Hey Randy ... How about a series of videos on putting these how-tos into practice?

Randy,

These youtube videos, OnX, and GoHunt Insider is great and all ... but I'm probably not the only one here that would love to see a series of videos, from start to end (from getting the tag to tagging out), that puts everything together in one real world example hunt from start to finish. I want to see you pick a strategy to get this particular tag, then the e-scouting, then the trip planning, .... and so on, all the way until the end when you tag out, and then haul camp and the meat out. A very detailed web series of just one hunt. It can be a cow elk hunt, or it can be another species for that matter. I think this would serve the community well (though at the expense of one place on the map possibly getting overrun in the future by having it documented on the web).

I don't think you'll ever get the Big Fin and Crew to spill the beans on what specific area they are going to hunt. Nor do I want them to. The comment you make about a spot getting overrun is on-the-money and not a price I'd be willing to pay. Imagine if that were your hunting spot that you'd been hunting for a few years. I'd be more than a little upset if a crew spoon-fed and documented (that will remain for years on the web) everything I've worked hard at to learn about on my own in a public land area. There's plenty of general info out there on Randy's YouTube channel that can help. What else is there to do in the off season beside stay in shape and learn?

I think its a great idea. But yes I wouldn't want someones favorite area to get overrun.

I've wished for something like this. I mean, I get the issues with getting a spot overrun, but there must be a way to get past that. Maybe work with a private landowner and show the process (even if there is no actual hunting, just a demonstration) of ground-truthing all that online scouting in a brand new spot. It's private land, so no issue with it getting swamped by hunters. Experienced elk hunters don't need it, but there is nothing out there for newbies connecting all the online scouting to actually putting it on the ground. I've done the statistics on FWP surveys, harvest data, hunting pressure, and trends. I've pored over OnX Maps ownership layers. I've studied Google Earth, looking for water, feed, and cover. Then I get to my chosen spot and it all falls apart. My spot doesn't look like the elk spots I see on TV. I understand that dark timber makes for lousy television, and that Randy has to go to areas where he knows there is a good chance of at least seeing- and filming- elk. I get to a spot that looked good on Google Earth, and it's all straight up with dog-hair pines. Getting far enough away from the road to actually be hunting would take all day, and I'm really reluctant to invest that time without any real idea if there are actually elk in there. A day spent struggling back into that is a day I can't hunt somewhere else. I just have no clue what I'm doing. What if I'm completely wrong? What if I get a mile back and never see a track? People on the opposite slope laughing in their spotting scopes- "Look at that moron hunting over there. Who would ever expect to see elk in that?" I wasn't born in elk country. I grew up hunting farmland whitetails. I'm too damn old to spend many seasons learning how NOT to hunt elk. So I end up paralyzed by indecision, and driving from one possible spot to another, hoping to see some sign that one of them is a good place to hunt. I suppose that's the downside of putting together several back-up spots, and a few back-up back-ups.

Ladykiller said:

Randy,

These youtube videos, OnX, and GoHunt Insider is great and all ... but I'm probably not the only one here that would love to see a series of videos, from start to end (from getting the tag to tagging out), that puts everything together in one real world example hunt from start to finish. I want to see you pick a strategy to get this particular tag, then the e-scouting, then the trip planning, .... and so on, all the way until the end when you tag out, and then haul camp and the meat out. A very detailed web series of just one hunt. It can be a cow elk hunt, or it can be another species for that matter. I think this would serve the community well (though at the expense of one place on the map possibly getting overrun in the future by having it documented on the web).

Click to expand...

Have you watched Randy's Youtube channel? I feel like Randy and crew already have done this quite well.

I want to hunt X species in X state. Use gohunt and I have X points and here are my unit options. Chose X unit because of options researched in gohunt, escouting, and learned knowledge. Draw a tag then great. Didn't draw then better luck next year.

Hitting the ground running for X days. Ideally scout a day or two ahead of the season and find one to kill on opening day. If not keep scouting and hunting until found one. If not then go home with tag soup. If killed it then load up the packs and get the meat cooled off as quick as possible.


I have not yet had a chance to put this to practice for myself with western tags and hunting. I'm sure there will be many unforeseen hurdles to overcome in the planning part of the trip and while in the field, but I think the videos do a good job a laying out his process. Everything from escouting to how to field cape and quarter.

jtm307 said:

Have you watched Randy's Youtube channel? I feel like Randy and crew already have done this quite well.

Click to expand...

