A Good Bull, By Accident

While I've been working (slowly) on my glassing posts, I have a brief, fluke story to tell.

My hunting partner and I have been exceptionally lucky in the Arizona elk draws, but haven't been so lucky when it came to actually shooting the bulls we scouted. Dealing with lots of hunters had finally taken its toll on our hunting plans, last season he, his father and I all drew tags, and spent an entire season spotting and stalking bulls, it felt more like an archery deer hunt than an elk hunt, fun, but tough hunting all the way around.

Now I have to preface this story with the fact that all of us have significant hunting experience and have all killed good bulls, all through hard hunting.

This season, I decided to sign up for 18 credit hours at school. Most of these classes are in finance, so they're a bit more than a smidge over my head. I knew that I had to make my hunt happen as fast as possible to prevent a total failure of a semester, so I went in with the simple goal of shooting a bull. For the first time in my career, I wasn't trying to raise the bar; in all reality, I had set my sights lower than ever.

Day one was tough, running into a few other hunters in the field and not hearing my first bugle until near dark. I managed to see a couple small bulls, but was far from in position to get the job done.

On the second morning, I put a few miles on the Ford, hearing bulls at pretty much every stop. After making a big loop I picked a spot that was fairly close to town and the highway, so all the other hunters were driving right past it. I was pretty sure this would make for a good morning hunt, as I watched a decent bull trying to tend a cow in the middle of the road.

I bailed out of the truck and got right in on a bull, that lead me into several other elk. The first part of this morning was surprisingly busy, all I could do was try to sneak from one group to the next to see if I could get a sot on the bull. The end result was no, I couldn't poke a hole in any of the bulls I saw, or even get into range. But I remember thinking to myself on the way back to camp that it had been the most entertaining morning of elk hunting I could remember.

I rolled into camp fairly early, it just so happened that the show ended a little early where I was hunting. I figured I would take care of some chores around camp and get a fire started to enjoy a little morning coffee. Michelle, my hunting partner Jason's wife offered to put a pot on. All in all the day was starting off pretty good.

While I heard bugling from camp for the first ten minutes I was there, I couldn't let myself believe it was a bull. We had been surrounded by other camps, and I figured somebody was making noise from their camp. Then he starting chuckling, the sound was too "elky" so I grabbed my bow and took off at a trot.

The stalk took close to fifteen minutes. I stopped to check my wind when I realized there were two bulls firing off at one another, and one was right next to me. He started making a rub and I decided I would try to sneak in for a shot.

My attempted stalk lasted about three steps, he had started walking my way! Hearing his hooves hit the ground I backed into some shade and let him come in.

The bull came in to about 18 yards, bugled then turned for an opening in the trees, stopped to listen to the other bull, and I shot. I was less than a half mile from camp, after my morning hunt had ended and had just managed to shoot a bull.

Basic Animal Movements and Glassing

When it comes to glassing, animals are generally in one of three movement categories: feeding/watering, bedded, or transitioning from feeding/watering areas to or from bedding areas. At each of these times animals move at different rates. So the pace at which we glass should also vary. When animals are up and moving they are easier to see for two reasons; first, they are generally more exposed, the more of an animal you can see the more likely you are key in on recognizable features and notice it’s presence. Second, they are moving more, as movement increases so does the likelihood that the passive element of the eye will detect that movement triggering the recognition of that animal. At these times beginners will even find high success glassing from the tripod which will hone their game finding abilities for situations with low game numbers or limited game movement. At this point game is at it’s peak of movement and you should be glassing as fast as you can effectively find game, making movements just slowly enough to see animals, while covering as much country as possible.

When animals are feeding or watering, they are still up and moving, but movements aren’t as fast as they are in transition from feeding to bedding. Animals are typically more exposed because good feed typically comes from more open country, but the rate at which they move slows. The slowing of the animal’s mass movements means their steps are smaller and head movements become more confined, accordingly the pace at which we glass needs to be slowed as well.

When bedded, animals are at their most limited movement of the day. Now identifying movements may simply be a deer twitching its ear because a fly is bugging it, a small, quick turn of the head to see something moving, or chewing their cud. While animals will re-bed to maintain their protection from or exposure to the sun, it is an occurrence that happens at a slow pace, and in a brief time window. Occasionally, you will luck out and an animal will be silhouetted and easy to find, but the majority of the bedded animals found will be in the shade or tucked into brush. The characteristics you register in your mind during periods of greater movement will begin to pay off significantly during bedding times. Over time the number of bedded animals you find will increase, up to the point that you discover mid day glassing is as effective as glassing during periods of high game activity.

As you can see, game movements vary throughout the day, as an effective glasser the rate at which you glass will correlate to the pace at which animals move, and will vary throughout the day. Adjust your glassing rate to what you are actually seeing; simply slow your glassing until you being finding animals. This will be a useful tool for the rest of your hunting career, as it better informs you of game movements, which will eventually play into the planning of stalks as well as where and how you look for animals in the future. Understanding the rate that animals move is an important part of the establishment of good glassing mechanics, and as you hone your technique, the results will become more and more significant over time.

