To view the illustrated version of this post, go here:
http://www.biggamehunt.net/forum/just-another-smooth-hunt
So, we’ve been planning this hunt for nearly a year… We had been keeping an eye on the exploding elk population, yet extremely low bull harvests. But in order to hunt it properly, we knew it couldn’t be a mere truck hunt and would require a full on backcountry pack trip. Ryan had us talked into going in for a muzzleloader hunt in that unit to really get into the big dark timber bulls. Being primarily rifle hunters, the thought of getting into rutting bulls was pretty appealing, and a little out of our routine.
5 of us drew muzzleloader tags, two bull tags and three cow tags. Myself and Adam had the bull tags, and Adam was just coming off of a week of mountain goat hunting. I had tried to help him get his goat by opening morning so his mountain goat hunt wouldn’t cut too much into our elk hunt, but it ended up taking a lot longer to connect. We needed his horses, we needed to be fresh for this hunt, and he needed to be able to spend some time at home before taking off again for another big hunt.
In June we did a scouting trip on horseback. Probably saw over 75 elk up in the bowl that morning. Nearly every meadow we came across seemed to have elk in it. And the additional sign was incredible. The trail looked like an elk highway and the willows were browsed down to practically nothing. We came away very excited about our prospects.
Our plan for the main hunt was to meet at the trail head, late Tuesday night, pack up and hike in with the horses carrying our gear Wednesday, and Wednesday afternoon to Sunday morning, hopefully catching the best rutting activity at the tail end of the muzzleloader season. Because muzzleloader season is 9 days, encompassing two weekends, we also decided to investigate some easier to get to areas for an opening weekend hunt. Some of that country will be shown in the scouting video we are working on, but we got into elk off the easier roads too.
Because our scouting trip up to the bowl was on horseback, we didn’t have a good feel for how long it would take on foot. We knew it was all uphill (about 3,000 feet), took four hours on horseback and was going to be at least 7 miles, maybe more. We also knew that we’d be wiped out if we did do it on foot, and decided to try to rent a horse with a guide for the ride up to the bowl, then hiking the remainder in to camp while the guide took the horses back.
The scouting and legwork for the unit was the easy part for us, but getting everyone’s act together for the rest of the prep was much more difficult. Ryan was the only one in the group who owned a muzzleloader by the time we drew our tags, so the rest of us needed to buy or borrow. I had previously owned one, and had several fiascos deer hunting with it before selling it. I waited until early August to finally replace it with a .54 cal Lyman Deerstalker and a 57SML peep sight. Two of the guys borrowed guns from other friends and didn’t shoot them until about two weeks before leaving. Another bought his gun in late July, and spent several hours getting accustomed to it/fiddling with the sights in frustration. The point is, none of us felt super confident with our new toys.
By late August, we finally decided to contact an outfitter about setting us up for the ride up to the bowl, but at that point they were completely out of horses. And since they were the only outfitter working this portion of the wilderness, we were back to square one. We had to walk it. Oh well. However, one of our hunters also backed out, when he learned there would be no easy ride in, deciding to just hunt the opening weekend. It turned out to be a good thing, leaving more space on each horse for the rest of our gear and allowing us to go up with just one tent for four guys instead of two tents for 5 guys.
Summer flew by, and Friday, September 10th was here, quicker than we were really ready for. I backed out of the weekend hunt at the last minute, instead focusing on just the pack trip. Mike and Ryan saw elk on that quick hunt, but couldn’t make anything happen.
Despite logically knowing the hunt was coming up, I still didn’t feel prepared. We had been planning our whole year around the big pack trip hunt, and it was time to put our plans to the test. On Monday, the 13th, Adam had a minor emergency with a boarder’s horse at his place, but he basically lost the whole afternoon and evening for packing and gear prep. So, he and Jason, who were supposed to leave by about noon on the 14th so they could get to the trailhead with daylight to spare, only left an hour before myself and Ryan left after working all day. Those two had never been to that trailhead, and were going in in the dark with a horse trailer. Thankfully we found them by 11pm on Tuesday night without any real incidents.
We got up at 5am Wednesday morning, hoping to hit the trail sometime just after dawn. But breakfast, packing and repacking gear in the panniers and saddlebags took a lot longer than anticipated. It was 9:30 before we hit the trail and was already starting to get hot. We balanced our loads pretty well on the horses, and they didn’t require much additional work. However, this is when things started to unravel for us…
First stop, we hit a creek about a mile and a half past our trailhead, just inside the wilderness boundary. While letting the horses get a drink, Adam set his shooting sticks down. By the time, he remembered, we were 3 miles up the trail. Not a big deal, but just a sign of the many things to come.
Next up was my turn. On my brand new gun, the ramrod guide tubes popped loose under the strain of being integrated into the sling swivels. I tied Sonny up to a very large dead Aspen, mostly because it was handy while I saw about dealing with my gun. Sonny, an otherwise great horse, has the bad habit of pulling when tied up. I forgot about this until he tore down the 40 foot aspen he was hitched to and freaked out, bouncing around with a 3 foot wide log attached to himself, laying waste to all the vegetation around him. Thankfully, I got him untied before he did any real damage to himself or the rest of us. We weren’t prepared to repair the gun at that moment, as my Leatherman tool was stowed in a fairly inaccessible part of the panniers. Barely two miles into our hike, I was now forced to put my gun into a scabbard and carry Jason’s gun, whose sling swivels thankfully did not come undone.
A mile after that, Ryan, who was carrying a six foot galvanized pipe that we were going to insert into the spring we were planning on camping at in order to better facilitate filling water bottle and buckets realized he set the pipe down sometime after my stop to deal with Sonny and the faulty sling swivels/guide tubes. He insisted we continue on without him and would meet us at a campsite that he and I knew of. At that point we were going to eat lunch, load our guns and fire fouling shots for those who hadn’t before leaving. That camp was about a mile from the border of our unit and still a long way from where we planned on camping and hunting.
At Lunch Camp, Adam couldn’t get his gun to fire on the first shot, it seemed his percussion caps were too small for the nipple. Turns out the friend he borrowed that gun from gave him #10 caps for a #11 nipple. Once again, not an insurmountable problem, but the last thing you’d want is to have to you gun go “CLICK!” instead of “BOOM!” with a bugling elk at bayonet distance. I had plenty of #11s, so that was no problem. Not long after we got Adam’s gun up and running, Ryan showed up, about 30 minutes behind our arrival.
I popped a few caps to clear out any cleaning residues in my nipple, then loaded a partial charge below a patched round ball to fire a fouling shot. However, I was out of caps and walked back to my pack to get another, hoping it would light the charge on the first cap in a still slightly oily barrel. Of course, it went “POP!”, instead of “BOOM!”, so back to my pack I walked (we were shooting at a bare hill about 75 yards from where the main camp was and where the horses were tied up). Next cap “POP!”, and the next, and the next one and the next one went “POP!”. WTF?! I never marked my ramrod for a full charge, so I couldn’t tell whether or not the charge was still in there. I was scared to death of double charging the gun, so my next idea was to put a little bit of Adam’s FFg blackpowder into my nipple to hopefully light my Pyrodex charge.
Holding the gun well away from my face, with Jason threatening to put the video of this whole incident on YouTube (I’m sure it was funny to him!), I took a deep breath and pulled the trigger, “POP!”. But this time, the lubed patch from my round ball came flying out! Once again, WTF!?, over? My guess is that while walking back and forth to my pack for caps, the ball and main powder charge fell out. I know the patches and ball were always kind of a loose fit in my bore, which explains the poor accuracy I had with anything but Powerbelts, but still, the ball fell out? Never heard of that. But, next charge and patch ball lit off without a hitch, leaving me feeling and looking pretty stupid, screwing around for nearly 45 minutes when we could have been hiking to camp.
Oh well, bellies full, egos shattered, guns loaded and we were back on the trail by 3:00 pm. While messing with the guns, we did see two pack trains. One heading up and the other heading down. The wife of the outfitter had told us that the bowl we were headed to would be full of people during muzzleloader season. That seemed tough to believe, given that there was no more statewide muzzleloading tag. When we got up to the bowl(kind of a basin several miles wide, with strips of timber separating large meadows, bounded by heavy timber below solid rocky peaks), which is where the unit boundary started. About 1 mile in, we found a camp with several guys with rented horses from Pennsylvania. Thankfully, that was the last occupied camp we saw all week. Ol Linda was full of crap. In fact, the large outfitter camp wasn’t even occupied. It was getting late and we were exhausted, pushing on towards the camp we had intended to use. However, on the way there, we spied an even better spot, with better grazing for the horses. It was late, and no one was going to argue. At 6:30, we could finally stop hiking and start unloading horses.
What was a four hour horse ride back in June, took 9 hours this September! 6 of those hours through a unit we couldn’t hunt.
It didn’t take long to get camp set up, the horse corral built (electric fence), water bottles filled from the creek (no monkeying with the pipe was going to be necessary, but yes, we still filtered the water). By about 7:15 camp was made, and were feeling a little better. So 3 of us spread out to hunt the last remaining minutes of dusk. I head up towards where we intended camp to be, seeing a buck muley at our spring, Adam saw several does in the meadow below camp, and Ryan, who had a cow tag, put a stalk on a lone elk that night back towards the trail we came in on. In the falling light, he couldn’t make out whether or not it was a spike or a cow at 140 yards, so he let it walk. Jason stayed in camp, heating up some elk chili his wife made earlier in the week. After a long day and some good hot food, there wasn’t much lingering by the campfire. We hit the sack before 9.
Thursday morning we were up by 5, watered the horses, moved the 400 square foot pasture (3 horses can wipe out a 20x20 foot piece of meadow pretty quickly), grabbed our gear and headed out. Jason and I hunted together and Ryan and Adam hunted together so that we’d each have someone on had with either a cow or bull tag.
We started the morning sitting a meadow near a small saddle in the bowl, hoping to catch elk headed towards bed. No luck, so by 8 am we were stalking the timber and headed to a large opening at the back of the basin, up against the cliffs which would still be shaded. We took a little longer than anticipated going through the timber, but the large, wide trails just begged to be sat in hopes of ambushing elk headed to bed. We sat the meadow below the cliffs, glassing some bighorns above us until almost noon.
After that is was time to still hunt the timber. Within 30 minutes we were busted by two cows that we had no shot on. Oh well, that means slow down, but at least we were into elk. We spent the rest of the day investigating feature in the timber we had seen on the aerial photos. We found a small lake below a slide, several wallows, and some hidden meadows. The north facing timber that we cruised was absolutely littered with trails, sign and the familiar barnyard smells of a good elk hunting area.
At 4:00 pm we heard our first bugle of the trip, and it was within a half mile of the wallow we were presently investigating. The only call I carried was a cow call, as I’m not a super confident elk caller, and had always been of the belief that less is more with elk calling. Having called the biggest public land bull I’ve ever seen my just using my mouth several years prior to this, I thought I knew what I was doing. I didn’t. Our first move was to cut a quarter mile of the distance between us and the bull before he bugled again. On his second bugle in the thick blowdowns, we felt we were close enough to start calling to him. My first mews had him immediately bugling in response, so we set up, with guns trained in his direction. What felt like eternity was probably barely 3 minutes, before I couldn’t resist calling again. Another bugle, and it sounded closer. So we sat still, hoping any minute he’d come up out of the small drainage in front of us and collide with a .54 caliber slug. A few minutes later, still nothing. So we call again, trying to sound like a desperate cow. He bugles in response, but was he further away now? We move forward, creeping towards the ridge above the small creek in front of us. Nothing. We call some more, nothing. We creep forward…. “CRASH! SNAP! THUD! CRASH!” Sonofa! I catch a black blur off to my left as our bull is headed out of Dodge in a hurry. He must have been wallowing in the black mud alongside the creek below us on that last bugle, making himself sound further away than he really was with a hill directly between us.
