Whether hunting public or privateland, the fundamentals of calling elk remain the same.

By Michael Waddell

We heard the bull bugle at first light and snuck into his core area. When I hit a lick on my bugle, the bull simply came unglued and stormed our position like a tank, crashing through brush and small lodgepole pines like they were atchsticks. Before we could react he was in our lap and we were pinned down, myself hiding behind a camera, too afraid to even touch the tripod for fear of my shaking hands would run the footage. All I could see of my partner edged against a stunted pine was the tip of his undrawn arrow shaking uncontrollably on the rest. Before a shot presented itself, the bull smelled a  rat and disappeared as quickly as he arrived.

While this experience didn’t result in a dead elk, it did hopelessly addict me to calling them. It seems that in all walks of life, be it the animal kingdom or humans, communication is a key ingredient for all social interaction. However not all living things communicate to the same degree. If you ask my wife, I am sure she will tell you I lack in the communication department, in fact I am sure she believes I don’t listen to her at all, but when it comes to communicating with animals I can barely shut up. Of all the animals I love to communicate with elk rate right at the top. By nature elk are very vocal. The uninitiated often simply think of bulls bugling, but cows, calves and bulls make all sorts of noises year around. If you encounter a larger herd of elk while you might not hear a thing from a distance, if you get close you will hear lots of subtle vocalization. Most of the time these are sounds of contentment, but depending on what’s happening the vocalization reflects it. Elk can convey contentment, danger, curiosity, or a cow in heat. Bulls for instance only bugle primarily in the rut, but they also communicate to establish a pecking order. After spending a considerable amount of time chasing the mighty wapiti, I’m convinced every elk in the herd knows each other by sound alone. This happens with the cows as well as the bulls and based on my evaluation somewhere in this mix is the deadly secret to calling elk archery-close.

Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery

It seems that the more vocal a herd the better the odds are for success at calling them. Some cows call subtle, while others are loud-mouth ladies actively looking for a date. By listening it gives you a better opportunity to imitate the particular tones and intensity of the herd. By calling we are automatically intruding into the social club without an invitation. The closer we can sound to a known elk, and match that intensity the better the odds are of filling a tag. Even though we may sound like an outsider to the herd, luckily for us, love crazed bulls are not looking to be intimate with just one or two cows they are looking for all the love of every cow in the world, so taking advantage of their sexual frustrations and promiscuity is what we aim to do. It doesn’t take a world champion elk caller to trick bulls within range. By simply paying attention to the herd and understanding simple elk rhythm, tone and more important volume when calling, a hunter can depend on an elk call to be a valuable asset to dulling broadheads.

Public Versus Private Land

Since I started hunting elk 16 years ago, on private as well as public ground, I have realize that comparing these two different types of ground are like comparing night and day and it is all about the amount of pressure each receives. Generally speaking private ground bulls are way easier to call than public ground animals, but this is not always the case. Some private land does get a lot of pressure, which can make for some pretty tough calling duels with elk that can serve you up a humble pie every time you bust out a call. While conversely some public land either through sheer remoteness or hard-to-get tags is like calling the best private land in the nation. Hunting un-touched land and cow calling to bulls that have never heard a Hoochie Mamma would obviously be nice and it wouldn’t take long working over these uneducated elk to start feeling like an elk calling pro only to be deflated the first time we went to the national forest and mixed it up with bulls so well-known by local hunters that they have knick names. However, regardless of where you hunt the basics of calling remain the same. Start with mastering the cow call and all its various inflections. Your basic reed type calls are the easiest to learn as well as get proficient with. You will find two kinds; both are bite down reed-type of calls, one being enclosed and the other having an open reed or reeds. These calls make a very realistic sound and before your wife can run you out of the house you will master the basics.  I rely heavily on the cow call and think most of the time hunters are better off sticking with it over a bugle no matter where he is hunting. But learning how to make a basic bugle is important, especially for locating bulls at a distance before getting close and working him with your cow call. In addition, sometimes it is the bugle that finally provokes a dominant bull to commit, especially during the early season when bulls are still sorting out their peckin’ order.

