Elk Hunt Recap with Jermaine Hodge

 

Show Notes:

Jermaine and I pick apart things that went right and wrong in a recent elk hunt. Hindsight’s always 20/20 and it’s always good to look back and learn. Jermaine was on the hunt a couple of weeks before me, and the season started off really well. Although it was slower than last year, bulls were still responding. Everybody knows the rut kicks off in the beginning of September, and some cows come into heat later in the season. The majority of the cows Jermaine saw came into heat pretty early. He passed up quite a few bulls in the beginning because he was looking for a specific age class, but there were plenty for other hunters. 

 

His buddy Nathan joined him for a portion of the hunt, too. They had some encounters, but a lot of the elk were call-shy or coming in silent. They spent the mornings bugling and averaged 11-mile days. Almost every last setup that they did was cold calling, and they really had to pay attention. Jermaine says 99% of the calls that came in were younger elk with some cows called in. They called in one bull that was a shooter, who also came in silent. When I got in, I joined Jermaine and we didn’t get anything until we put some distance in and heard some cows. We dropped off a ridge and into a meadow where we thought the cows were coming from, but we almost gave up. But when we started walking out, I saw a bull coming down the pasture. 

 

I decided to give Nate the bull, and we did a two-shooter setup. Unfortunately, when Nate got down to the edge, he was afraid to break through some brush and walked back up and he missed his time to move. We recap other stories from the rest of the hunt and talk about some common mistakes when people call elks and understand the different sounds. Jermaine and I chat about how we would have positioned ourselves differently in some scenarios. We also talked about timing and what we would have done instead to get better shots. 

What’s Inside:

Hunting stories from a recent elk trip with Jermaine. 

Lessons learned and what went wrong.

Lessons on positioning and calling and what we would do differently.

 

Mentioned in this episode

Phoenix Shooting Bags save 20% with code johnstallone

Howl for Wildlife: https://www.howlforwildlife.org/

GoHunt: https://www.gohunt.com/

 

Short Description:

Jermaine and I pick apart things that went right and wrong in a recent elk hunt. Hindsight’s always 20/20 and it’s always good to look back and learn. We recap other stories from the rest of the hunt and talk about the mistakes we made. We also talked about positioning, timing, what we would have done instead to get better shots. 

Tags:

big game hunting, hunting tips, hunting guide, buck hunting, hunting stories, elk hunting, bugle, bugling, bulls, cows, calls