ELK BOW CLOSE

Whether hunting public or private land, the fundamentals of calling elk remain the same

By: Michael Waddell

We heard the bull bugle at first light and snuck into his core area. When I hit a lick on my bugle, the bull sim­ply came unglued and stormed our position like a tank, crashing through brush and small lodgepole pines like they were match­sticks. Before we could react he was in our lap and we were pinned down, myself hiding behind a camera, too afraid to even touch the tripod for fear of my shaking hands would run the footage. All I could see of my partner wedged against a stunted pine was the tip of his undrawn arrow shaking uncontrollably on the rest. Before a shot presented itself, the bull smelled a rat and disappeared as quickly as he arrived. While this experience didn’t result in a dead elk, it did hopelessly addict me to calling them.

It seems that in all walks of life, be it the animal kingdom or humans, communication is a key ingredient for all social interac­tion. However not all living things communicate to the same degree. If you ask my wife, I am sure she will tell you I lack in the communication department, in fact I am sure she believes I don’t listen to her at all, but when it comes to communicating with animals I can barely shut up. Of all the animals I love to communicate with elk rate right at the top.

By nature elk are very vocal. The uninitiated often simply think of bulls bugling, but cows, calves and bulls make all sorts of noises year around. If you encounter a larger herd of elk while you might not hear a thing from a distance, if you get close you will hear lots of subtle vocalization. Most of the time these are sounds of contentment, but depending on what’s happening the vocalization reflects it. Elk can convey contentment, danger, curiosity, or a cow in heat. Bulls for instance only bugle primar­ily in the rut, but they also communicate to establish a pecking order. After spending a considerable amount of time chasing the mighty wapiti, I’m convinced every elk in the herd knows each other by sound alone. This happens with the cows as well as the bulls and based on my evaluation somewhere in this mix is the deadly secret to calling elk archery-close.

Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery

It seems that the more vocal a herd the better the odds are for success at calling them. Some cows call subtle, while others are loud-mouth ladies actively looking for a date. By listening it gives you a better opportunity to imitate the particular tones and intensity of the herd.

By calling we are automatically intruding into the social club without an invitation. The closer we can sound to a known elk, and match that intensity the better the odds are of filling a tag. Even though we may sound like an outsider to the herd, luckily for us, love crazed bulls are not looking to be intimate with just one or two cows they are looking for all  the love of every cow in the world, so taking advantage of   their sexual frustrations and promiscuity is what we aim to do.

It doesn’t take a world champion elk caller to trick bulls within range. By simply paying attention to the herd and under­standing simple elk rhythm, tone and more important volume when calling, a hunter can depend on an elk call to be a valuable asset to dulling broadheads.

Public Versus Private Land

Since I started hunting elk 16 years ago, on private as well as public ground, I have realize that comparing these two  different types of ground are like comparing night and day and it is all about the amount of pressure each receives. Generally speaking private ground bulls are way easier to call than public ground animals, but this is not always the case. Some private land does get a lot of pressure, which can make for some pretty tough calling duels with elk that can serve you up a humble pie every time you bust out a call. While conversely some public land either through sheer remoteness or hard-to-get tags is like calling the best private land in the nation.

Hunting un-touched land and cow calling to bulls that have never heard a Hoochie Mamma would obviously be nice and it wouldn’t take long work­ing over these uneducated elk to start feeling like an elk calling pro only to be deflated the first time we went to the national forest and mixed it up with bulls so well-known by local hunters that they have knick names. However, regardless of where you hunt the basics of calling remain the same.

Start with mastering the cow call and all its various inflections. Your basic reed type calls are the easiest to learn as well as get proficient with. You will find two kinds; both are bite down reed-type of calls, one being enclosed and the other having an open reed or reeds. These calls make a very realistic sound and before your wife can run you out of the house you will master the basics.

I rely heavily on the cow call and think most of the time hunters are better off sticking with it over a bugle no matter where he is hunting. But learning how to make a basic bugle is important, especially for locating bulls at a distance before getting close and working   him with your cow call. In addition, sometimes it is the bugle that finally provokes a dominant bull to commit, especially during the early season when bulls are still sorting out their peckin’ order.

