Well, welcome to Elk Week, everybody. This is day one of what will be five back-to-back daily episodes this week on How to Hunt Elk.

So the whole idea with this series was basically pulling you guys to get what are the most common questions, what are the things you guys want to know?

What can help you most for Elk hunting, which is hopefully kicking off here in a few days or a few weeks for you.

But we talked with quite a few guys in each of these episodes. You're going to hear from Dan Staten, Cory Jacobson, Paul Medell, and Trent from Born and Raised Outdoors.

And so we take these four guys and give them the same question, the same topic, get their opinion, their thoughts, and their suggestions.

So in this first one, for example, we're talking about how to find Elk and their top tactics for finding Elk.

So this could be before season, during season, but when they boil down, how do they find Elk?

So Steve, this series is similar to the podcast series we did in July, the roundtable, but focus specifically on Elk. Just to kick things off, what comes to mind for you on this topic of just locating and finding Elk, what is your go-to?

Hmm, yeah, good question. I think it's really hard for me to narrow that one down.

I guess at all, I mean, you can do as much e-scoutings you want, but you've got to get boots on the ground and just get out there and spend some time in the woods.

And you're going to, yeah, to me, that's probably it, to be honest with you, it's not. There's no shortcut to this answer.

There's the best places you could scout online and you get out there and they're just not good. And I know it's not a great answer for guys because it doesn't help.

But you just got to get out there and scout. And then if you can't scout, man, that's when you really need to dive into your research on the e-scouting side of it, I guess.

And get on the phone and talk to biologists and find out if there's other hunters and look at harvest success rates and things like that to do your best homework that you can.

So if you're going and blind, you're at least as informed as you possibly can be. But in my experience, I've just found, you know, every, really every year, you know, especially like January, December, January, or even

during September, I'll find a spot that said, I don't get to check out, but I'll just kind of mentally flag it. And then over the winter, I'll just go through Google Earth and I'll put pin marks down.

I specifically probably do this more so for deer because I kind of tend to hunt the same out country just because I know it. But I just put it, you know, like check out in 2019 is my pin tag, you know, and then I go go back and reference that.

And short of, you know, you just got to get that I have one spot elk that I really want to go check is been on that has been attacked for probably five, six years. I've never made it over there.

And then, yeah, I said, you just got to get there and see what it is. And hopefully you can do that before season starts. So one thing that on a kind of a side note on that too is scouting the tough part about early season scouting boots on the ground is you don't know what it looks like.

September 1st. I can think of places I've scouted that looked awesome. And then you roll up there to the trailhead or the parking lot or whatever it is. And there's freaking 10 other rigs there opening day, you know, so it kind of kind of going back to picking out some spots in September.

You know, it's a good time to do that and check things out. If and if you're young and have a bunch of time or you're old and you're retired and you have a bunch of time.

Even after you tag out, I wouldn't call September quits. I'd go back out there with a camera and hunt some new country. Just take photos and get out there and hike and check it out and see what what the animals are doing and what the hunting pressure is like.

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