridges. Weather was unsettled and wind was 40 MPH from every direction. I watched them for a while, and decided to wait until the next day to go after them when wind was going to be more calm. I thought if I went that day I was going to be winded no matter the direction I came and I was just going to blow them into another drainage and effectively put them out of any realistic range. It didn't work out, because my hunting buddy went in and blew them all out over the ridge (he knew I was in elk on that ridge the weekend before). They were the only group of public land elk in the area (there was a small group on a private claim on the other side. I prefer to use whatever tactic I think has the greatest chance of success. Sometimes, I feel it might be to take a little down time. I'll admit, I could go after every elk I see, or every time I know they are in an area. Just in my experience, going in the timber after a group, at least for me is often a very low percentage play and results in elk that go totally nocturnal. Therefore, if I have a pretty good bead on them, sometimes I prefer to wait for hopefully un pressured animals to come out and take a little down time waiting.

Yeah, some people need down time.

Case in point:

Last fall I had a late-20's (age) client who was hunting Dall sheep and he looked to be in good physical condition. So, we did some moderate walking/climbing the first five days of a ten-day hunt and then the client began to dramatically wane in physical ability. We took a break away from hunting on the sixth day. But, even the last four days of the hunt were problematic, because it took everything I had to psychologically coax the guy into getting back to camp each night after moderately hiking each of those days.

On the very next hunt, I had an early-30's (age) client who was also after Dall sheep and although he looked to be in top-notch physical condition, he had a hard time convincing himself that he could actually out walk me if he would just apply himself. During the first six days of the ten-day hunt we did some moderate walking/climbing and then he threw in the towel (completely) and thereby he decided to go home.

Needless to say that I was very disappointed in those two hunts.

There's a lot to be said about psychological conditioning and that's probably the more important aspect, rather than physical conditioning.

Yes, down time in camp while on a hunt is sometimes necessary for some people, if they haven't done the requisite psychological/physical conditioning prior to a hunt or hunting season.

As a professional hunting guide who's in the field no less than 250 days each year, I can't afford down time in camp. Clients spend to much money for that sort of thing. Therefore, I have to go into a season with the attitude and ability to continue non-stop without a break.

But, not all clients are able to do the same thing. That's the sad part.

Yes, unfortunately, some people do need down time during a hunt.

There are any number of reasons to take a little down time. One of the best is the one Dan Adair mentioned. Anyone who's tried to stalk within range of bedded elk with a bow in their hand would know that it's not your best foot forward.

But please Mav, regale us with more tales of your exploits.

Whatever the mind can conceive, the body can endure.......well, maybe, then again maybe not.... You sound like you are ready for the worm pit Mav.

I believe that mental preparation is critical to any endeavor. I also believe that it's crucial when hunting for animals and then killing them.

OK Mav, how do you recommend a new elk hunter should go about his mental preparation? For that matter, since this thread was started by a novice, is it your recommendation that a novice, hunting out of a backpack in the rockies take zero downtime, and consider the trip a failure if he does? Do you recommend the novice measure himself against a professional guide who hunts 250 days a year?

Why would a guy consider a hunt a failure if he decides to do something, or anything? If a decision is made, how does that equate to failure? There's consequence for every decision that's made. There's no right or wrong decision(s) in life. Fact of the matter is that all decisions are good, because all decisions equate to consequence. Consequence is a good thing, actually. Therefore, how could a decision result to failure? I guess it would depend on one's definition of the term or phrase, "failure".

Mav, you sure you're not a politician? A whole paragraph, with no answers to the questions posed, I think you missed your calling.

How do you recommend a newbie go about mental conditioning?

PS, above, you were the one who expressed disappointment about a hunt where a guy needed to take a break. That's how I'd define failure, a hunt where I was disappointed in my performance.

I don't know about you guys, but once I get where I'm going, I'm sure as hell not hiking around a mach 5, blowing out who knows what. My downtime is tucked on the edge of a bluff or in some bushes with my binos glued to my face, not moving, not skylining myself, with the wind blowing in my face. I've bt/dt with trying to cover an entire mountain in a day hoping to get lucky. You're much better off getting to a vantage point before first light, with the wind in your favor, with binos/spotter overlooking the habitat you think the animals will be in. Camp in an area where the wind can't shift and night and blow out the nocturnal animals.

Precisely. Eyes can do a lot more than legs, especially out West. That's my preferred method of hunting most North American big game -- by glassing and glassing and glassing. Dall sheep tend to be a little different (sort of) since a guy has to go high and then walk the ridgelines while doing a lot of glassing. But for most western big game and most of the other Alaskan big game, glassing is the key.