Dejected, we decide to head back towards the meadows as evening was coming on. We sat the edge of a meadow, just above the large creek that lead towards camp, watching deer browse along the edge and a couple of grouse putter around, doing whatever it is they do when they aren’t busy scaring hunters. With 15 minutes of shooting light left, we hear another bugle, this one within a quarter of a mile, but just inside the tree line along the creek. We scoot around the edge of a spruce and give off a few cow calls, making us seem really desperate to the bull. Another bugle! Maybe 100 yards away, still inside the timber, but much closer now. Our guns our up and we wait. Nothing. Tick, tick, tick, tick, we are running out of daylight, so I call again. The bugle is further away now, down the creek towards camp. So we scoop up our packs, run to the trail, then jog/walk at a brisk pace until we hear him again. Our camp is now within sight, and just I’m about to call, I say to Jason, “where are the horses?” I could see the white electric fence in the falling light, but no horses. He picks up his binoculars and says, “they’re gone!”.
Oh crap. This bugling bull is now the last thing on our minds as we race down there to look at the fence. The stakes are strewn about, the fencing is stretched across the meadow and there are no horses to be seen. Softly, I call for Tango and Honey and Sunny. I knew it was a futile effort, but it was all I could think of.
10 minutes later, I get Ryan on the radio, who informs Adam of situation. I’m glad I wasn’t there when he heard the news, it could not have been good. He was surprisingly calm about it when he got to camp, saying there’s nothing we could do about it now, and that tomorrow we would have to go look for them.
We were all hoping that the horses would just show back up in the middle of the night, but at dawn on Friday we were not so lucky. We hiked the 2.5 miles down past the outfitter camp and to the Pennsylvanian’s camp. They had seen the horses run right by their camp the night before, but could do nothing to stop them. Unfortunately this now meant the horses had to be all the way down at the trailer, as there was no other place they were likely to stop at, except maybe the outfitter’s small ranch where he kept his horses.
Adam didn’t want us to ruin our hunts by going all the way down with him, but Ryan graciously insisted on going with him. He had two bridles with him, but the saddles were in camp, so whoever went down was going to have to ride the horses bareback all the way back up the mountain. In the end, Ryan and Adam both hiked all the way down to find the horses while Jason and went back to hunting.
Because our morning was now gone, we decided to hike back up to the slide lake, hoping to catch elk looking for a drink or to wallow at midday. We took our time getting there as quietly as we could through three-quarters of a mile of dark timber. When we got there, we maneuvered some of the driftwood around the small lake (maybe 100 yards wide) to create a small blind. We mostly napped and snacked throughout the afternoon, trying to keep the snoring to a minimum. By 2:00, we were pretty cold in the shade, so we switched sides of the lake to warm up a bit in the sun.
After warming up, I got underneath a tree at the edge of the lake with a little bit of shade, and got back to napping. I awoke an hour later after hearing a stick snap. Upon opening my eyes, a midsized 5x5 raghorn bull stepped out into the sunlight barely 60 yards away! But now I felt like I was caught with my pants down. I was lying on my back, with my feet facing the bull and the gun leaning against a tree next to me. I slowly reached over and grabbed the gun, but on cocking the hammer, which seemed to echo across the rock slide above us, the bull whirled to face me. At this point my heart was racing, I knew it was just a raghorn, but we had had had enough problems (oh yeah, did I mention my sling swivel and ramrod guide tube fell out again, and my powder flask broke open spilling powder out all over my food?) and with no word from Adam and Ryan on the horses, I had to try to take this bull to help salvage the hunt. As the bull turned his head to look back behind him, I snuck the gun to my shoulder, but I still felt pinned down and unable to rise off of my back. The gun naturally settled at the top of his shoulder, which was a lot higher than I should have aimed, but I pulled the trigger without thinking about it. “BOOM!” The bull stiffened in his tracks, then whirled around trotting back into the timber. I had a clear view of where the exit side would be, and with his unhurried reaction, I instantly knew I missed. With no hair, no blood, no muscle, no bone in the bare soil, my heart sunk. I let us all down. Jason saw the whole thing and was caught trying to decide whether to grab his gun or his camera to back me up. But there was nothing we could do now; I blew what should have been a chip shot. In fact, this is the first elk I’ve ever missed. There was no excuse, I shot before I was ready, which was the kind of thing I used to do as a kid. I’ve killed way too much game to do something so stupid, but here I was, acting like a 15 year old again and not talking myself through the shot placement and trigger pull.
We half heartedly sat the pond for about 30 more minutes before deciding to sit a smaller wallow a few hundred yards away. A lone bugle reminded us it wasn’t totally over yet. It was Friday, not Sunday yet. The rest of the afternoon was uneventful as we alternated sitting wallows and trails, and stalked the timber back towards camp, watching a few doe deer here and there. We were at camp at dusk, and thankfully Ryan and Adam were there. Apparently they just arrived and didn’t find the horses until they were over a mile beyond the trailer. The horses spent the night at the trailer, but when no one showed up, they must have wandered off to graze. Sonny was sore with a stone bruise, but otherwise the horses were just tired and no worse for wear. And apparently it’s really hard to bareback ride a horse up a hill unless it’s sweaty. We decided to alternate high lining two horses while one would graze in the enclosure at a time. That way we couldn’t lose all the horses at once again.
That evening, the camp bull piped up again. And unlike the night before, he kept going all night long! His bugles would seemingly reverberate off the mountains. Every half hour to an hour or so, there would be a response or three. We hardly slept, listening to the eerie chorus all night. The banshee shrieks and throaty roars seemed to be all around us, but that certain throaty roar of the camp bull was the one constant. It sounded as if he was standing just outside of our tent, tempting us to come out and fight him.
Dawn couldn’t come soon enough, as the bulls were still sounding off when 5 am hit.
It was decided that Adam and Ryan should go after the camp bull, while Jason and I headed further down the creek towards slightly more distant bugles. As the light began to switch from black to grey, the other bulls quit talking and we had no sound to cue in on, until another small bull piped up back towards camp. As we crept back in the direction of camp, we could still hear the camp bull going nuts. His high pitched opening note, followed by a throaty roar of a second note was very distinctive. As we headed up the trail past camp, we finally heard a “BOOM!” in the timber above it. Jason and I high fived in relief and glee for the other guys, then tried to get Adam and Ryan on the radio. We slowly hiked towards where we thought we heard the sound, when Ryan finally turned his radio on. I found him on my Garmin Rino, barely 500 feet away, and he said they found hair and felt like a good shot but were waiting on me to help them track the bull Adam shot.
It was a steep uphill angle at 110 yards through an avalanche chute surrounded by heavy timber. Ryan and Adam were trying to get to the main herd bull and cows, but a satellite that was dogging the herd was always in the way. After the 3rd pass by the satellite, Adam decided that the bird in hand was better than the two in the bush, so he took the easy shot. He said the bull spun at the shot and headed back into the timber to the east. When I inspected the shot site, I couldn’t find any blood, but there was hair there and so I felt like we should be able to find blood pretty soon. However, after 50 yards, and several log jumps, with no blood, things weren’t adding up. In my experience, animals don’t generally spin when shot, they run the direction they are facing. There was no hair clumps in the shot site, just a bunch of single hairs, and no meat or bone. I went back to the site to investigate some more and found where Adam’s slug hit the behind the bull. Now the question was, did it hit the bull first, or just graze him? We could see that the bullet hit the tree at about original caliber size, then expanded once hitting the tree. The final determination was made when Adam dug the bullet out and there was no meat or blood in the grooves. He now got to experience what I felt the day before. After all the angles he had studied for his .300 Win Mag before the mountain goat hunt, the excitement of the elk hunt made him completely forget to hold much lower on that bull at such a steep angle (50 or so degrees uphill). Combine that with what was likely too high of a hold, and he just missed spining the bull by an inch. After the shot, Ryan charged the herd while calling, hoping to catch the cows in confusion, but never caught up with them.
We decided to switch things up, so Ryan and I headed to the top of the mountain, towards the pass above our bowl, while Adam and Jason headed west through the timber. After a grueling climb, Ryan and I topped out at 11,500 feet on a ridge with a lot of elk sign. While debating our next move, and contemplating lighting off a location bugle, our questions were answered for us. A squeaky little bugle started to our east along the top of the ridge, then was answered below us by a hearty, throaty, deep bugle. I guess, we go down then, eh? Those two bulls kept talking, and every once in a while a third bull would light up to our west and down the canyon. So we fired off a bugle, and all three would answer. Then we would drop further towards the bigger, closer bull. Then I would cow call, and he would answer. Then, thinking he was coming and we really needed to challenge him, we got to within 100 yards, Ryan lit off a challenge bugle, while I kicked and snapped dry limbs and through in a little cow call here and there, trying to sound like a bull was taking his cows. Sure enough, our herd bull answered, but further away. He was now across the creek and heading up the opposite hill! Crap! We could talk AT the bulls, but we were not talking TO them. We did not know what they wanted to hear. We could get them to respond vocally, but we were just trying different noises to make them come to us. We didn’t really know what we were doing and were really out of our element. It was exciting, but demoralizing, being amongst what sounded like 3 bulls, at least one of which likely had a herd with him, but we didn’t know what to say to him. It’s possible we could have just crept in on him while the other bulls were talking to him, but instead, we wanted to feel like a part of the action, not an interloper. We should have just shut up and hunted him down.
The rest of the day was spent spinning our wheels at the top the ridge, then back to the slide lake until dark. It was a fun day, but we just couldn’t make anything happen in our favor. Now we only had a few hours of Sunday morning left to hunt.
I slept in, but the other three got up and hunted. I watered the horses and rotated the grazer, then Ryan came back by about 7:30. We began packing up the tent and the rest of our gear, and Jason came back to camp by 8:00. At 8:30 we heard a “BOOM!” behind camp. We hooted and hollered, hoping Adam took a last minute elk so we wouldn’t be coming out empty handed. It took another 20 minutes before Adam showed up with a big ol sh!t eating grin on his face, carrying something being his back. He said, “you didn’t think I was gonna come back empty handed did you?”, then pulled out a big lump from behind his back. I let a big whoop before I realized what I was looking at, assuming he was pulling out some sort of an elk part from behind his back. Turns out it was a grouse! He head shot it perfectly, but begs the question, if you can head shoot a grouse, how’d you miss an elk?
One last bit of drama in packing up the horses. Sonny decided to pull his “tug on whatever I’m tied to” routine again. He was fully loaded, but tied to a stout spruce that wasn’t going anywhere no matter how hard he tugged. He fell over sideways while we were trying to untie him. His eyes rolled back in his head, with the halter tearing at his face, as all 1,200 pounds of him pulled against it. I eventually got him untied, but not before getting kicked in the shin. It took him a moment to stand up, he was shaking with adrenaline, the skin on the bridge of his nose and above his eyes being torn off and acting completely dazed.
He quickly recovered, and the rest of the hike down was uneventful. We were excited about the spot and would like to return, but very disappointed with our own performances. Most of our problems were totally avoidable or easily solved with better preparation. We let too many opportunities slip through our grasp. We very likely should have been packing out at least two raghorn bulls. We’ll go back, but we need to get more serious about learning to talk to elk, we need to really focus on our open sight shooting, and we need to take more precautions with the horses. Or we’ll be taking goats next year. Just another smooth hunt, eh?
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men
The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men Do Oft Go Awry
Reality kicked me in the teeth yesterday. I had only been able to commit one day of hunting season to a mountain goat hunt with a friend. Our plan should have worked, but only by dumb luck did the mountain goat elude us. To see the full story, go here: http://www.biggamehunt.net/forum/hair
The point is, the odds are the odds. The vast majority of hunters will not harvest an elk this year, and slightly less than half will take a mule deer. Most antelope hunters will harvest, so will most moose hunters. And I’m sure my friend will harvest that goat eventually. But in just one day, almost anything can happen. The odds will win out eventually, but freak occurrences, accidents and unplanned events have short term effects that are difficult to plan for.
Time and flexibility will help to overcome most stochastic events. It’s difficult for all of us to schedule more time for a longer hunt, but if you’ve got the ability to schedule even a few more days, you should really consider doing so. There’s nothing like having a little extra time to make more informed decisions, be more selective with your choice of animals to harvest and react to unplanned events.
But in order to be able to react well, or to be able to react more quickly to new information and events, you need to plan for flexibility. What are you going to do if it snows? If someone is in “your” spot? What if it’s windy? If a trail or road is closed? What can go wrong? Do you have a back up plan? It’s never too late to alter a plan.
