Big Bulls Don’t Come Easy: Montana Elk | S2E04 | MeatEater Hunts

[Music] trophy hunting say those two words out loud and inevitably someone's going to object what you don't often hear about though is the amount of time effort and hard work that goes into an actual trophy hunt i've drawn a trophy bull tag that's challenging to get and in one heck of a unique environment too easy don't say that much like the saying it takes a village to raise a child the damn near takes a village to find and shoot a true trophy full but that's half the fun in a couple of days i'll have a pile of friends here to help me find a big bull while they fill their own deer tags all right garrett help me get the tent up so at least i've got shelter it's about three in the afternoon um there's a lot of stuff to do in camp including go find firewood set up the kitchen set up sleeping area but i'm also here to scout during european settlement elk were found across most of the united states including eastern montana but market hunting and just plain old hunting pressure extirpated them from much of the u.s including here in the late 1980s locals started reporting elk and the population has grown steadily since then mild winters combined with plentiful feed provided by agricultural lands have made good living for these animals okay this is my first morning of for a full day of scouting it's about 6 30. first slice at 7 20 but we've got a pretty good uh storm system coming through right now it's snowing pretty hard so i'm guessing daylight's going to be delayed by up to a half an hour i've parked up on a high point where if it's clear i should be able to see some lowlands and ag lands down below me where there should be elk that should be feeding up towards me once it gets light or moving up towards their beds as it gets light but i've got some time to wait i'm just gonna i'm hoping for good visibility by the time it becomes daylight if there if i don't have that i'm just gonna start driving roads looking for tracks and maybe cruising through some of that low country and see if i can't see herds of elk out feeding before they started their little daily journey up the hill to go bed the tag i hold is coveted because there are opportunities that monster bulls out here the mild winters allow them to spend more calories on antler growth compared to their mountain dwelling cousins who use much of their fat stores just surviving here the demand for tags outweighs the opportunities so the montana fish and wildlife department uses a squared bonus point system to reward those that have applied multiple years if i've applied for five years i'll have 25 chances to draw whereas the first time applicant only has their name in the hat one time this particular tag is known to take 10 years i got lucky and drew it in five it's an interesting elk hunt so far i've only been at it a day but um one it doesn't look like average elk country and two it's low density elk um i'm used to all country that's steeper covered in dougford maybe aspen's and this is just mellow rolling hills just covered in ponderosa pines it's beautiful i've been turkey hunting out here for five years and i always wanted to come back in the fall and here i am you can imagine it'd be great for just deer hunting because you can just creep along and you can always see at least 100 yards it seems like in this whole unit that i'm hunting there's probably only 1500 to 2000 out and it's a big unit it's a lot of country so i'm not to put a lot of miles in to just find an elk let alone a big one but the big ones are here i'm just gonna have to put my uh for the time [Music] my friend zach sandow joins me for opening day zack works for onyx the gps mapping app that i use for hunting zach grew up in missoula which is on the western border of montana but he's hunted eastern montana a ton i'm hoping his experience will help us in finding a big bowl zach you think they're going to be moving this morning i think so right now you know i was moving that gate it was uh pretty calm a little bit of snow i think we'll find some tracks and there's when we were looking at the map it was pretty open so i like our odds of being able to find something up and moving this morning the elk country i'm used to is mountainous with a mix of timbered slopes and open meadows but eastern montana is the beginning of the great plains and here the land consists of breaks arroyos and river features all shaped by erosion particularly the freeze thaw cycle travel is easier in this country there's less elevation to gain and lose but the weather no matter where you are can always complicate things i feel like we need to keep moving yeah i don't think they're going to be up feet um all right yeah let's keep let's keep driving with my scouting only telling me where not to look zach and i head out into brand new territory we're driving from one spot where we're looking for elk to another but as we're doing so we're going real slow because all the deer all congregated down in these bottoms and both zach and