I agree 100% with the last posters get your hands on an elknut video to help you understand the talk your producing and hearing. I thought I was good at calling but elknut informed me that some of my decisions I was making made no sense to the elk for which i was talking to, he gave me pointers and I also picked up his video. While I enjoyed success prior I am much more effecient today and my success isn't getting worse. It's nice to know when, what and where. I also totally agree with the last poster about bull calls, I use them a lot and in fact their are portions of my hunting season where they are the main attraction. Here archery starts the 3rd week of august, bachelor groups are breaking or broken up and the bigger bulls are defining both territory,dominance and starting to gather/find the ladies. At this time bull sounds work very well at calling both bulls and cows. In reference to cow calls i have found the easy to use single sound cow talks are to limiting, i prefer a diaphram or reed call that i can vary my sounds to be more realistic and switch. I prefer hunting solo when calling elk in rifle season however in archery I find tandem calling works better. This is where you place a shooter 50-100yards upwind of the caller. This avoids some hang up issues you may have and also draws the attention of the elk to the caller thus making it a little easier for the shooter to draw on the elk. Where we hunt in archery is different then rifle, we concentrate more on feeding/watering area's this avoids any bedding area bumps & less pressure at this time makes such areas effective during legal hours. The areas tend to be a little more open so we employ montana decoys, and set them up beyond the shooter usually closer to the caller. B/c the areas are more open i feel when the elk present to the location seeing an elk, eases them vs looking for the phantom caller. In years of use I have found the elk come to the decoy but tend to shy somewhat as they cross into the 60 yard barrier so when I use them solo I place them behind my position but to the side if possible or out to the side about 40 yards that works best for me and lloks natural to the elk. Results vary with elk reaction to decoys but I think most agree they can be a useful tool just need to find what is the best way to use them.

In regards to your question about learning, well I never stop learning about elk or calling. I have harvested an elk in each of the last 9 seasons, while the basic principles apply something new is learned and used each year. I don't measure my success based on notched tags but it certainly does help boost the confidence.

Good luck