We have been building a strong glassing foundation, in the next post we will dive into the mechanics of how to glass: picking terrain features and determining the most effective ways to glass according to specific country. Following that, we will dip into picking a good glassing spot.

A Hunting Tripod

What I call a tripod here is actually a combination of three elements: tripod legs, a tripod head, and a binocular adaptor. The kind of tripod legs, head and adaptor you set up with will likely affect your success.

Starting with the adapter, you need a way to mount optics as rigidly as possible to the tripod head to prevent any play when the face comes into contact with the binoculars – little things like this will drive you nuts when you spend significant time behind the glasses – and it’s a nice bonus when your expensive binoculars don’t topple off the tripod unannounced.

The tripod head – the piece that facilitates clean, fluid movement is an investment, it should be rugged in order to deal with the hunting environment while being precise enough to enable repeatable movements. Having fluid movements is key; jerky stop-and-go movements will actually make you seasick, so spend an extra hundred bucks to ensure your next few years of glassing will be productive and enjoyable.

Tripod legs come in a wide array of weights and sizes and all offer their own strengths and weaknesses. Lightweight tripods sacrifice the stability and durability that is inherent with heavier tripods. There is a balance to be pursued here, as weight goes up, features tend to increase. The key tripod features that should be sought are the ability to change heads and legs that can be adjusted to multiple angles, most quality tripods offering these features, and the lighter units that meet these requirements are generally great for hunting. Having the ability to change heads is more of a screening feature than one that deals with actual function, better tripods are generally sold as legs alone so the user may pick a head that caters to their specific need where tripods with fixed heads are typically a price pointed units for a beginning user. Adjustable leg angles are key. The ability to sit under the tripod as apposed to behind it ensures long-term comfort and comfort translates into more effective glassing times and the ability to glass longer, both of which produce more game. Next, the tripod needs to be tall enough to at least sit under it comfortably, taller tripods are convenient for glassing near the truck or in tall brush but additional height translates to additional weight; the first tripod you purchase needs to be one that you are willing to carry. The big tripod is typically the second purchase, while glassing from a standing position decreases the stability inherent with seated glassing, in some cases tall brush dictates you either have to stand, or get really creative in finding a glassing spot.

When you actually find yourself in and optics shop, or on the phone with them these few pieces will allow you to sort out the wide array of tripods into the few units that really perform in a hunting atmosphere. Now you can do yourself a favor, and shorten the search as there are two outfits that will be able to really dial you in; The Outdoorsmans, www.outdoorsmans.com has been in the game for a long time and is a specialty retailer dealing with all the goodies that pertain to optics hunting, I have been using their tripod for over seven years and it's been a constant companion. Unidaptor, 928-635-5316, owned by Jim White is also a great resource, Jim sells a wide array of optics and adapters that will help get you out on the right foot when it comes to tripod glassing, I have been using Jim's pan head for as long as I have had my Outdoorsmans tripod, and it to has been a reliable companion on many hunts. On the next post we will be discussing the tempo of game movements and the rate at which we should glass to maximize the results.

The Foundations for Effective Glassing

Finding game is the first tangible step in any hunt. The methods we use to find game dictate how many animals we find and with each additional animal located, the greater the likelihood that we will find the one that we want to hang our tag on. For the majority of Western hunts, glassing is the foremost method of game finding. Even if you plan on sitting water, still-hunting, or tracking you must first know that there are animals in an area and glassing is a great starting point for any of these methods. Glassing promotes successes in your hunting with both the immediate reward of finding game now and the long-term benefit of a more finely honed game eye. I will elaborate on the relationship between the brain and eyes; understanding the way we work makes building effective glassing techniques a more logical process. Once we understand how we function, I will elaborate on glassing equipment, technique and the selection of glassing points. From this you will develop a solid baseline of how to glass or how to glass more effectively, the results of which will dramatically effect your long term hunting successes.

. Think about the first time you met your significant other. You may have seen them around and could somewhat recognize them, but over the years, their hands, eyes, hair and silhouette are all thoroughly recognizable from any angle. The inner workings that make that person stand out are the same ones that help you find game over the course of your hunting career. Neurons fire when we see game developing a mental image of those animals. With each additional sighting, the quality and depth of that memory is gradually improved – actually building a mental image. Through repeated exposures the smallest details become finely ingrained in our memory, eventually those minute features will trigger recognition of an entire animal. This is why as kids we always had a hard time seeing the deer that dad showed us, but over the years we can find them by a patch of hair, an ear or eye.

