The bass are exploding on surface plugs, bluegills are bedding in the shallows and inshore trout and redfish are begging for a lure to smash. And here I am daydreaming about conversing with wild animals; calling game with manmade devices to try to get them to come to you. Maybe my misplaced pondering is the result of my visit down in Raleigh, Mississippi yesterday with master turkey call maker Paul Meek. He has callers that sound so much like real turkeys that they make my trigger finger twitch.

Besides using all the standard and exotic woods, Meek makes callers out of rocks! Yes, rocks! And he is working on one using PVC pipe and other plumbing materials. The prototype sounds so good it makes the hair ripple on the back of my neck.

Another cause of my current distraction could be residual stimulation from the recently closed spring gobbler season when every day was filled with calling to mostly indifferent tom turkeys.

Anyway, what floated through the vacant spaces in my mind was how callers that fool game can also fool other hunters who are trying to fool game while you are fooling game. That unforgettable day near Green Mountain Reservoir in north central Colorado immediately came to mind.



Bull talk



On a primitive weapon hunt for elk I hiked in to a place so remote that I would have the area to myself. There were two ways in; a very long walk through a low, flat basin, or a shorter climb up a huge mountain and down its back side. I chose the long walk, and I camped near a road that bordered the wilderness.

As I suspected, the elk were there. After I hiked for most of the morning, I heard two bulls bugling; screaming their throats hoarse at one another. I rushed ahead toward the dominant bull as the lesser one left the area. My calls enraged the big fellow, and when I got very close I began crawling toward his grunts and roars, dragging along my .58 muzzle loader.

I crawled ever closer for nearly an hour, until I was on top of him. My eye caught a movement, and I stood up and walked over to the camouflaged bowhunter. We laughed, each complimenting the other on being the country’s best bull elk imitators. Meanwhile, the only real elk in that trio had left earlier for fear of being gored to death by these two mad monarchs!

This story of duplicity does not end here. I had asked the bowhunter how on earth he had found his way into that wilderness, because I had figured to be alone there. He told me he had climbed the mountain to the west. I was impressed.

That night, as I planned the next day’s hunt, I reasoned that no man would climb that large mountain and walk that far two days in a row. So I would walk there again and have it to myself. Next morning there was four inches of snow on the ground, so I knew the bowhunter’s camouflage would be ineffective and that would be further reason for him to hunt close to camp and wait for the snow to melt in the early September sun.



Alone with elk



By mid-morning I was deep into the wilderness, heavy snow clouds giving the landscape the appearance of dusk. I stopped at the edge of a hundred acre clearing and bugled lustily, the call ringing out across the white landscape. At a far corner of the field, a bull screamed back. I skirted the field, moving toward the bull. His grunts indicated he was also following the woods line around toward me.

I checked the cap on the nipple of the .58 as I eased ahead, watching for clouds of vapor steaming from the bullís nostrils into the cold air. Suddenly, there he was. The bowhunter and I spotted each other simultaneously. No pair ever had more sheepish looks on their faces. We chatted and bragged on each other’s calling and tenacity. Then my new friend said, “You know, we’re going to have to stop meeting like this.” That broke me up, and we parted after a few more chuckles. The next day, I didn’t hike to the wilderness. And I’ll wager he didn’t either.

A similar elk calling adventure happened years later up near Gore Pass that offered even more humor. That story will wait for another time. But ever since those episodes with the bowhunter in the wilderness, I have never assumed that I was alone in the woods with the game animal I am calling.