Janis Putelis In Search of His First Archery Elk, Part 1 | S2E01 | MeatEater Hunts

on this episode of meat eater hunts i'm with jason phelps owner and operator of phelps game calls we've been invited to hunt elk on a friend's ranch in southern colorado which sits at about 8 000 feet it's not a giant place but i've hunted here before and i know that it holds plenty of elf i'm done here's a little something about me that you may not know i love archery elk hunting but since i've always been on the guiding side of the deal or busy as a producer of meat eater i've not had as many opportunities as i would have liked on this trip i'm hoping to get my first bull with a bow you heard it right my first all right now i really need to be done since jason makes elk calls for a living it goes without saying he's an excellent caller i'm looking forward to watching him work and maybe picking up a few new tricks i just want to hear some bugling tomorrow that would make my day what's your guess for tomorrow mostly cow calls do you think we'll do some viewing we'll just try to probably match the you know the temperament of the elk we're calling if they're quiet we'll probably be quiet and just use cow calls if they're some reason ripping in the morning we'll we'll get in there and be one of them so i think that's kind of our best strategy is just to see what works to start with tomorrow and then go from there cool yeah all we need now is uh for them to read the scripts and play ball right yeah [Applause] [Music] it's day one and we're getting after it early since elk are crepuscular meaning they're most active during twilight timing is everything the first outfitter i worked for always told us we had two hours a day to kill elf one in the morning and one in the evening that's a small window so we're out well before first light listening for bugles before you can hunt elk you have to find elk when they are vocal finding them as a piece of cake when they're being quiet it can feel like you're hunting ghosts one of the best ways to find them is to broadcast loud cow calls or bugles until a bull answers you then you can get the wind in your favor and approach so far that's turning out to be quite the challenge for us it's early september the days are hot and the elk are not quite running yet that can change quickly once a cow in the area goes into heat but until then it's a little like hunting blindfolded they're not talking at all so they're not making any noise so we're just having to see them before we you know make a move they're definitely within 4 500 yards of us our tactics go from calling elk to hiking with the wind in our face in hopes of spotting elk before they spot us we'll make sure our routes take us by areas elk-like to frequent like wallows watering holes and the edges of the ranch's hay meadows the flora on the property doesn't help any it's covered in a mix of aspens conifers and lots of gamble's oak the gamble's oak is thick stuff and it hides elk extremely well we spend day one canvassing the ranch with little success it's not until almost dusk when jason happens to spy a bull bedded down there's a uh there's a better bull right down there he's pretty nice 330 yards away yeah still bedded i'm gonna send him a killer calling a little bit [Music] sure jason's cow calls are rewarded with a turn of the head and a half-hearted bugle but the bull doesn't seem interested enough to get up and investigate so jason bugle's in return it's enough to stand him up but that's about it it doesn't look like he's ready to close the distance between us after a couple more calls jason switches tactics bulls will rake trees as a sign of dominance this sound works well as an additional challenge and can push a reluctant bull into committing it looks like it may be working hey he's coming he started walking this way no he disappeared in the brush but we never see or hear him again he disappears into the sea of gamble's oak one lackluster vehicle out of his bed nothing since yeah that's better than it oh what do they say sharp stick in the eye poke in the eye yeah that wasn't a bad night i mean the last 30 minutes of school [Music] the rest of it was a little bit of bust but we needed to get here yeah yeah just this early season stuff but it sure seemed like when you started raking that got him to at least take ten steps towards this yeah nice bull though yeah that's a really good bull [Music] it's day two and as they say in the movies it's quiet a little too quiet we're still not getting any elk to talk to us so we're forced to feel our way around the ranch hoping to spot something but we think they're in the small patch of timber it's not until late in the morning that we finally get some vocalization just not the kind we were hoping [Music] i don't think they've seen us or smelled us she's probably barking because her calf's kind of spooked do you want to maybe just give him one bark i don't know it's the last sound you want to hear when you're elk hunting but so what you're hearing there is an alarm bark that the cow's making they usually seem to make that when they're unsure of what's going on around it and they're just trying to tell everybody to be kind of aware because if they would have smelled us or seen us they just take off through so it's not the end of the world but they're definitely putting everybody on a little edge right now yeah it's kind of like a come show yourself yeah and the reason that jason's barking back at them is because it's almost confused some more they're like oh well maybe that was just an l back there she's upset with you if conditions continue as they are jason and i have a long week of slow elk hunting ahead of us the rest of the day feels more like a nature walk than hunting the elk are here we've seen them we've seen their sign we've even heard a few elk but the rut is simply not happening yet thus the bulls have no interest in our calls [Music] with the exception of one curious spike that jason coaxes in for a closer look towards the end of the day [Music] he was never in any danger anyhow spike hunting is not allowed in colorado still it's nice to get a little up close and personal after two very quiet days those guys make you feel good about your calling don't yeah yeah i'd almost trade here in a bubble for calling that spike though yeah we've called in one we called in one elk and had zero vehicles so far private ranch access does not always equal great hunting i thought that this would be a perfect location for jason