bigbulls

If I were hunting this particular spot I wouldn' t worry about the tree stand too much in the morning and during the day. The bulls could be coming to the wallows in the evening to get all stunk up for the night time romp with the cows and may or may not come to the wallows during the day. Set up a ground blind in the evening near the wallows if you can' t find the stand. Preferably about 20 yards on the up hill side of the meadow in the timber. Usually they wait until real close to dark to actually enter the meadows. Assuming you are bow hunting this land then the elk probably won' t be too regular during the rut. The bulls are constantly harrassing the cows and the cows are constantly keeping the bulls on the move. The elk are going to be on the move and so should you be able to move at a moments notice. Get above this meadow in the morning early. You will probably be able to catch them moving from the meadow to the higher elevations to keep cool. The earlier the better. The bulls will usually head up before the cows will until they have built up their harem and even then they will be hearding the cows up the mountain before light.

Wind is hard to deal with in the mountains. In the mornings there is a period of time that it is always going to swirl around whild it begins to warm up and the same goes for the evenings when is begins to cool down. It also has a tendancy to swirl around during the mid day when it kind of stabilizes and there are no strong thermals moving the air.

I would also go over there again and check out the land around this meadow. Especially above the meadow. Get there a week or more in advance of the actual hunt to do a little more scouting and make a ground blind then if you need to.