I was two days into a seven-day archery elk hunt in the Montana backcountry. On the first morning I had found rubs running along one particular ridge, more than I’d ever seen before or since. The mid-September conditions were hot. By 8 a.m. the thermals were rising, forcing me to keep the high ground above the elk. All the rubs were below me, some more than 100 yards down the hillside. They were easy to see with a binocular in the sparse, young pine forest.
I’d hunted the entire length of the ridge, well over 2 miles of it, multiple times. With so many rubs, I moved slowly, calling when it felt right. I never heard a single bugle. After two days of this, I decided to drop down the ridge and look more closely at the rubs and for any other sign I could find. What I quickly discovered was, frankly, embarrassing.
From a distance the rubs looked fresh. They weren’t. Every bit of shredded bark was dry and curling on the edges. The sap spilling from the scarred trees was dry. Droppings were everywhere, and they, too, were dry. I found two wallows in the bottom of the draw and neither had been used in a long time. I’d just wasted two days of valuable hunting time because I failed to look closely at the sign.
I didn’t kill a bull that year as the elk had moved
