Boone & Bugles: Kentucky Bull Elk | S4E10 | MeatEater

i'm headed to the cumberland gap which allows passage up and over the blue ridge mountains 250 years ago this was the route used by daniel boone to access the rich hunting grounds of the kentucky wilderness where he hunted deer and elk and bear but those elk herds were wiped out almost within boone's own lifetime but now thanks to hunter conservationists at rocky mountain elk foundation those animals are back in strong numbers and i have a chance to go hunt one of these elk which means i'm getting a rare glimpse of this wilderness through the eyes of daniel boone [Music] i'm stephen runella to me hunting isn't only about the pursuit of an animal it's about who we are and what we're made of i live to hunt and hunt to live i am a meat-eater this is not what an elk hunt sounds like you're used to the western stillness but here you have tree frogs crickets so you have all these sounds of the eastern forest and you look out and you just kind of imagine you know what the eastern u.s was once like being that you had these sounds and these smells but it was full of elk [Music] today elk only occupied 10 of their historic range there used to be elk everywhere in the east [Music] it's only like a recent thing to me a couple hundred years so you come to think of them as this western thing like this was what the elk woods sounded like i want to keep working along here then maybe climb up hopefully we'll hear a bugle if not we'll start still hunting that ridge back in that direction [Music] these elk like the bed on top of the ridges but on the ridge you get bigger trees there's not as much underbrush so you can see further so hopefully on that ridge it'll be like that we can kind of peer around and not just get stuck in thick brush the elk they have a smell it's like a horse kind of like barnyard smell after a while you kind of learn to distinguish the smell of where elk used to be and the smell of where elgar are right now the smell of elk right now seems to have like a warmth to it it's hard to explain but you just kind of get a sense you like you'll smell and you'll be like that's elk that's not we're elk words for elkhart [Music] here's a spot where game's been bedded little beds all over here it's on it just makes sense [Music] there's a young bull right there he's coming right out the trail that's just a young one that wasn't like a first morning bull seeing this gorgeous animal has me thinking about the fact that there was an absence of elk in this part of the nation for well over a hundred years at the time of the american revolution elk ranged across most of the lower 48 but as the country moved westward commercial hunters and pioneers including my own hero daniel boone extirpated the animals from the nation's eastern half hunter conservationists fought long and hard to remedy the mistakes of their ancestors and bring those animals back and in the late 1900s the rocky mountain elk foundation spearheaded efforts to reintroduce the species to an area of kentucky dominated by the scars of reclaimed coal mines the elk foundation has been fighting for these elk all along they run an annual camp here to give a hand to supporters or volunteers who might have landed one of these coveted tags when i showed up i dropped by to say hi and chat with bill carman who's been involved with these elks since the get-go here in kentucky i understand this went from being an area where you're doing a reduction and now it's become a source for other states that want to do a similar project that's correct how did all that play out so fast the first elk are actually brought in in 97 and for the next three years there were fifteen hundred elk brought in it blows my mind it was that many animals so it was like commitment it wasn't like let's just put a few down and see what happens right it was a big commitment from the elk foundation it was about a million and a quarter bucks back in the daniel boone days and they were in central and western kentucky we now call them the bluegrass savannah because there's a lot of grassland what happened with the surface mining it created what i like to call a new savannah yeah so this these vast open grasslands areas which are perfect for elk electronic in the west you're using these like big vistas you know like you looking to see everything you're just going to get in a high spot in glass all day but here it seems like you got to just get in there and find them well there are places and if you really get into the rut and they're bugling there are places where you see a lot of elk but generally you got to hunt them well i'm going to do it good deal good luck yeah thanks for the information yes sir [Music] [Music] this is my first time hunting this area and all i've got to go on is a hand-drawn map in my own experience which to be honest don't seem too relevant in this landscape of hardwoods and reclaim coal country i time my hunt to coincide with the rut when the bulls are looking to mate in hopes that i'd catch some bugling action that might help draw me into some animals [Music] problem is it's awfully warm and the elk aren't making much noise at all so i'm just keeping my eye out for fresh sign and trusting my instincts this is pretty ambitious robin project right here little bits of air stuck up this high that's a good size bowler i've already seen one bull today so i know they're here i just need to bump into another getting on evening time now it's probably another hour and a half a day late i haven't heard any legit bugles saw that one bowl and you know already i'm like man i should have shot that bull but that would have been the first outlook in kentucky i ever saw and it seems like to shoot the first something of you know the shoot the first one of something you've ever seen in