Upgrade Your Lens: Rethinking How You Scout Elk Country with Dillion Ness

Dillon Ness is back on the show, and dude, this one's a good one. If you haven't heard our last conversation, go find it — I've always considered Dillon one of the best open country elk killers I know. But what people don't realize is the guy crushes it in the mountains just as hard. Well-rounded doesn't even cover it.

In this episode, Dillon walks me through the full story of last year's mountain bull — a hunt that started with him throwing a dart at a map, glassing bulls pouring off the alfalfa at first light, getting boogered by other hunters, losing the herd, and eventually catching them in the dark on their last drink of water before bed. It's one of the best hunt breakdowns we've recorded, emotional gut-punch ending and all.

From there we get into the nuts and bolts — how to actually dog a herd in the dark without blowing them up, why satellite bulls are your best friend, what 20 failed days of hunting really look like (because that's 90% of the season, not the highlight reel), midday strategy for guys who don't have 27 days to burn, and the biggest lesson 301-level hunting has taught both of us: elk are never random, and neither should your strategy be.

We also get into a mindset shift that I think is worth the price of admission alone — using onX the wrong way is probably costing you elk without you even knowing it.

Grab your coffee, settle in, this one's just shy of an hour and fifteen, and it's packed.

This Episode's Sponsors

🔭 Maven Optics

This episode is brought to you by the good folks over at Maven Optics. Love those guys, love the product, love the team, love everything about it. Maven is a direct-to-consumer optics company right out of Wyoming, and I've personally been running their stuff for years. My favorite comment I get when someone picks up a Maven is, "Man, these are actually really good" — and I just say, "Yeah, I told you."

Binos, rangefinders, rifle scopes — Maven is, hands down, the best bang for your buck out there. Because they sell direct-to-consumer, you're not paying the big box store markup for the same glass quality.

 Check them out at mavenbuilt.com 

⌚ Bridger Watch

This episode is also brought to you by Bridger Watch — a project I've been building for a long time now. Everyone said we couldn't take on Garmin. Here we are anyway, and I think we've built something amazing: a smartwatch built specifically for hunting.

The standout feature is the mapping. On top of all your normal smartwatch stuff — health tracking, fitness tracking, texts — Bridger Watch has the best mapping capability of any wearable on the market. Save maps offline, pan around right on your wrist, and the screen clarity is unreal. We've also built a full onX integration, so you can push waypoints, tracks, and markups straight from your onX account to your watch. Set a waypoint at the truck, drop a pin on a bedded bull, and it's on your wrist — even if your phone dies. This isn't about replacing your phone's mapping. It's a redundancy for the woods, and a watch you'll wear every day of the year, hunting season or not.

Check it out at bridgerwatch.com

Chapters

Time Segment 0:00 Sponsor reads — Maven Optics & Bridger Watch 3:15 Welcome back Dillon — new baby, real estate license, fencing life update 6:30 Why "time" is the real secret to killing big bulls 10:15 Setting up the story: last year's mountain bull, throwing a dart at the map 14:45 Glassing bulls off the alfalfa at first light, finding the herd bulls' pattern 19:30 Getting boogered by other hunters, losing the giant at 58 yards 24:00 Relocating, finding the sanctuary drainage where elk funnel every night 29:15 The morning of the kill — dogging the herd in the dark through the willows 35:00 The shot, and the emotional final bugle exchange between the two bulls 40:30 Blending mountain calling with open country tactics after the kill 44:00 The underrated skill of dogging herds in the dark without bumping them 49:30 "Chumming the water" — using satellite bulls to create chaos 55:00 What 20 failed dogging days actually look like (the other 90% of the season) 1:01:15 How long to wait before going back after blowing a bull out 1:05:00 Midday strategy — mountains vs. open country, and what changes with less time 1:10:00 101 vs 201 vs 301 — the biggest lessons each level teaches you 1:12:30 The onX mistake most hunters make (turn off the purple lines) 1:13:30 Two totally different hunts this year — mountains, then prairie, and "upgrading your lens" 1:14:20 Wrap-up and free hunt planner

(Approximate timestamps — adjust to final edit.)

3 Key Takeaways

1. It's not skill, it's time in the field. Both Cody and Dillon agree the biggest separator between guys who kill giants and guys who don't isn't calling ability or fitness — it's days. Hunt 27 days instead of 7, and you don't even have to be that good. The years you close it out in a weekend are the rare exception, not the rule — most giants take multiple trips and a lot of grinding to finally connect.
2. Big bulls are hiding in plain sight, not miles from the road. Some of the biggest bulls either guy has ever killed or encountered were within a mile — sometimes a few hundred yards — of a truck or a main road. After the first few days of season, you're not really hunting elk anymore, you're hunting other hunters. Elk find the overlooked pockets fast, and so should you — including turning off the public/private overlay on onX so you're not subconsciously avoiding good country just because of a purple line.
3. Stay mobile instead of committing to one backpack camp. It's tempting to load up 5-6 days of gear and dig into one drainage, but if that spot gets blown out on night one, you're stuck. Both guys recommend "heat checking" a spot with just 1-2 days of light gear, staying ready to bail and relocate, and treating a hunt like a search across the whole unit rather than a siege on one canyon.