This^^^^

Too many people are relying on "help" to take all the hunt, out of the hunt. I never had any of the help that Randy provides for free to anyone that cares to take the time to learn. I learned from mistakes, lots of hiking, lots of glassing, copious journal/note taking...observing, yada yada. I still do all those things, including the mistakes...many mistakes. The one thing I was fortunate with is a huge desire to learn how to hunt and a Father that would take us anytime we wanted to go. Dad taught us the very basics, and we just built on it from there.

There's only so much a person can provide via a website or youtube video. Just have to get out and do it. Pay the fiddler with the hard knocks, unpunched tags, and the learning curve...just like most any other good hunter has done.

There's all the info you need on the site if you do a little searching. Why does Randy need to show A to Z?

I don't know how Randy could possibly provide more information on tag drawing strategies, online scouting, animal behavior, etc than he already has. Maybe they aren't arranged in chronological order and spoon fed to his audience but the information is out there. To provide more information he'd have to offer "accountant like" services to each person individually. Maybe that's his next business venture...bring people into his "Randy room" and go over their point status, trophy expectations, physical capabilities, and financial situation to create an application strategy geared specifically for them.

scubohuntr said:

I've wished for something like this. I mean, I get the issues with getting a spot overrun, but there must be a way to get past that. Maybe work with a private landowner and show the process (even if there is no actual hunting, just a demonstration) of ground-truthing all that online scouting in a brand new spot. It's private land, so no issue with it getting swamped by hunters. Experienced elk hunters don't need it, but there is nothing out there for newbies connecting all the online scouting to actually putting it on the ground. I've done the statistics on FWP surveys, harvest data, hunting pressure, and trends. I've pored over OnX Maps ownership layers. I've studied Google Earth, looking for water, feed, and cover. Then I get to my chosen spot and it all falls apart. My spot doesn't look like the elk spots I see on TV. I understand that dark timber makes for lousy television, and that Randy has to go to areas where he knows there is a good chance of at least seeing- and filming- elk. I get to a spot that looked good on Google Earth, and it's all straight up with dog-hair pines. Getting far enough away from the road to actually be hunting would take all day, and I'm really reluctant to invest that time without any real idea if there are actually elk in there. A day spent struggling back into that is a day I can't hunt somewhere else. I just have no clue what I'm doing. What if I'm completely wrong? What if I get a mile back and never see a track? People on the opposite slope laughing in their spotting scopes- "Look at that moron hunting over there. Who would ever expect to see elk in that?" I wasn't born in elk country. I grew up hunting farmland whitetails. I'm too damn old to spend many seasons learning how NOT to hunt elk. So I end up paralyzed by indecision, and driving from one possible spot to another, hoping to see some sign that one of them is a good place to hunt. I suppose that's the downside of putting together several back-up spots, and a few back-up back-ups.

Click to expand...

I too grew up chasing farmland whitetails...walking tree lines and shooting deer when they came running out. I would never do that today, but growing up, deer drives were very common. By going through some of the challenges that you elude to in your post, is exactly how I feel I have evolved into a better hunter. When you log numerous miles in a day without seeing anything, is it tough to get up the next morning and do it all over again...heck yes it is, but it's that sense of adventure and optimism that keep me going. Those buggers travel, so maybe we can catch them tomorrow...maybe not, but we are going to try.

I went on my first elk hunt in 2013 and it was a guided thing in WY that my brothers and I did with my father for his retirement. I caught the bug for sure as we all harvested our first bull elk, but what really changed the game is when my guide pulled me to the side before we left and he said, "if you thought this was fun, learn how to shoot a bow and go chase them in September." To this day, I thank that man for helping introduce me to archery elk hunting. In 2014, I did not apply for an archery tag, but I did in 15, 16, 17, and 18 and I was able to harvest elk(cows) in two out of four years. I am by no means an elk hunting expert, but I really do enjoy everything there is about planning and working on a strategy for the coming season.

You mention not being looked at as a moron, my brother and I call it "LTS", meaning Limit The Stupid. Boy oh boy have we made mistakes, some that we can laugh at and some that still make us want to cry. My point is, I would gain as much info as you can from the folks on here, ELK 101, books, podcasts(great during off season workouts) and then just hit the hills and create an adventure. You will win some days and lose on others, but as long as you put in time and a solid effort, you will have accomplished something great. One of my favorite things to do when I'm on the mountain/prairie/breaks/etc is stand in a spot and wonder if any other human has ever set foot there, and if they have, what was their experience like? Just lose yourself and enjoy the creation.

Best of luck

jtm307 said:

Have you watched Randy's Youtube channel? I feel like Randy and crew already have done this quite well.

Click to expand...

