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Big Deal Hunt: Hunting elk can be a lot like pursuing turkeys
By Tim Renken, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
06/28/2002
In reading about elk hunting, a Midwesterner learns it is quite different from deer hunting, especially white-tailed deer hunting.
The second thing we learn is that elk hunting can be quite like turkey hunting.
Come again?
Our hunt will take place in late September, during the rut in northwestern Montana. During the rut, elk call in their efforts to find mates. The call of the bull is an "eeeeeeooooo" bellow. The cow responds with a barking sound as they approach each other.
Wild turkeys call and respond to find each other in the woods, too. Elk hunters use calls as turkey hunters do to get the game in range. So elk hunting during the bugling season resembles turkey hunting, with the hunters setting up at calling stations and moving from station to station to locate and work the elk.
Most rifle hunters, though, don't get to hunt during the rut. Most of the rifle tags issued by the states are for later in the autumn, after the rut. We will hunt with rifles during the rut because we will be hunting in a wilderness, where access is so difficult that relatively few hunters go there. After the rut, according to the literature, elk hunting more resembles deer hunting with many important differences.
Most of the differences result from the fact that deer are browse eaters. Rocky mountain elk eat mostly grass. Elk are herd animals, white-tailed deer aren't.
Because of this herding tendency, even the best elk habitat contains no elk at any given time because the elk are concentrated into relatively small areas.
Elk and deer have keen noses and use them to avoid people, according to the literature. Both also have keen eyesight with especially acute sensitivity to movement. Deer are sensitive to noise. Elk are less so because they themselves make so much noise moving about.
The literature also says that sometimes stand hunting works for elk, but only under special circumstances. Stands are used extensively in white-tailed deer hunting, and many good hunters sit on stands all the time.
In actual elk hunting, the literature says, hunters move a lot, more than deer hunters, in search of the herd. Sometimes they run in trying to get ahead of a moving herd. It isn't unusual for an elk hunter and guide to walk 20 miles a day over several thousand feet of elevation in rugged mountain country.
This kind of hunting isn't much fun, obviously, for somebody not ready physically.
******
Next: What outfitters say about getting into shape for the hunt.
This is the seventh in a series that will appear every other Sunday, about a once-in-a-lifetime elk hunt my son and I will make, our Big Deal Hunt.
By Tim Renken, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
06/28/2002
In reading about elk hunting, a Midwesterner learns it is quite different from deer hunting, especially white-tailed deer hunting.
The second thing we learn is that elk hunting can be quite like turkey hunting.
Come again?
Our hunt will take place in late September, during the rut in northwestern Montana. During the rut, elk call in their efforts to find mates. The call of the bull is an "eeeeeeooooo" bellow. The cow responds with a barking sound as they approach each other.
Wild turkeys call and respond to find each other in the woods, too. Elk hunters use calls as turkey hunters do to get the game in range. So elk hunting during the bugling season resembles turkey hunting, with the hunters setting up at calling stations and moving from station to station to locate and work the elk.
Most rifle hunters, though, don't get to hunt during the rut. Most of the rifle tags issued by the states are for later in the autumn, after the rut. We will hunt with rifles during the rut because we will be hunting in a wilderness, where access is so difficult that relatively few hunters go there. After the rut, according to the literature, elk hunting more resembles deer hunting with many important differences.
Most of the differences result from the fact that deer are browse eaters. Rocky mountain elk eat mostly grass. Elk are herd animals, white-tailed deer aren't.
Because of this herding tendency, even the best elk habitat contains no elk at any given time because the elk are concentrated into relatively small areas.
Elk and deer have keen noses and use them to avoid people, according to the literature. Both also have keen eyesight with especially acute sensitivity to movement. Deer are sensitive to noise. Elk are less so because they themselves make so much noise moving about.
The literature also says that sometimes stand hunting works for elk, but only under special circumstances. Stands are used extensively in white-tailed deer hunting, and many good hunters sit on stands all the time.
In actual elk hunting, the literature says, hunters move a lot, more than deer hunters, in search of the herd. Sometimes they run in trying to get ahead of a moving herd. It isn't unusual for an elk hunter and guide to walk 20 miles a day over several thousand feet of elevation in rugged mountain country.
This kind of hunting isn't much fun, obviously, for somebody not ready physically.
******
Next: What outfitters say about getting into shape for the hunt.
This is the seventh in a series that will appear every other Sunday, about a once-in-a-lifetime elk hunt my son and I will make, our Big Deal Hunt.