In an article I wrote years ago, while I was the wildlife manager for Weyerhaeuser I wrote: 75% of the game use 25% of the habitat.

Of course this is not an absolute mathematical fact. Rather more an observation of how much area is Heavily used and connected with other areas that are used. While in between there is vacant, Barron, game free zones. Sure wanderers will be there and there are always exceptions to the typical movements.

Spooked game will run and scatter, but eventually they regroup and get back into their life cycle and normal behavior patterns. I've hiked and packed into the 360,000 acre tree farm for several decades of work. I've done game management studies with dozens of game cameras running 365 days a year, flown over with a helicopter game management study teams. Recruited dozens of sportsman to help place tetracycline baits used in tissue marking studies for bears and cougars.

During all this time areas of habitat stood out. I had aerial photos of the entire landscape, and topographical maps. On these we marked game movements from radio collared animals, camera data, and other studies. This collection of data points provided a brilliant study of habitats and travel routes. It also more importantly showed vast areas of uninhibited land. Visited only on the rarest of occasions.

Once you locate those areas that make up the 25% stay out of it. Look from a distance, the fringe of these habitats are the places to set up.

The only time to enter is to stalk or recover game.

You pretty much nailed it. Over half my time in the field every year is during bow season, with a recurve in my hand. Even hunting elk when they're at their stupidest, the wind is still what F's up most hunts.

Also, I usually have camp with a view. One of my favorite spots to backpack into has the remnants of an old burned down lookout tower right where I pitch my tent. Also, up high there, the wind is consistant, right into junk country that nothing lives in. I love that spot for late bow season hunting Mulies. I've spent hours glassing right out the tent. If I watch a good'un bed down, and watch him stay put, and the wind is right, and staying right, I'll put that stalk on everytime. In all the years I've hunted that country, I've never seen a dayhunter in there at sunrise or sunset.

I learned my lesson the hard way. When I was in my late teens and early 20's, I F'd up plenty of opportunities being a "go getter." One of my old hunting buddies was a fat dude in his 40's. He's glass all day and hunt very little. He killed a lot more game than I did and he SAW a [bleep] more game than me every time out. Now I use the "Glass 2/3rds, Hunt 1/3rd" rule.

In regard to original post, scout intended hunting areas in the summer to know the deer that live there. If I know which animals live where I know where to concentrate my glossing. Get to the area, take a seat and pick it apart. Repeat come elk season except in elk habitat.

Glassing is a great tool, but it's utility depends on the country and what the animals are doing. I'd say it's one tool in the toolbox. I have a few favorite spots for elk (in CO) that are mostly heavy timber where glassing doesn't work very well.

If you're after bulls during the rut, sometimes listening is more effective than glassing. This is one of my favorite photos. This was an early hunt with my hunting partner cupping his hand to listen. Every year there are multiple bulls in this basin, but they rarely venture out of the timber during the day. Ideally you locate them by listening and go in after them. This particular year, there were 4 bulls in there:



And if you're hunting during the general rifle seasons after the rut in CO, lots of times the bulls are laid up in the timber recovering, and on public land anyway, they tend to shy away from open areas where they can be seen during shooting hours.

Which is just to say that if you don't see animals in the open, it doesn't mean they're not there.

Cool photo there smoke.

Smokepole,
I don't disagree with you one bit. There are areas where it is incredibly tough to make glassing your primary tool. Most of those places are better for hunting Elk with a bow, something I haven't done a lot of the last couple of years. Kind of have an addiction to Mulies in the high basins.

My preference is to hunt areas that I can glass from. With all of the dead trees from beetle kill lately, black forests have opened up a bit in my neck of the woods.

Like what Dan mentioned, I used to be very stupid and think that I needed to be moving all of the time, constantly looking over new places, hoping that animals would pop up.

As soon as I figured out how how to move slow, glass effectively, and pick the right spots my success rates climbed dramatically.

First thing would be to learn how to hunt. Some places lend themselves to one style of hunting, some to another. Work out how to hunt the location first and the choice of which sort of backpack hunting to do will fall into place.

I'm more inclined to "through hike" with an eye open for game than I am to sit and glass. I can sit about 20 minutes, then I need to be somewhere else.

Sometimes the best application of "backpack hunting" is to allow you to comfortably stay on-spot for last light one night and first light the next morning rather than having to either travel in the dark or not be set up at "witching hour". It doesn't necessarily have to be very far from the road.

Tom

SR, I like to glass too, even in thick stuff my preference for a spot to stop for lunch is a good overlook and the glass comes out before the food. Just pointing out to the new guys that lots of good elk country isn't the best for spotting animals from a distance.