Weather and Bugling

[Tigger]

What are your thoughts on how weather affects bugling. Obviously there are a lot of other factors, but what have you noticed for:

1. Cloudy vs Sunny?
2. Windy vs Calm?
3. Rain vs no rain?
4. Snow vs no snow?
and just for good measure,
5. morning vs afternoon?

What is the perfect situation?

[elkaholic]

Last couple of years there is a notable increase in activity when it is cloudy with showers off and on. Cooler temps also help a great deal. The elk can be active almost all day when it is like this. When the skies are clear
Majority of the activity is in the morning.

[Brijake]

I agree with elkaholic, I love it when it is cloudy with either mist or a light rain off and on. The bulls seem a lot more vocal and I assume it is because the weather is cooler.

[Trophyhill]

Hotter weather = less bulging from what I've seen.

[msd1228]

I've more or less given up on looking at the weather for bugling activity and have taken a far more active roll in watching the barometer as it has been FAR more consistent with respect to determining bugling activity. Too many days of bugling frenzies in +25-35 Celsius (75-95F) and 0 activity in 0 to -10 (32-14F) and 2" of snow for me to keep trying to convince myself that the weather is more important than barometric pressure (that's not to say that I don't prefer a nice cool day as opposed to a scorcher, for other reasons). Applies to fishing too. Only weather that matters to me anymore is wind - frick I hate high winds, but that's just life around these parts.

With respect to your options, I'd choose the following:

-Cloudy
-Low wind
-Cool temps
-No or light rain (preferably no rain)
-2" of snow

But the above is more so about my personal comfort than correlation to bugling activity.

[dtrkyman]

My limited experience, warm weather little bugling, cool weather good bugling, cold weather, after a front drizzly cool weather good bugling! After a few days of zero bugling in New Mexico a couple years ago I decided to drive to a new area, some heavy storms over night and I was met with a cool wet foggy morning and tons of bugling, Actually starting working Elk right from where I parked.

After 3 quiet days it was awesome to step out of my truck camp and hear bulls while I was tying on my boots!