# Youth Any Bull Success



## whitepd01 (Aug 26, 2014)

I wanted to share some stuff from my son's Youth Any Bull hunt. Stuff we learned and a few fun pics. About a month ago I came to this forum asking for some help as I didn't know much about bull elk hunting. I got a variety of responses to say the least. One fine member PM'ed me with some info and a specific spot to hunt. We did NOT hunt in that spot. But a HUGE thanks to that member... he knows who he is and I thank him for giving us some good advice and offering some help and suggestions. Much of what I will list below is common knowledge to others. Much of what I will share can be found via a search on your own. And I'm sure some of what I share the experts will disagree with.

1. Google earth and the Utah Hunt Planner are your friend. https://dwrapps.utah.gov/huntboundary/hbstart Everyone I talked to told me the secret to bull elk hunting is to get high in the mountains, then start hiking and get away from people and roads. Fink the thick crap away from people and there you will find the elk. So we spent lots of time looking for areas on the computer that looked promising.
2. Ask for help, even if the haters tell you not to. I got some good advice here. There is lots of advice to be found in old threads. I had figured a spot that we would hunt but I was still talking to people. About a week before the hunt my son and I were asking a good friend with lots of experience for advice. He asked where we were going and I told him exactly. I told him the exact lake we were starting at. Turns out he hunts within about 5 miles of where we were planning on going. He showed us exactly where he would go and what he would do. There are people that will help and share so don't be deterred by those who don't want to share or help.
3. Adapt to the situation. When we started hunting we went where my friend said. Wasn't as good as we thought. We ended up going where we thought best. Like most hunting once you get there your plans usually change.
4. We hunted the northern slope of the Uintah's. I think you could go about anywhere there and find elk. Simply pick a road, drive to trailhead, then start hiking. We found lots of other spots that looked great and I'm sure held bulls. We had a list of about 6 spots to try but ended up narrowing it down the more we researched. But I think we could go to any unit and find elk.
5. GPS is an absolute MUST. I use OnXMaps and the new version is awesome. We would not have killed our bull without GPS. It was so nice to just hop meadow to meadow based on what we could see on the the GPS. We would have been blind without it. The hybid (topo and satalite) map was great. We could see meadows, ridges, and we used it a a lot.
6. Take lots of cow calls. We found the bulls seemed to like 1 particular cow call more than the others. Find calls with different sounds and tones and take as many as you can. Then try them all and use what the bulls like. And practice calling before you go. I can't call for anything, my son though practiced and practiced and watched Youtube videos and by the time we went hunting he was pretty decent at working those calls.
7. Get a good meat pack. We fully expected to kill a bull and we were prepared for it. Turns out we were about 3 miles in when we killed my son's bull. Took us 7 hours and 2 trips to get him quartered and to the truck. Without that meat pack we would have been in serious trouble.
8. Have good boots. We put 18 miles on our boots in 48 hours and I don't think that is out of the ordinary. No surprise to hunters here. Good shoes, good gear, lots of layers, and rain gear!
9. You don't need to scout. We didn't. Don't feel like you have to. I don't have time to. We just went, hiked, and found the elk. Of course I'm not a trophy hunter. I'm a memory hunter so I don't worry about finding and killing the biggest animals in the world. We take what we are given.
10. If you bump a bull, keep calling. This bull we killed winded us and bolted. We thought we were done. We kept calling and 5 minutes later he came in from a different direction and we killed him.
11. Follow the bugles and the bulls. They may not come to you. You may have to go to them. The bull we killed came to us, but not until we went to him first.

For those who care, he shot the bull at 50 yards. Right thru the heart. Ruger Hawkeye 6.5 Creedmoor. Put a second shot in him while he was "running" for good measure because elk are tough buggers. But that bull was dead before he dropped 30 yards from where he started.

Here are some pictures of our hunt. Thanks again to those who encouraged and shared and hopefully some of my stuff here will help future hunters.


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## SidVicious (Aug 19, 2014)

Very Cool! Congrats to the both of you!


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## BradN (Sep 25, 2007)

Well done! And thanks for the tips.


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## hunting777 (May 3, 2009)

Great bull! Congrats


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## whitepd01 (Aug 26, 2014)

One wild thing about this hunt just for fun. We got there Wednesday night about 7PM, which was earlier than we expected. We had about 45 minutes of shooting time left. I told my son to grab his gun and we hussled to a meadow 1/2 mile in that I had seen on GPS. He could have killed what I think is this same bull that night. But my son didn't want to end a 3-4 day hunt 30 minutes after getting there. So he passed. We had 3-4 bulls respond that night. 2 of them came into view. The one 4x4 (I think the same) came 300 yards across the meadow and stopped about 40 yards from us LOL. Pretty cool! But he passed because we wanted to hunt. Thursday the wind was terrible. We saw 4 cows first thing in the morning, but nothing else the rest of the day. Heard 1-2 bugles but that was it. I guess the elk don't like 20-30 mph wind and they just hunker down. Trying to find and stalk them in the timber was a joke  Friday morning it had snowed lightly and the wind was still blowing a bit. Fog made visibility about 50 yards and we were a bit discouraged, especially after seeing that bull first thing when we got there, then nothing the day before, but decided to just go for it. Weather broke about 8-9am and we got some responses. So that's when we went and chased down this bull he ended up killing. We both agreed the extra 2 days hunting was worth the hard work. This bull had 1 thing on his mind, and it cost him! He was destined to come back to Richmond, UT!


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## toasty (May 15, 2008)

Great tips. Thanks for sharing.


