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The Elk Club

Twenty percent of the bowhunters kill 80 percent of the elk. Here's how they do it.

By Douglas Dillingham

With adrenaline raging through my body, I began to shake as I clipped my release onto the bowstring and watched as, one by one, the elk herd walked single file past me in the bottom of the dry stream bed. Eventually, heavy polished antler tips appeared, swaying back and forth as an impressive 6x6 bull slowly and methodically made his way down the ravine and into full view.

As the bull neared a good shooting lane, he stopped behind a thick lodgepole pine, which momentarily hid his heaving chest. One more step and he would be mine, broadside at just 20 yards. For what must have been an eternity, the bull stood safely behind that tree as his penetrating eyes darted to-and-fro, trying to determine if anything was amiss. I knelt there with my bow raised, quaking like an aspen leaf in a steady breeze, praying he would take that step.

Suddenly, the bull lunged out of the stream bed and onto the opposite side of the ravine. Standing broadside at what was now 35 yards, he looked nervous. Almost by instinct, I came to full draw, placed the third pin high and tight behind the bull’s powerful left shoulder and turned loose the arrow. It looked to be right on target as it left my bow, but to my disbelief it buried harmlessly at the elk’s feet. The startled bull whirled and thundered away into the security of the pines. An unseen twig had deflected my arrow off course. After 13 days of hard hunting, I had just blown the best shot I had at a big bull all season. I was overwhelmed with disappointment as I quietly knelt there, with darkness falling on the last evening of another Colorado archery season. For the fifth year in a row, I had failed to arrow an elk, and I was admittedly frustrated.

You’ve probably heard the old adage that “20 percent of the bowhunters kill 80 percent of the elk.” While I’m not sure those figures are completely accurate, there is undoubtedly a whole lot of truth to that statement. Year after year, the same small group of bowhunters is consistently successful with elk, while the vast majority of archers tag elk only sporadically or not at all. Just what is it that differentiates those bowhunters in the elk-killing club?

After my fifth elkless bow season, I set out to find the answer to that question. I talked to and observed successful elk bowhunters, poured over numerous books, magazine articles and videos and even attended a few seminars in an attempt to figure out what these successful bowhunters knew that I didn’t. What I found forever changed the way I bowhunt elk and has provided more memories, meat for the freezer and antlers for the wall than I ever thought possible. Let me share with you five characteristics of the bowhunters in the Elk Club.

Know Your Hunting Area Intimately, Especially Where the Elk Bed

If you strive to gain membership into the Elk Club, it is in your best interest to hunt the same elk area each year in order to gain a thorough understanding of how the elk utilize the terrain. While it is human nature to want to explore and see new country, that is not the best way to consistently kill elk. To kill elk on a regular basis, you need to know where they feed and, in limited water areas, where they drink. Wallows and seeps can be an invaluable resource for ambushing elk only if you know where they are. It is also critical to know where the elk go when they’re pressured. However, above all else, to achieve consistency with elk it is imperative to determine where the elk bed in your particular hunting area.

Because elk normally utilize only a small percentage of the terrain in a given area, locating elk can oftentimes be the most difficult part of the hunt. Knowing where elk are bedding, as well as feeding, watering and wallowing, allows you to locate core areas where elk spend most of their time and maximize the number of elk you will encounter in the field. If you know the location of bedding areas, you will most assuredly be able to locate elk on a regular basis. Also, knowing where elk are bedding allows you to locate likely ambush spots between bedding and feeding, watering or wallowing areas. It is infinitely more productive to hunt along known elk travel routes than to walk aimlessly through unknown territory. Furthermore, still hunting from one bedding area to another, attempting to call elk out of their beds is an underutilized but outrageously productive tactic. Identifying bedding areas is the key that unlocks the mystery as to where elk spend most of their time in your hunting area.

Fortunately, locating bedding areas is not as difficult as it sounds. First off, because elk often like to bed on benches within thick timber on north- or east-facing slopes, you can utilize USGS topographical maps to easily locate these likely spots. Secondly, you can follow a herd as they move from their morning feeding grounds to their beds, or you can dog a bugling bull from a distance until he beds down. Lastly, my most productive method for locating elk bedding areas is to bugle into the dark timber during the mid-day hours of 10:30 to 2:30. When you get a response from a bull during that time period, he will likely either be in his bed or very near it. Mark these bedding areas on a GPS or a map, because they are a gold mine that will keep producing for you as long as you utilize them wisely. Knowing your hunting area gives you a huge advantage over the elk and greatly expands your options as to how and when to hunt them.