The information we feed into our minds to initiate this neural response and polish the mental image is the actual creation of what many of us call a “game eye.” To become as effective as possible we need to understand a few eye components and their function. This knowledge will enable us to provide the highest quality information to the mind, which will build a better game eye. The key elements of the eye that effect what we are doing here are rods and cones. Rods number around 120 million and manage night vision, motion detection and peripheral vision, what I call passive vision. Cones, numbering 6 to 7 million, deal with the highest vision acuity and color vision. When we hand hold binoculars we are actively looking for game, using the cones. Unfortunately the movement that comes from our pulse and minor body movements combined with the magnification from our binoculars effectively disarms our peripheral vision and ability to perceive movement cannot effectively function. In other words, hand holding binoculars provides magnification but only allows us to semi effectively utilize 5% of our eyesight. So how can we use the passive 95% of our sight capabilities while still using the active 5% and magnification? If the image we observe is stabile, these passive game finding tools go to work – with no additional effort.

At this point we know that eye function is at its peak when provided with a stabile image and the body, especially when paired with magnification, is incapable of providing the requisite stability. Something is missing, and that something is a tripod. What I call a tripod here is actually a combination of three elements: tripod legs, a tripod head, and a binocular adaptor. The kind of tripod legs, head and adaptor you set up with will likely affect your success, so stay tuned, because that’s our next step.

The First Big Project

My first project has proven far bigger and more in depth than I ever expected. In the interest of brevity, these first few articles are what I want to impart upon my readers as foundational elements. When in doubt I feel like I can fall back on these pieces of the puzzle and produce results in the west consistently.

Regardless of where you hunt, these elements play into hunting in general, many of these facets will work North, South, East or West- when employed at their elemental levels. These elements are as follows: Location, Stalking, and Shooting.

While each element can be described in a single word, they are very broad categories and each will turn into a full-length article.

Location covers finding country, accessing that country, finding game, different methods of finding game and the mentalities that tie into them.

Stalking has wo categories or phases, pre-stalk routine, which lays the foundations of success of a stalk. Second is the actual stalk, the use of wind, cover, sun, and where you will shoot from. This article will segue into shooting, as there are two categories of stalking, to game stalking – which is more common with archery hunts and to the shot stalking, where the shooter is merely sneaking into position for a shot. Different situations dictate a different method, so I feel every hunter should at the very least understand both, because there will eventually be one circumstance that dictates going all the way to the target with a rifle, or stalking in to an ambush with a bow.

Shooting with bows and rifles are two entirely different methods, accordingly, these two techniques wil be split from one another. The first will be rifle shooting, and in it I will cover the techniques that have worked for me and my friends over the years- both set ups and mechanics. I will touch on distance shooting and appropriate adjustments to compensates for long shots as well as angled shooting, both come into play in the west.

With bows, The mechanics of a good shot are entirely different than with a rifle and while the physics of that shot and it’s appropriate execution are different than what most of us are accustomed to, shooting a bow well is very doable given the proper expertise. I will cover the fundamentals of a good shot as well as provide some critical links that will be real assets to your long term archery success. IN addition to the basics of how to shoot a bow I will also cover some additional tidbits that will help tie everything together when the critical sot comes to pass.

The first article, location will follow this piece almost immediately, then stalking, then shooting. If you have any questions on the topics I am discussing here, please post or email, because I feel that these key techniques have a significant effect on your long term hunting successes.

Welcome to Performance Hunter

Well, if you’re reading this I managed to put something together correctly. Welcome to Performance Hunter, the blog about the little things that make hunting more productive. I have spent the majority of my life trying to evade work and school to spend as much time in the woods as I can. I grew up in and around the hunting industry, from the retail side of gear; guns, bows, backpacking gear and optics; the guide side of it, both from my own limited experience and that of the majority of my friends and a little bit of time on the publication side of things as well. From my own experiences and those that have been related to me, I feel like I have a unique perspective and a cool catalog of gear and techniques that consistently produce results for me and the guys I run around with.

You will find me consistently writing about glassing, stalking, shooting rifles and bows, backcountry hunting and the gear that corresponds with it, all around hunting gear, and I’ll likely dabble into ethics just to keep myself on my toes. That said, if there is something you see here that you are curious about, want me to expand on, or even if you want to call bullshit, let me know!

At the current time, I have jumped headfirst into the backcountry hunting scene. It’s something I was first introduced to over ten years ago, but feel like I have come into my own over the last two or three seasons. Living in Northern Arizona, I have a ton of ground close at hand to hunt, but the state is speckled with small wilderness areas that are just big enough to get away from the competition. Nothing compares to starting off with a map in the dining room late at night and expanding that into a hunting trip/adventure. Some places pay off big time, others make for challenging, cactus laden, overweight hikes, either way, the results are challenging and the memories first class.

I intend to expand upon the gear and mentality that I currently use, and why they work for me, as well as some of the other new gadgets that are hitting the market that have my interest piqued. Nothing compares to hunting solo, in the wilderness, the country is big, the game is relatively unpressured; the time itself tends to stand still, unless of course I’m on a two day forced march to get to or from where I want to hunt. The adventure factor and pitting myself against mother nature adds a whole new dynamic to the experience and has significantly raised my bar as a hunter.