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Elk hunting wisdom

Old 09-17-2014, 07:59 AM
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Default Elk hunting wisdom

For a hunting forum, there seems to be relatively little sharing of hunting knowledge and hunting wisdom. There seems to be relatively a lot of discussion of gear, equipment, GMUs. These are important, I admit. I would just like to see more shared knowledge about the actual hunting. I'll try to offer something. I hope others ring in on this topic by sharing their wisdom.

Elk are generally herd animals and they congregate in relatively large numbers. Oh, maybe in herds of 25 to 35 or even bigger. This leads to important insights. As a consequence, elk can't locate in a place where there is only enough food to feed 2 or 3 or even 10 elk. They need to locate where enough food is available to feed 25 or more elk every day. That's a lot of food. Thus, don't hunt in areas where there isn't enough food for 25 or more elk.

Additionally, as a consequence of the herding property of elk, there is a whole lot of land where the elk are not. Let me say that another way. If a 20 square mile area is big enough to provide food for elk over a summer-fall period, at any given time the herd of 25-35 elk are only going to be in a small part of that 20 square mile area. It may be the case that a herd of elk includes 50 elk and may be located somewhere in a 100 square mile area. Once you find them, you find a lot of them, but perhaps more importantly for the hunter who doesn't initially know where the elk are . . . there is a whole lot of land where the elk are not. Finding the elk in that large expanse of land is the problem. They aren't equally distributed. And every square mile of that area is not equal with the other square miles. You have to figure out how to identify the best spots as a strategy for reducing your search area to a size that is manageable. If you know where to find the elk in advance because you know your hunt area very well, you are fortunate and can expect much increased probabilities of success relative to another who doesn't know where the elk are likely to be before the season starts.

There are exceptions. I understand post-rut, large bulls may violate this assumption. It is possible that, post-rut, large bulls are loners and can live in areas with small amounts of food available, since they only need to have enough food to feed themselves, not to feed a herd of 25 or more elk. Maybe the wisdom can be flipped around in this case. Being loners, the bull elk seek places where herds of elk CANNOT live, hence look for big bull elk post-rut in areas that offer ONLY small pockets of browse.


I don't know how valuable that information is, but that seems a step in the direction of revealing general "elk hunting wisdom." Maybe others can extract and share other consequences from the axiom "elk are generally herd animals."

I invite others to provide their contributions.
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Old 09-17-2014, 10:25 AM
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Not sure I agree with you saying elk "generally" congregate in relatively large numbers. While that can be true in the breeding season and during winter, I have found that during the hunting season the herds often break up into smaller groups and often the bulls will be found alone. I've killed a number of elk that didn't have any other elk around them.

I think the secret to consistently taking elk is to find areas the elk feel secure in. This means finding areas that are rough enough to keep most the people away but not so rough the elk have a hard time getting in and out of it. In the areas I hunt that means heavy thick cover on steep hillsides with water and feed fairly close by. If you can walk around standing straight up without ducking, weaving or even crawling, you're in the wrong place. I've got a couple of areas that I can usually find elk in and I've got one hillside that has produced 4 bulls.

One of the best pieces of advice I was given for hunting elk was to always try to hunt uphill. That way, if you get one you will be packing meat downhill.
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Old 09-17-2014, 11:58 AM
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These observations on elk behavior are just fine, but hunting pressure can change everything. I have had my best luck on public land in places where there were not many boot or horseshoe tracks in the snow - and no ATV tracks.
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Old 09-17-2014, 02:40 PM
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I know my areas that I hunt them real well. They are creatures of habit, and I carry a pile of chain and rope in case I have to pull them out of some God forsaken place. Even a downhill drag is a real bummer for a large bull. Now that I have aged a little, I tend to pass on them if I can't get near them with my 4x4. I have seen herds of over 100, but also have cracked many a loner too. Best eating wild meat there is,and the holiday is over when it is down.
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Old 09-17-2014, 07:25 PM
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This is a good thread to start. I wish I had information to add to this. I have yet to harvest an elk. Plenty of deer but no elk yet. I hope this is my year. I have read many articles, posts, books on how to find elk just haven't had a chance at one yet. I hike very much and try to get to where there is no one else in the area, just haven't produced an elk. I would have had a cow two years ago if I had the tag but just had a bull that year. I did go scouting last weekend and saw two nice bulls at treeline, which always makes for a good start to a scouting trip.
This is great information to read on. Thanks for providing it.
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Old 09-18-2014, 11:21 AM
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I have read that walking through a basin or draw, finding the low point where a little stream threads its way down the slopes, and then walking up the little stream looking for elk tracks can be useful. When you find the tracks you follow them. You probably won't find an elk standing in the tracks, but you might discover their bedding area or their feeding area. This can lead to making a plan to intercept the elk going to bed, leaving their feeding area, or drinking.