i have general deer tags which this unit is open for so essentially we're road hunting um there's a chance we could bump an elk in here and even if we did bump them it's not the best thing but my guess would be they're just right roll over a hill and probably not go too far and since we have snow we could track them we're seeing bucks but it would take a lot for me to turn this into a deer hunt with limited visibility we make moves for camp it's morning too it's 10 degrees five three two to five miles an hour wind and uh it feels good it feels right i have a lot of antlers at home i'm not talking hundreds but enough that all of them don't have a place on the wall what i don't have is a real trophy bull elk i'm looking for something truly large and truly special and when i say looking i mean to shoot a trophy you better be willing to put in long hours staring through the glass i think he's six he's now jumping out as a giant but it's a six point we might as well take a camper [Music] there isn't it i want to go like trophy hunting and look for a mature specimen is because like i don't need another set of five point antlers i'd rather just shoot a cow and eat her yeah they're gonna taste the same but like it'd be like way cool to have like a very mature specimen of the species at home yes and this haunt definitely has that opportunity this bull is close to giant status in my book i'm guessing his antlers would score 330 inches by the boone and crockett system easily beating my best by 30 inches but he's broken his third and fifth times on his left side i'm not missing the 30 inches of score he's lost i'm missing the beautiful symmetry that once was i'm going to pass so we just saw two bulls that we saw earlier this morning we're on this big flat plateau it's got all these finger ridges coming in so now we went over to the back side this whole new country kind of what we like to do is sneak over and look closer before you look out because a lot of times people look out way far there'll be something bedded right up under you and the other thing is i always like to have a tree behind me to break up my silhouette give me a little back that'll give me some camouflage there and break up my supplement there i could take another little snack break yeah if we want to make a fire the fire thing is i feel like it's a montana thing is it or we just i don't know or maybe just the guys that i came up elle connie was in colorado just didn't do it but like i don't think in in 10 years of guiding elk in colorado i can't remember a single time building a fire in the field [ __ ] yeah when i get here it's like you make three in a day yeah no yeah they're all all the time there was there's like two or three that were probably 300 inchers ish because i was just like i was like going from each one i'm like no not quite one of the reasons i enjoyed guiding elk hunts was the camaraderie so my ask for friends help on this hunt is twofold yeah i need help finding a big bowl but i also enjoy a warm wallet tent filled with fellow hunters telling hunting stories that's what it was like [Music] um and just like i'd hoped for my friends jake and sam tip us off to some bulls that they spotted on their hunt the next day we set out in that i don't know there's direction of a dozen bulls in here right now including spikes but still not the one there's one very very nice six point he's the only one that i've seen with cows we're still just looking for his like big brother big cousin this is a treat why it's fun to have one of these special tags and to be out trophy hunting because in a general unit in any state you're rarely gonna pop over hill and see a dozen bulls and get to watch a couple of them sparring good wildlife viewing don't get me wrong the bulls we've seen are solid they've even been great but at this moment i'm not looking for great i'm looking for once in a lifetime [Music] it's already above freezing i bet really close to it it's supposed to get up to like mid 40s today so we've had a uh 50 degree temperature swing in the last like 48 hours [Music] we've officially entered the grind portion of the hunt um zach and i have been at it for let's see saturday sunday morning tuesday four days and i scouted two and a half days prior to that um the like lustre and the excitement and energy of like the night before season and opening weekend it's kind of worn off we're into five days of trying to be in bed by nine waking up at 4 30. 