Allow Enough Time to Hunt

Work schedules, family obligations and the busyness of life tend to make it difficult to schedule enough hunting time. However, all of the consistently successful elk bowhunters I know allow at least two full weeks for their elk hunt. It simply takes time to find the elk, figure out what they are doing and have everything come together for a bowkill.

If the inadequate length of your bowhunt is attributing to your lack of success, you need to utilize the time you do have more efficiently. Sitting on a wallow, stock tank or pond during the warmer, mid-day hours while everyone else is lounging in camp can make up for a shorter hunt. Although many bowhunters don’t believe it is productive to hunt during the lazy mid-day hours, as previously discussed, bugling and cow calling along the fringes of bedding areas can bring elk to you at any hour of the day, especially when the rut is in full swing.

Another surefire way to get the most mileage out of your hunting time is to use the pre-dawn darkness to walk ridgetops and listen for bugles. Don’t be afraid to use a locator bugle in the dark. Bull elk are often much more vocal at night than during the day. If you are able to locate elk in the dark, you can focus your early morning efforts on killing elk rather than finding them.

The first bull I ever killed was located using this technique. As I walked a ridgetop one very dark morning, I heard a bull bugling and blindly followed him for about 45 minutes. When shooting light came, I was able to coax him in with some sweet cow talk and killed the exceptionally long-tined 5x6 bull at 35 yards. Had I not been on that ridge in the dark, I never would have caught up to the bull and wouldn’t have had the opportunity to arrow him. Admittedly, making the most of your bowhunting time takes both stamina and dedication, but it often separates bowhunters in the Elk Club from those on the outside.

Learn From Your Mistakes to Acquire Essential Elk-Hunting Skills

Most bowhunters seem content to make the same mistakes over and over. While this may make for a lot of exciting stories to tell, it also makes for few, if any, dead elk. Folks in the Elk Club certainly make their fair share of blunders, but they learn from them and tend not to repeat them. The biggest distinction between everyday elk bowhunters and archers that regularly kill elk is that the latter have corrected their mistakes and are repeatedly able to make their one chance count. They have learned how to close the deal when elk are in close. To kill elk regularly, you need to do the same.

For instance, you need to learn when to move, how much movement you can get away with and when to draw your bow. You must be able to identify ethical shot angles and control your emotions to make a quick, humane killing shot under intense pressure. You must also learn when to be passive and let the situation develop, and when to be aggressive and force the action. Regularly successful bowhunters have to know whether or not to call and what call to make. These skills, along with many others, must become second nature to bowhunters desiring membership in the Elk Club.

However, these skills are not inherent in anyone. This level of knowledge comes only from a willingness and ability to learn from each interaction with elk. You need to analyze each elk encounter and determine what worked, what did not and why. I have benefited greatly by keeping a journal of each elk encounter for later study and use as my “play book” as I encounter similar situations.

You can’t expect developing these skills to be easy or to happen overnight. It takes a focused effort to learn the skills required to decipher the best approach for each different elk scenario. Most bowhunters find it difficult to keep a positive attitude while enduring the inevitable years of failure while learning these skills. However, patience, perseverance and a commitment to constant learning are the only ways to grow as an
elk hunter.

Go the Extra Mile

Consistently successful elk hunters possess a relentless obsession with elk and will go to whatever lengths it takes, legally and ethically, to arrow their quarry. They have the motivation and desire needed to overcome the physical and mental torture that, more often than not, defines elk bowhunting. Do you have that motivation? Ask yourself the following questions: Do you train your body and prepare mentally for the rigors of the hunt? Do you practice adequately with your bow, including range estimation, difficult uphill and downhill shots, kneeling and sitting shots and shots with your gear on? Do you practice with your elk calls before the season? Are you willing to spend all day on the mountain searching for elk? Will you hike in the dark to be where the elk are come dawn? Are you willing to hunt areas that are too steep, inaccessible, remote or thick with blow-downs for other hunters? Bowhunters in the Elk Club regularly do these things. Do you?