Earning Your Public Ground PhD

Lets face it, unless you have deep pockets much of the private ground in the West is pretty much off limits, so you have to learn to hunt public land. This is not a bad thing as public ground comprises millions upon millions of acres across the West and happens to have some of the biggest bulls found anywhere. While it can be tougher than private, once you learn how to hunt it you won’t be disappointed. Over the years, one of my favorite places to hunt is the Gila National Forest, in New Mexico, and even though this is a trophy area tags are fairly obtainable through application.

In the Gila, the trophy potential is off the chart, sporting some of the biggest bulls in the country, but just because the big ones live there doesn’t mean that you automatically make one call and they come running to get in the back of your truck. These mature jokers have a PhD in avoiding hunters.

Over the last six years I have hunted this area religiously and have had the op­portunity to shoot some nice bulls all by using elk calls as an aid to close the coffin.

Notice I said, “as an aid”, meaning the call was just one thing in a bag of tricks to help smoke these monarchs. My biggest bull that came out of the Gila was a 378 P&Y bull that had earned the name Professor because he always seemed to take you to school when you applied too much pressure. However, this bull was vocal and would bugle his butt off. He also seemed to be fairly easy to find, not only by his gnarly, raspy bugle that set him apart, but frequently he could be found early in the morning in a large meadow just south of a particular water hole that always attracted a large herd.

The Professor was not the only bull in the area that had large headgear, but it was The Professor that seemed to call the shots. I had caught this bull in the open several times, but calling seemed to really make him uneasy when you were in close. The Professor however would bugle hard to distant cow calls and seem to be whole heartedly interested, but had a sixth sense when you moved in for the attack.

Finally we decided to have a caller stay behind as we worked him coming off the meadow at daybreak. By doing this we could keep him interested and bugling as we stalked in closer. The caller always was no closer than 80 yards behind me. While the caller kept him occupied, I slid within 50 yards and gave him a G5 Tekan right behind the shoulder. This hunt was really a stalk, but the call and caller had a big part to do with his demise. Once we started quartering the bull up, we found a piece of an old arrow lodged just below the backstraps, so obviously someone had him in close before and gave the Prof and education, which explained why he was so wary.

The Double Team

As this old bull showed, hunting with a partner can work extremely well. It not only puts the hunter out in front of the call, but it gives the hunter a chance to move and adjust the angle based on where the bull might be ap­proaching. Likewise, the caller has the flexibility to move as well and apply a lot of different calling techniques.

The double team plan worked again on another hunt. It had been hot and the bulls were only bugling early and late. As soon as the sun would rise the elk woods would turn in to a ghost town.

Just after daybreak on the fourth day of our hunt we heard this bull bugle. He hit it only two times, both very weak and he sounded like the littlest rag horn in the land but with no other game in town we went after him. Getting as close as pos­sible to where we thought the bugle came from I eased up and sat down by a pine stump while my buddy moved back and to my right about 40 yards. Neither of us were very optimistic about our chances. My buddy made one or maybe two very soft cow calls on a two reed diaphragm then he started raking a tree and rolled a few rocks. We sat there for possibly 10 minutes in silence, then out of nowhere appeared a wide 340 inch 6 x 6 coming directly to us, at 25 yards the bull let out a soft chuckle, looked over his surround­ing and kept walking in the direction of where the last rock had been rolled, which led him 16 steps from my pine stump. By now I was at full draw waiting for a broadside shot. When the arrow left my bow, I knew we had killed a call shy monster by keeping it low key and stay­ing patient. Needless to say, I was never convinced by the two times he had bugled earlier that he was a shooter. This was a lesson in itself. Never judge a bugle until you can see what is making the sound.

