Hunting Elk with Game Calls

By Predator Hunting Editor Judd Cooney

The Party Line Approach to Calling Early Elk

 

“Bulls will often respond to this cow and calf talk, even when they totally ignore bull bugles and squeals.”

My hunting client and I eased easing along the ridge top, soaking wet from the knees down but appreciating the morning dampness that allowed us to move quietly through the woods. After a mile or so of this, I caught the high-pitched squeal of a bull emanating from a narrow valley below us. From the timbre and volume, I figured it must be a young bull testing its bugling abilities prior to the rut. However, I had learned many years ago that you can’t judge the size of a bull elk by the sound of its bugling.

A 5x5 rack that now hangs in my den proves the point. I had spent that day unsuccessfully trying to get within bow range of a bull on the high ridges above Fish Creek near my home in southwestern Colorado. I was bushed and hiking out in late afternoon when a bull squealed in the creek bottom below the trail I was following. The high-pitched squeals and half-hearted bugles made me think it was a spike or at best a raghorn bull.

However, an enthusiastic response to my calling got my heart thumping and my adrenalin going. I kept matching the squeaky squealing call for call, making my sounds even more wimpy and tentative than the elk’s. The bull wasn’t far off the trail and within easy packing distance of the trail head. If I could get this one on the ground, it would wrap up an enjoyable day in the mountains.

I about lost it when the big 5x5 appeared across a small clearing from where I was kneeling in the shadows of a fallen fir tree. I was certain this had to be a different bull—until it let out with the same squealing bugle.

The thoroughly aggravated bull answered my last timid challenge with a grunting squeal and then charged to within 20 yards, where I managed to put an arrow through its boiler room.

The bull I and now my client heard in the valley below certainly didn’t sound like a big one, either. But it was the client’s first elk bowhunt, and he was ready to take any legal bull that came within range. We sat down and waited for the bull to sound off again so we could pinpoint its location, but the only thing still sounding off in the valley were pine squirrels and a raven.

I didn’t want the bull to wander out of hearing, so after half an hour we moved down slope to the base of the ridge and set up to call.

It was early in bow season, well before the peak of the rut. The bachelor groups were just starting to break up, and bulls were wandering hither and yon checking on cows, fighting trees, exercising their lungs and in general getting ready for breeding season.

At this point in the season, bulls are more interested in hearing themselves sound off and aren’t real responsive to bugling. They have no interest in seriously responding to a vocal challenge. But elk are herd animals, and the cows and calves are constantly mewing, chirping, whining and barking in communication. Bulls will often respond to this cow and calf talk, even when they totally ignore bull bugles and squeals.

The saying “You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar” definitely holds true for these animals.

I gave my client a short course in cow calling with a Woods Wise hyper cow call. He didn’t sound good, but I was after quantity rather than quality. The eager bowhunter kept cow calling, and I added a whole lot more noise; switching back and forth between a diaphragm call and an open reed call, I mixed loud mews, chirps and whines. After 15 minutes of this raucous racket, my client probably thought I was borderline looney, so I had him tune out and concentrate on being ready to shoot.

I continued to call as loudly and continuously as I could, making full use of a reed call, tube call and diaphragm call coupled with a grunt tube to amplify and throw the sound in different directions. I changed rhythm, pitch and volume frequently to imitate a whole herd of excited cows and calves.

I was still making a racket when a tan form drifted through the aspens 100 yard across the finger of dark timber where we had taken our stand. I made a couple of more soft cow calls through the grunter, facing away from the elk, and then I shut up. The bull never made a sound as it drifted silently toward us, intent on joining the group of elk he thought he had heard making such a racket.

At 20 yards, my client sent an arrow through the bull’s vitals to fulfill a lifetime dream and also once again prove the effectiveness of early elk calling tactics.

Throughout 40 some years of hunting with bow and gun, I’ve used about every technique known for conning elk. I’ve called up both bulls and cows with a single cow call, shrill whistles on a piece of gas pipe, intense and raucous racket with a diaphragm and grunt tube accompanied by brush busting and branch breaking, antler rattling with and without brush rattling, grunting and bugling. Through all of this, I have come to believe the single key to success is using the right call at the right time, a tough proposition if you don’t live in elk country where you can study them and learn when to use what. I’ve also learned that cow calls can be effective from the early pre-rut to late winter, and cow calling doesn’t attract other hunters the way bull bugling can.