I have read that when you don't know where the elk are, you want to move fast. You can't move slow. The problem is because there is a lot of space where elk are not (see above post), if you are hunting slowly through the area where the elk are not located . . . you may never cover enough ground to get into the area where the elk are located. Elk make a lot of noise when they are moving, so if you make noise it may not be that big of a deal.
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Old 09-18-2014, 11:28 AM
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Originally Posted by redgreen
I know my areas that I hunt them real well. They are creatures of habit, and I carry a pile of chain and rope in case I have to pull them out of some God forsaken place. Even a downhill drag is a real bummer for a large bull. Now that I have aged a little, I tend to pass on them if I can't get near them with my 4x4. I have seen herds of over 100, but also have cracked many a loner too. Best eating wild meat there is,and the holiday is over when it is down.
I dragged my first elk across a steep muddy slope to some tree shade where there was snow left over. My plan was to cut the elk into pieces and then pack it in the snow until I could fetch it the next day. That plan worked.

The trail was about 100 feet below that cache of meat. I climbed the 100 feet to the meat and packed down a quarter at a time on a pack, over steep, slippery ground. That was four trips. It now occurs to me that it would have been better to drag the elk as far as possible down that slope. If I had only been able to drag it down to 50 feet above the trail . . . that would have saved half the distance of my trips fetching the meat.

Normally you can't drag a whole elk, but the slope of the hill and the muddiness (melted snow wet the ground) made this possible in this case.

I suppose even if you can't drag the whole elk, if you could drag the quarters, that might be better than carrying them in some circumstances. Some sort of skid mechanism would be needed or a piece of heavy plastic or a tarp. My partners and I once put elk quarters on heavy plastic and slid it down from the kill site to a sheltered area.
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Old 09-18-2014, 03:11 PM
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Originally Posted by Alsatian
I dragged my first elk across a steep muddy slope to some tree shade where there was snow left over. My plan was to cut the elk into pieces and then pack it in the snow until I could fetch it the next day. That plan worked.

The trail was about 100 feet below that cache of meat. I climbed the 100 feet to the meat and packed down a quarter at a time on a pack, over steep, slippery ground. That was four trips. It now occurs to me that it would have been better to drag the elk as far as possible down that slope. If I had only been able to drag it down to 50 feet above the trail . . . that would have saved half the distance of my trips fetching the meat.

Normally you can't drag a whole elk, but the slope of the hill and the muddiness (melted snow wet the ground) made this possible in this case.

I suppose even if you can't drag the whole elk, if you could drag the quarters, that might be better than carrying them in some circumstances. Some sort of skid mechanism would be needed or a piece of heavy plastic or a tarp. My partners and I once put elk quarters on heavy plastic and slid it down from the kill site to a sheltered area.
I carry a packframe and game bags when I hunt elk. I bone them out where they fall. I haven't tried to drag an elk in over 20 years. Taking the meat off the bones cuts the weight of the animal to less than half the live weight. Besides, the coyotes have to eat too and I leave the guts, hide, bones and head for them. If I take a bull and want the antlers I cut them off with a folding bone saw.
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Old 09-19-2014, 09:31 AM
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Originally Posted by flags
I carry a packframe and game bags when I hunt elk. I bone them out where they fall. I haven't tried to drag an elk in over 20 years. Taking the meat off the bones cuts the weight of the animal to less than half the live weight. Besides, the coyotes have to eat too and I leave the guts, hide, bones and head for them. If I take a bull and want the antlers I cut them off with a folding bone saw.
I wasn't clear enough. I was only talking about dragging the elk a short distance. In the example I was talking about, my camp was 2.5 miles or so away from the kill. But there was a relatively decent trail without much elevation change between the camp and near the kill site. After I field dressed my elk, I dragged him over the open slope where he dropped to a shaded area where there was snow. That's where I skinned him and cut him into bone-in quarters and stowed in game bags. I buried the game bags in snow to cool. I came back the next day, with hunting partners, to pack them back to camp.

The way we set up the work, I fetched the quartered elk meat from the cache in the snow and packed it on a pack frame down to the trail. It was a climb of about 100 feet maybe 150 feet from the trail. that is not a lot of climbing. But about the time I was making my third climb up to that spot to fetch another load . . . I was feeling a little tired. Not exhausted, just tired.

In retrospect, I'm just thinking it would have been yet more clever to have skidded that elk all the way down to the trail or have skidded the pieces of elk meat down to the trail rather than packing them.

It also happened to be the case that the ground was steep and slippery from my cache down to the trail. I did slip once, and tweaked my knee. I could easily see how that -- slip with a 60 LBS load on your back -- could blow out your knee.

So I'm just musing about other tricks or ideas that could have made that easier on myself. The prospect of skidding the elk meat off the steep hillside to the trail rather than packing it off the steep hillside to the trail seems like it could be an improvement. I hunt this same area often, and I could easily be in this same scenario again.

Last edited by Alsatian; 09-19-2014 at 09:34 AM.
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Old 09-19-2014, 11:33 AM
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Want to see some bad knees from hauling out elk meat? I have the x-rays.

Be careful.
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