The most exciting way to bag a bull elk is to get him in close, and the best way to do that is with a call. Confidence in your call is critical, because if you’re insecure about using your call there is a good chance you will spook elk. Have confi­dence in your calling ability and become just another elk in the herd where you are hunting. Find a call that works for you and not what works for some else. Think like an elk and do as elk do. Real­ism, rhythm, and volume control can make the difference between bringin’.

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StickemArchery.com, the A to Z of Archery, is the one – stop shop for the today’s Bowhunter. Whether you are Bow Hunting that Monster Whitetail Buck or chasing that Long Beard, we have Bow Hunting Articles to help you “Get Closer”. You will find experts in Food Plots, Bow Hunting Tips, Bow Tuning, Bowhunting & Archery Videos, Bow Hunting Product Reviews, & a ton of FREE Bowhunting & Archery Resources. You will also find thousands of Archery Supplies, Bowhunting Supplies, Bowhunting Equipment in our on-line store at discount prices!

Hunting Funnels! How Do You Find Them? 

By:
Shane McDermott, President

Mapping The Outdoors, Inc. & Stick’em Archery Contributor/www.mappingtheoutdoors.com

Bowhunting a funnel can be one of the most exciting stand set-ups imaginable. They are easy to locate on a map, you can set up the bowhunting stands so that playing the wind is simple, and you will normally see plenty of deer movement through a funnel. So what isn’t to like? I want to talk about funnels, my experiences with them, and how I have learned to make the most of a good funnel.

A few weeks ago I met a guy who had some property they had been leasing to outfitters for the past few years. However, with the economy in the state that is it they were having trouble getting outfitters to lease all of their ground. I was in the market for some new hunting ground, so I had been looking at multiple pieces of ground in the area. They had a few farms for lease, but the one that really caught my attention was a 240 acre farm in Adams County, Illinois. This property is only 20 minutes from my house, so the size and the location was certainly what I was looking for.

The first thing I always do when looking at a new piece of property is to pull out the aerial photo’s, which will give me an idea of how much timber and crops there are, how the ground lays, and what the neighboring property looks like. This particular piece of ground is pretty close to a 50/50 split of timber and crops, and also has a one or two acre pond (which will work out great in the early season to spend the mid-day hours fishing for catfish). There is also a stream running right through the big timber on the farm, which is something that will be a benefit if there is water running through it. However, something else has really caught my eye! Right in the middle of this 240 acre tract of land I see a thin piece of timber connecting two big sections of timber. It’s a funnel, and it looks like a good one. Using the scale bar on the map I measure it to be about 40 yards wide and about 500 yards long. Both sides of the funnel are huge crop fields, which will work out nicely for getting into and out of the stand once the crops are out.

Last week I was finally able to meet the landowner and walk the property. I had about a dozen locations on the property that I wanted to focus on, and one of them was this funnel. I was pretty pumped when we walked up to the funnel, as I could already see there were some big hardwoods that I could hang stands in. As we walked down into the funnel I could tell there was some great deer movement through the funnel. There were a few smaller trails and one right down the middle that was obviously used more than the others. It turned out to be a prime setup for a funnel, and I am going back this weekend to hang the stands. So, I would love to be able to tell you how successful this location was, but you will have to wait to hear that story, because I will be hunting it for the first time in October.

So what exactly is a funnel? My best explanation is: a narrow strip of trees that connect bigger tracts of timber. This will allow deer to travel from one piece of timber to another without exposing themselves to the dangers of the field or open ground. Most funnels are relatively narrow, but can vary in length. The funnel I refer to above is about 150 yards in length, but have seen many that are shorter in length and have seen some that run well over 1,000 yards. I personally prefer them to be longer for two reasons. 1.) The longer they are the more options you have for trees to hang stands in. The shorter they are the more likely the deer are to cut through the corners of the fields instead of using the funnel. 2.) They also need to be relatively wide, something like a fence line isn’t going to be a very effective funnel to hunt.

