A picture-book elk setting. Make no mistake, though; Elk will evade hunters by taking up residence in the toughest possible country--even if it means they have to travel to find food.

But at the turn of the century, outlaws, hired riflemen and subsistence hunters had left few elk in their wake. In 1910, the U.S. Forest Service estimated that fewer than 1,000 elk remained in Colorado. A 1918 survey of Forest Service lands in Idaho showed only 610 elk. Where elk had been protected, herds quickly rebounded. Then they were pounded by hard winters in 1897, 1909, 1911 and 1917. As many as 10,000 elk may have starved in Jackson Hole during the winter of 1897, a decade before that area was declared an elk refuge. Wildfires in Idaho during 1910 and 1913 benefited future generations of big game by setting back forest succession; but they eliminated thousands of acres of thermal cover and forage for the short term--and even killed many elk directly.

Efforts at the turn of the century to "bring back the game" were largely driven from the top--that is, by government. But hunters actively backed big game restoration. One of the most ambitious of game transplanting projects began in Yellowstone Park in 1892. During the next 50 years, more than 5,200 of the park's elk were shipped to 36 states, as well as to Canada and Argentina. That effort and many since have paid off. From a total count of around 41,000 in 1907, elk on U.S. ranges have now come to number nearly a million.

Chapter 3: Calling Elk
Elk don't make just one sound. And what they communicate is still largely a mystery. The typical "Unh-ai-EEEE! yuh, yuh" has been called a challenge. But many bulls give voice when they have no intention of fighting. Some bugle a lot, others infrequently. Besides bugling, you'll hear chirps, grunts, gurgles and squeals. Cows and calves mew to each other. Adult elk often bark when they sense an intruder just outside their "immediate threat" zone.

You needn't spend a lot of money on elk calls. Like guitars, some sound better than others--but a good guitarist always attracts a crowd. You must do more than sound like an elk to other people. You must sound like an elk to an elk. That means finding your own elk voice. If you simply try to sound like a perfect elk, you'll miss the more important mandate: Be natural. Perhaps, with much practice, you could sing "New York" almost like Frank Sinatra, or give a passable Elvis rendition of "Kentucky Rain." But in neither case would you sound just like the artist, and you wouldn't sound natural.

There are contests for elk calling now. One fellow who has served as a judge in a number of these contests admitted to me that he knows what a winning bugle is supposed to sound like, but he can't really say if it sounds like an elk.

Elk answer to train whistles and coyotes and hunters blowing into PVC pipe. Elk have come to the tinny coiled whistles that hunters carried when you could buy a new pickup for $3,500. If you go where there are lots of bull elk, you'll find that in voice, bulls are as individualistic as people. If you tape your own bugling, you'll also discover that like the message you record for your telephone answering machine, your elk call may sound different to you when you listen and aren't actively making noise.

On the street, few people talk in textbook English. I suspect that, in the woods, textbook elk is as rare. Elk do not practice to sound like instructional elk calling tapes. In fact, because so many hunters have now heard the same calling tapes and read the same magazine articles, it is becoming possible to tell a hunter's bugle by its lack of personality. When you talk to elk, remember that elk hear lots of bugling and that they don't respond to all of it. If a bull answers, remember what put him in the mood and try it again. Or mimic the bull. Answering quickly and with the same message you hear is safe strategy. Your job is to convince elk that you are an elk. Not a Sinatra elk or an Elvis elk, just an elk.

Today's elk hunter is indeed fortunate. There were fewer than 50,000 elk at the dawn of the century. Now there are nearly a million.

If you expect the bull to visit, you must first make it easy for him. Calling from the lip of a bluff delivers your voice to a big area and offers great visibility. But elk won't get out their climbing ropes to reach you. Nor will they walk to a dead end. Elk don't like to corner themselves in steep places. Nor do they expect other elk to be there, bugling. Elk live in places that are easy to reach and easy to leave. They don't like steep slopes or the bottoms of canyons.

Some hunters recommend that you position yourself so that an elk must come through a place that gives you a perfect shot or that denies him downwind drift of your scent. That's reasonable advice, but you won't always find it easy to follow. Some places that elk stay during rut are too thick to give you lots of open shooting, no matter where you set up. And denying a bull the option of circling your post or coming in downwind may keep him from responding at all. I always set up where there's cover enough to hide an elk.

Good hunters are good opportunists, and I'm always looking for a new place to put a stand. If it won't work for elk, maybe it will for other big game. One of my deep-timber stands was chosen for me by an elk that died at the site. He'd taken my arrow at dusk, then run far enough that I'd lost the blood sign in the dark. Returning first thing the next morning, I found the bull--but a bear had already snacked. A better place to shoot a bear was hard to imagine, so I cleared an approach through the lodgepoles.

At dawn, I was back--to find the bear already busy inside the ribcage. I sneaked toward it along my path, thankful I'd removed most of the tinder-dry twigs. But even the needles popped and spat under my sneakers. Twenty yards downwind and off the bear's flank, I stopped. The animal was certain to hear me if I crept closer. I drew and released, but the shaft hit a twig just shy of the bear's chest and caromed away.

There's a postscript to this tale. When I got to the carcass, I found it swarming with yellowjackets. The din was so loud that the bear could not possibly have heard me coming. I might have had a shot measured in feet had I sneaked in from the rear. My plan had not taken into account either the little branch or the bees. Overlooking a couple of details at that elk carcass, I had failed. A stand is not a place. It is more a sense of place. It is where you want to be when an elk (or any other big game) makes itself vulnerable.

Wayne van Zwoll, HUNTING's senior field editor, has written hundreds of hunting articles over the past 25 years. Many of those include adventures he's had with elk, his favorite big game. Wayne's latest book, Elk and Elk Hunting, was published earlier this year by Safari Press (714/894-9080; info@safaripress.com).

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