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## bowhunt3r4l1f3 (Jan 12, 2011)

Awesome! Congrats to your boy on his first bull! Sounds like an awesome hunt with memories to last a lifetime!

Very cool hunt you got to participate in. I think that's some great advice to future youth hunters. In my experience that same advice simply doesn't apply to the general hunt. 

You were able to hunt when there were 500 hunters across the entire state pursuing these bulls. That makes a MASSIVE difference when compared to the 15,000 hunters entering the woods next weekend for the general hunt.


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## LostLouisianian (Oct 11, 2010)

Great story and that is one heck of a nice bull! I would shoot him any day and twice on Saturday if he came my way.


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## 3arabians (Dec 9, 2014)

Congrats on a great hunt!! 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk


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## johnnycake (Jul 19, 2011)

Way to go! I'm glad to hear that you guys got a bull, and really glad to hear that you were able to get some intel and figure out a bit on your own too. Congrats to your boy on a great first bull!


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## High Desert Elk (Aug 21, 2012)

Very nice!


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## CPAjeff (Dec 20, 2014)

So awesome - congrats!


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## KRH (Jul 27, 2015)

Great story. Thanks for sharing


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## Stickboy (Oct 28, 2010)

Great post! Thanks for the tips!!


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## DallanC (Jan 13, 2009)

Congratulations!


-DallanC


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## 30-06-hunter (Sep 22, 2013)

Simply awesome!


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## silentstalker (Feb 19, 2008)

Congrats to both of you! What a great adventure and a memory you will have forever!


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## neverdrawn (Jan 3, 2009)

Way to go! Sounds like memories to last a lifetime.


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## middlefork (Nov 2, 2008)

Nice job to the both of you!


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## Bow hunter mojo (Oct 12, 2013)

Thanks for sharing your lessons learned. I am glad you were able to experience success. Way to go!


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## ridgetop (Sep 13, 2007)

Congrats and thanks for sharing.


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## Springville Shooter (Oct 15, 2010)

Awesome! -----SS


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## turkinator (May 25, 2008)

That's awesome! Thank you so much for sharing your success and advice!


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## whitepd01 (Aug 26, 2014)

I had someone PM me a question I figured I would respond to here. Again, I am a total newb at elk hunting. He was asking me what calls we used. Here is my answer:

I bought 4 of them at Sportsman Warehouse. I honestly don't know what brand. I just bought 4 different ones because a friend of mine had told me last year he found that the elk his daughter killed responded to one of the calls and ignored the others. He told me to take a bunch of different cow calls.

So I bought these 4 calls, handed them to my son, and told him if he wanted to kill a bull he better figure out how to work the calls. He did.

My hunch is that different bulls at different times of the year like hearing different calls. What worked for us last week, probably wouldn't work next week. I figure bulls are like men.... what turns on one doesn't necessarily turn on all. So that's my $.02 on the situation. I am sure glad we had those calls though because over that couple of days, the bulls responded to 1 call much more than the other 3.


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## Vanilla (Dec 11, 2009)

This is what it is all about! Well done. Congrats on a great experience!


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## pollo70 (Aug 15, 2016)

Congrats!!


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## cc6565 (Feb 6, 2012)

My daughter just drew this tag so I googled youth anybull and found your post. Awesome story


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## pollo70 (Aug 15, 2016)

Persevering! That's what its all about awesome job and congrats! thanks for sharing. also "memory hunter" I like that


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## hazmat (Apr 23, 2009)

my cousins daughter smacked a good one on the south slope last year. Good luck


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## tjbowser (Jul 12, 2021)

whitepd01 said:


> I wanted to share some stuff from my son's Youth Any Bull hunt. Stuff we learned and a few fun pics. About a month ago I came to this forum asking for some help as I didn't know much about bull elk hunting. I got a variety of responses to say the least. One fine member PM'ed me with some info and a specific spot to hunt. We did NOT hunt in that spot. But a HUGE thanks to that member... he knows who he is and I thank him for giving us some good advice and offering some help and suggestions. Much of what I will list below is common knowledge to others. Much of what I will share can be found via a search on your own. And I'm sure some of what I share the experts will disagree with.
> 
> 1. Google earth and the Utah Hunt Planner are your friend. Utah Hunt Planner -- Utah Division of Wildlife Resources Everyone I talked to told me the secret to bull elk hunting is to get high in the mountains, then start hiking and get away from people and roads. Fink the thick crap away from people and there you will find the elk. So we spent lots of time looking for areas on the computer that looked promising.
> 2. Ask for help, even if the haters tell you not to. I got some good advice here. There is lots of advice to be found in old threads. I had figured a spot that we would hunt but I was still talking to people. About a week before the hunt my son and I were asking a good friend with lots of experience for advice. He asked where we were going and I told him exactly. I told him the exact lake we were starting at. Turns out he hunts within about 5 miles of where we were planning on going. He showed us exactly where he would go and what he would do. There are people that will help and share so don't be deterred by those who don't want to share or help.
> ...


My twelve year old daughter drew this tag for thisbyear. Would you be willing to email me at [email protected]? Would like to ask you some more questions, specifically trying to decide where to stay and decide on a starting point either north or south slope. Thank you.


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## MooseMeat (Dec 27, 2017)

tjbowser said:


> My twelve year old daughter drew this tag for thisbyear. Would you be willing to email me at [email protected]? Would like to ask you some more questions, specifically trying to decide where to stay and decide on a starting point either north or south slope. Thank you.


Hahahahahaha 

and so it begins


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