Another feature that makes the funnel such a successful feature to hunt is the ability to approach the stand from both sides. My normal setup on a funnel is to hang a stand on both sides of the funnel, which some of my friends call nuts because I will have two stands within 40 yards of each other. The reason that I do this is so I can hunt the wind as much as possible. If I have a wind out of the north I can enter my stand using the south field and hunt the stand on the south side of the funnel. This will keep me downwind of the funnel, and hopefully completely undetected. Same goes for a wind out of the south, you enter from the north and hunt the stand on the north side of the funnel. Using a setup like this there are only a few wind directions that would not be favorable for this location.

How do you find these funnels? Get out the aerial photos! You don’t really even need a topographic map for this one, but it wouldn’t hurt to look at both. Funnels are one of the easiest features to locate on a map. All you have to do is locate the bigger tracts of woods and find any smaller wooded strips that connect one to another. Take a look at the map below and you will see.

Hunting funnels can be a blast as the deer movement should be confined to the area right in front of you. The stands I will place on the funnel I located on this new farm I will be hunting will be about 5-10 yards inside of the funnel, putting me about 10-15 yards from the main trail. So, not only do I have a close in shot to the trail, but I am also close to the field edge in case I have a deer trying to skirt behind me. Using the wind to your advantage as well as a multiple stand setup can really improve the odds of not getting busted by that big buck. We all know, the longer you can go without being detected, the more you can hunt that location and increase your chances of that encounter.

Funnel locations such as this have been a favorite of mine for years, especially during the rut. The main reason is because the funnels are a natural travel corridor, so the bucks will usually run this travel route looking for hot does. Another reason I like to hunt a funnel is if I am going to sit and hunt all day I will sometimes change stands after the mid-day hunting period ends. I prefer to stay in one stand, especially during the rut, from sunup until 1:30 or 2:00 in the afternoon. At that time I may decide to switch to another stand for the afternoon hunt, maybe trying to catch a buck following the does into a food source. Funnels will allow me to sneak out through the field instead of having to stomp through the woods and risking jumping deer.

Well now you know what a funnel is, and how you find them. Now its time to get out that aerial photo of your hunting ground and see if you can find one. It’s up to you to get a stand setup in one and put this information to good use. Good luck, I hope to hear some good stories on some successful hunts using these techniques.

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StickemArchery.com, the A to Z of Archery, is the one – stop shop for the today’s Bowhunter. Whether you are Bow Hunting that Monster Whitetail Buck or chasing that Long Beard, we have Bow Hunting Articles to help you “Get Closer”. You will find experts in Food Plots, Bow Hunting Tips, Bow Tuning, Bowhunting & Archery Videos, Bow Hunting Product Reviews, & a ton of FREE Bowhunting & Archery Resources. You will also find thousands of Archery Supplies, Bowhunting Supplies, Bowhunting Equipment in our on-line store at discount prices!

Bowhunting the Whitetail Rut

Brian Murphy
Quality Deer Management Association  QDMA.com

With the whitetail rut rapidly approaching in many areas, this column will be specific to this unique and exciting time. I suspect many of you use urine-based scents such as “doe in heat” in attempts to lure that buck-of-a-lifetime into bow range. Like me, you probably have had both good and not-so-good success with these products. You might even be able to recall the morning that big buck came “bird dogging” into your setup like he was “on a string.” But I’ll bet you didn’t know the real dynamics behind that response, an element of whitetail behavior that happened to be the key focus of my Master’s research at the University of Georgia (UGA).

For the past two decades, studies conducted at UGA have attempted to unravel the mystery of how an estrous doe advertises her readiness to bucks in the area. Given that estrus or the “heat” period occurs only once per month and lasts only 24 to 36 hours, the mechanism must be efficient. Hunters have long believed that urine was the source of the magical pheromone or scent that conveys this message. This is a reasonable assumption given that bucks perform the flehmen or lip curl behavior almost exclusively in response to doe urine during the breeding season. When bucks encounter doe urine, they take it into their mouth, lay their head back, and “pump” the urine into a special, diamond-shaped organ in the roof of their mouth called the vomeronasal organ (VNO). Surely, a specialized behavior such as this must be how bucks determine estrus status.

