Elk Hunting Seminar 2020 West Coast Archery 

I was invited to speak on a virtual seminar for West Coast Archery here is the audio of the seminar and the video is up on my Youtube   

¨No matter what it is you are hunting when using a call there is always a point that the animal you are calling feels that they should be able to see what’s calling to them, and that is usually when they hang up. I don’t have the secret sauce that will help you get those animals that hang up but what I do have is the recipe to choose your set ups so that they won’t hang up to begin with . And honestly this system works for all animals that we call elk, deer, turkey, predators etc…

I have heard a few guys in the industry refer to it as the doorway principle or the calling room. Simply put, it’s the area at which the animal you are calling suspects to see what it is that is calling to them.  You hear it all the time “I called this coyote in and he hung up just outside where I could shoot to”. Or “the turkey came running in and hung up and wouldn’t come into the clearing…” I called a bull in and hung up at 80 yards. I think the person who describes it best is Chris Roe of Roe hunting resources. Chris uses a similar principle and he describes it like this: If you were in a separate room and you heard your wife calling you from a different room, you would get up and go to where you heard her calling from but when you got to the doorway of the room you believed she was in, you wouldn’t just run in there and “say what’s up babe”. You would first look into the room to verify that’s where she was and if you didn’t see her you would continue to look for her or call her name. And if she responded from within that room and you still couldn’t see her you would think something was fishy. Well the same goes for animals they want to see who or what is making the sounds. That’s why set up is the most important aspect to calling in game. Most guys focus all their time an energy into being a “good caller” or a “realistic caller”. Now I’m not saying that it’s not important to sound good and have proper cadences and timing, but you can certainly get by with being a mediocre caller if you know how to choose your set ups. 

¨Now I know what most of you are thinking….Decoy…. Not necessarily. I almost never use a decoy but what I do is pick the right set up that forces the animal to step into the room(step into my kill zone) to see what’s calling to them. When choosing a location to call from, I want you to try to be on the other side of the calling and try to imagine what you would do if you were the animal approaching the sound that you’re hearing. Look at it like at it from the perspective of the wind and how an animal would use it, look at it from what is the most direct route to the call and how far animal would have to go to see the call.

¨The room you are creating can be a number of terrain features or vegetation and will depend heavily on what you got to work with.