40 minute can-am rides in the dark 40 minute to an hour hikes in the dark to get out to places to look over the country and um yeah it starts to feel like a grind fatigue is setting in you don't hop out of bed just like that every morning when you look at the next knob you second guess whether or not you actually want to go to it and look into the next drainage um so yeah we're uh i'm tuckered zack's like 20 years younger so he's not quite as tuckered but i can see in his eyes he's just a little bit cut i gotta say you're really hanging in there for a guy that doesn't have the elk tag this is fun i enjoy this it takes a lot though yeah i was just looking we've put over 60 miles hiking in the five days of them that's what i was figuring close to 10 miles a day we head back into the zone we saw the dozen bulls a few days earlier in hopes that we somehow missed one or a new one has entered the area at this point they're just there's a couple uh cows feeding we can see three bedded we just heard the bull bugle we're probably 200 yards from the herd the best thing we can do is just be patient we've got a really good wind in our face if they feed out on the bench that it looks like they're going to fade out on you it'll be like an easy 200 yard life shot almost immediately we spot a bull we hadn't seen the day before that gives me hope the giant is lurking out across that saddle i think they're gonna end up on that ridge but we should move in case just in case there's a big old giant that steps out that we haven't seen yet i can give a shot oh elka you can see over there just shy of 400. i really wish i was at that next little ridge but we're kind of caught in the open right now i can't move that right there is awesome wildlife watching to get to watch that bull dip his head back chase those cows around there must be a cow in there that's still in estrus that he's trying to breed and he's trying to keep that whole ham together i think there's a bigger ball in the bunch he's a beauty i think there's a big bigger ball around i didn't see another branch antler pull but that doesn't mean he's not there he could easily just be on the other side of the ridge the herd moves off heading down the drainage and we follow suit [Music] um he's about 80 yards ahead of me he you know he's not ready to shoot you but he's just getting an eye on everything [Music] unbelievable look at that one two three four five six pulls there seven eight nine and like five of those are six points it's sick dude they just keep coming back whatever just join the party down there after looking at over a dozen bulls i decide to shoot the six-point bull i've been watching all day although not the giant i came for he dwarfs the other bulls and would be my personal best i prepare for the shot let's try to kill that [Music] [Music] is let's save it for tomorrow i got close to sending that one but he uh he just walked right towards me and then out of sight i lost him below where i could see it so yeah let's try again in the morning which is not a bad thing zach's wishing we had just killed him we'd be back in the morning but give us one more hunt to find the bacon luckily we have another day we head out to the same stretch of country under clear skies and favorable wind hoping for another opportunity spotted two balls they're by themselves it's good to see that they're still out but they are like on the move they're nowhere near the bottom where we hope to catch the elk so um i think we made the right choice by coming up on this ridge and hopefully we can catch up to these to the bigger [Music] unless this is a weird angle nope he busted his main beam last night [Music] god they must have been getting after it that's a big it serves me right i had that bullet 150 yards yesterday and him and haud for six hours yeah i think we almost pulled the trigger a couple times right dark we can hem and haul about missed opportunities all day long but no matter how you look at it a broken antler saved that bull's life so sitting around here contemplating and just realized that i'm sort of up against a false deadline it's just like made up because i've got other stuff going on this season's actually six weeks six weeks right six weeks yeah six weekends i believe so tomorrow is halloween the season actually ends um the sunday after thanksgiving um but i have other hunts planned and other commitments you know so i actually can't make it back until basically thanksgiving um but at this point because it's been a long week and we don't have anything great to go and look at or find right now i think that everybody you've got family coming in to go hunting tomorrow yeah it'd be nice to be home tonight get ready for halloween with the kids tomorrow we're gonna pull the pull the plug and uh walk away from all these elk i just love this place man eastern montana is the [ __ ] i wanna spend more time out here all in all i hunted 14 days for a bull that still wanders the hills of eastern montana trophy hunting gets a bad rap and i won't lie i wish his antlers were on my wall and his meat in my freezer but in the end it goes like this i like to hunt and hunting for a trophy gives me an excuse to prolong my hunt when i'm old and gray i'll judge myself by how many days i spent a field not by the biggest bull i killed [Music] you

Channel: MeatEater

Views: 495,224

Keywords: big game hunting, elk hunting, hunting, jani putelis, janis putelis, meat eater, meateater, montana, montana elk hunting, steve rinella, steven rinella

Id: 3I8jyFPq5PU

Length: 23min 52sec (1432 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 01 2021