For as long as I've been studying and teaching elk behavior, vocalizations, and communication, the debate between "emotion" vs "meaning" has raged on. Some believe that for effective cow–calling one only needs to focus on making "quality sounds" with "emotion" rather than worrying about what you are actually saying, per se. Others, like myself, feel that – while calling with "emotion" can be beneficial in certain instances – you can't actually call "with emotion" unless you know what you're actually saying, generally or otherwise; "emotion" is simply an embellishment of whatever root word or message you're broadcasting across the landscape.

While I may have my beliefs, that doesn't mean I don't continue to look critically at what I and others believe and share; as I always say – you can never prove a behavioral principle or hypothesis "to be," rather, you can only work to disprove it. Those with intellectual integrity within the realm of their personal beliefs are continually striving to refine, and when possible, DISprove their own theories. In this video series, we'll take a deep dive into the debate of emotion vs. meaning, look critically at both sides of the discussion, highlight a few hypocrisies, and re-evaluate some of what I've shared previously in the "Understanding Cow Vocalizations" and Understanding Bull Vocalizations" series.