Earning Your Public Ground PhD

Lets face it, unless you have deep pockets much of the private ground in the West is pretty much off limits, so you have to learn to hunt public land. This is not a bad thing as public ground comprises millions upon millions of acres across the West and happens to have some of the biggest bulls found anywhere. While it can be tougher than private, once you learn how to hunt it you won’t be disappointed. Over the years, one of my favorite places to hunt is the Gila National Forest, in New Mexico, and even though this is a trophy area tags are fairly obtainable through application. In the Gila, the trophy potential is off the chart, sporting some of the biggest bulls in the country, but just because the big ones live there doesn’t mean thatyou automatically make one call and they come running to get in the back of your truck. These mature jokers have a PhD in avoiding hunters. Over the last six years I have hunted this area religiously and have had the opportunity to shoot some nice bulls all by using elk calls as an aid to close the coffin. Notice I said, “as an aid”, meaning the call was just one thing in a bag of tricks to help smoke these monarchs. My biggest bull that came out of the Gila was a 378 P&Y bull that had earned the name Professor because he always seemed to take you to school when you applied too much pressure. However, this bull was vocal and would bugle his butt off. He also seemed to be fairly easy to find, not only by his gnarly, raspy bugle that set him apart, but frequently he could be found early in the morning in a large meadow just south of a particular water hole that always attracted a large herd. The Professor was not the only bull in the area that had large headgear, but it was The Professor that seemed to call the shots. I had caught this bull in the open several times, but calling seemed to really make him uneasy when you were in close. The Professor however would bugle hard to distant cow calls and seem to be whole heartedly interested, but had a sixth sense when you moved in for the attack. Final we decided to have a caller stay behind as we worked him coming off the meadow at daybreak. By doing this we could keep him interested and bugling as we stalked in closer. The caller always was no closer than 80 yards behind me. While the caller kept him occupied, I slid within 50 yards and gave him a G5 Tekan right behind the shoulder. This hunt was really a stalk, but the call and caller had a big part to do with his demise. Once we started quartering the bull up, we found a piece of an old arrow lodged just below the backstraps, so obviously someone had him in close before and gave the Prof and education, which explained why he was so wary.

The Double Team

As this old bull showed, hunting with a partner can work extremely well. It not only puts the hunter out in front of the call, but it gives the hunter a chance to move and adjust the angle based on where the bull might be approaching. Likewise, the caller has the flexibility to move as well and apply a lot of different calling techniques. The double team plan worked again on another hunt. It had been hot and the bulls were only bugling early and late. As soon as the sun would rise the elk woods would turn in to a ghost town.
Just after daybreak on the fourth day of our hunt we heard this bull bugle. He hit it only two times, both very weak and he sounded like the littlest rag horn in the land but with no other game in town we went after him. Getting as close as possible to where we thought the bugle came from I eased up and sat down by a pine stump while my buddy moved back and to my right about 40 yards. Neither of us were very optimistic about our chances. My buddy made one or maybe two very soft cow calls on a two reed diaphragm then he started raking a tree and rolled a few rocks. We sat there for possibly 10 minutes in silence, then out of nowhere appeared a wide 340 inch 6 x 6 coming directly to us, at 25 yards the bull let out a soft chuckle, looked over his surrounding and kept walking in the direction of where the last rock had been rolled, which led him 16 steps from my pine stump. By now I was at full draw waiting for a broadside shot. When the arrow left my bow, I knew we had killed a call shy monster by keeping it low key and staying patient. Needless to say, I was never convinced by the two times he had bugled earlier that he was a shooter. This was a lesson in itself. Never judge a bugle until you can see what is making the sound.
The most exciting way to bag a bull elk is to get him in close, and the best way to do that is with a call. Confidence in your call is critical, because if you’re insecure about using your call there is a good chance you will spook elk. Have confidence in your calling ability and become just another elk in the herd where you are hunting. Find a call that works for you and not what works for some else. Think like an elk and do as elk do. Realism, rhythm, and volume control can make the difference between bringin’ them in or running them over the next ridge. And remember its not always about calling, it can be just patiently listening to the sounds around you and applying minimal calls, while practicing good woodsmenship, and stalking skills that could help you put that monster on the back of the truck.

By Michael Waddell

I can hear their whispers wherever I go. “Control your breathing, concentrate on the blade, and squeeze.” “Feel your way along with your toes instead of watching your feet.” “Work your way down through that black-growth and you’ll find ‘em in that stand of beech.” So persistent are they that I sympathize with a schizophrenic who feels as if he’s never alone. Unlike him, my voices are not a psychotic delusion created by chemical imbalances crying out for the saving grace of lithium. Real men spoke those words and no amount of time or distance will ever silence them. They are my last connection to a past that I crave but know I’ll never see. They define the man who hears them. And I pray they shape the lives of my sons.

When I close my eyes and listen to their whispers I return to my youth and, in some ways, to times that I never lived. I can still feel my father’s warm breath on my ear as I concentrated on the front blade of the Model 94’s sights, silently asking a god yet known to help me prove I was ready to join the hunt. I can see the gentle face of my grandfather as he admonished me for being so preoccupied with the obstacles in my path that I never saw the animal in front of me. I can feel the weight of my great-grandfather’s right hand on my shoulder as the old mystic described where he knew the deer would be feeding on beechnuts. And if I let my mind misbehave, I see their fathers and grandfathers passing on the same lessons of how to live off the land.

