There’s one huge reason why I archery elk hunt. Because the bulls are bugling then! There are some cool events that occur in the outdoors. For example, think about the Idaho salmon run. A salmon is hatched from an egg in a high mountain stream, takes out for the ocean, lives there four years and then is able to navigate his way back upstream to the exact same spot where he was born. That’s inconceivable! As fast as Idaho is growing, if I fly out of town for two weeks, I can barely find my way back home.

Or what about a formation of geese lined up headed south for the winter. Or something as simple and yet profound and beautiful as an Idaho sunset, especially when the skies are smoky.

But one more thing that thrills my soul is the eerie sound of a bull bugling as it reverberates down a canyon. What a unique sound to come out of something as big as a bull elk. Archery elk season in most states is in September. They usually don’t start bugling until it turns cool which is the third week of September (generally).

I had to go hunting the first and second week due to a deal I had to do the last 2½ weeks of September. But it worked out fine because the first night the temps dropped down to 30 and the bulls were bugling.

This year an old buddy, Robert Martin, and I were going to hunt together. We haven’t been able to hunt together in a good while due to hectic schedules for both of us so it was going to be fun to get to hunt with him and catch up on things.

If I remember correctly he’d just flown in, packed and then ran by Thursday night and picked me up and we took off. He had to fly back out the next Wednesday. We got to our camping spot about midnight and hit the sack. We were beat. Robert had hurt his shoulder and didn’t think that he was going to be able to draw his bow back so he said he’d call for me. But. … later in the week when a shot presented itself, he was suddenly healed and able to draw back his bow. See! Elk hunting has healing properties.

I was excited, as I’d met the Elk Ridge crew in Las Vegas in January at the SHOT Show and had eight of their knives to test out. Great. Maybe I could stick an elk, a deer and a bear! That’d give me enough skinning/boning to test out the knives.

The first thing we had to do was to locate some elk. Robert had hunted this area before so he had a few mountains and canyons he wanted to check out. The plan was to hike into his spots and see if there was any sign. If not, we’d keep hiking until we did find sign and then set up and call.

I’ve somewhat lost track of how everything played out but I believe the first morning we only saw two or three deer. It got pretty hot during the mid-day so we ended up heading back to camp by 1 p.m. every day. We’d eat a big meal and then go back out and hunt until dark and then head back to camp dead tired and go to sleep without eating dinner.

It took a day or two but then we started getting into a lot of elk sign. Once we did, we were able to talk to quite a few bulls but just never could quite lure one in close enough to whack. I’d taken along a Montana Decoy but hadn’t used it up to this point so by now I took it and set up but still didn’t have a bull come in close enough for a shot despite Robert’s calling efforts. We saw deer and/or elk every morning and every evening so it was a good hunt.

One afternoon I had a shot at a deer but surprisingly (OK, maybe not so surprisingly) missed. Robert had to fly out Wednesday and I had to fly out Monday so I’m sunk on elk but hopefully can pick up a deer in rifle season.

Gee it’s good to get up in the mountains. Good to be out in the wild, good to get to hang with an old friend and good to eat ribeyes for lunch even if we did cook them on a griddle on a camp stove.