October Elk Are Bugling Again — Is Montana’s Second Rut Real?

Every October, it happens. You’re sitting on a Montana ridge, general season tag in your pocket, and somewhere down in the timber a bull cuts loose with a full-throated bugle. You thought the rut was over. You thought those September screams were behind you. So what’s going on — and more importantly, can you use it to your advantage? The crew at Backbone Unlimited digs into exactly that question in this recent video, and it’s worth your time whether you’ve got a tag burning a hole in your pack or you’re just trying to figure out what those bulls are actually doing.

Here in Montana, this question has real stakes. Archery season typically runs into mid-October, and general rifle season for elk opens in late October — putting hunters right in the middle of whatever this “second rut” phenomenon actually is. In units across the Bob Marshall Wilderness, the Bitterroot, and the Beartooths, hunters regularly report increased elk activity and vocalizations during the third and fourth weeks of October. The conventional wisdom has always been that you’re hearing leftover rutting behavior from cows that weren’t bred during the primary September rut cycling back into estrus roughly 21 days later. That’s a real biological event. But whether it rises to the level of a full “second rut” — with bulls fired up and responsive to calling the same way they are in early September — is a different question entirely.

The honest answer matters for how you hunt. If you walk into October timber expecting September madness, you’re going to make mistakes — overcalling, spooking bulls that are acting more cautious and less aggressive than they were a month ago. Montana’s general elk herds have significant hunting pressure by late October, especially on public land close to trailheads. Bulls that survived September didn’t do it by being stupid. That said, a cow in estrus is still a cow in estrus, and a mature bull isn’t going to ignore that regardless of the calendar. The key is reading what’s in front of you rather than what worked six weeks ago.

If you’re sitting on a late-season elk tag — whether that’s a general license, a shoulder season permit in one of Montana’s damage hunt units, or a special drawing tag — understanding the nuances of October elk behavior could be the difference between punching that tag and hauling it home blank. Backbone Unlimited does solid work breaking down the biology and the hunting strategy together, and this one is worth a watch before you load up the truck for your October hunt.

Editor’s note: Corrected the elk estrous cycle interval from 28 days to approximately 21 days.