Elk

Keys to 25 Hunters' Success

By: John E. Phillips

Narrated by: John Davenport

Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

Often just one tip or tactic makes the difference in whether you take an elk home to dinner or have to hike back to the truck by yourself. In John E. Phillips’ latest elk book, Elk: Keys to 25 Hunters’ Success, you’ll learn from successful elk hunters the strategies they use to find and take elk. Many know that the technique that seems to work most often is to hunt where other elk hunters don’t and understand where the elk are before you go on a hunt by studying data from each state, visiting HuntData (see chapter 1), examining maps, and reading postings on elk forums. This book also tells you how to get ready physically for an elk hunt, including participating in Train to Hunt Competitions, what gear you need to take, how to enjoy a successful do-it-yourself elk hunt or how to pick the best elk guide for you. You’ll also hear about the X System and the Broken Y System of hunting elk.

Although no one person has all the answers on how to help you find and take your elk, I’m convinced that this book’s outdoors men and women will teach you how to have satisfying elk hunts. As my friend Karl Badger once told me, “Elk hunting doesn’t get any better than when I ride horses into the high back country, see two grizzly bears, hear a pack of wolves howl close to camp all night long, eat plenty of delicious food prepared on a fire and enjoy the company of good friends.”

©2018 John E. Phillips (P)2018 John E. Phillips

Too many web addresses

And this book is six hours long. About 45 minutes of which are listening to www.blabla.com

A great work commute listen.

This was great. I listened to it on my way to and from work. I found myself still sitting in my car in the driveway a couple of days just to finnish the story I was listening to.

Endless URLs to sell stuff??

There were many good stories that could have been elaborated to be the bases of a great book but so far too many friggin “www backslash backslash.......” those were way way way way far beyond unbearable.

Some good info

This book is mainly just a collection of anecdotes illustrating various elk hunting tips. Most relate to early season archery hunting and contain some good info on calling strategies, although the overall topics are repetitive. For someone who is brand new to this sport this could be a usable resource, and there is a little info (mostly on calling strategies) that could be beneficial to a seasoned hunter. The audio version of this book could do without the seemingly endless reading of website addresses where you can find gear discussed, as well as the plugs for mossy oak camo. The performance was poor, read by someone wholly unfamiliar with the topics discussed. Overall I was somewhat entertained and did learn a bit.

Poor Editing

The narration is decent. My issue was the seemingly ubiquitous placement of websites that interrupts each chapter. Fully spelled out, this makes the audio book a waste of a credit because the reader is regularly distracted.
h t t p colon forward slash forward slash w w w dot website dot com forward slash etc. is incredibly grating on one’s patience.
This is the result of poor editing in the printed book - where website references should be placed in the footnotes.

one long commercial for the hunting industry

I only made it an hour into this book. If it were not bad enough that every person interviewed was mostly giving their preferred gear list, they had to speak the URL for every item of gear listed. Does anyone truly believe that someone is more likely to key in a long and involved Cabela's URL, including item number, than to punch a key word or two into Google? I was ready to scream. In addition to that, the narration is filled with mispronounced words and Shatner-esque pauses.