When gearing-up for an elk hunt, the author suggests purchasing equipment that will keep you comfortable during harsh weather, safe when the terrain becomes shaky, and on game in any situation. This means not skimping on essentials such as optics and other important gear.

For the past 25 years, I've been a serious, do-it-yourself archery elk hunter. Such being the case, I've slowly refined my elk hunting tactics down to a very productive system, which eliminates many of the mistakes that lower your odds for success. In the following lines, I'll try to highlight many of the ways that you can make such an outing more productive and enjoyable. If you're thinking about trying a "self" hunt for elk on our open public lands of the West, consider addressing these issues, and you'll save yourself a lot of hard knocks.

The Big Three
By far, most do-it-yourself bowhunts for elk are doomed to failure before they ever get started because an individual fails to supply a liberal dose of three critical ingredients: time, and physical and mental toughness. All these factors are intertwined, yet distinctly separate. Only by learning to combine all of them at a top-end level can you cross the dividing line between consistent success and average failure. Few people have any idea of the true level of participation I'm really talking about here; even fewer will ever grasp such a reality. Most stay on the porch, a few run with the big dogs.

Firstly, and by far most importantly, comes mental toughness--herein lies the single greatest factor to success or failure in the do-it-yourself, elk bowhunting game. You must have a burning desire to do it; to learn it, to settle for nothing less than your absolute best effort. If this is you, if you've got the fire inside, you'll find a way to supply everything else.

In addition to this mental toughness, you must be able to back it up with a capable, warm body that can get the job done. The physical rigors involved in this type of hunting must be experienced to be understood. Here, let me interject this: Certainly, you can bowhunt for elk on your own without "taking it to the limit," as I've always done. Nevertheless, from my own personal experience, this type of "top-end" effort is absolutely necessary to achieve the kind of success that I've enjoyed--100-percent, on public land, mature bulls.

If you've got the mind and body for the undertaking, then you must supply the time to bring it all together. You'll spend countless hours preparing for the trip before it ever starts. Additionally, whenever you get to elk country (especially if you'll be hunting above 10,000 feet in elevation), you must figure that a large part of the first week will be needed for your body to acclimatize, and to start to acquire the physical capacities it needs to accomplish the task at hand. As you can probably see why, I always allow at least two weeks for my elk trips--three weeks is much better. Let me give you an example of how I quickly learned the necessity of combining a liberal dose of time and toughness to assure success.