But in the end, even with the odds in your favor, you may still go home empty handed. Are you going to be happy anyway? What would it take for you to enjoy the hunt, even without harvesting? What if you shoot an animal younger/smaller than you had hoped? Will you be disappointed in yourself? That’s an easy one for me to answer: don’t shoot anything you aren’t proud of. Let him/her walk and let someone who would be proud take that animal. But just as importantly, were your goals a little too lofty? What’s a realistic expectation for the area you are hunting? I have to be able to dream of big, mature animals, but my trophy standards are on a sliding scale.
It’s not fun to think about reality, but in order to live out your fantasy hunt, you need to know what to expect and then plan for the unexpected.
Good luck and be safe out there
Reality kicked me in the teeth yesterday. I had only been able to commit one day of hunting season to a mountain goat hunt with a friend. Our plan should have worked, but only by dumb luck did the mountain goat elude us. To see the full story, go here: http://www.biggamehunt.net/forum/hair
The point is, the odds are the odds. The vast majority of hunters will not harvest an elk this year, and slightly less than half will take a mule deer. Most antelope hunters will harvest, so will most moose hunters. And I’m sure my friend will harvest that goat eventually. But in just one day, almost anything can happen. The odds will win out eventually, but freak occurrences, accidents and unplanned events have short term effects that are difficult to plan for.
Time and flexibility will help to overcome most stochastic events. It’s difficult for all of us to schedule more time for a longer hunt, but if you’ve got the ability to schedule even a few more days, you should really consider doing so. There’s nothing like having a little extra time to make more informed decisions, be more selective with your choice of animals to harvest and react to unplanned events.
But in order to be able to react well, or to be able to react more quickly to new information and events, you need to plan for flexibility. What are you going to do if it snows? If someone is in “your” spot? What if it’s windy? If a trail or road is closed? What can go wrong? Do you have a back up plan? It’s never too late to alter a plan.
But in the end, even with the odds in your favor, you may still go home empty handed. Are you going to be happy anyway? What would it take for you to enjoy the hunt, even without harvesting? What if you shoot an animal younger/smaller than you had hoped? Will you be disappointed in yourself? That’s an easy one for me to answer: don’t shoot anything you aren’t proud of. Let him/her walk and let someone who would be proud take that animal. But just as importantly, were your goals a little too lofty? What’s a realistic expectation for the area you are hunting? I have to be able to dream of big, mature animals, but my trophy standards are on a sliding scale.
It’s not fun to think about reality, but in order to live out your fantasy hunt, you need to know what to expect and then plan for the unexpected.
Good luck and be safe out there
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Illustrated Guide to Unit Selection
This is the part of the script and illustrations to a series of videos that we are working on. What I’d like to attempt to do here is to show all of what goes into planning a successful hunt or three. And rather than sit on this for a few months until the video is complete, I’d like it out there for folks to be able to think as we head into hunting season. It’s my plan to do follow up pieces to this with remote scouting, on the ground scouting and hunting season updates throughout the 2010 season:
For me, there is no offseason. Hunting season does not begin in the fall, it is a yearlong procession of research, applications and scouting seasons, all culminating in the hunt. I put a lot of effort into this process; have developed some different ways of doing my research to put myself and my hunting partners on the ground in productive country, and would like to show how it is we are able to routinely harvest in new country every year. Because we are unit hoppers, we never get to intimately know an area the way someone would who has hunted a specific drainage for the past 20 years. I don’t find that to be a handicap, in fact, I feel that you are missing out by not exploring new country whenever possible. When you are wed to a specific unit, you stay with it through the good years and bad years, never feeling comfortable with the idea of trying a new location, not knowing how your wisdom will translate, and not knowing the specific movement habits of game in a new spot. I accept that I will never know have a complete understanding of the unique movements of game in every area, but I feel that knowledge and wisdom gained through hunting many places will apply to most situations I will encounter. While I may eventually settle down to hunting a few units routinely, by being flexible and keeping my eye on the population trends, I am able to hunt more places at their peak, and I don’t ever feel “stuck” with the same old, same old.
Unit selection is all about putting the odds in your favor. Most elk and deer hunters throughout the west go home empty handed more often than not. On average, elk hunters in Colorado harvest about 20% of the time, and deer hunters are successful about 40% of the time. Average isn’t good enough for me; I want to have the chance to harvest every time I go out. To do that, I feel it is advantageous to put yourself in more productive country. But how do you identify those areas? What do I look for when selecting a unit? After I’ve selected a unit to hunt, then how do I go about narrowing down the options for selecting a specific region to hunt? This script will attempt to show you the statistics and research that I looked at for this year and then show you the sign, habitat and terrain features that will encourage or discourage me from hunting in a specific area. Then hopefully, we’ll be able to put it all together for a successful hunt.
To begin the 2010 application season, my partners and I all had differing amounts of preference points and hunting preferences. We are all Colorado transplants, and so we do not have deep connections to any particular area within the state. We are mostly rifle hunters, but we also dabble in muzzleloading and archery now and then to expand our hunting opportunities. In 2009, very few of us were successful in drawing our first choice deer and elk tags, so we mostly hunted on second choices, OTC tags and leftovers. We had an up and down year with a few blown chances sticking in our collective craws making the season seem not quite as successful as we had hoped. As a group, our deer preference points were all over the map, with one of us having 0 points, one having 1 point, 2 having 2 points, one having 4 points, and two with 5 points. Only one of the 3 with a high deer point count had a plan for his points, the others were just blindly accumulating. For elk, we had fewer points as a group, with one having 5 points, but the rest of us had either one or two points each.
So our first order of business was to sit down and have a Meeting of the Mighty Hunters to map out our plans back in February. This was already past the application deadline for Wyoming elk, but none of us seemed interested in attempting an elk hunt Wyoming this year. For the last couple of years we have been going to Wyoming for a doe antelope hunt, so our first set of deadlines was going to be March 15th. New Mexico elk was on Ryan’s radar, and I decided to apply again for Nevada mule deer, as the last cheap and easy western hunt left now that New Mexico requires the full fee up front. But other than those hunts, the majority of our efforts were going to be focused on our home state of Colorado.
As with every group, some take a more active role in the planning process than others, with the less active members being more amenable to whatever the planners decide on. First order of business and that which most of us plan our year around is the elk hunting. In 2009, the main group hunt was a 1st rifle cow hunt in and alongside a wilderness area. We also had a 3rd rifle OTC bull elk hunt for 3 of us, while others hunted muzzleloader and archery seasons if they hunted elk a second time. Ryan had just taken up muzzleloading in 2009 and had an awesome experience with elk bugling in his face. As a dedicated waterfowler, the game calling aspect also appealed to him. To me, l liked the idea of having first crack at an elk with a firearm, and love mid September in the Rockies. We were also able to get more guys to commit to a backcountry elk hunt in September as opposed to October or November. Thankfully, we have access to Adam’s horses, which would make packing in a lot easier for all of us. Still, not everyone in the group was willing to commit to this hunt, but enough of us were willing to give it a shot.
Previously, I wasn’t willing to consider muzzleloading for cow elk until 2010 when the regulations changed. The previous statewide muzzleloader cow tag was a List A tag. But now that the statewide tag had been broken up into numerous units, with those tags that were List B for rifle hunts, now being list B for muzzleloading, it made it so that if I drew a cow tag, we wouldn’t lose an opportunity at a bull with the OTC tags or a leftover. While we were sold on muzzleloader season for our elk applications, we were well aware that our success rates would be much lower than a first rifle season tag. Traditionally, here in Colorado, 1st rifle season stands head and shoulders above the other seasons in terms of success rates. Of the 106 units I follow closely 1st season has approximately twice the success rates of the OTC seasons. Part of that is due to the common either sex tags, part of it is due to the fact that the elk have not been bothered for several weeks, and have not been run off onto the lower elevation private lands. But as you can see in the graph, 1st and 4th seasons are generally your best bets to kill an elk. These are 5 year averages reflecting either sex success rates for archery, muzzleloader, 1st and 4th rifle season, but bull only success rates for 2nd and 3rd seasons.
But where to go? I’m not the kind of guy who’ll chase a hot tip, and I try to put the experiences of others into perspective when listening to their advice. And most guys who’ll suggest a place to hunt have no perspective, and don’t really know what’s out there. Looking over data will help put things into perspective. And while it can be manipulated, I trust it more than the biased opinions of most hunters.
The unit had to be List B, so that those who drew cow tags could still hunt a bull. We also wanted a high density elk unit with low pressure. I want to hunt in units where I at least have a solid chance at shooting what I consider a trophy bull, basically anything approaching 300 inches. I have a sliding trophy scale, depending on the circumstances of the hunt; how many days I have left, what caliber of bulls I am seeing, what caliber I expect to see, and how many, if any elk I’ve already seen. The stat that I’m most willing to compromise on is success rate, as there are so many variables that affect a success rate that I feel it does not accurately reflect the way I hunt. Some of the guys were going to only put in for cow tags as a second choice so they could continue to accumulate preference points, but we were totally unsure of how the new muzzleloading elk units would draw out. There were no draw odds, and no tag quotas announced ahead of the draw, so it was going to be a gamble.
Anyway, our unit possibilities boiled down to the following units, some of which we had hunted in the past, others were new to us: Units that ranked highly on my lists that we had hunted recently and were considering returning to A, B, C, D, E, F and units that we had not hunted recently but were very interested in W, X, Y, and Z. Included on this list were some units that had previously had limited muzzleloader tags, but since we were unsure of how the breakup of the statewide tag would affect tag demand, we gave them some consideration too. All of these units had significant roadless area, most of which was federally designated wilderness.
As you can see in the chart, unit X has a significant elk density advantage over the others, and was a unit we had had our eye on for the past several years as the elk population had been growing.
Unit C, also has a substantial elk population, we were very familiar with it, but it was basically considered a raghorn unit, as you can see in the % of the bulls being harvested there last year. In fact, while only 30% of the bulls had been harvested out of that unit in 2009, that is considered a down year for that unit, as typical harvest percentages are in the mid to upper 40% range, leaving very few older bulls in the population. However, while Unit Y was a little below average in elk density, it is the top trophy potential unit, right next to unit X.
When you examine the number of elk per hunter in these units, once again unit X comes out on top, with only unit B coming in a close second. But unit B, which we hunted last year, doesn’t come close in terms of trophy potential and has half the elk density.
We do however like the extremely low hunter density in unit B as compared to unit X, but it’s not like X was particularly bad. When we hunted Unit C a few years ago, the hunter density was a real turn off for us, despite the fact we all harvested elk. Unit Y came up as another good possibility for low hunter density and good numbers of elk per hunter.
The main downsides to both units X and Y were the success rates, indicating difficult to access elk populations, especially compared to units C, E and Z.
Still, since we had decided to backcountry camp this year’s muzzleloader hunt, we were willing to disregard the lower success rates that are typical of units where a significant portion of the area is wilderness. We also knew we had to step up our scouting efforts in order to find good populations to hunt during muzzleloader season, as we wouldn’t be able to up and move very easily during the limited amount of time we’d have to hunt. But our decision had become a no-brainer at this point. With the expanding elk population in Unit X, which still wasn’t on the tongues of many hunters, we had to hunt this unit while it was still at its peak. Unit X is tops in nearly every category and the mediocre success rates could be explained away by the poor access that we could overcome through backcountry camping.
So that solved one of our primary elk hunt. Myself and Adam would put in for the bull tag as a first choice but were unsure how many points it would take to draw it. Ryan, Mike and Jason would apply for the cow tags with a second choice; while Matt and a friend of his from Florida, Chuck, would bow hunt the unit. We all applied separately, no group applications.
That left our deer applications for the other major group hunt. Having two or more resident points really opens up a lot of excellent possibilities. Determining a season can be almost as important as determining a unit. For us, primitive weapons hunts for deer hold little interest, but the early, high country rifle hunts have a lot of appeal. When you look at Western Colorado as a whole, there is little reason to spend the points on 4th rifle season, and the early rifle season is a terrible value. Although we still remain interested in the early rifle hunt, it would also conflict with our muzzleloader hunt this year.
