Stubborn Perseverance Pays Off During Bowhunt for Idaho Elk

   What do you say to convince yourself to stick with a treestand where you haven’t seen an elk after 11 hunts totaling 50 hours the past 5½ days?

   Based on 55 years of bowhunting experience, I knew only this: The drought can end with one turn of your head.

   And so I slipped into my full-body safety harness, tied my compound bow to my treestand’s pull-rope, climbed 16 feet up the lodgepole pine and stepped onto my stand to again hunt Idaho’s Targhee-Caribou National Forest.

   The treestand’s platform squeaked softly as I placed my full weight on its metal-grate floor. I winced and shifted my weight, triggering another squeak. I winced again. I studied the welds that joined the stand’s grate to its frame but saw no breaks or wiggles.

   I tried avoiding the squeaky spot the next few minutes, but failed. The platform’s soft, squeaky spot was too centrally located to dodge. Plus, I hadn’t packed a backup stand for my 1,300-mile journey from Wisconsin. I could only hope the mountain’s winds would keep rustling the leaves on nearby aspens. If those leaves kept quaking, the pesky squeaks shouldn’t carry far.

Patrick Durkin arrowed this bull elk from a treestand while bowhunting in southeastern Idaho.   — Patrick Durkin photo

   And so I resumed my vigil, believing elk would eventually funnel into this narrow creek bottom, and pass within bow range of my perch. In fact, their freshest sign and most likely routes were only 25 yards away. Game trails, antler-rubbed trees and countless piles of elk pellets verified these big deer avoided the steep, rocky sidehills nearby, preferring the valley’s flat bottomlands and tall grasses, willow brush and scattered trees.

   Plus, I’d occasionally seen and heard elk in this valley since first hunting it in 2013. I even arrowed a cow elk from the same treestand in September 2024 as it walked past at 18 yards.

   True, no hunting method offers guarantees, but few people use treestands to hunt elk, including me until 2017. Most bowhunters prefer calling, chasing and stalking elk. One of the best at “running and gunning” is my buddy Karl Malcolm, who got within bow range of mature bulls his first two mornings high above camp, but neither offered a shot in the dense woods. After that, Malcolm heard few bugles and saw few elk the next four days before flying home after a week in camp.

   I figured if the elk aren’t bugling, I might as well wait them out. I’ve yet to find a good glassing knob in the dense Targhee-Caribou forests, which I’ve bowhunted since 2006. We simply can’t spot distant elk in such cover. More often I’ll get within 20 yards of elk and see only flashes of hide and antlers.

   Therefore, after returning to my treestand at 4 p.m. on Sept. 13 for my sixth evening hunt, I silently repeated my mantra: “The elk will come. The elk WILL come.”

   Unlike white-tailed deer, elk seldom follow the same paths, visit the same fields and openings, or browse the same woodland edges day after day. And even if you arrow an elk from a well-placed treestand, you might never repeat your feat. In September 2017, for example, I hung a treestand on a lodgepole pine overlooking a wallow. I returned four hours later, and killed a bull elk 45 minutes before dark as it sipped from a trickling spring 15 yards above the wallow.

   My friend Chris White then sat in that treestand several evenings without seeing an elk. White and I also hunted that wallow repeatedly in 2018, 2019 and 2020 without seeing another bull. We haven’t hunted there since.

   Instead, I hung my treestand over an elk “crossroads” in a nearby meadow for several years, and tagged elk there in 2019, 2020 and 2021. After not drawing a tag in 2022 and 2023, I scouted a valley in 2024 where I occasionally saw elk or heard bugles. Eventually I found a natural funnel there that steers elk into a narrow pinch-point.

   I then hung my treestand in a big pine overlooking scattered aspen saplings on one side, and a grassy opening along a creek on the other. Small Douglas firs and lodgepole pines surround the site, ensuring my silhouette isn’t skylighted. When elk roam the valley near dusk, they usually flow downhill like the creek and the mountain’s chilly thermals. In the morning, elk seem to come from anywhere, randomly crossing, ascending or descending the valley.

   I arrowed an adult cow elk near dusk during my first hunt there a year ago. But after lugging my treestand back up the valley when returning Sept. 7, I soon wondered if that first-time success was a jinx. Despite hunting the 6 a.m. to noon shift six straight days, and the 4 to 8 p.m. shift five straight days, I always returned to camp with the same greeting for my friend Mark Endris: “I saw no elk.”

   The 12^th hunt proved more charming. As I glanced uphill about 7:10 p.m. on Sept. 13, I saw a young bull approaching silently. I had made several cow and calf calls earlier, and the bull seemed to be searching for the sounds’ source.

   When I turned my feet into shooting position, the treestand squeaked. The sound carried clearly in the calm air. The bull paused and scanned the area. It resumed walking a minute later, but stopped when my treestand squeaked again as I shifted my feet and started drawing my bow.

   This time the bull hurriedly retreated several yards before stopping. I held my breath. Finally, it turned to look my way.

   Minutes passed. My knees quivered, beset by buck fever. Just when I felt certain the bull would flee, it turned and approached, pausing every few steps. I adjusted my bow’s sight pin to 25 yards when the bull next moved, and drew and held at full draw when it edged into range. Second passed, and the bull stepped into an opening, its ribcage broadside in a narrow shooting lane.

   I released the arrow, and my 4-blade broadhead pierced the bull’s chest. The arrow fell out the bull’s far side as it ran 20 yards and stopped near the steep hillside. Seconds later,  the bull turned clumsily to face me. Then it wobbled. As I raised my binoculars for a better look, the bull stumbled sideways and collapsed.

   Elated, I hurried down the tree and hustled to camp for help. Endris and I returned an hour later with headlamps and cargo packs to cut up the elk and pack out its meat, heart, liver and hide.

   Perseverance doesn’t guarantee success. It just makes it possible.