to put on an elk calling clinic but it doesn't matter how good you call if no one is listening [Music] [Music] um so we decided to change locations because we've been hunting down on the ranch it's around 8 000 feet and it's been hot like 80 85 midday and like the elk are just like not active so we decided to gain elevation we're going to probably spike it like 10 000 ish tonight so we'll be 2000 feet higher we've never been here what i really love about this spot we can start to see up there it just looks like trophy country like this is the spot where there's going to be elk so for sure yeah we make the decision to leave the ranch and to hunt higher up the mountain i gotta say it feels good to be tromping around our public lands as free americans but it's not easy leaving the safety net of the ranch we risk increased pressure from other hunters but staying on the ranch we risk burning another day on lackluster elk activity it's not long before we see promising sign we're on our way up into this new area and happened to swing by a fairly fresh rub so we decided to come over and try to get all the information out of it that we can you know because if this is a day or two old versus two weeks old may change you know how active we want to be in this area but this park is pretty pretty crispy you know it could drop really quick in this weather but i'd say just by how brittle it is probably over a week but at least it's a serious sign right you can take that information you know they've been here yeah down in the low country we just hunted for two and a half days we didn't see any of those so that's a good sign do you have a way to gauge like size of animal by height it depends on how it's like a bull can take a whippy tree and bring it way down so you know he might be 10 feet up put on a tree like this where he's really not gonna um it's really subjective like if he's only taking his eye guards in versus if he's you up in the top so it's tough i just always assume it's a really big bull and go with it still hiking to our predetermined destination and a bull sounds off above us any doubts we had about our decision to leave the ranch are erased oh that's what we needed man that's a good time two bulls doing us not very far away the wind's perfect it's 415. you see all hunters but especially archery elk hunters or any kind of archery owners that have to get close to their game to make a shot constantly worrying about the wind reason being is that we stink and not just because we just hiked for two hours to get here but just because we stink like humans the elk's got a nose on him that's dang close to 18 inches long you're just not going to fool it no matter what you do so and in the mountains there's a thing called thermals with the wind and we usually try to use thermals to our advantage and how they work is that when the air warms up it's gonna rise and when the air cools down it's going to fall usually the higher in elevation you go because it's going to be cooler in the evening you're going to get a more consistent you know downhill thermal a thousand feet to climb if we wait here too long we're not gonna get there before dark yeah we got two hours left we gain the ridge and are immediately in the mix we can hear a bull and he's close at this point we'll split up as the designated shooter i'll move forward and jason as the caller will hang back we'll stay anywhere from 15 to 50 yards apart depending on the situation once i find a position with good shooting lanes i'll stay fairly motionless jason will be calling raking trees stomping the ground all trying to sound like a group of elk the goal is for the caller to draw the bull by the shooter jason starts with cow calls and bugles testing the bull's temperament [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] that sound you hear is jason's stomping on branches and raking the ground [Music] jason bugle's right on top of the bulls bugle challenging him to a fight it works [Music] come on but my hide was not perfect the bull spots something out of place turns and walks out of the meadow that's exciting i didn't range but i'm guessing 60 to 70. so it was question it would have been questionable damn oh that was awesome we're definitely in active elk country now what a difference 2 000 feet makes it was a pain to carry our camping gear up here but now that we're here i'm so happy to be spending the night on the mountain with the elf they should not be far in the morning laying here on one of the stillest nights i've ever had in the backcountry the stars are intense like they have finally aligned [Music] oh the next morning it doesn't take jason long to get a bull to respond and we start to close the distance [Music] [Music] we saw the bowl as we're coming up through here maybe 100 yards away he kind of eyeballed us but i don't think he saw us but he just turned and walked away now he's answering fairly good fairly well we decide to move closer but just as i'm starting to make my way i spot some movement in the trees are they looking at you cow calf look at me you know just right there okay let's get closer [Music] um [Music] wow yeah and he was only showing like front part of the shoulder brisket and there was like that you can see that one small aspen right there it was all covering it up it didn't feel quite good to see horns coming through here and i didn't know where it was at it's a nice start to the morning then we'll go call alert pull in right next time on meat eater hunts and so we're gonna work basically just up this ridge and call down into here the public land has been promising so far but we still have two tags to fill i don't even think i've bugled through a tube since uh 2019 are you trying to build my confidence i'm trying to just set expectations okay yeah expect a ton of calling and more close encounters as jason and i try to close the deal on a couple of bowls plus i reveal my cooking secrets for an often overlooked piece of meat this here is what they call the flat iron steak or the clawed steak this is caveman style kruger buckskins and your fingers have adam [Music] you

Channel: MeatEater

Views: 265,926

Rating: 4.9469209 out of 5

Keywords: Jason phelps, Steve rinella, Steven rinella, archery, archery hunting, bow hunting, colorado, colorado elk hunting, elk bugling, elk calling, elk hunting, how to call elk, hunting, janis putelis, meat eater, meateater, phelps, phelps game calls

Id: 2KSUMSRe7YY

Length: 22min 34sec (1354 seconds)

Published: Tue May 11 2021