Here we missed the rut by days it would appear, on friday & saturday we had or heard several bulls bugling in preseason scouting, expecting a week of bugling were suprised to only hear a few bugles from elk during a week of hunting. We managed to harvest 3 bulls of which 2 were aided by cow calling only, the 3rd was right place at the right time. It appeared the Elk rut was earlier and shorter than usual, we talked with the CO' s mid week and they stated the bulls were going hard the week prior. Which may explain for the response and talking we heard on friday and saturday than nothing really to speak of the rest of the week. Our hunting party figured we had just caught the tail end of the rut and them bulls were searching for the scraps...it might explain how we managed to lure 2 bulls out with just cow calling, but the bugles produced nothing with the rifles in hand!!! The weather was perfect, cool daytime temps and frost on many nights, seemed like it should have been prime. Our trees are mostly green, but were turning after the frost and dropping by weeks end.

Another thing that pointed to an early start to breeding season was we heard several Moose calling by mid week, which is a good week to 10 days early. I called out a young bull in search of love on weds morning & one of our party members even witnessed a large bull moose breed a cow at close range. DARN to bad moose season wasn' t on[:' (]!!!!!