BuzzH said:

This^^^^

Too many people are relying on "help" to take all the hunt, out of the hunt. I never had any of the help that Randy provides for free to anyone that cares to take the time to learn. I learned from mistakes, lots of hiking, lots of glassing, copious journal/note taking...observing, yada yada. I still do all those things, including the mistakes...many mistakes. The one thing I was fortunate with is a huge desire to learn how to hunt and a Father that would take us anytime we wanted to go. Dad taught us the very basics, and we just built on it from there.

There's only so much a person can provide via a website or youtube video. Just have to get out and do it. Pay the fiddler with the hard knocks, unpunched tags, and the learning curve...just like most any other good hunter has done.

Click to expand...

^^^^^ This! Watching and learning helped but doing helped the best. Experience is the best teacher!

I forgot to mention one important details. It needs to be a spot Randy has never been and would to therefore be goiing in blind like the rest of us.

I think too many folks have the expectation they should be able to garner enough information on the web that there is no inherent risk of failure. At a certain point, you just need to get out and learn from hard knocks.

Even those of us born in elk country get a mile or more back and don’t see tracks. Or we see other hunters. Or we waste a day driving around to recon a new spot. Or the spots we picked all suck. That’s why it’s called hunting.

I am continually amazed at the wealth of information that is so readily available to hunters, yet it seems the expectations are for more help, more information, less chance of “failure “.

Hunter numbers would probably be in the tank if there wasn't youtube and the internet to teach them. mtmuley

Ladykiller said:

I forgot to mention one important details. It needs to be a spot Randy has never been and would to therefore be goiing in blind like the rest of us.

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If he did this for you, I wonder how many will accuse him of guiding? Don’t you want some satisfaction of doing on your own? After all, your on a do it yourself Forum.

Thanks for tossing out that idea. Others have asked us to do that, also. I started to reply earlier, but wanted to give it more thought. Pardon the length and rambling of this reply.

I preface everything by reminding folks that I'm pretty below average. There are folks on this site who I would put on a pedestal when it comes to hunting certain places, species, or seasons. If one hangs out here and pays close attention, there is probably more great information provided on this site than on any place on Al Gore's world wide web. A month of studying on Hunt Talk would likely yield greater benefit than any content series I could produce.

We use media platforms to provide information and encouragement to get out and try things or to hunt more than they otherwise would have. The WHY of our platforms is "To promote self-guided public land hunting and create advocates for that cause." In that effort, we try to balance the benefit of providing information that might have been helpful for me to know along my elk hunting journey against information we feel is best learned by experience and failure. It is not a perfect balance and we are trying some ideas and purposefully not trying others. Some of the things we do are working and a few experiments weren't what we hoped for.

I provide that background to explain why we do what we do and how we do it, as imprecise and imperfect as it is. I feel there is great benefit in some lessons being learned by failure or frustration. I see value in bits of information being learned by researching and working hard at teaching oneself, with the self-discovered/self-taught pieces being the nuggets that best prepare us for applying the same research and discovery manners to the next hunt or the next species or the next location.

Gear, basic camp skills, field dressing, overlooked opportunities, draw strategies, all seem to be things that are easily explained and help people with steps that will get them in the field, get them a tag, keep them safe, or get their game out of the field. If you looked at our content white boards, you would see that we try to provide foundational basics in everything we do. We expect people will take those basics and apply those systems on their hunt, learning how to adapt to their preferred hunting style or their local hunting area.

We try to put some "How to" content in everything we do, to varying degrees. Some are straight "How to" segments. Others pieces are meant to primarily entertain, with some "How to" mixed in.

The E-scouting series we did with onX last year was one I gave a lot of consideration to. It was the most direct "How to" start-to-finish series we've ever done, even more so than the tag drawing overviews we do each year. I feel I fell short with that series, based on feedback I've received. I had hoped people would focus on the basics that explain the five calendar periods of the elk season and the four basic needs of elk. That is how you find elk. That system can be applied to deer or other species, just like I adapted it to elk by reflecting on how I was successful catching walleyes in new lakes.

Most the feedback I got was people asking about tactics and gear, which told me I had not explained how important those basics are. I've went and re-watched that series a couple times to see what I could do to explain it more. I'm not sure, but given how people seem to have skipped past those very important basics, it is obvious I did something wrong. Every question I get asked I answer by going back to that basic premise that you find elk based on the seasonal need they have at the time you are hunting.