However, when you look at some of my top rated units, you’ll see a few that truly represent excellent value. No one in the group had any special attraction to previously hunted units, and in fact hadn’t been happy with the ones we had hunted in the past, and had not drawn any tags since we had recently been following the data as closely as we do now. Jason and I had applied last year to unit A, but did not get drawn. However, a customer of mine had an excellent hunt in the same area we intended to hunt. I was open to a variety of units and seasons for 2010, but really dislike the amount of pressure that the 2nd season sees due to the number of OTC elk hunters. Traditionally, 2nd season has nearly twice the hunter pressure that 3rd season sees, and the deer success was lower. So it had to be a truly stellar unit to interest us in a 2nd season deer hunt. The units we were looking at for this year also had to require 2 points or less so most of us would have a chance to draw.
Unit A 3rd season, Unit B 3rd season, Unit C 2nd season, Unit D 2nd season and Unit E 3rd season, were the only units given much consideration. This was not going to be a meat hunt for most of us, we were after a quality experience. In the group, our trophy standards are all over the place, with some guys willing to shoot the first buck they see, others willing to be a little more patient for a buck. The unit also had to be OTC for elk, so those who only drew cow tags in muzzleloader season could come along on a bull hunt. Also, we had another friend, Tom, who wasn’t up for the backcountry muzzleloader hunt with his son, but would be more willing to jump in on an OTC bull hunt. He would be hunting a unit we had good success in for 1st season a few years ago.
Each of these 5 units had something going for them, and we knew that whichever we selected would be a slight compromise. But we had some incredible options to mull over. First, looking at the deer densities, unit E was the obvious standout, and is one of the top deer density units in the state.
But Units A and B were not too far behind in deer density.
One of the real downsides to Unit E 3rd season, which is even worse in worse in 2nd season, is the hunter density.
So, negating Unit E 3rd season, we looked at A and B for 3rd season, which were the next highest deer densities, and you’ll see both have low hunter densities. In terms of trophy Potential, Unit B 3rd season, begins to separate itself from A 3rd season.
However, unit C has excellent trophy potential. But the real downside there is the low deer density. Also, Unit C has a poor success rate. While that normally wouldn’t be the deciding factor, it did play a small role in this decision.
Of the last major statistical categories that I decided to look, Bucks per Hunter, Unit D 2nd season really stood out from the pack:
As I said, this was a tough decision. All of these units were ranked in the top 15 to 20 units in 2nd or 3rd season, and amongst the top values. The first to be eliminated was unit E 3rd season. It ranked the worst of these units, but the incredible deer density kept it in play in the discussions. Unit D 2nd season is the top ranked second season deer hunt, but because it required one more point than the other units, it would eliminate some of our hunters from drawing, and those with the minimum number of points, might not actually draw. So that left Units A, B and C. Unit C 2nd season only had the high trophy potential going for it, everything else looked poor in comparison with units A and B. And unit C 3rd season required more points than most of us had. So, in reality it came down to unit A versus unit B in 3rd season. Unit B was ranked slightly above A in our rankings, but because A was so close to our elk muzzleloader elk area, we had knowledge of the unit, the success rate was higher and the landownership pattern and terrain more conducive to our hunting styles, we decided to compromise and go with A. A did not lead any category, but was still an excellent unit.
Deciding on which units to apply for in New Mexico and Nevada went through similar processes. When we first started antelope hunting in Wyoming, we went on the recommendation of an area by a friend of ours. Productive hunting, and research showing we’d have to travel a lot further to greatly improve our hunting has had us staying put in the unit we know and like. Plus the tags are easy to get.
To be continued next time with the draw results, remote scouting and spring scouting…
For me, there is no offseason. Hunting season does not begin in the fall, it is a yearlong procession of research, applications and scouting seasons, all culminating in the hunt. I put a lot of effort into this process; have developed some different ways of doing my research to put myself and my hunting partners on the ground in productive country, and would like to show how it is we are able to routinely harvest in new country every year. Because we are unit hoppers, we never get to intimately know an area the way someone would who has hunted a specific drainage for the past 20 years. I don’t find that to be a handicap, in fact, I feel that you are missing out by not exploring new country whenever possible. When you are wed to a specific unit, you stay with it through the good years and bad years, never feeling comfortable with the idea of trying a new location, not knowing how your wisdom will translate, and not knowing the specific movement habits of game in a new spot. I accept that I will never know have a complete understanding of the unique movements of game in every area, but I feel that knowledge and wisdom gained through hunting many places will apply to most situations I will encounter. While I may eventually settle down to hunting a few units routinely, by being flexible and keeping my eye on the population trends, I am able to hunt more places at their peak, and I don’t ever feel “stuck” with the same old, same old.
Unit selection is all about putting the odds in your favor. Most elk and deer hunters throughout the west go home empty handed more often than not. On average, elk hunters in Colorado harvest about 20% of the time, and deer hunters are successful about 40% of the time. Average isn’t good enough for me; I want to have the chance to harvest every time I go out. To do that, I feel it is advantageous to put yourself in more productive country. But how do you identify those areas? What do I look for when selecting a unit? After I’ve selected a unit to hunt, then how do I go about narrowing down the options for selecting a specific region to hunt? This script will attempt to show you the statistics and research that I looked at for this year and then show you the sign, habitat and terrain features that will encourage or discourage me from hunting in a specific area. Then hopefully, we’ll be able to put it all together for a successful hunt.
To begin the 2010 application season, my partners and I all had differing amounts of preference points and hunting preferences. We are all Colorado transplants, and so we do not have deep connections to any particular area within the state. We are mostly rifle hunters, but we also dabble in muzzleloading and archery now and then to expand our hunting opportunities. In 2009, very few of us were successful in drawing our first choice deer and elk tags, so we mostly hunted on second choices, OTC tags and leftovers. We had an up and down year with a few blown chances sticking in our collective craws making the season seem not quite as successful as we had hoped. As a group, our deer preference points were all over the map, with one of us having 0 points, one having 1 point, 2 having 2 points, one having 4 points, and two with 5 points. Only one of the 3 with a high deer point count had a plan for his points, the others were just blindly accumulating. For elk, we had fewer points as a group, with one having 5 points, but the rest of us had either one or two points each.
So our first order of business was to sit down and have a Meeting of the Mighty Hunters to map out our plans back in February. This was already past the application deadline for Wyoming elk, but none of us seemed interested in attempting an elk hunt Wyoming this year. For the last couple of years we have been going to Wyoming for a doe antelope hunt, so our first set of deadlines was going to be March 15th. New Mexico elk was on Ryan’s radar, and I decided to apply again for Nevada mule deer, as the last cheap and easy western hunt left now that New Mexico requires the full fee up front. But other than those hunts, the majority of our efforts were going to be focused on our home state of Colorado.
As with every group, some take a more active role in the planning process than others, with the less active members being more amenable to whatever the planners decide on. First order of business and that which most of us plan our year around is the elk hunting. In 2009, the main group hunt was a 1st rifle cow hunt in and alongside a wilderness area. We also had a 3rd rifle OTC bull elk hunt for 3 of us, while others hunted muzzleloader and archery seasons if they hunted elk a second time. Ryan had just taken up muzzleloading in 2009 and had an awesome experience with elk bugling in his face. As a dedicated waterfowler, the game calling aspect also appealed to him. To me, l liked the idea of having first crack at an elk with a firearm, and love mid September in the Rockies. We were also able to get more guys to commit to a backcountry elk hunt in September as opposed to October or November. Thankfully, we have access to Adam’s horses, which would make packing in a lot easier for all of us. Still, not everyone in the group was willing to commit to this hunt, but enough of us were willing to give it a shot.
Previously, I wasn’t willing to consider muzzleloading for cow elk until 2010 when the regulations changed. The previous statewide muzzleloader cow tag was a List A tag. But now that the statewide tag had been broken up into numerous units, with those tags that were List B for rifle hunts, now being list B for muzzleloading, it made it so that if I drew a cow tag, we wouldn’t lose an opportunity at a bull with the OTC tags or a leftover. While we were sold on muzzleloader season for our elk applications, we were well aware that our success rates would be much lower than a first rifle season tag. Traditionally, here in Colorado, 1st rifle season stands head and shoulders above the other seasons in terms of success rates. Of the 106 units I follow closely 1st season has approximately twice the success rates of the OTC seasons. Part of that is due to the common either sex tags, part of it is due to the fact that the elk have not been bothered for several weeks, and have not been run off onto the lower elevation private lands. But as you can see in the graph, 1st and 4th seasons are generally your best bets to kill an elk. These are 5 year averages reflecting either sex success rates for archery, muzzleloader, 1st and 4th rifle season, but bull only success rates for 2nd and 3rd seasons.
But where to go? I’m not the kind of guy who’ll chase a hot tip, and I try to put the experiences of others into perspective when listening to their advice. And most guys who’ll suggest a place to hunt have no perspective, and don’t really know what’s out there. Looking over data will help put things into perspective. And while it can be manipulated, I trust it more than the biased opinions of most hunters.
The unit had to be List B, so that those who drew cow tags could still hunt a bull. We also wanted a high density elk unit with low pressure. I want to hunt in units where I at least have a solid chance at shooting what I consider a trophy bull, basically anything approaching 300 inches. I have a sliding trophy scale, depending on the circumstances of the hunt; how many days I have left, what caliber of bulls I am seeing, what caliber I expect to see, and how many, if any elk I’ve already seen. The stat that I’m most willing to compromise on is success rate, as there are so many variables that affect a success rate that I feel it does not accurately reflect the way I hunt. Some of the guys were going to only put in for cow tags as a second choice so they could continue to accumulate preference points, but we were totally unsure of how the new muzzleloading elk units would draw out. There were no draw odds, and no tag quotas announced ahead of the draw, so it was going to be a gamble.
Anyway, our unit possibilities boiled down to the following units, some of which we had hunted in the past, others were new to us: Units that ranked highly on my lists that we had hunted recently and were considering returning to A, B, C, D, E, F and units that we had not hunted recently but were very interested in W, X, Y, and Z. Included on this list were some units that had previously had limited muzzleloader tags, but since we were unsure of how the breakup of the statewide tag would affect tag demand, we gave them some consideration too. All of these units had significant roadless area, most of which was federally designated wilderness.
As you can see in the chart, unit X has a significant elk density advantage over the others, and was a unit we had had our eye on for the past several years as the elk population had been growing.
Unit C, also has a substantial elk population, we were very familiar with it, but it was basically considered a raghorn unit, as you can see in the % of the bulls being harvested there last year. In fact, while only 30% of the bulls had been harvested out of that unit in 2009, that is considered a down year for that unit, as typical harvest percentages are in the mid to upper 40% range, leaving very few older bulls in the population. However, while Unit Y was a little below average in elk density, it is the top trophy potential unit, right next to unit X.
When you examine the number of elk per hunter in these units, once again unit X comes out on top, with only unit B coming in a close second. But unit B, which we hunted last year, doesn’t come close in terms of trophy potential and has half the elk density.
We do however like the extremely low hunter density in unit B as compared to unit X, but it’s not like X was particularly bad. When we hunted Unit C a few years ago, the hunter density was a real turn off for us, despite the fact we all harvested elk. Unit Y came up as another good possibility for low hunter density and good numbers of elk per hunter.
The main downsides to both units X and Y were the success rates, indicating difficult to access elk populations, especially compared to units C, E and Z.
Still, since we had decided to backcountry camp this year’s muzzleloader hunt, we were willing to disregard the lower success rates that are typical of units where a significant portion of the area is wilderness. We also knew we had to step up our scouting efforts in order to find good populations to hunt during muzzleloader season, as we wouldn’t be able to up and move very easily during the limited amount of time we’d have to hunt. But our decision had become a no-brainer at this point. With the expanding elk population in Unit X, which still wasn’t on the tongues of many hunters, we had to hunt this unit while it was still at its peak. Unit X is tops in nearly every category and the mediocre success rates could be explained away by the poor access that we could overcome through backcountry camping.
So that solved one of our primary elk hunt. Myself and Adam would put in for the bull tag as a first choice but were unsure how many points it would take to draw it. Ryan, Mike and Jason would apply for the cow tags with a second choice; while Matt and a friend of his from Florida, Chuck, would bow hunt the unit. We all applied separately, no group applications.