All three of them were hard men, descendants themselves from a long line of hard men. Hundreds of years in the mountains of northern Maine proved Darwin right on some level; only the strong will survive. Their rough exteriors hid a gentle spirit that I have not seen since I chose to leave the Wabanaki nearly two decades ago. Faces darkened by the sun and chiseled by the wind offered smiles or thoughtful expressions and rarely scowled at my clumsiness. Hands calloused by decades felling timber were quick to embrace me or pat me on the back. In all my years with them I never heard a curse pass their lips, nor did I ever hear the words “I love you.” The absence of that sentimental phrase never created a doubt in my mind. Their actions and whispered instructions reverberated much more than those syllables ever could.

Today the world is full of self-professed sensitive men that care for so many causes yet are guilty of so many trespasses. The headlines and social dilemmas created by the supposed sophisticated modern man perplex me. Once, not so long ago, I knew three men who were superior in every way. They demonstrated it in how they survived and provided for their families. The hunt, like everything else in their lives, was a necessary vocation and not some mere recreational activity. They felt no joy in killing but the survival of their own outweighed the animal’s sacrifice. The meat loosened the purse strings a little. Muskrat hides and beaver pelts ensured the family had presents under the tree. Reliance on the land created a spiritual connection between the hunter and the hunted. Father, after downing the biggest buck of his life, patted the deer on the neck, apologized, and then shed one of only two tears I’ve ever witnessed on his cheek. These hard men, in their quests for survival, formed a brotherhood that I admire and long for.

Fifteen years ago I became a father, and therefore a likely candidate for the office of grandfather and great-grandfather. I want my sons, and their sons, to share the bonds that I experienced and to understand theirs is a lineage of survivors. My greatest fear is they will grow up to be modern men who vocalize convictions but never take a stand; men who will not provide for their families or value the land they walk on. I want them to be hard men, like the gentle giants that guided me more than a decade ago. But now I’m without those guides that led me into the evergreen forests of Passadumkeag Mountain as a boy and helped me safely emerge as a man. Great-grandfather was eaten alive by a cancer before my journey was over. Grandfather’s body succumbed to years of providing for his family and arthritis now keeps him inside on cold days. Father can still walk, but a drunk driver ended most of his hunts by ruining his right arm. During my early days of fatherhood I wandered aimlessly, lost and confused in a foreign land. I didn’t know how to connect with my boys, how to teach them all of life’s lessons passed down through generations. Then I listened to those whispered voices and realized three hard men taught me how to live when they showed me how to kill.

I suddenly understood that those long struggles in thigh-deep snow with 50 pounds of traps on my back had defined my spirit more than any school or job or friendship. Because of those hard men I had grown into a survivor in my own right. They showed me that the right course in life often proved the hardest, which only made the rewards in the end taste even sweeter. When they filled my packbasket with a man’s load and ignored my boyish whines they taught me how to carry my fair share. As my skills grew they forced me to make decisions for the group, and in doing so made me a leader. The more I reflected on those times the more I realized exactly what I had learned. The cold dark and rainy night spent alone guarding our equipment from thieves showed me how to conquer fear. Self reliance came when they made me run my own trap line, where my many mistakes could have meant death in the cold waters of Bowers Brook or the alder thickets atop Vinegar Hill. Confrontations with lesser men that used the land like a whore made me stand up for what I held sacred.

I am not a hard man like my three forefathers. I spend most of my time behind a desk where I feel their whispers on the back of my neck. Jack London’s “Call of the Wild” pulls at my soul as I recognize a piece of me in Buck. I don’t belong here, but I must stay. Survival, for me, has taken on a new form. To care for my family I must continue with the detestable and mundane course I’ve set for myself. That too I learned from them. Far removed from my ancestral home the other lessons of survival learned on the hunt have sustained me. When rifle fire and mortar rounds pounded the Bosnian forest around me I controlled my fear. Hard work, paling in comparison to the load of traps that made my lungs burn years ago, earned me awards and respect. I am not a hard man, but I share traits of those three hard men. I want my boys to become even better men, able to survive in a changing world. To prepare them for life I turned to my roots where I’ve found so many answers.

Last year, Robert, my oldest, took his first steps on his own journey into manhood. It was just he and I, but we were not alone. When he made mistakes the words I spoke were first whispered in my ear by my father 25 years ago. And I’ve come to understand that those words came in turn from grandfather, and great-grandfather, and other hard men before them that I only know through stories. Because of their convictions, and hard work, and love, I now know how to be a father on my own. When Robert pulled the trigger for the first time they were there when his triumphant shout echoed through the valley. And they were no doubt there when he sheepishly wiped a tear from his cheek as he realized that the price of our survival was that beautiful animal’s life. When I remember that hunt my overindulgent mind can see three hard men standing off to one side. They each have a knowing smile on their face, content that the cycle of life is rolling along and that they are still providing for their families.