ORhunter74
Lil-Rokslider
Some quick background. I live in Oregon and am an adult onset hunter after relocating here from Philadelphia. I have hunted almost entirely in the coast range and have never been terribly successful. And not having grown up hunting elk (or anything else for that matter) I know very little about them.
Yesterday while bear hunting on a small chunk of private property that I’m lucky enough to have access to, I set up an electronic predator caller in the middle of the day and managed to annoy a mature bull elk enough to rouse it from its bed and send it casually walking off. After I finished the unsuccessful calling set, I started investigating the elk further. This guy appears to have spent quite a while living ON this old abandoned logging road. There were 5 or 6 beds of varying ages and huge piles of droppings in each of them. There also happens to be a small run off drainage that flows out on one side of the road down into some thick and nasty. I had seen tracks and droppings in May while spring bear hunting but kind of figured he was just passing through. I’ve hunted this property a couple times a year for the past five years and had never seen ANY sign of elk before this spring.
My question to those with any Roosevelt elk knowledge and experience is this. Is it worth going back there in November during rifle season? He will have had zero legal hunting pressure by then but will he even still be in the area? Is it at all likely that he’ll come back to the solitude he’s enjoying here after the rut? Sorry for the long winded post, but any insight or personal experiences shared would be greatly appreciated!
Yesterday while bear hunting on a small chunk of private property that I’m lucky enough to have access to, I set up an electronic predator caller in the middle of the day and managed to annoy a mature bull elk enough to rouse it from its bed and send it casually walking off. After I finished the unsuccessful calling set, I started investigating the elk further. This guy appears to have spent quite a while living ON this old abandoned logging road. There were 5 or 6 beds of varying ages and huge piles of droppings in each of them. There also happens to be a small run off drainage that flows out on one side of the road down into some thick and nasty. I had seen tracks and droppings in May while spring bear hunting but kind of figured he was just passing through. I’ve hunted this property a couple times a year for the past five years and had never seen ANY sign of elk before this spring.
My question to those with any Roosevelt elk knowledge and experience is this. Is it worth going back there in November during rifle season? He will have had zero legal hunting pressure by then but will he even still be in the area? Is it at all likely that he’ll come back to the solitude he’s enjoying here after the rut? Sorry for the long winded post, but any insight or personal experiences shared would be greatly appreciated!