We also got a lot of heat for publishing that series, summarized as, "Why are you telling everyone this information? Let them figure it out." Same as we get heat when we say we are in "Central Wyoming" or "Southern Arizona" or "Southeast Montana" or "Western Colorado." There is a balance we try to find that determines how much information we give or don't give, mostly driven by what I think they can/should figure out by trial and error. Some are mad if we don't give GPS coordinates and have even contacted sponsors to complain that I wouldn't tell them where we hunted. And I've had others hammer me for saying what state we are hunting. Point being, no matter what we do, some think it is too much information and some think it is not enough. My job to direct where on that information spectrum we operate.

The lesson I drew from that E-scouting series is that most hunters don't want to invest the time in learning about elk; what elk need, when they need it, and how those two questions solve the riddle of where elk will go to satisfy those needs. It is not as sexy as the latest gear items or calling strategies or long distance shooting or fitness or....... But, those basic points are way more important to consistently finding elk than any of the sexy items. Maybe I need a tattoo on my forehead, "To kill an elk you have to find an elk."

Finding elk is the biggest struggle hunters face. It was, and still is, for me. In the past I would focus on "shiny objects" of gear and shortcuts, thinking that was the solution to finding elk. Nope. The more I get back to the foundational aspects and think that through in more detail, the quicker I get through the drought periods of no elk.

I am surprised at the number of hunters, no matter the species, who want/expect some magical short cut as a replacement for the lifetime learning about the species they are hunting. That is a reality I have to consider when we produce content. Do we just do pieces that are the click bait short cuts and avoid the foundational pieces that help people build their elk knowledge? Or, do we continue to hammer on these basics of how we find elk in different states, across a variety of habitats, during many different seasons? Do we just show the days when we find elk or do we show the days we struggle to find elk and explain the learning experience that provides me, even after 25 years of hunting elk?

Those preceding paragraphs might seem a bit of a tangent, but it gets it me to this explanation. The content we provide is to educate (to whatever degree a below average hunter can educate), inform, and entertain. Hopefully a bit of inspiration mixed in to that. In doing so, we mix it up and hope the people will follow along and gain a bit along the way.

We know that hunting is species dependent, location specific, influenced by condition/season, and each hunter has a different interest in topics. For us to do a start-to-finish series on any species would be a large content investment on a hunt that might only fit a very small segment of hunters who hunt that way/species/habitat. I feel we need to continue preaching the foundation of how to find elk and let the viewer develop their own tricks and tactics that work best for their hunting style/location. Finding elk is fun. Help people consistently find elk on public land will make it more fun for them and provide more encounters. More encounters lead to more mistakes, which leads to more learning. Or, at least it works that way for me.

I can't say we won't someday do what you mention. Given what I've learned while producing digital content in the last few years, we have the entire 2019 year planned, pending what tags we draw. We have targeted 2019 as the "Year of the Elk" for us. We want to dive deeper into elk hunting and all that it entails, focusing on the basics of finding public land elk consistently. We have examples of what content has worked and what hasn't, with those successes and failures guiding us for 2019.

Maybe I will miss the mark in 2019 and I will come back to this thread and decide it would be better to do what you suggest. Thanks for throwing it out there. You are one of many who have made a similar request.

Ladykiller said:

I forgot to mention one important details. It needs to be a spot Randy has never been and would to therefore be goiing in blind like the rest of us.

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If you do your e-scouting, you won't be going in blind. My best NM spot was found from my recliner. WY last year, from the table in my camper. After that it's just as Buzz mentioned; mistakes and learning from them.

Great response Randy, It kind of saddens me that our sport has become less learning about the pray and developing the skill to harvest them and more about shopping

Loved the response Big Fin. I think you do a great job delivering your message and you love of hunting. On many occasions you can hear Randy say during his shows how he picks the areas he chooses to hunt. I think it is great that you are reaching out to the other hunters and showing them that you can harvest a nice animal on public land during general season. I appreciate that you show the public your ethics and that you, an avid hunter sometimes comes home empty handed. I appreciate that you show what it's like to be a public land hunter. Thank you for Fresh Tracks, Hunt Talk and thank you for all you do. You are truly inspirational.

Most hunters succumb to the temptation that they can compensate for limited time in the woods by spending more on gear, guns, and optics. All these things are necessary but the most important factor for success in my opinion is making the financial sacrifice to ensure you have enough time spent in the woods. Guys spend thousands on gear for a 4-5 day elk hunt and when they don’t kill they assume better gear or more knowledge would have made them successful. They would have been better off with less gear and more days. If you guys don’t remember anything else that Randy wrote in his post, remember this. Finding elk is the hardest part. Elk are actually easy to kill. Finding them and the physical effort of getting within shooting range is the hard part.