Elk, especially the hard-hunted bulls, learn and adapt. Over time, they become less susceptible to the most common calling techniques, especially bugling. Many states hold their rifle seasons late in the fall well after the rut, when bugling is an iffy proposition at best.

When I was outfitting, guiding and elk hunting on my own, I usually was the lone caller and could only make so much racket. But over the past couple of years, I’ve found that more is definitely better when it comes to cow sounds. Two years ago, I had a chance to really see how effective team calling can be when I hunted with my good friend Matt Poma on his lease in northern New Mexico.

The New Mexico season opened in early October that year with exceptionally hot and dry conditions. Consequently, the elk were only active late evening to early morning, and even then, the bulls were in silent mode. Matt is a superb elk caller, so I let him carry the ball the first morning. The only thing that responded was a distant bull that bugled half-heartedly in response to Matt’s bugling. It wasn’t about to leave the sanctuary of cool dark timber to scrap with another bull.

We agreed to switch tactics for the evening hunt, and along with Beau, one of his guides, we headed to a high saddle just above a tank dam. We sat above the almost-dry water hole for several hours waiting for it to cool down and the wind to start drifting downhill so we could set up for an evening calling session just over the ridge. There wasn’t much breeze, and it was still plenty warm when we moved quietly into position at the edge of a small clearing overlooking a relatively open slope and ridge top 100 yards away.

I set up against oakbrush 20 yards in front of Matt and Beau with my .50 muzzleloader already propped on shooting sticks, ready for action. Our plan was to inundate the area with cow and calf calling with an occasional spike squeal thrown in for good measure.

I used three different calls, as did Matt. Beau stuck with a favorite closed-reed cow call that added greatly to the crescendos in our elk music.

We called continuously for 15 minutes, increasing the volume and switching calls repeatedly. I’d just started another series of mewing cow calls when a 5x5 bull stepped around a point of brush and into an open shooting lane. He froze and stared our way. A minute later, I saw the tall spikes of a yearling bull moving through the brush 30 yards behind the larger bull.

The big 5x5 edged to within 30 yards as we kept calling, but the first week of the New Mexico season is limited to 6 points or better, so I just sat back to enjoy the show. The bull was plumb befuddled by all the elk sounds, as was the spike that had moved in behind him. Every time the bull would start back the way he had come, we would increase the tempo of the calling and pull it back toward us.

Half-hour after the first bull appeared, we heard a distant bugle and increased the volume and tempo even more. The 5x5 and spike had barely disappeared into the oakbrush when another 5x5 bolted out of the brush on the ridge top and down the slope. Almost immediately, I spotted the antler tips of yet another bull, and it didn’t take long to ascertain this one was legal and definitely a shooter.

I quit calling, and Matt and Beau toned down their efforts as the bull moved down off the ridge. When it stopped at 80 yards, I lit a three-pellet charge of Pyrodex that sent a 250-grain Barnes TMZ bullet through the big bull’s vitals. It made maybe 30 yards before piling up.

The following weekend, Matt and I used the same tactics to get one of his clients a nice 5x5 (legal the second week of the season). When we set up and started our infernal cow and calf racket, the client, a somewhat experienced elk hunter, thought we were going to scare every elk within hearing completely out of the county. He changed his mind 10 minutes later when a cow came boiling across the meadow and ran to within 5 feet of him.

We kept her hanging around another 10 minutes until two big-bodied 5x5 bulls came out of the timber at the head of the meadow 400 yards away. When they paused at around 100 yards, Matt’s hunter smacked the bigger of the two with a 180-grain slug, and it went down within 50 yards.

The following weekend, my grandson and son-in-law used the same team calling strategy to pull in a nice 5x5 on the opening day of Colorado’s elk season—on public land right in the middle of a hoard of other hunters.

Next time you head for the mountains, whether with bow or firearm, whether early or late in the season, leave the bugle at home. Instead, take a couple of hunting buddies and all the cow and calf calls you can muster.