Summer Scouting

Talking about summer already right?! anywho... FINALLY convinced my old man to come elk hunting with me next year. Figured he has 10 good years of mountain hunting left l want to make the best of it(and my mom wants his moping arse outta the house but that's a different story lol)

I got my vacation bumped to 4 weeks and plan on using 12 days of vacation to hunt MT, either all at once for rifle or splitting it for archery and rifle.

We decided we're going to take a week in the summer to go and scout the unit we end up deciding on/obtain tags in.I had two general questions on this:

1) Is there any literature that'd help me out with summer elk scouting or preseason elk scouting in general. My dad has all of Randy's shows on DVR at home and every time I go home he "shows me a new one" he just recorded but it typically turns out to be another one we've already seen but I still watch it. He doesn't have memory loss lol he just gets so excited because I live far away and don't see him much.

2) If we do rifle, is it worth it to go out there because the elk will be in the high country in the summer and when rifle comes the winter will push them down lower. Or should we just use topo maps, or is actually getting our feet out there on the land and getting a hands on feel going to help us more in the long run

Scouting is a great way to learn your way around a unit and to figure out what elk are available. I go every year and setup trail cameras to get needed information and get in shape. I check the cameras before hunting season to determine which unit has the best potential. I hunt mostly archery season so I can focus on the elks summer range. Colorado Parks and Wildlife has a hunting atlas that shows areas where elk are in the summer and in the winter (see their site). Montana has something similar but it is not as detailed as the one for Colorado. Still there are map companies that have maps that can help. I use all the information that I can find to help me in my search for areas that can hold elk in the summer. I use Google earth to evaluate how promising an area can be for holding elk. I look for remote areas that are at least 3 miles from roads that have good water, cover, and feed (meadows).

The trail cameras help me determine the quality and quantity of the animals available in the unit. I hunt over the counter units that get lots of hunting pressure so these locations need to have a place for the elk to escape to when the hunting pressure gets too high. This usually means private land for winter range.

I would suggest you split your time between archery and rifle. Scout during the Summer then pick a location and go there during the archery hunt to learn the area and discover what the elk do and to get a first crack on a wallowing bull. Try and determine the migration routes they use to their winter range and then show up in those locations for the rifle hunt with your dad in tow. Elk like to use the same routes to their Winter range so if you can locate them it becomes a timing thing (when will they show up?) The weather or hunting pressure will push them to the Winter range. There is one strange thing that happens in the Winter. Really big bulls will stay as high as they can all Winter if possible. They will find a canyon with good water and brush to feed on and will not come down to the valleys where the cows and younger bulls spend the winter. This is not true in all cases but I have seen lots of videos where large late season bulls are taken way up in the high country.

Pick an area and use Google earth to do fly overs to get a feel for its potential. Look for water, feed, cover, and trails. Heck I have even seen herds of elk show up on the satellite pictures. You could get lucky too. Head up there in the middle of June or early July and hang some trail cameras. Then after a month go and check on them to see what quality and quantity of elk exist in that unit. Use that information to plan your archery hunt and then use what you learn during archery to plan your rifle hunt.

One last thing. You can use shed hunting as an opportunity to determine the location of the elks winter range and see the quality of elk that made it through the winter. If you want to get an Idea of what the potential is for using trail cameras search for Royal Point Hunting on Youtube. I have several videos of summer scouting that could give you some ideas. Oh one thing on the trail cameras. Set them high in the tree pointing down. Elk and bears can sense them and will wreck havoc on them when they find them. You can put them in a bear box but they are heavy to carry and a pain to install.

Anyway. Enjoy your summer.,
HondoArcher.