That left our deer applications for the other major group hunt. Having two or more resident points really opens up a lot of excellent possibilities. Determining a season can be almost as important as determining a unit. For us, primitive weapons hunts for deer hold little interest, but the early, high country rifle hunts have a lot of appeal. When you look at Western Colorado as a whole, there is little reason to spend the points on 4th rifle season, and the early rifle season is a terrible value. Although we still remain interested in the early rifle hunt, it would also conflict with our muzzleloader hunt this year.
However, when you look at some of my top rated units, you’ll see a few that truly represent excellent value. No one in the group had any special attraction to previously hunted units, and in fact hadn’t been happy with the ones we had hunted in the past, and had not drawn any tags since we had recently been following the data as closely as we do now. Jason and I had applied last year to unit A, but did not get drawn. However, a customer of mine had an excellent hunt in the same area we intended to hunt. I was open to a variety of units and seasons for 2010, but really dislike the amount of pressure that the 2nd season sees due to the number of OTC elk hunters. Traditionally, 2nd season has nearly twice the hunter pressure that 3rd season sees, and the deer success was lower. So it had to be a truly stellar unit to interest us in a 2nd season deer hunt. The units we were looking at for this year also had to require 2 points or less so most of us would have a chance to draw.
Unit A 3rd season, Unit B 3rd season, Unit C 2nd season, Unit D 2nd season and Unit E 3rd season, were the only units given much consideration. This was not going to be a meat hunt for most of us, we were after a quality experience. In the group, our trophy standards are all over the place, with some guys willing to shoot the first buck they see, others willing to be a little more patient for a buck. The unit also had to be OTC for elk, so those who only drew cow tags in muzzleloader season could come along on a bull hunt. Also, we had another friend, Tom, who wasn’t up for the backcountry muzzleloader hunt with his son, but would be more willing to jump in on an OTC bull hunt. He would be hunting a unit we had good success in for 1st season a few years ago.
Each of these 5 units had something going for them, and we knew that whichever we selected would be a slight compromise. But we had some incredible options to mull over. First, looking at the deer densities, unit E was the obvious standout, and is one of the top deer density units in the state.
But Units A and B were not too far behind in deer density.
One of the real downsides to Unit E 3rd season, which is even worse in worse in 2nd season, is the hunter density.
So, negating Unit E 3rd season, we looked at A and B for 3rd season, which were the next highest deer densities, and you’ll see both have low hunter densities. In terms of trophy Potential, Unit B 3rd season, begins to separate itself from A 3rd season.
However, unit C has excellent trophy potential. But the real downside there is the low deer density. Also, Unit C has a poor success rate. While that normally wouldn’t be the deciding factor, it did play a small role in this decision.
Of the last major statistical categories that I decided to look, Bucks per Hunter, Unit D 2nd season really stood out from the pack:
As I said, this was a tough decision. All of these units were ranked in the top 15 to 20 units in 2nd or 3rd season, and amongst the top values. The first to be eliminated was unit E 3rd season. It ranked the worst of these units, but the incredible deer density kept it in play in the discussions. Unit D 2nd season is the top ranked second season deer hunt, but because it required one more point than the other units, it would eliminate some of our hunters from drawing, and those with the minimum number of points, might not actually draw. So that left Units A, B and C. Unit C 2nd season only had the high trophy potential going for it, everything else looked poor in comparison with units A and B. And unit C 3rd season required more points than most of us had. So, in reality it came down to unit A versus unit B in 3rd season. Unit B was ranked slightly above A in our rankings, but because A was so close to our elk muzzleloader elk area, we had knowledge of the unit, the success rate was higher and the landownership pattern and terrain more conducive to our hunting styles, we decided to compromise and go with A. A did not lead any category, but was still an excellent unit.
Deciding on which units to apply for in New Mexico and Nevada went through similar processes. When we first started antelope hunting in Wyoming, we went on the recommendation of an area by a friend of ours. Productive hunting, and research showing we’d have to travel a lot further to greatly improve our hunting has had us staying put in the unit we know and like. Plus the tags are easy to get.
To be continued next time with the draw results, remote scouting and spring scouting…
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Last Minute Leftover Tag Prep
Wyoming’s leftovers are currently on sale, Montana’s go on sale Monday the 9th, Idaho is presently conducting its second chance drawing and Colorado’s leftovers go on sale Tuesday the 10th. It’s not too late to do a little last minute prep and scouting before committing to a tag. As I mentioned last week in “Why is this tag a Leftover?”, not all leftovers are junk. But some are more headache than they are worth.
So let’s walk through a few steps we should consider before purchasing a tag. As a data guy, the first thing I’ll look into is how the unit stacks up in my rankings. Everyone has different priorities, but for me personally, I want above average game densities, solid trophy potential if it’s a buck or bull tag, and low hunting pressure. I will sacrifice success rates, except in the case of meat hunts. But if a unit has unusually low success, I will want to try to figure out why, and whether or not it is something I can overcome by hunting smarter or hunting harder than the average.
The next thing I do is look at the landownership pattern. Checkerboards and small parcels of public land work for me for antelope and some deer hunting, but not for elk hunting. In heavily private areas that have tempted me to look into their tags for whatever reason, I will also look at any public access programs like Wyoming’s Hunter Management and Walk In Access areas, Montana’s Block Management, Idaho’s Access Yes! and Colorado’s Big Game Walk In Access Areas.
Next I’ll do some quick remote scouting of the publicly accessible areas on Google Earth, to make sure they look like proper habitat from the air. I’m not concerned with where exactly to hunt at this point, but I want to know that there is the kind of habitat that looks appropriate for the game of interest and works for my hunting styles.
After that, I’ll try to do a quick drive to and around the unit. Try to schedule your drive to be out during peak game hours. If the place I want to look at is 4 or 5 hours away, I will be leaving in the middle of the night to be on the roads at dawn. If that’s not possible, be sure to be driving through your most likely areas by dusk. This tactic is better for deer and elk, as antelope are more active mid to late morning and late afternoon. But I want to see that there is at least some game. If I have time I’ll hike around looking for sign that I mentioned in this scouting article a while back:
http://wildlife.state.co.us/Hunting/ElkHuntingUniversity/EHULessons/EHUScoutTips.htm
When doing that I’m just trying to get an idea of relative animal densities. How does this area compare to others that I’ve hunted? Is there more or less browsing pressure on the plants than I’m used to? Can I see hedged shrubs along the winter range areas, indicating high winter concentrations of game? What about fresh tracks in the road and along the cut banks of dirt roads? It doesn’t take much to get me excited, and validate my decision to hunt an area, but it’s best to have some perspective. If you don’t know what a lot of sign looks like, head out to one of the higher game density reputation areas in your state(or take a look at my stats), then compare it to wherever else you’re considering hunting. Montana and Colorado hunters, you still have one more weekend day to do this.
It’s also important to know what kind of a chance you have of getting the tag you are interested in. Are there only a handful of tags available? If that’s the case, be ready with a backup plan. This year in Colorado, there are only 8 public land heavy units with rifle buck deer tags available. That’s as few as I remember ever seeing, so you’ll want to have several back up plans if you’re eyeing buck deer tags. Guys who have several members of a party going for a small number of leftover tags have additional issues. If you can’t pick up the leftover tags with all of your friends at once in the same place, make sure you stay in touch with everybody in the party. You’ll want to know if the tags have sold out and you’ll want to be prepared to purchase some sort of secondary license for that area if you intend to go anyway. That might be a cow elk tag or doe deer tag instead of a buck or bull tag. If you know members of your party can’t or won’t be first in line for that limited tag, you might have to think more seriously about a unit with more leftovers so you are all more likely to get a tag.
Additionally, if you have to return a tag before you can purchase a new one, do that before leftover day (that means Monday at the latest for Colorado hunters). You’ll have to that at a Division of Wildlife Office, which is the last place you’ll want to be on leftover day.
For Colorado’s mad rush on leftover tags, another good tactic is to head to less well known and less well stocked hunting stores for your leftover tag. Sportsmen’s Warehouse and Wal Mart are just as bad, if not worse than the Division of Wildlife Offices. Frequently, the counter help at big box stores are not aware of List A versus List B and List C rules, so if you see someone struggling as they are continuously rejected, don’t be afraid to let them know what’s wrong with their tag selections. Every year I see someone try buy more bull or buck tags than they are allowed, or try to buy a List A cow or doe tag in addition to the buck or bull tag. Also, there’s no need to buy your OTC tags while there are so many people in line. Those are unlimited.
You still have plenty of time to scout, but you should start getting ready to commit to a unit, if you haven’t already done so.
Good luck out there
So let’s walk through a few steps we should consider before purchasing a tag. As a data guy, the first thing I’ll look into is how the unit stacks up in my rankings. Everyone has different priorities, but for me personally, I want above average game densities, solid trophy potential if it’s a buck or bull tag, and low hunting pressure. I will sacrifice success rates, except in the case of meat hunts. But if a unit has unusually low success, I will want to try to figure out why, and whether or not it is something I can overcome by hunting smarter or hunting harder than the average.
The next thing I do is look at the landownership pattern. Checkerboards and small parcels of public land work for me for antelope and some deer hunting, but not for elk hunting. In heavily private areas that have tempted me to look into their tags for whatever reason, I will also look at any public access programs like Wyoming’s Hunter Management and Walk In Access areas, Montana’s Block Management, Idaho’s Access Yes! and Colorado’s Big Game Walk In Access Areas.
Next I’ll do some quick remote scouting of the publicly accessible areas on Google Earth, to make sure they look like proper habitat from the air. I’m not concerned with where exactly to hunt at this point, but I want to know that there is the kind of habitat that looks appropriate for the game of interest and works for my hunting styles.
After that, I’ll try to do a quick drive to and around the unit. Try to schedule your drive to be out during peak game hours. If the place I want to look at is 4 or 5 hours away, I will be leaving in the middle of the night to be on the roads at dawn. If that’s not possible, be sure to be driving through your most likely areas by dusk. This tactic is better for deer and elk, as antelope are more active mid to late morning and late afternoon. But I want to see that there is at least some game. If I have time I’ll hike around looking for sign that I mentioned in this scouting article a while back:
http://wildlife.state.co.us/Hunting/ElkHuntingUniversity/EHULessons/EHUScoutTips.htm
When doing that I’m just trying to get an idea of relative animal densities. How does this area compare to others that I’ve hunted? Is there more or less browsing pressure on the plants than I’m used to? Can I see hedged shrubs along the winter range areas, indicating high winter concentrations of game? What about fresh tracks in the road and along the cut banks of dirt roads? It doesn’t take much to get me excited, and validate my decision to hunt an area, but it’s best to have some perspective. If you don’t know what a lot of sign looks like, head out to one of the higher game density reputation areas in your state(or take a look at my stats), then compare it to wherever else you’re considering hunting. Montana and Colorado hunters, you still have one more weekend day to do this.
It’s also important to know what kind of a chance you have of getting the tag you are interested in. Are there only a handful of tags available? If that’s the case, be ready with a backup plan. This year in Colorado, there are only 8 public land heavy units with rifle buck deer tags available. That’s as few as I remember ever seeing, so you’ll want to have several back up plans if you’re eyeing buck deer tags. Guys who have several members of a party going for a small number of leftover tags have additional issues. If you can’t pick up the leftover tags with all of your friends at once in the same place, make sure you stay in touch with everybody in the party. You’ll want to know if the tags have sold out and you’ll want to be prepared to purchase some sort of secondary license for that area if you intend to go anyway. That might be a cow elk tag or doe deer tag instead of a buck or bull tag. If you know members of your party can’t or won’t be first in line for that limited tag, you might have to think more seriously about a unit with more leftovers so you are all more likely to get a tag.
Additionally, if you have to return a tag before you can purchase a new one, do that before leftover day (that means Monday at the latest for Colorado hunters). You’ll have to that at a Division of Wildlife Office, which is the last place you’ll want to be on leftover day.
For Colorado’s mad rush on leftover tags, another good tactic is to head to less well known and less well stocked hunting stores for your leftover tag. Sportsmen’s Warehouse and Wal Mart are just as bad, if not worse than the Division of Wildlife Offices. Frequently, the counter help at big box stores are not aware of List A versus List B and List C rules, so if you see someone struggling as they are continuously rejected, don’t be afraid to let them know what’s wrong with their tag selections. Every year I see someone try buy more bull or buck tags than they are allowed, or try to buy a List A cow or doe tag in addition to the buck or bull tag. Also, there’s no need to buy your OTC tags while there are so many people in line. Those are unlimited.