During my research project I tested the response of rutting bucks to four substances: 1) estrous urine, 2) mid-cycle urine, 3) estrous vaginal secretions and 4) mid-cycle vaginal secretions. The estrous urine and estrous vaginal secretions were collected immediately upon determining a doe was in heat using a vasectomized “teaser” buck. The mid-cycle compounds were collected 14 days later when estrous pheromones are believed to be nonexistent. One buck and two does were used in each trial. The ovaries were removed from all test does to eliminate the possibility of them producing reproductive odors. One of the four compounds was attached to the rump of one doe, and water (the control) was attached to the other doe. The three deer were then released into an outside pen, and the responses of the buck to each doe were monitored.

My results supported those of a prior student who found no significant differences in buck responses to either of the urine treatments. In other words, the magical pheromone didn’t seem to be present in urine or was present in such small quantities that it did not elicit a response from the bucks used in my study. My results regarding the vaginal secretions also supported previous research. While there was no significant response to the mid-cycle vaginal secretions, there was a significant response to the estrous vaginal secretions. Bingo! It appeared we were onto something.

Another UGA study confirmed that bucks could easily identify an estrous doe even when their VNO was rendered temporarily inoperable by numbing with Novocain. In yet another study, a “Y”-maze, similar to those used in rodent experiments, was used to determine if a buck could determine estrus status through airborne scent alone. In this study, one estrous doe was placed in one of the short arms of the “Y” while a non-estrous doe was placed in the other. Then, a buck was released into the long arm of the “Y.” The “Y”-maze was fully enclosed, so the buck couldn’t see either doe. As he approached the juncture of the “Y,” the buck was forced to choose which direction to take – toward the estrous doe or the non-estrous doe. The majority of bucks consistently selected the estrous doe.

Collectively, these studies suggest that a doe’s reproductive tract is likely the primary source of the magical pheromone that conveys her reproductive status. They also suggest that this scent is emitted into the environment and picked up by bucks through their noses.  But what about the role of the flehmen behavior and the VNO?  Researchers have discovered that the VNO is connected to a primitive portion of the brain that does not control immediate behavior as in, “Hey there’s a doe in heat in the area,” but instead affects production of reproductive hormones. In contrast, a buck’s nose is connected to the neocortex the behavioral center of the brain. Given this, researchers are now fairly confident that the VNO and flehmen behavior keep bucks sexually “primed” during the breeding season. In essence, it’s their daily dose of Viagra!     Interestingly, researchers also have observed that once a buck finds an estrous doe, they will invariably lick the tarsal gland and the “business-end” of the doe (if given the chance!). This licking is then followed by a flehmen response.  Perhaps this serves to confirm what they their nose told them, or perhaps it helps further prepare them for the final act. Clearly, we still have much to learn.

What does all this mean to the bowhunter? The take-home message is that when urine-based scents are used appropriately they can work, but maybe not for the reason you originally thought. Urine is an important medium of communication among whitetails, and bucks in the rut are constantly on the prowl for anything that might be female. Doe urine may tell a buck that a doe is in the area, but it probably isn’t the primary mechanism bucks use to locate a doe in heat.

You might be wondering what type of scent I use? In most cases I don’t use any, preferring the scent-free approach. However, on occasion, and especially while bowhunting, I’ll use a doe-in-heat or dominant-buck urine product to stop deer in specific spots. Good hunting!  For more Bowhunting Resources and Archery Supplies visit StickemArchery.com

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StickemArchery.com, the A to Z of Archery, is the one – stop shop for the today’s Bowhunter. Whether you are Bow Hunting that Monster Whitetail Buck or chasing that Long Beard, we have Bow Hunting Articles to help you “Get Closer”. You will find experts in Food Plots, Bow Hunting Tips, Bow Tuning, Bowhunting & Archery Videos, Bow Hunting Product Reviews, & a ton of FREE Bowhunting & Archery Resources. You will also find thousands of Archery Supplies, Bowhunting Supplies, Bowhunting Equipment in our on-line store at discount prices!

Tracking an Arrowed Deer