Bring me on your scouting trip......

[iccyman001]

I am heading out Saturday and I am going to try to take LOTS of pictures and get lots of miles under my boots.

Looking forward to hearing about your adventures and seeing the pics, Dan!

Here are a couple of trail cam pics from last Year after the trip:

I haven\'t checked the cam in over 6 months...time to get back up there and see what\'s on it!

I\'d be very interested on what you find on your cameras! You know there is probably a monster just waiting on there. :shock:
Nice cows :dance2:

 

[iccyman001]

I scout on the ground 2-3 times a week from now until the start of the season. I\'m looking for last year\'s rutting sign. Once I find it I then start putting together the pieces of the puzzle. Why were the elk there then? Where do they bed, feed, water, go when pressured from the most likely direction pressure will come from.

Last year I found rutting sign in a spot along an old closed logging road. The road is several miles long but the sign was only in an area about 1/3 mile wide, a mile in. There were no elk there in June, but after a popular ATV road was opened on the other side of the mountain I started seeing fresh elk tracks in that same little spot. The further I went in on that old road, the less sign I found even though all the habitat seemed exactly the same.

I put the pieces together, figured out why they come to that place to feed and how they travel relative to the thermals, and where they bed so I could stay far away from that when hunting. I should have killed a 310 bull there the first time I hunted it. Had him at 25 yards but just couldn\'t get a shot angle. Some other guys in a camp near the ATV road heard him bugling and ran in on him right before dark with the wrong wind, blowing him and the herd out. They never came back.

But now I know how to hunt that spot, and you can bet I\'ll be back fine-tuning it even more as soon as this danged snow melts..

That\'s awesome you have it down now and you\'ll be able to fine tune it over the next few months.
I look forward to hearing your results this upcoming year then. I have a feeling it\'ll go very well :upthumb:

 

[iccyman001]

Lou,

can you touch more on this \"rutting sign\" that you are looking for?