You still have plenty of time to scout, but you should start getting ready to commit to a unit, if you haven’t already done so.
Good luck out there
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Why is this Tag a Leftover?
With application season pretty much behind us, leftovers becoming available and hunting season just around the corner, most of us have our plans pretty well fleshed out. However, many of you may still be contemplating the leftover lists, looking for an opportunity to hunt.
I’ll mostly talk about the Wyoming and Colorado leftovers here, but the thought processes should apply elsewhere.
More often than not there’s a reason tags go unclaimed in the draw, and it’s not always because it’s a bad tag to have. But you need to do your research BEFORE you buy a tag. It all boils down to supply and demand, but we need to look into both variables to see why the tag has leftovers, and whether or not it’s worth having.
On the supply side, units with high game populations frequently issue a lot of tags. So just because the tags are available, it does not mean no one wants them. It’s just that there’s a tremendous number available. Here in Colorado, a unit with one of the highest deer densities and excellent trophy potential is available as leftovers most years. Areas with population problems often make it to leftovers. Colorado’s top elk density unit has tags available in leftovers for nearly every season. Areas that are just in a population maintenance mode, are rarely as good for a meat hunt as those whose populations are above objectives.
Sometimes there will be areas that traditionally to draw out, with a fairly steady number of applicants. But if the managing game department suddenly increases the tags, the public may not have been prepared and the unit will go undersubscribed. Check out the draw stats for both this year and last year. Was there an increase in the number of permits? That might indicate a growing population for you to take advantage of.
One of the big factors affecting demand would include public access. This is easy enough to figure out with a simple atlas or map showing public land ownership and the major county roads. The antelope tags I buy in Wyoming every year are always available as leftovers, but Wyoming Game and Fish discourages people from purchasing tags for that unit with their asterisk, meaning public access is poor. It may not be full of contiguous blocks of public land, but there’s enough, especially when you include Wyoming’s Walk In Access and Hunter Management Areas. And don’t overlook checkerboarded areas for deer and antelope hunting. My favorite parcel for antelope is just a single 640 acre (1 sq mile) section of BLM land. It always has a large herd of antelope on it after 10 am.
Wilderness and difficult terrain conspire to discourage many hunters. If you’ve purchased my full data sets, you’ll see that some of the best units are wilderness-heavy and/or incredibly steep, rugged country. In Wyoming, that’s a major issue for nonresidents, because you can’t hunt a designated wilderness without a guide, but it shouldn’t hold back a hardcore hunter in other states. Also, look closely to see what proportion of a unit is wilderness. Is there still enough country left to hunt outside of the wilderness area? Most hunters just don’t want to fool with backcountry camping. But if you’re willing to, you’ll open up tremendous possibilities for yourself. Road closures to popular areas also discourage some hunters who had traditionally hunted in a place they could drive to.
But, as often as not, a tag goes undersubscribed for good reason. Frequently the game numbers are way down, and even the locals are giving up on hunting the area. While most hunters don’t pour over the statistics, long term trends of poor success and infrequent game sightings go noticed eventually. Heavily pressured areas take a toll on those who are intolerant of “pumpkin patches”. Despite an areas popularity, few hunters dream about hunting elbow to elbow with other strangers. But tolerance to hunting pressure is relative. If you’re used to heavily hunted areas in your home state, what locals consider heavy pressure may not bother you at all.
Sometimes, it’s just the season that hunters don’t like. Here in Colorado, 2nd season deer tags and 4th season elk tags aren’t very popular; leaving some high quality tags available in places that you wouldn’t think would have leftovers. 3rd season is very popular for deer hunters, but low on most elk hunter’s priorities.
New hunts and new boundaries also create confusion or poor awareness amongst hunters. This year, with 3rd rifle season in Colorado being extended to a full nine days, you’d think more people would know about it. But many of the folks I’ve talked to had no idea. Also, keep your eye out for new late or early season opportunities that are outside of the traditional hunting seasons. Because game departments tweak their seasons and hunting opportunities each year, new hunts pop up without the knowledge of many long time hunters. In fact, I talked to an outfitter this year that had no idea that there was a new late elk season in his area. Many of those guys just don’t pay enough attention to the new regulations each year. Yes, they’ll know for next year, but having first crack at migratory herd in an area of heavy public land appeals to me, and there are leftovers of the tag I’m talking about.
Lastly, we usually have a few weeks between finding out what the leftover list looks like and the date the permits go on sale. So try to get a little scouting in if you can to verify that an area looks like it holds game and the public lands are accessible.
My point is that there are many factors that go into whether or not a permit is available as a leftover. Sometimes it’s a supply issue, other times it’s a demand issue. So make sure you do your due diligence when considering a leftover tag. Also, keep in mind that a limited permit isn’t always better than an unlimited one. But more often than not, we need to take advantage of leftover limited permits in order to maximize our hunting opportunities. They aren’t all marginal permits, some of them can be fairly desirable. Wyoming leftovers are on sale now, Colorado leftovers go on sale in person and over the phone August 10th. Good luck out there and do your homework.
I’ll mostly talk about the Wyoming and Colorado leftovers here, but the thought processes should apply elsewhere.
More often than not there’s a reason tags go unclaimed in the draw, and it’s not always because it’s a bad tag to have. But you need to do your research BEFORE you buy a tag. It all boils down to supply and demand, but we need to look into both variables to see why the tag has leftovers, and whether or not it’s worth having.
On the supply side, units with high game populations frequently issue a lot of tags. So just because the tags are available, it does not mean no one wants them. It’s just that there’s a tremendous number available. Here in Colorado, a unit with one of the highest deer densities and excellent trophy potential is available as leftovers most years. Areas with population problems often make it to leftovers. Colorado’s top elk density unit has tags available in leftovers for nearly every season. Areas that are just in a population maintenance mode, are rarely as good for a meat hunt as those whose populations are above objectives.
Sometimes there will be areas that traditionally to draw out, with a fairly steady number of applicants. But if the managing game department suddenly increases the tags, the public may not have been prepared and the unit will go undersubscribed. Check out the draw stats for both this year and last year. Was there an increase in the number of permits? That might indicate a growing population for you to take advantage of.
One of the big factors affecting demand would include public access. This is easy enough to figure out with a simple atlas or map showing public land ownership and the major county roads. The antelope tags I buy in Wyoming every year are always available as leftovers, but Wyoming Game and Fish discourages people from purchasing tags for that unit with their asterisk, meaning public access is poor. It may not be full of contiguous blocks of public land, but there’s enough, especially when you include Wyoming’s Walk In Access and Hunter Management Areas. And don’t overlook checkerboarded areas for deer and antelope hunting. My favorite parcel for antelope is just a single 640 acre (1 sq mile) section of BLM land. It always has a large herd of antelope on it after 10 am.
Wilderness and difficult terrain conspire to discourage many hunters. If you’ve purchased my full data sets, you’ll see that some of the best units are wilderness-heavy and/or incredibly steep, rugged country. In Wyoming, that’s a major issue for nonresidents, because you can’t hunt a designated wilderness without a guide, but it shouldn’t hold back a hardcore hunter in other states. Also, look closely to see what proportion of a unit is wilderness. Is there still enough country left to hunt outside of the wilderness area? Most hunters just don’t want to fool with backcountry camping. But if you’re willing to, you’ll open up tremendous possibilities for yourself. Road closures to popular areas also discourage some hunters who had traditionally hunted in a place they could drive to.
But, as often as not, a tag goes undersubscribed for good reason. Frequently the game numbers are way down, and even the locals are giving up on hunting the area. While most hunters don’t pour over the statistics, long term trends of poor success and infrequent game sightings go noticed eventually. Heavily pressured areas take a toll on those who are intolerant of “pumpkin patches”. Despite an areas popularity, few hunters dream about hunting elbow to elbow with other strangers. But tolerance to hunting pressure is relative. If you’re used to heavily hunted areas in your home state, what locals consider heavy pressure may not bother you at all.
Sometimes, it’s just the season that hunters don’t like. Here in Colorado, 2nd season deer tags and 4th season elk tags aren’t very popular; leaving some high quality tags available in places that you wouldn’t think would have leftovers. 3rd season is very popular for deer hunters, but low on most elk hunter’s priorities.
New hunts and new boundaries also create confusion or poor awareness amongst hunters. This year, with 3rd rifle season in Colorado being extended to a full nine days, you’d think more people would know about it. But many of the folks I’ve talked to had no idea. Also, keep your eye out for new late or early season opportunities that are outside of the traditional hunting seasons. Because game departments tweak their seasons and hunting opportunities each year, new hunts pop up without the knowledge of many long time hunters. In fact, I talked to an outfitter this year that had no idea that there was a new late elk season in his area. Many of those guys just don’t pay enough attention to the new regulations each year. Yes, they’ll know for next year, but having first crack at migratory herd in an area of heavy public land appeals to me, and there are leftovers of the tag I’m talking about.
Lastly, we usually have a few weeks between finding out what the leftover list looks like and the date the permits go on sale. So try to get a little scouting in if you can to verify that an area looks like it holds game and the public lands are accessible.
My point is that there are many factors that go into whether or not a permit is available as a leftover. Sometimes it’s a supply issue, other times it’s a demand issue. So make sure you do your due diligence when considering a leftover tag. Also, keep in mind that a limited permit isn’t always better than an unlimited one. But more often than not, we need to take advantage of leftover limited permits in order to maximize our hunting opportunities. They aren’t all marginal permits, some of them can be fairly desirable. Wyoming leftovers are on sale now, Colorado leftovers go on sale in person and over the phone August 10th. Good luck out there and do your homework.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Gear Talk, Part 3: Elk
In the last installment of Gear Talk, I discussed the variables of antelope habitat and hunting, and how it would affect your gear selection. Antelope habitat does not vary nearly as much as deer or elk habitat, so this time we are going to have to cover a wider range of hunting scenarios and habitats when discussing elk. While there is no “normal” elk country, it can be lumped into a handful of habitat types, which usually have an effect on hunting techniques, which should dictate which gear you bring, and which you should leave at home.
By now you should have an idea of what the country looks like, even if you don’t know a proper name for it. Within an individual hunting unit, elk country varies by time of year, snow levels, slope, aspect, vegetation cover types, altitude, latitude, region of the country and individual microclimates. Within the Continental US, the further north you go, the more precipitation you have, and therefore the forests are denser and more shade tolerant. Within a given latitude, your north and east facing slopes will also be denser than your west and south facing slopes. So, the Southern Rockies in New Mexico typically have sparser Ponderosa Pine forests at an equal elevation and aspect compared to Northern Idaho and Montana’s dense spruce-fir habitats. Those sparse Ponderosa Pine forests have excellent shooting and sight lanes, but the dense Douglas Fir and Lodgepole Pine forests throughout the Northern Rockies leave very little for shooting lanes.
Altitude has a very large effect on habitat types. Within most elk country, you can have low elevation cold desert and farmland winter ranges all the way up past timberline in the summer time. Timberline changes with respect to slope, latitude, aspect and precipitation. In the Northwest, where you have high precipitation (snowfalls are what’s important here), and higher latitude than say, Southern Colorado, timberline is closer to 10,000 feet. On the drier slopes in Colorado, timberline is over 11,500 feet, sometimes exceeding 11,700. As elevation approaches the tree line, the timber gets sparser, growth becomes stunted and twisted forming what is called krummholz (German for twisted wood). Extending below this tree line and the krummholz are your dense spruce-fir forests. The higher altitude increases precipitation and retains snow for a longer period of time, growing larger, more shade tolerant trees. Below this band of spruces and firs will be your typical pine and aspen habitats, depending on the successional stage that the mountain is in.
Because pines tend to burn frequently, the stands may still be in aspens or mountain mahogany and other shrubs, but the climax species below the spruce-fir zone tend to be in less dense, shorter pines where you have decent sight lines. Below most pine zones in the Rockies, the vegetation communies tend to be either Pinyon-Juniper, scrub oaks or various mountain shrub species. These areas are often winter range and late season hunting areas, though in some canyon country these communities are found through the highest elevations. These habitats tend to be much more conducive to spot and stalk hunting than the spruce-fir zones, though the visibility isn’t quite as good as when hunting in alpine and krummholz habitats.