a place is a little bit not right when that coyote was like one note into that i was thinking sweet as i get to the top of another ridge the elk sign starts to get intense a bull has been here i can just feel it he come in i was just kind of like checking my help but i'll probably regret that i'm very good at that he was beautiful just barely a six pointer even if i wanted to find him again i'm sure he's long gone now of course i'm worried that my luck might be running down now that i've had two great albeit brief encounters i just need to keep reminding myself that there's now upwards of 13 000 elk in this state and i'm sure to run into another one or two if i keep my nose to the ground and hunt hard i've still got two full days left the next day i'm back on the ridge the wind shifted enough where i'm just gonna pick up the same ridge and take it a different direction today [Music] this day plays out awfully slow i see plenty of sign that's getting used by elk you can see where this guy is antler time drag through the mud but it's completely quiet and while i take great pleasure just being in this strangely beautiful environment every minute that passes makes me wonder more and more if i missed out on my only chance by passing those bowls [Music] late in the day i get a break or at least i hear one finally heard a bull finally hurt a bull [Music] daylight [Music] man that ball is right up on the ridge [Music] so shoot man [Music] broad daylight now that bull might have just gone over that top he must have been up on that ridge the whole time that didn't work out but it's a very good sign this bull's buckling i'm gonna mark this spot for tomorrow maybe you'll be fired up in the morning [Music] it rained last night the temperature's a little bit lower hopefully this change in the weather is gonna bring out some bugling i mean i just would really like to just hear this place light up the beautiful man i know what happens i'm gonna work that ridge that bowl was bugling on last night try to refine them today or find a new one elk have really been using this trail i feel like they're you know they're feeding this stuff which is all old reclaimed coal mines but they're moving out of it so early i think i haven't seen you know you don't see them oh i feel like they're just before it gets light into the timber [Music] that bull from last night was just over a half mile down this ridge conditions are pretty perfect because we got up up wind and there's a little bit of noise in the air from the waterfall and rain and drip which kind of masks the noise you make and you don't make much noise at all because the leaves are wet and there's a trail running down the spine of this thing so it's like pretty ideal still on circumstances just got a bugle basically over where i was yesterday i don't want to try to chase a bugler down into this i'm just gonna spook him if i knew what side he was on i might know what ridge he's going to go to whether he's going to go back up there he's going to come back up here so i'm just going to keep listening try to get even with him and figure out where he there's a ton of rocks in here and i just got a big whiff of elk i'm starting to think that bugler it's on my ridge it's not on the other side [Music] that bull is on my ridge my ridge keeps hooking around he's down below me on this ridge somewhere i hope the wind stays good one thing i'll tell you about elk hunting when you hear a bull bugle he's closer than you think and that bull is right here so so i can't believe all that worked out oh man [Music] [Music] that was awesome man that was great wow what a gorgeous animal [Music] i returned to thinking about all those decades when elk were missing from the eastern u.s on one hand i think about the hard work and hunting prowess that it took to eliminate them with muzzleloaders it's heartbreaking but also weirdly impressive but it's not nearly as impressive as what it took to bring them back they had the vision and dedication they spent the money they took the time and they put these incredible animals back on the map to me that's what hunter conservation is all about [Music] it was said that daniel boone's favorite meal elk liver so when i get done butchering this thing and i go to have lunch in his honor i'm gonna have a little elk liver right here and sit in these hills that he hunted i just enjoy the feeling of it all [Music] to make this meal really authentic i'm gonna harvest some of these chicken of the woods mushrooms that are grown all over this forest to go along with my elk liver you want to talk about locavore diets this here is it [Music] so i'm gonna drop these i don't like to cook liver too much like a pretty rare i'm gonna do these mushrooms first it's like a very meaty kind of mushroom i'm guessing these mushrooms get their name from the fact that it's probably the closest uh approximation to chicken that you're gonna get growing out of a dead stump [Music] this is like a tapas bar here so that's elk liver and chicken of the woods [Music] man it's a strong liver [Music] it's mild mushroom and strong liver it kind of says something about boone that elk liver was his favorite meal if that's true it says that he was not afraid of uh flavors man which is admirable quality for a guy to have in my mind you

Channel: MeatEater

Views: 1,163,063

Rating: 4.9284415 out of 5

Keywords: MeatEater, Meat Eater, MeatEater Full Episode, MeatEater Season 4 Episode 10, Episode 10, Ep. 10, Kentucky, Kentucky Bull Elk, Bull Elk, Steven Rinella, Steve Rinella, Rocky Mountains, Rocky Mountain Bull Elk, elk, deer, hunting, deer hunting, elk hunting, hunt, outdoors, forest, kentucky forest, daniel boone, mountainous coal country, coal country, SouthEast Kentucky

Id: DkdD1DCv8-g

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 09 2021