Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Afognak Is. Elk Bugling/Calling ?

Anybody ever do any elk bugling in October on Afognak Island to lure elk out for a shot ?
Was it effective ? I've got moose calling down pretty well but have never bugled elk ,
I know that cow and calf calls will bring in the brownies and I don't want to deal with them at all .

No

May not be much of a choice w/ dealing with the browns!

Pard killed a nice one there years ago. I'll give him the quiz.

If you don't want to deal with bears at all, I wouldn't go to Afognak. They got a few. Some big bodied elk too!

Don't know a thing about calling Afognak elk though.

What I meant by not wanting to deal with bears is using calls that bring them in, cow and calf calls are bear calls on all of Kodiak including the rest of AK, just wondering if elk bugling will bring the elk out of the thick stuff but not bears ......

I have no special love for brownies and consider them annoying overgrown rats that we have to deal with while hunting in Alaska, the Fish N Game worship them like they're Gods, what they should do is issue a couple brown bear tags to every hunter that draws an elk tag so the hunters can remove the bears that come to the sound of a shot, in a few years the "dinner bell" will instinctively become a "run n hide" sound for the bears, as it should be .....

I know exactly what you meant!

daughter and her family live there now, when I talk to the SIL i'll ask him

he's familiar with elk hunting being from WA state, but will see what the skinny is on calling them on Afognak.

hopin to go see them there pretty soon

Pard found Afognak don't seem to bugle much or at all. Get high enough to glass. He found lots of hunting pressure, but I'm not sure where he was.

If the weather is the shiit, look in the timber.


Hope this helps.

Ironbender,

Thanks for the input, I appreciate the help ,
We have taken several nice bulls years back out of the Seal Bay area , a 6x6 and 5x6, I never witnessed bugling elk during those two hunts that were several years apart , we did the high ground glassing, spot and stalk thing and got busted numerous times before connecting, those Afognak Elk are spooked easily and will run for miles without stopping ..... I was hoping the damned things could be drawn out of the timber and held in the open momentarily (by bugling) for a solid shot....
this time around I hold the tag and my alternative is stay in the high ground and stick a 300 gr Berger between the ribs at 1k with my 338 Wolverine long range rifle ..

I'm no stranger to these Islands having commercial fished around and hunted on them for deer through the 80's and 90's ...... during the suicide trip halibut derby days to the limited weight halibut trips up to the IFQ's, deer hunting was a normal occurrence every year, the last 15 years were dominated by bending nails and smashing thumbs, have not been able to get back to the Islands ...

as for the bears , I've found the canned air horns work very well in chasing bears off, I had one shyte himself as he tumbled backwards from the blast, beady eyeballs bulging out in confused terror .... a hilarious sight !

Good luck!