BareBack Jack

You pose a good question, about public land hunting, it' s a crap shoot at times isn' t it? I' ve been in the situation Wolf killer is in. As mentioned before, odds are the cows will show up first if you follow the herd and try to cow call the herd bull over to you. Wolf Killer and myself can speak from experience on this one.
I also hunt public land, but I don' t let that hinder my calling decisions. If I don' t do it someone else will. The good thing about it I' ve discovered is that most hunters cow call these days, especially early season. The way I combat this is to bugle, I ' ll tell you why. Let' s take Wolf killers situation, he knows where a herd of elk are with a good bull as we speak, he wants that bull not a cow or spike. His best chance of getting that bull is to get his attention before someone else does. Let' s say the whole herd is moving from feeding to bedding, and someone cow calls toward the herd, but Wolf killer bugles, what do you think would happen? who' s the threat? which one would recieve the bulls attention? That bull would not ignore this other bull to go after another cow, he already has a herd and doesn' t want to sacrifice any of them. In the meantime this other guy is calling in a cow or spike. So by all means work the bull, he couldn' t care less about some old cow call at that time, she poses no threat and as far as he' s concerned she' ll join up anyway. So I would act fast, get in close pressure the bull, don' t let let him reason out what' s happening, believe me he' ll put up a defense, cut him off everytime he bugles back, this really pisses him off. We killed a 322 6 point two years ago with this exact setup. Not a monster but respectable. I wish I was there Wolf killer, we' d give it our best shot. elknut1

By the way, I start off with a location call just to see what frame of mind the bull is in, he could answer back a half doz. ways. I respond accordingly.
Those cow calls I suggested earlier(excited) are not cow in heat calls or estrus calls, they' re calls cows make to get others attention and actually asking them to come on over, unlike social calls or herd type mews which don' t require attention by other elk.