Thanks elknut & bobby for the advise and well wishes...same to the both of you best of luck this season!!!

Yes, I will be bow hunting and I never thought of that being in a tree bobby...good advice! I have always called elk and moose from the ground, funny I never clued in to that fact. The 1 stand is really a sit and wait stand on transition routes, the other over looks a long skinny Pea field that the elk should be all over in the next month or so, my thought was if an elk entered the field and I was interested in trying for him, I get down and try to call him from the ground. I do have several other spots in mind that are ground locations, so maybe I will reserve the calling to them. I am going with 3 others, so tandem calling is great idea. That is how we call moose with the bows, which has been extremely successful. Elk I usually bugger off for the day by myself and call, still hunt, etc but being early and possibly hot it may be better suited to do the calculated team effort as you suggested at peak times!

The terrain is near impossible to spot and stalk, it really favors the elk. Lots of popular timber and willows mixed in with valley terrain, their is a creek running the whole distance of the valley and the food is really only located to the west. To the East their is some decent pasture land, but it has been so dry this year the farmers cattle have hit it hard, slim pickens for any game. As such the west is a pretty good bet for where the elk will be feeding and makes concetration of effort a little easier to boot.

What about trying calf calls? I was thinking while I would love to get a good bull, chances are this looks like my elk season(one week with the bow) and if the weeks is getting short a nice dry cow may be pretty hard to say no too! After all I love the meat[8D] and the area is rich with cow pop.(only allow cow harvest in archery season in this zone). I have never targeted cow elk before, any suggestions???

Thanks