If you answered “no” to a majority of these questions, you might need to do some soul searching and ask yourself, “How bad do I really want it?” Bowhunters in the Elk Club have tasted success and have a fire burning inside to continually beat the odds. Their motivation allows them to do the things required to consistently overcome the typically dismal elk-bowhunting success statistics. I believe that motivation and desire play just as big a role in your success or failure as hunting skills do.

Because motivation is fueled by success, I think it is imperative that a beginning elk hunter kill the first legal elk that affords the opportunity. Many bowhunters end up frustrated because they set their goals too high initially, holding out for a shot at a trophy bull. Any legally bow-killed elk, bull or cow, is a hard-earned trophy and should be viewed as a huge success. The success experienced with your first archery elk will both build confidence and serve to further motivate you to crave that indescribable feeling of accomplishment again and again. I know that nothing motivated me like finally tasting success on a cow elk many years ago. Regular success simply will not come until you are motivated to put forth maximum effort.

Utilize Smart Elk-Calling Techniques

Lastly and most controversially, I believe that it is imperative to utilize elk calls if you want to regularly kill elk. Bowhunters employing spot-and-stalk or ambushing techniques will likely kill an occasional elk, but consistency is best achieved with proper calling. Of course there are exceptions. Some fortunate bowhunters are able to hunt over an extremely productive wallow or water hole, heavily used trail intersection, saddle, mineral lick or some other area that attracts elk like a magnet and allows for an effective ambush or stalk. But for the overwhelming majority of situations, calling is the best way to arrow elk.

In modern bowhunting lore, bowhunters have been led to believe that today’s elk are call-shy. Experience has shown me otherwise. Even in the heavily hunted over-the-counter public areas I bowhunt, most elk are not so much call-shy as they are wrong-call-shy. Simply put, if you make the wrong call, they will flee.

When elk vocalize, they are not just making noise but are speaking a language and communicating with each other. To be an effective elk caller, you must learn what these elk sounds mean and what to say to the elk in response. It isn’t enough to just make realistic elk sounds. You must make calls that make sense to the elk.

As an example, I often hear bowhunters ripping off a full bugle with grunts in response to every bull sound they hear. These hunters are threatening every bull within earshot with bodily harm. When the elk invariably turns tail and runs, the puzzled hunter chalks the experience up to a call-shy bull, when in reality he or she just didn’t make the correct call. Their confidence in elk calling is lost, and the legend of the call-shy bull grows.

Smart elk-calling techniques can offer you critical advantages over your prey. While most bowhunters realize that bugling and cow calling can both help locate hard-to-find elk and bring elk to the hunter, I think many bowhunters severely underestimate the benefit of the latter. Your odds of getting a shot at an elk go up astronomically when the elk comes to you, rather than you attempting a risky stalk. An elk’s eyes are built to detect movement, and they serve as a potent defense. If you can remain stationary and coax the elk in to you, you have neutralized this powerful defense and given yourself the advantage. Furthermore, when you call an elk into bow range, you dictate where the encounter will take place. You can ensure that proper cover, good visual fields and shooting lanes and a favorable wind further stack the odds in your favor.

In my opinion, the single most important course of action you can take if you want to begin killing elk with regularity is to learn proper calling methods. In order to improve as an elk hunter, begin by improving as an elk caller. If you need a place to start, Paul Medel’s “Bugling Bulls and Beyond” series of CDs and DVDs, available at elknut.com, are an invaluable resource for teaching bowhunters how to truly speak the elk’s language. Without question, learning these methods was instrumental in turning my elk-hunting fortunes around after that fifth season of frustration.

The abysmal success rates inherent to bowhunting elk testify to the difficulty of the task. Those bowhunters that regularly beat the odds certainly don’t do it by chance, but have a method to their madness. If you desire entrance into the Elk Club, look at what these wildly successful elk bowhunters are doing, and do likewise. Know your hunting area, especially elk bedding areas. Allow ample hunting time or at least utilize the time you do have efficiently. Learn from your mistakes to develop solid elk-bowhunting skills. Get motivated to put forth your best effort. And lastly, utilize proper elk-calling techniques. If you incorporate these traits into your bowhunting for elk, I’d wager that you will see your success skyrocket. And you just may join the Elk Club yourself.

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