Tips & Tricks for Using Mouth Calls for Hunting Elk

I felt like, and I'm sure I looked like, Elmer Fudd as I tip toed behind this elk as he worked his way across a sagebrush flat. I thought no way was I going to get close enough for a shot, not to mention actually kill him. But, here I was, full draw and 10 yards away listening to him stomp around in the mud, raking his antlers on the shrub between him and me.

All the Difference in the World

15 years of preparation had gone into this moment. Hours of annoying my mother, driving my friends mad and getting weird looks as I made turkey noises with my mouth call on campus. I thought everything weird was accepted in Missoula, MT? I hear it all the time from hunters across the spectrum, "I just can't get use to that thing" or, "I'll never really need it". In this situation, one sound was all the difference in the world and if you can call in a turkey with a mouth call you can probably call in an elk with one too.

At full draw, you can't make too many call sounds with your hands, but you can with your mouth. As I closed the distance on the wallow, I knew I was going to be too close to make any movement when the moment of truth arrived. I had already ranged a few chunks of sagebrush, and popped in my single reed diaphragm call. At 10 yards, I let out the softest mew I could muster, hard to do at the rate my heart was pounding. That mew was met with an epic bugle and lustful raking of that scrawny shrub still between him and me. One more mew and the hunt for his new mate was on. 10 yards quickly turned to 5.

The Ugliest Cow

He stood there looking at me, probably thinking I was the ugliest cow he'd ever seen. Every pin I had covered his chest, but I couldn't get myself to take the shot at that angle. A mature bull elk doesn't stand around for long and by the time the second blob of mud had fallen from his chest he was gone, bolting off across the wallow to the other side of the coulee. One last mew from my trusty single reed.

I got my first diaphragm turkey call from my lifelong friend Stacey sometime around the age of 15. A three pack of Quaker Boy's "Screamin' Green" calls.   My favorite of that three pack was the world champ & I've gone through dozens since that gift. Many a long beard have been fooled by that call and more recently many have been fooled for friends, family and first timers. Dang, I love seeing the look on someone's face when a prehistoric (Velociraptor) looking bird lets off a big ole' gobble a few feet from your boots.

His Final Mistake

The anxiety between arrow release and recovery can be excruciating. The bull stopped one last time after that last mew, his final mistake. As always, the anxious feeling set in, but was short lived as I watched the bull's legs buckle a few seconds after the release. As he tipped over, I was flooded with emotions, but there were no high fives or screams of joy. It was an odd and eerie moment as I stood there over the old warrior, bow in hand and call still in my mouth. On the quiet walk back to the truck that evening, I relived that hunt a hundred times.