Bedding Areas

[Swede]

The following line from Tigger got me to thinking again:

I hunt tens of thousands of acres of bedding areas! It is almost all the same, so why would this area be better than that area? Our best angle so far is saddles. We have a few that we see elk around all the time. I don't understand why this grassy meadow is a feeding area and the other ones are not. That is where I feel I need the most help. uh, no laughing Saddlesore!

What makes a good bedding area? Why, and how do you identify them on G.E. and on the ground? Tigger is right there are thousands of acres or square miles of timber cover in many areas, so what makes one spot any better than another? Let me try to take a stab at answering that, then anyone else can correct or add to what I have.

Elk select daytime bedding areas for their cool temperatures, and for security, during the general archery season. Also; they need a level spot to rest on. The level spot is big enough for the herd, but can be very small for a lone animal.
Usually you will find a bedding place on a bench below the ridge or flat area above. Often this is about 2/3s of the way up a mountain, above the lower meadow feeding area. Isolated moist dark timber locations may be great bedding areas to investigate. You can find these niches on G.E. and set them on your GPS to check out later. Other locations may have elk beds, but I believe these are the best place to start your search.
After finding your bench area, or isolated timber patch on Google Earth (G.E.), and a topographic map, go check the location out on the ground. Just like a baseball player does not hit a home run every time they come to bat, you won't score a good bedding area every where you look.
A good bedding place has multiple elk beds scattered around that general location. They will be well worn from repeated use, and/or more than one average herd would use at a time. Often bedding areas sometimes stink day after day from continuous elk use. The elk relieve their bladders when they get up from their siestas. They move around in a bedding area to avoid direct sunlight making more than one bed in many bedding locations. They may go out for water then return, so more than one bed is used in a day by each elk. More stink and more beds. You can observe that. Bedding areas have rub trees scattered around. You will see old and fresh rubs around a good bedding area. Elk beds may not always be heavily concentrated in a small area, but may cover 10+ acres. A large area will have a lot of beds scattered around.
I do not consider a place a bedding area to consider for hunting purposes if all I see are some fresh beds in a grassy meadow or the like even in the timber. Open meadows usually are a night time location and they just stopped there to rest and chew the cud. That is not near always true.
If you go into a bedding area to hang your tree stand, as I have done too often and you kick out elk right in the middle of the day. oops. You will likely get away with one mistake like that, but don't chase after them at all.

Tigger don't start me to thinking again. I am trying to keep my brain in mint (unused) condition so I will have something in good shape to pass to on to a needy person after I die. I may want to be an anatomical donor. If I do, I want the remainder of my anatomy to be completely worn out and useless from hiking the mountains.
Now it is someone else's turn here.

[Swede]

I just finished my exercise routine and remembered I had not written about what makes a bedding area secure.

I believe the elk are bedded in a general way the herd can see all around. One is facing one direction while the others are faced in other directions. They are situated where they can smell anything coming up from below and hear a predator approaching from all directions. In other words they will attempt to know you are coming before you know they are there.

[cohunter]

How many times have you tried to sneak in on a bedded elk you spotted from a ways off and just as you were getting close, the wind swirled and they took off? How many times have you sat on a water hole downwind from it... then for a few brief moments, the wind switches and... bam - here come the elk? It's happened to me plenty - enough to believe that another key ingredient to a really popular bedding area (or wallow or water hole) is a fickle breeze. Similar to allowing elk see in all directions from their bed, variable winds allow them to smell in all directions.