ELK GUNS:
Where and how you hunt should play a large factor in your elk gun selection or build criteria. A standard factory sporter-weight .30-06 with 180 grain soft points and a variable 3-9x40 scope will be more than adequate for most situations. But since this article is about specialized gear, I’ll go over some features to consider when looking for an excuse to tinker with what you’ve got, buy something new or build something a little more festive than what you’re packing now.
Most of us can’t hunt with a rifle when elk are still above timberline, so the highest habitats we’ll be rifle hunting are the krummholz and spruce-fir zones. It takes over a foot of snow to really force the bulk of the elk herds to migrate much below that. So the reality of most elk hunting, is that shots can be very short. However, you must still be capable of handling a long shot across a large, wet meadow. I find short barrels to be of no real ballistic disadvantage, but I also don’t find that shortening a barrel helps in the handling very much. Shortening the length of pull on your stock tends to be of more help in handling a quick shot. Also consider that you will likely be wearing bulky clothes in late October or November, so a shorter stock will shoulder much more easily. A longer barrel will help you swing with a moving target. So if you are trying to build the best handling gun you can, barrel length is a tough compromise. A short barrel might be nice if you prefer to still hunt or track elk and hope to take short, quick, but stationary shot. The actual length should depend on the contour of the barrel, but the balance point for those stalking the dense spruce-fir zones should be right around the front action screw on a bolt action rifle so that it will swing properly. If you aren’t comfortable with a moving shot, then bring the balance point back to the middle of the receiver. Don’t forget to factor in the scope weight and position when trying to determine where a good balance point for you would be. Forward mounting a scope on the barrel will help the balance if you choose to shorten the barrel severely. Overall weight is less important than balance in this situation.
There are only a few places where a true long range elk rifle serves much of a purpose. Any rifle that can hold 1.5 MOA out to 600 yards will easily remain within the vitals of an elk, provided the shooter is up to such a shot. The only places where I could see the use of dragging around a dedicated long range rig would be for late season hunts on winter range, Wyoming’s Red Desert country, and some sparse canyon country. In BLM-heavy canyon country, you can occasionally see elk from extremely long distance, and roads may quickly get you to the edge of a canyon, where you would lose sight of the elk if you attempted to cross it. The danger of building such a specialized rifle is that you lose the versatility needed to handle the majority of elk hunting situations. A 12 or 15 pound, 30 inch barreled .338 Lapua with a 20X Nightforce scope and McMillan A5 stock is a poor choice of rifle for sneaking through the woods and climbing the mountains.
I think it is far better to improve your abilities at extended ranges with a more versatile rifle than to intend to hunt with something that specialized. If you think the country you hunt will present you with a situation where a 500 plus yard shot is possible, you’ll be better off having practiced those shots with your current rifle than be caught holding something wholly unsuited for a quick shot in the timber as you approach your vantage point. A good compromise is to stay with a high comb, sporter-style stock and not too heavy of a barrel. I’ve killed 3 elk in quick situations at under 100 yards with a 27.5 inch #3 contour(0.625 at the muzzle) .264 Win Mag with a 15 inch length of pull. I designed it as a somewhat long range deer rig, but I tend to use that gun for almost everything, as it is versatile enough to not be a handicap for quick, short range situations. If the elk in your area will stay in and around the krummholz for rifle season, longer shots may be presented, but you aren’t going to want to carry a heavy gun up and over 12,000 foot ridges. You’ll be happiest with a lightweight rifle with some long range capability. Fluting, skeletonizing, restocking, using a smaller scope, switching to lighter scope mounts and shortening barrels will work to cut out a significant amount of weight from most guns without reducing effective range.
I find bipods to be of little use for elk. In most timbered elk country, you can find a rest if you need it for longer shots. And a little ingenuity will give you more options to get a steady rest above the vegetation than a bipod. A bipod designed to be used from prone will rarely be used in areas with decent grass length or substantial shrubs. Shooting sticks are more useful, but even your binoculars will make a decent rest if need be. For those you that sit meadows and trails, a sitting length bipod or shooting sticks will work well to minimize the amount of movement necessary for a longer shot. I would take the bipod off when you are moving between areas or still hunting the timber. A sling is crucial. Not just to free your hands up when navigating difficult terrain, but also for steadying a shot from any position. Really wide, fat slings are comfortable, but of little use when trying to tighten up for a shot. A rangefinder is useful when sitting a meadow, as it can be difficult to judge distance in places that have very little vegetation. However, most shots must be taken before you have the time to judge the range.
I feel bullet selection is more important than cartridge selection. My basic guidelines are to use premium, controlled expansion type bullets with magnum cartridges. Basic cup and core bullets were designed for standard velocities and impacts below 2800 fps generally. I prefer heavy for caliber spitzers when using cup and core bullets, and light for caliber bullets in the monometals. You can choose too tough of a bullet and cartridge combination, just as you can choose too soft of a combination. A .308 Winchester and 200 grain Barnes TSX combination with a 400 yard shot into soft tissue is asking for trouble due to poor expansion. A .300 Weatherby Magnum shooting a 125 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip shot into heavy bone at 50 yards is another disaster waiting to happen. Nearly anything can kill an elk, but to do so efficiently and properly requires some forethought and understanding of operating windows for the bullet selected. Along that same line of thinking, if you have to ask whether your bullet and cartridge combination is up to the task of a severe quartering shot, it probably isn’t and you’ll be left wishing you chose a better bullet. My favorite rifle is my .264 Win Mag, but using my 3700 fps 100 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip antelope loads on elk would be irresponsible. In my .358 Norma Magnum, I wouldn’t use bullets designed for the .35 Remington velocities either.
Regarding muzzleloaders for rut hunting, keep them short and handy. Front globe sights are great for precision shooting, but cumbersome at short range. A peep rear and small, bright front dot works well in most conditions, but a larger, brighter front sight is useful in the dense timber. In Colorado, sabots aren’t permitted, but I wouldn’t use them anyway. I’ll stick with a heavy, solid lead conical.
OPTICS:
When scoping an elk rifle, you’ll want to think about the likely distances and conditions involved in the habitats you’ll be hunting, as well keeping an eye on the effect of weight and balance with your rifle. As mentioned before, a versatile 3-9x40 will handle nearly any situation well, just make sure you keep the setting at 3X unless you have time to set up for a long shot. There’s very little a simple fixed 4x scope wouldn’t work well for. The field of view allows quick shots, and the magnification is just good enough to be precise with your placement. I personally don’t like fixed 6x scopes, as I find the field of view a little limiting on short shots. A 4.5-14x or 4-12x works well, as long you keep the setting at low power. In reality, most guys could err on the side of low power variables, such as a 2-7x or 1.75-6x and be very happy with their nice, lightweight scope. The mid elevation pine-aspen and low elevation scrub oak/winter range hunter will have more long distance shot opportunities than the high elevation spruce-fir elk hunter, and might better appreciate slightly higher magnifications.
I was once guiding a hunter for mule deer in Western Nebraska, and two does and a decent buck came up out of a timbered draw, with the buck dogging the a doe 75 yards away. I pointed the buck out to my hunter and she said, “I can’t find him!”, turns out her scope was on 9 power and the field of view didn’t allow her to find the buck before he went up and over the ridge less than 50 yards away. We never got back on that buck after discovering her error. In short, if you have a variable power scope, check it to make sure you are on low power when you arrive in your hunting error. It’s common to leave your scope at max power after sighting in at the range.
Thick crosshairs are best for most elk hunting. Timber hunting dictates you find your crosshairs quickly on moving objects or in heavy shadows. Thick crosshairs are also useful for hunting during the typical primetimes of dawn and dusk for the meadow and trail sitters. If you like bullet drop compensators, realize those are typically designed to be used at maximum power, so if you have to take the time to figure out bullet drop, take the time to crank up your magnification. For the long rangers, custom reticles matched to your bullet drop or turret adjustments are great. But for most elk hunting situations, those are superfluous. Good eye relief is another important factor in an elk riflescope. We tend to choose hard kicking rifles and it helps to be able to keep sharp aluminum tubes from banging into your nose and eyebrow. But more importantly, long eye relief is great for fast target acquisition without too much of the “staring down a black hole” feeling.
I find spotting scopes useful for only two types of hunting: Road hunting in areas where you can see long distances, and when hunting from ridges above timberline in the early seasons. I know, I know, I should condemn the road hunters, but let’s get real, in some places that’s called hunting smart, and a lot easier than bumbling around the ridges. For the timberline archer or rifleman, a compact spotting scope can save you miles of walking by determining whether or not the small herd of elk you’ve spotted has a legal bull or a bull up to your standards. They are also great for peering into the krummholz and edges of the spruces and firs from above, while looking for bedded elk.
For most people, binoculars are all that is necessary. The big timber spruce-fir rifle hunter and bowhunter will do fine with a medium power 6,7 or 8x with a wide field of view. High magnification cab be a detriment if you’ve snuck up on elk in the timber. If you can’t find the elk, focus your binos and get a steady view of the antlers or what’s behind your target, they are worthless. Those hunting sparser country can benefit from greater magnification. In large aspen stands or dense scrub oaks you can often pick elk out easily with the naked eye, but will need powerful binoculars to make out the sex and antler size against the twiggy background. I’ve always used cheap glass, but only recently have come to regret it. I left my binoculars in my pack with a leaking water bladder and now one barrel of the binoculars are permanently fogged. Don’t make that mistake.
Part 4, the continuation of elk gear, including clothing, footwear and camping gear will be coming soon…
By now you should have an idea of what the country looks like, even if you don’t know a proper name for it. Within an individual hunting unit, elk country varies by time of year, snow levels, slope, aspect, vegetation cover types, altitude, latitude, region of the country and individual microclimates. Within the Continental US, the further north you go, the more precipitation you have, and therefore the forests are denser and more shade tolerant. Within a given latitude, your north and east facing slopes will also be denser than your west and south facing slopes. So, the Southern Rockies in New Mexico typically have sparser Ponderosa Pine forests at an equal elevation and aspect compared to Northern Idaho and Montana’s dense spruce-fir habitats. Those sparse Ponderosa Pine forests have excellent shooting and sight lanes, but the dense Douglas Fir and Lodgepole Pine forests throughout the Northern Rockies leave very little for shooting lanes.
Altitude has a very large effect on habitat types. Within most elk country, you can have low elevation cold desert and farmland winter ranges all the way up past timberline in the summer time. Timberline changes with respect to slope, latitude, aspect and precipitation. In the Northwest, where you have high precipitation (snowfalls are what’s important here), and higher latitude than say, Southern Colorado, timberline is closer to 10,000 feet. On the drier slopes in Colorado, timberline is over 11,500 feet, sometimes exceeding 11,700. As elevation approaches the tree line, the timber gets sparser, growth becomes stunted and twisted forming what is called krummholz (German for twisted wood). Extending below this tree line and the krummholz are your dense spruce-fir forests. The higher altitude increases precipitation and retains snow for a longer period of time, growing larger, more shade tolerant trees. Below this band of spruces and firs will be your typical pine and aspen habitats, depending on the successional stage that the mountain is in.
Because pines tend to burn frequently, the stands may still be in aspens or mountain mahogany and other shrubs, but the climax species below the spruce-fir zone tend to be in less dense, shorter pines where you have decent sight lines. Below most pine zones in the Rockies, the vegetation communies tend to be either Pinyon-Juniper, scrub oaks or various mountain shrub species. These areas are often winter range and late season hunting areas, though in some canyon country these communities are found through the highest elevations. These habitats tend to be much more conducive to spot and stalk hunting than the spruce-fir zones, though the visibility isn’t quite as good as when hunting in alpine and krummholz habitats.
ELK GUNS:
Where and how you hunt should play a large factor in your elk gun selection or build criteria. A standard factory sporter-weight .30-06 with 180 grain soft points and a variable 3-9x40 scope will be more than adequate for most situations. But since this article is about specialized gear, I’ll go over some features to consider when looking for an excuse to tinker with what you’ve got, buy something new or build something a little more festive than what you’re packing now.
