George Gribben, via Email

I’m going on my first elk hunt to Colorado with my buddies, November 2008. We are easterners from Ohio who love the west. We will be hunting the third rifle season (Nov. 1-7). It is a drop camp, we are going in 12 miles by horses. We need your advise for calling elk during that time of the year. Do you recommend bull bugles or cow calls? Are they helpful or detrimental? If they would help what calls would you suggest? We will have bull and cow tags. Any help you could give would be appreciated. We are fans of Eastmans.

Hello George,

Thank you for watching the show. To answer your question, generally by that time in the season the elk are done rutting and the bulls and cows might even be in separate areas. I would recommend carrying a cow call. I use the Primos Cowgirl call. It is very light weight and durable. A bugle will probably be very ineffective in November but a cow call might be able to be used to stop a bull long enough for a shot. That time of year you will be left mostly to spot and stalk methods on elk. The mule deer should be starting into the rut by then though.

I hope this helps you out and good luck on the hunt.

Guy

Dan Kohnen, via Email
Aberdeen, South Dakota

Hey Guy,

Just want to start by saying I love your show, and your magazine even more. I am getting ready to upgrade my binoculars, and need some help sifting through the reviews and catalog descriptions. I hope you and the others at Eastmans can help. Right now I’m using Nikon Monarch 10×42, they are great but I’m ready to take the big plunge into high end optics. Most of my fall is spent in a treestand waiting for whitetails, but I also do a yearly mule deer hunt in Western South Dakota(my home state), and last year I went antelope hunting for the first time, and as long as I’m able I’ll continue doing both. And hopefully more western big game hunting in the future, in a few weeks I will also find out if I will be elk hunting for the first time (wyo unit 62). Back to the bino dilema, I don’t know what to buy. I’m looking to spend around a thousand bucks, give or take, which is the best buy in that range, Leupold Gold Ring HD, Steiner Predator, Peregrine, Bushnell Elite, Nikon Premier LX, Leica Trinovid BN, Zeiss Conquest ABK, Cabelas Euro? Can you help? I may have another option, a used set of Swarovski El for around $1400, the only thing I worry about the used Swaros is the warrenty if I don’t have the receipt, what is there warranty like? Should I keep saving and get the used Els or would one of the above listed be a better(safer) purchase. I hope you can help.

Howdy Dan,

Thank you for the e-mail and the question. I can understand where you are coming from on the whole binocular dilemma. They are very expensive products and you definitely want to make the right decision. For the $1,000 price range I would look at either the Steiner Peregrine or a pair of Minox binos. I actually looked at the Minox product at RMEF this weekend and was extremely impressed for the price.

If possible you might also consider saving up an additional $450 and go for the Swarovski SLCs. Those are very, very durable binos. Mike used the heck out of his and won?t use anything else. I am not sure if this is possible, but my advice would be to go with either the Minox or the SLCs.

I hope this helps you out.

Thanks for reading the magazines and watching the show.

Guy

Duane Matejka, via Email
Buckingham, Pennsylvania

Hi,
My son gave me a subscription to your magazine and one of your DVDs for Christmas. Great stuff! In the video you seem to be hunting with a Weatherby Accumark with some sort of vibration damper on the barrel just in front of the end of the forend.
I have an Accumark in 30-378 and would be interested in this accessory, can you tell me about it?
Thanks!
Duane Matejka

Dear Duane,

Thank you for the e-mail. You are correct, I shoot a Weatherby .30-378 Accumark equipped with a Sims Vibration Labs, Barrel De-Resonator. You can check out the product at the Sims website at: http://www.limbsaver.com/Products/Firearms/Barrel De Resonator.aspx

This product is real simple to install and just slips over your barrel. The product dampens the vibration out of your barrel when the gun is fired which does two things. First, it takes the “whip” out of the gun upon firing and second is improves the accuracy up to 15% because the barrel remains more stable as the bullet travels down and out the barrel. The gun jumps up less than half as high when you fire it with this product on the barrel.

Not too bad for a $10 product and five minutes worth of installation time.

I hope this helps to answer your question. Good luck this fall.

Guy

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 2:43 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.