---
title: "How to Call Elk: World Champion Corey Jacobsen’s Tips on Getting Bulls into Bow Range"
description: "You might expect a top elk caller to focus all his hunting advice on proper call selection, volume, tone, timing, or teamwork. But an 8-time world champion says the most critical step in calling elk into bow range is not the quality of the calling, but in how you set-up to intercept an approaching bull. Corey Jacobsen of Boise, Idaho, won the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation/Leupold World Elk Calling Championships in Las Vegas on Dec. 5-6."
date: "2014-12-12"
modified: "2014-12-12"
authors:
  - name: "Steve Wagner"
    link: "https://www.outdoorlife.com/authors/steve-wagner/"
url: "https://www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/hunting/how-call-elk-world-champion-corey-jacobsens-tips-getting-bulls-bow-range/"
categories:
  - "Big Game Hunting"
  - "Elk Hunting"
  - "Hunting"
---

# How to Call Elk: World Champion Corey Jacobsen’s Tips on Getting Bulls into Bow Range

![](<https://www.outdoorlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/22/UZVFWBZ2J2NK52A7GPY3S5U74Y.jpg>)

You might expect a top elk caller to focus all his hunting advice on proper call selection, volume, tone, timing, or teamwork. But an 8-time world champion says the most critical step in calling elk into bow range is not the quality of the calling, but in how you set-up to intercept an approaching bull.

Corey Jacobsen of Boise, Idaho, won the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation/Leupold World Elk Calling Championships in Las Vegas on Dec. 5-6.

Jacobsen is the most decorated elk caller in the competition’s history, but he’s also a consistently successful hunter, and he offers some unexpected advice on how to call elk into bow range.

“Set-up, not calling, is probably the most critical step,” he says. “Set-up always plays a major role in determining the outcome of a hunt. I can’t count how many hunts have been blown by a bad set-up – too much brush to shoot through, not enough cover to hide in, no shooting lanes, inconsistent wind currents, caught in the open, the list goes on and on.”

Jacobsen, a mechanical engineer by trade, advises, “A bull will often approach your set-up by circling downwind. I like to visualize a straight line from the caller to the bull, then draw an imaginary arc on the downwind side. This is the path a bull will likely follow as he comes in. Always try to set up along that arc.”

If RMEF hosted a World Elk Set-Up Championship, that’s one competition, Jacobsen says, that could separate great elk hunters from those who are simply great elk callers.

**More about the event**
Jacobsen won the event's top category, the Professional Division, but competition also was held in peewee, youth, natural voice, women's and men's divisions. Complete results are [posted here](<https://www.rmef.org/NewsandMedia/PressRoom/NewsReleases/WorldChampionElkCallersCrowned.aspx/>).

RMEF hosts the event annually to help draw attention to elk, hunting and habitat conservation – and to find out who’s the best elk caller in North America. Amateur and professional callers come from across the U.S. and Canada. Competitors have 30-45 seconds to mimic cow and bull sounds. Judges score each competitor anonymously. Winners receive prizes and cash ranging from $500 to $2,500.