Editor’s Note: Shawn Fulton has been guiding for elk for 12 years and currently guides and outfits for Spotted Bear Ranch (http://www.spottedbear.com/) in northwest Montana, just south of Glacier National Park. 

One of the questions people always ask is, “How do you go into an area you’ve never hunted before and find elk?” We use Google Earth (https://www.google.com/earth/) and the onX GPS maps app (https://www.onxmaps.com/) to study the terrain using aerial photos and maps. With the onX app, you can download a map into your phone and mark trails on your map that you want to investigate. Even if you can’t access satellite coverage, you still can pull-up those maps and see where you are in correlation to where you want to hunt. 

Another tool I like is the app for the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks to get harvest reports for elk for all the units in the state. You also can get harvest information on your computer at 

https://myfwp.mt.gov/fwpPub/harvestReports. From that information, you can tell which units have the best opportunities to take elk. The third resource I like is to find a Facebook group about hunters who hunt Montana, and, more specifically, hunters who have hunted a unit you want to hunt. You can get plenty of information about the elk, the numbers of elk seen and the success people have had taking elk. 

Anyone who goes on an unguided elk hunt should use all the resources they can to understand and pinpoint the type of area they want to hunt. Learn what the elk population is, get to know hunters who hunt that unit, ask them to suggest regions you may want to consider to hunt, and have them tell you how to get to those places. More resources are available than ever before in the past to help you learn the land, determine how much game is on that land and find some of the most-productive places to hunt on that unit.

To learn more about elk hunting, check out John E. Phillips’ book, “How to Find Your Elk and Get Him in Close,” available in Kindle, print and Audible versions at http://amzn.to/17ENNqK. You may have to copy and paste this click into your browser. (When you click on this book, notice on the left where Amazon allows you to read 10% of the book for free).      

Tomorrow: The Biggest Bulk Elk Shawn Fulton Has Taken