Getting Vocal
The calling business was a surprise. It has always been my impression that Roosevelt elk simply weren’t talkative, actually that they hardly called at all. Long conversations with Ken had revealed that quite the opposite was true. In fact, calling is how most Oregon Roosevelts are tagged. It’s the nature of the habitat that likely created this long-held myth. In the swallowing coast range confines hearing elk talk is simply less likely; bugles quickly soaked up by thronged vegetation. The greater surprise is that even the biggest bulls in Roosevelt country respond to calls, to bugling. In fact, if it weren’t for this fact few would be tagged at all.

Oregon's Coastal Range and its large expanses of old-growth timber can make a man feel small. The author stays on red alert after him and his guide, Ross Morris, encountered a small band of cows, but no bull was tagging along.

My own bugle produced no results so I carried on, emerging onto open clear-cut littered with smoking-hot elk sign and abruptly out of road with several prime morning hours remaining. With no response to my continued bugling I plunged into nasty forest, creating as much clamor as a herd of spooked cattle.

It turned into an interesting morning; crashing through that impenetrable cover blindly, following trails that quickly vanished into tangles of thorny blackberry brambles, playing my bugle to a seemingly empty theater. It resembled no elk hunting I’m familiar with and I had to admit I really needed a guide.

Senior guide Ross Morris shook his head knowingly while I related my morning’s frustrations. He reminded me yet again that this was not Rocky Mountain elk hunting. Only after a couple days under his tutelage would I fully understand the gist of his words. Bowhunting Roosevelt isn’t the physical dodge I attempted to make it. Roosevelt hunting’s a game of chess, covering ground, yes, but doing so smartly. Most importantly, you don’t go to Roosevelt. Roosevelt come to you. In those dry conditions especially, in that jungle-like brush, going to them was essentially fruitless. It was a complete reversal of everything New Mexico had taught me.

And then I did succeed in coaxing a Roosevelt to me, only to find I was still a world away from success…

During five days of bowhunting the author was taken from agony to ecstasy, his first hunt for Roosevelt elk going from hopeless to successful in a matter of a single morning

I got the bull going after spying a cow at the edge of abrupt cover in another of Ken’s scouted hotspots. I produced a subtle bugle and the bull responded immediately. I began slowly, mixing squealing bugles with cow calls, feigning a traveling herd. The bull was buying it.

The elk closed the gap quickly. Enthusiastic cow and calf chirps arrived on the wind and I discerned breaking limbs and thudding, excited hooves. They were just over a lip of pushed earth at the clear-cut edge, just inside swallowing forest. They couldnt have been more than 40 yards away but I saw no part of them. Then I blew it. I became impatient and more insistent with my calls. And the forest grew conspicuously quiet. I circled and got that bull going again but the light was going fast. Again I heard, breaking branches, excited cows, but no tell-tale tan. And then it was dark and finished and with it my vain aspirations of impressing the experts.

Come morning I had my guide. We traveled a labyrinth of logging roads, parked well back from landings or inconspicuous road bends, stalked road edges to bugle into sudden clear-cuts. We quietly trekked blocked logging skids, bugled at odd intervals, but turned back when the skids abruptly ended. Ross knew of secreted, fern-blanketed benches that traditionally harbored elk. Then we fought brush a half mile or more, choked on fern dust, and emerged to produce a couple bugles that fell on seemingly deaf ears.

It became apparent that the Roosevelt’s demeanor more closely mirrored that of whitetail deer than nomadic Rocky Mountain elk. Fresh sign was everywhere, but the elk themselves remained invisible. We were hunting on faith gained through scouting. Ken and Ross spend endless hours during summer months locating elk concentrations, and particular bulls, glassing open clear-cuts, attempting to establish patterns, determining if new logging activity has created or destroyed hotspots. In short, it’s the kind of scouting that holds little reward at home. Rocky Mountain elk seldom camp out on a single swatch of ground long. Roosevelt are simply less inclined to wander. Even with hunting pressure they are more inclined to hunker down than seek greener pastures. For this reason alone we concentrated our efforts on a relative few locations to the point of tedium.