rather_be_huntin

As the years go on I am getting to the point that my bugle barely gets enough use to brush the dust off of it from year to year.

For me and the way I call elk I will use a bugle to locate or when I get between a bull and his cows. I only challenge a bull when I'm in real close.

In all other situations I will use different variations of cow calls. I have a hoochie mama in my pocket too but I don't use it whole lot. I mostly use the reed calls and the diaphram calls to do lost cow, normal mew, calf sounds, and estrus sounds. I mostly use the hoochie (one in each hand) along with a mouth call to sound like several cows and generate excitement. The key is understanding their language and knowing how to respond to elk that are talking to you. Understanding stage of the rut and other factors such as weather are important as well, and it's not an exact science and sometimes takes trying several different things to see what will work on a given day.

Having said that I don't rely on calls to close the deal and bring elk all the way to me (I'm not saying anyone else does). I use them as a tactic to get close. 90% of the time when elk are responding to my calls I am closing the distance on them and using the calls as a way to stalk rather than just bringing them all the way to me. Even though every situation for me isn't successful, and sometimes I say the wrong thing, I have a lot of success calling elk in the areas I hunt.

As a side note in the areas I hunt I hear a lot of hunters bugling and a few of the standard cow calls. But I rarely hear someone out there doing good estrus and general herd sounds. In other words if you get proficient using mouth calls I think you will be in the minority and be able to do what most hunters aren't doing.