Editor’s Note: Mark Jackson from Sequim, Washington, is on the Mossy Oak Pro Staff and loves to bowhunt and shoot targets.
Out here in Washington, there are many-more gun hunters than bowhunters. Probably, some of the reasons for that is the weather’s still quite hot when bow season arrives. Our archery elk hunts usually start in September - just at the end of summer. Many days at 6:00 pm, the temperature will be 95 degrees. During September, darkness often doesn’t fall until 9:30 pm or later.
I live on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, which is 2-hours west of Seattle, in the Olympic Mountains where there’s a lot of rolling hills. Most often, I find blacktails in the low-lying areas. The State of Washington is known for being apple country, and deer love apples. This is one of the big advantages we have up here. Often landowners will call and ask hunters to come in and take some of the deer off their properties. The blacktail deer can wreak havoc on an apple crop. So, one of the easiest ways to find a good place to hunt these deer here is to find an apple orchard and ask the landowner for permission to hunt there. You can make an apple farmer’s day if you start taking deer off his property.
If I am able to get the time off to go elk hunting, I will take off the entire 9-day season. But deer season comes at a really-busy time for my work schedule, and I generally only get to hunt on the weekends. Although I have been hunting elk for 3 years, I have not had an opportunity to take an elk. Last year we heard an elk grunting and decided to go after him, because we thought it was a bull elk. As we slipped in for the shot, we saw that the grunting sound was coming from a cow elk. What made matters even worse, we spotted another hunter between us and the elk, and he was making a stalk on her. So, that ended my hunt for elk last season.
Day 1: Hunting with ProStaffer Mark Jackson
Tomorrow: To Be a Better Bowhunter and Take More Game Shoot Target Archery
