November 2018

Author: Garth Jenson

Every year, it is getting harder and harder to draw permits in good units throughout the West where trophy bull elk exist, especially if you are applying for rut hunts in September. Even early season archery tags have gotten to the point that they can be harder to draw than late season rifle elk tags. Ten to 15 years ago when archery hunting wasn’t nearly as popular and the equipment wasn’t nearly as effective, that never would have happened. The future looks especially grim for drawing early season elk hunts when you look at the states with point systems and realize that most of us won’t live long enough to reach the top point level it takes to guarantee an elk hunt during the rut in prime areas.

Hunting bull elk during the rut, while exhilarating, has its fair share of hurdles with elk constantly moving and bulls being located in totally different areas in September than they had been in all summer or during the winter months when most of us can scout. Since I was born a little late in life to be in the top point pool for most states, I have found that one of the ways I can hunt units with more mature bulls is by embracing hunting post-rut during the late season. The good thing about these late season hunts is that usually they will issue more permits for late seasons than early seasons, which gives me better odds of drawing.

In order to be successful on these late season bull elk hunts, you need to embrace the opportunity you have to hunt a great area and not get hung up on comparing it to the early season hunt because, in all reality, you would not have drawn the early season permit. In other words, get used to cold weather, thick cover, deep canyons, and the hours of glassing you will have in front of you in order to be successful. The beauty and the beast about late season bulls is the fact that they typically run in packs and rarely spend time wandering around the landscape like they do in September. The beast part is that you can be glassing the right area during the wrong time of day and not see a single elk. However, the beauty part of it is that if you do see a branch-antlered bull, you can be fairly certain that he has a few buddies in the same location and unless they are bumped by someone or something they can be found in that same area again.

One thing most mature bulls have in common during the late season is that none of them will be located close to heavily hunted country. Since elk can adapt to a multitude of environments and they have long legs, most of the time when you are hunting mountainous areas with snow on the ground, rest assured that they will be living in portions of the unit that have just enough snow to keep 99% of the hunters out. If you are hunting desert units, the elk seem to seek out the thickest, nastiest canyons they can find, which leaves very few openings to glass in. I know this makes it sound like the worst hunting experience ever, but trust me, once you embrace the grind and figure out those pockets to locate bulls in, you will have them to yourself. Besides, it will allow you to continually put bull tags in your pocket when others keep sitting on the sidelines waiting for the perfect hunt to come along.

There are a few things to consider if this style of hunting sounds like something you’re interested in. First, it can be cold, brutal weather half the time and the other half can have you glassing in a T-shirt, so your layering system will need to be on point. You will need to carry around twice as many clothes as an early season hunt, and trust me, at some point during the hunt, you’ll use them all. Transportation is another critical aspect that can be challenging during the late season, even more so than the typical wet, icy, and muddy roads. If you are hunting in a unit that is mountainous and elk are still at the top, oftentimes roads will either be impassable or have seasonal closure restrictions, which will leave you on foot or horseback. This can be both good and bad. It is good because it will eliminate the heavy hunting pressure, but it can be bad as it can limit how far you can go.

One aspect of late season hunts that I have come to appreciate versus the early hunts is that it’s not as timely of a situation to get the meat out of the field, which gives you a little more leash as to how far you can travel back in from the truck. Although the packing out of the animal is never the most desirable part of the hunt, it certainly takes some of the sting out knowing the meat is preserved and you can take your time and not kill yourself trying to move all of it out in a day’s time.

If you are going to be successful during a late season hunt, the single biggest factor is the amount of time you spend behind quality glass. Since most of the time I like to glass two to three miles or more away and I spend all day glassing, I use the best optics I can afford. This time of year, elk, especially mature bulls, will be very light in color and tend to stand out, which makes long-range glassing very effective. One way I try to maximize the time I spend behind glass is by combing the unit during the preseason on Google Earth to find vantage points that will allow me to see the most country possible from a single location, preferably as close to a 360 degree view as possible. If you are having to jump around constantly from vantage point to vantage point to see country, you will waste a bunch of time in transition that could have been spent glassing. I like to pick a spot where I can see sections of mountain ranges and multiple basins instead of picking spots where I can only see a single canyon or drainage. Once I’ve located elk, preferably bulls, I focus more attention on that specific canyon or drainage to see what else is in there. It’s because of this that when I select possible units to apply for a late season hunt I always look for units with a lot of topography with scattered openings to enhance glassing opportunities because you can’t kill what you can’t see.

After reading about the areas that bulls tend to congregate in post-rut, the next factor to think about is physical fitness. More often than not, this will be the determining factor on filling your tag or not. There are always those areas where the size of the bull gets drastically larger in order for me to go after them. Elk country is some of the most brutal, unforgiving country on the planet, especially when you throw snow, deadfall, and cold temperatures into the mix.

If you are behind the curve in the points game or you simply want to go on more elk hunts in quality areas, you should really take advantage of hunting the late seasons. Take a look at the table provided to see how much better your odds are of drawing late season tags versus early season tags in a few of the top units in some big bull states.