Most of us can’t hunt with a rifle when elk are still above timberline, so the highest habitats we’ll be rifle hunting are the krummholz and spruce-fir zones. It takes over a foot of snow to really force the bulk of the elk herds to migrate much below that. So the reality of most elk hunting, is that shots can be very short. However, you must still be capable of handling a long shot across a large, wet meadow. I find short barrels to be of no real ballistic disadvantage, but I also don’t find that shortening a barrel helps in the handling very much. Shortening the length of pull on your stock tends to be of more help in handling a quick shot. Also consider that you will likely be wearing bulky clothes in late October or November, so a shorter stock will shoulder much more easily. A longer barrel will help you swing with a moving target. So if you are trying to build the best handling gun you can, barrel length is a tough compromise. A short barrel might be nice if you prefer to still hunt or track elk and hope to take short, quick, but stationary shot. The actual length should depend on the contour of the barrel, but the balance point for those stalking the dense spruce-fir zones should be right around the front action screw on a bolt action rifle so that it will swing properly. If you aren’t comfortable with a moving shot, then bring the balance point back to the middle of the receiver. Don’t forget to factor in the scope weight and position when trying to determine where a good balance point for you would be. Forward mounting a scope on the barrel will help the balance if you choose to shorten the barrel severely. Overall weight is less important than balance in this situation.
There are only a few places where a true long range elk rifle serves much of a purpose. Any rifle that can hold 1.5 MOA out to 600 yards will easily remain within the vitals of an elk, provided the shooter is up to such a shot. The only places where I could see the use of dragging around a dedicated long range rig would be for late season hunts on winter range, Wyoming’s Red Desert country, and some sparse canyon country. In BLM-heavy canyon country, you can occasionally see elk from extremely long distance, and roads may quickly get you to the edge of a canyon, where you would lose sight of the elk if you attempted to cross it. The danger of building such a specialized rifle is that you lose the versatility needed to handle the majority of elk hunting situations. A 12 or 15 pound, 30 inch barreled .338 Lapua with a 20X Nightforce scope and McMillan A5 stock is a poor choice of rifle for sneaking through the woods and climbing the mountains.
I think it is far better to improve your abilities at extended ranges with a more versatile rifle than to intend to hunt with something that specialized. If you think the country you hunt will present you with a situation where a 500 plus yard shot is possible, you’ll be better off having practiced those shots with your current rifle than be caught holding something wholly unsuited for a quick shot in the timber as you approach your vantage point. A good compromise is to stay with a high comb, sporter-style stock and not too heavy of a barrel. I’ve killed 3 elk in quick situations at under 100 yards with a 27.5 inch #3 contour(0.625 at the muzzle) .264 Win Mag with a 15 inch length of pull. I designed it as a somewhat long range deer rig, but I tend to use that gun for almost everything, as it is versatile enough to not be a handicap for quick, short range situations. If the elk in your area will stay in and around the krummholz for rifle season, longer shots may be presented, but you aren’t going to want to carry a heavy gun up and over 12,000 foot ridges. You’ll be happiest with a lightweight rifle with some long range capability. Fluting, skeletonizing, restocking, using a smaller scope, switching to lighter scope mounts and shortening barrels will work to cut out a significant amount of weight from most guns without reducing effective range.
I find bipods to be of little use for elk. In most timbered elk country, you can find a rest if you need it for longer shots. And a little ingenuity will give you more options to get a steady rest above the vegetation than a bipod. A bipod designed to be used from prone will rarely be used in areas with decent grass length or substantial shrubs. Shooting sticks are more useful, but even your binoculars will make a decent rest if need be. For those you that sit meadows and trails, a sitting length bipod or shooting sticks will work well to minimize the amount of movement necessary for a longer shot. I would take the bipod off when you are moving between areas or still hunting the timber. A sling is crucial. Not just to free your hands up when navigating difficult terrain, but also for steadying a shot from any position. Really wide, fat slings are comfortable, but of little use when trying to tighten up for a shot. A rangefinder is useful when sitting a meadow, as it can be difficult to judge distance in places that have very little vegetation. However, most shots must be taken before you have the time to judge the range.
I feel bullet selection is more important than cartridge selection. My basic guidelines are to use premium, controlled expansion type bullets with magnum cartridges. Basic cup and core bullets were designed for standard velocities and impacts below 2800 fps generally. I prefer heavy for caliber spitzers when using cup and core bullets, and light for caliber bullets in the monometals. You can choose too tough of a bullet and cartridge combination, just as you can choose too soft of a combination. A .308 Winchester and 200 grain Barnes TSX combination with a 400 yard shot into soft tissue is asking for trouble due to poor expansion. A .300 Weatherby Magnum shooting a 125 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip shot into heavy bone at 50 yards is another disaster waiting to happen. Nearly anything can kill an elk, but to do so efficiently and properly requires some forethought and understanding of operating windows for the bullet selected. Along that same line of thinking, if you have to ask whether your bullet and cartridge combination is up to the task of a severe quartering shot, it probably isn’t and you’ll be left wishing you chose a better bullet. My favorite rifle is my .264 Win Mag, but using my 3700 fps 100 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip antelope loads on elk would be irresponsible. In my .358 Norma Magnum, I wouldn’t use bullets designed for the .35 Remington velocities either.
Regarding muzzleloaders for rut hunting, keep them short and handy. Front globe sights are great for precision shooting, but cumbersome at short range. A peep rear and small, bright front dot works well in most conditions, but a larger, brighter front sight is useful in the dense timber. In Colorado, sabots aren’t permitted, but I wouldn’t use them anyway. I’ll stick with a heavy, solid lead conical.
OPTICS:
When scoping an elk rifle, you’ll want to think about the likely distances and conditions involved in the habitats you’ll be hunting, as well keeping an eye on the effect of weight and balance with your rifle. As mentioned before, a versatile 3-9x40 will handle nearly any situation well, just make sure you keep the setting at 3X unless you have time to set up for a long shot. There’s very little a simple fixed 4x scope wouldn’t work well for. The field of view allows quick shots, and the magnification is just good enough to be precise with your placement. I personally don’t like fixed 6x scopes, as I find the field of view a little limiting on short shots. A 4.5-14x or 4-12x works well, as long you keep the setting at low power. In reality, most guys could err on the side of low power variables, such as a 2-7x or 1.75-6x and be very happy with their nice, lightweight scope. The mid elevation pine-aspen and low elevation scrub oak/winter range hunter will have more long distance shot opportunities than the high elevation spruce-fir elk hunter, and might better appreciate slightly higher magnifications.
I was once guiding a hunter for mule deer in Western Nebraska, and two does and a decent buck came up out of a timbered draw, with the buck dogging the a doe 75 yards away. I pointed the buck out to my hunter and she said, “I can’t find him!”, turns out her scope was on 9 power and the field of view didn’t allow her to find the buck before he went up and over the ridge less than 50 yards away. We never got back on that buck after discovering her error. In short, if you have a variable power scope, check it to make sure you are on low power when you arrive in your hunting error. It’s common to leave your scope at max power after sighting in at the range.
Thick crosshairs are best for most elk hunting. Timber hunting dictates you find your crosshairs quickly on moving objects or in heavy shadows. Thick crosshairs are also useful for hunting during the typical primetimes of dawn and dusk for the meadow and trail sitters. If you like bullet drop compensators, realize those are typically designed to be used at maximum power, so if you have to take the time to figure out bullet drop, take the time to crank up your magnification. For the long rangers, custom reticles matched to your bullet drop or turret adjustments are great. But for most elk hunting situations, those are superfluous. Good eye relief is another important factor in an elk riflescope. We tend to choose hard kicking rifles and it helps to be able to keep sharp aluminum tubes from banging into your nose and eyebrow. But more importantly, long eye relief is great for fast target acquisition without too much of the “staring down a black hole” feeling.
I find spotting scopes useful for only two types of hunting: Road hunting in areas where you can see long distances, and when hunting from ridges above timberline in the early seasons. I know, I know, I should condemn the road hunters, but let’s get real, in some places that’s called hunting smart, and a lot easier than bumbling around the ridges. For the timberline archer or rifleman, a compact spotting scope can save you miles of walking by determining whether or not the small herd of elk you’ve spotted has a legal bull or a bull up to your standards. They are also great for peering into the krummholz and edges of the spruces and firs from above, while looking for bedded elk.
For most people, binoculars are all that is necessary. The big timber spruce-fir rifle hunter and bowhunter will do fine with a medium power 6,7 or 8x with a wide field of view. High magnification cab be a detriment if you’ve snuck up on elk in the timber. If you can’t find the elk, focus your binos and get a steady view of the antlers or what’s behind your target, they are worthless. Those hunting sparser country can benefit from greater magnification. In large aspen stands or dense scrub oaks you can often pick elk out easily with the naked eye, but will need powerful binoculars to make out the sex and antler size against the twiggy background. I’ve always used cheap glass, but only recently have come to regret it. I left my binoculars in my pack with a leaking water bladder and now one barrel of the binoculars are permanently fogged. Don’t make that mistake.
Part 4, the continuation of elk gear, including clothing, footwear and camping gear will be coming soon…
Friday, June 25, 2010
Gear Talk, Part 2: Antelope
In the introductory article on equipment pairing, I said I’d break down the articles by guns and loads, clothing and footwear, and camping equipment and specialized gear. But I think it makes more sense now to do it by species and habitats. I’m going to start off with antelope gear and the conditions under which they are normally hunted. If you’ve done your homework assignment from last week, hopefully you have an understanding of the terrain and vegetation in which you’ll likely be hunting. Terrain and vegetation are every bit as important considerations as the species being hunted when selecting or purchasing specialized gear.
As I mentioned in last week’s introduction, even antelope country varies, certainly not as much as deer or elk, but it’s important to understand the basic habitat features in your hunting area. I’m going to go over the major differences in each habitat and how your gear selection might be affected. The rangeland texts have 3 broad categories of range; deserts, prairies and grasslands, each of which have several subcategories. Of the deserts, you have Sonoran, Mojave, Chihuahuan, and Cold Desert (or Great Basin) deserts. Your prairies are generally categorized as tallgrass, mixed, shortgrass, Palouse and fescue. The grasslands are categorized as California, semidesert and mesquite-acacia woodlands. Each habitat is dominated by specific grass and brush species, some which can dictate your antelope gear and tactics. I’ll try to address these where the habitat difference may affect gear selection as we go.
The Antelope Gun:
I’m not going to get into archery equipment for antelope, other than to say you need to be prepared for longer shots. Archery equipment is also less fascinating to me, so I’ll focus on rifles, and throw in a little bit on muzzleloaders. When looking over your choices for what to take on a hunt, first know the legalities of the state you are hunting. Many states do not allow .22 caliber centerfires, even for antelope, most states have limitations on magazine capacities for semi autos, some states also have different minimum calibers for elk and larger game. We all know, or should know, shot placement trumps all talk of cartridge choice, action design, stainless vs blued or synthetics vs wood arguments. But I’m going to go through some scenarios and thought processes for elk, deer and antelope gun selections, including personal preferences, beliefs and feelings with the understanding that when I declare something better or more suited for the object at hand, it implies all other variables being equal.
As I mentioned before, not all antelope habitat is equal, and therefore some specialized guns are more suited to certain types of terrain. However, you should be prepared for windy country and long distance shot opportunities. The Interstate 80 region of Wyoming is the only gap in the Rocky Mountains, which acts to really focus winds more than anywhere else in the United States. And there’s a lot of antelope there. Antelope usually feel safest in areas with the least amount of cover so they can see danger coming. Antelope are also close to half the weight of deer and even more lightly built with a slightly smaller vital zone. This means that above all, you’ll want a rifle that allows you to be precise in your bullet placement. Magnums aren’t necessary, but because they flatten out the trajectory and higher velocity cartridges drift less in the wind (given equal weight and ballistic coefficient), they tend to be quite popular. Retained energy is of low priority when selecting a chambering for antelope, but it usually goes hand in hand with flat trajectories and minimal wind drift.
Other factors to consider when selecting or building an optimum antelope rifle includes stock style and rifle weight. Some specialized stocks, such as the newest generations of tactical stocks and many thumbhole stocks are designed to be shot from the prone position. A wide forend is also handy when resting the rifle over a pack, but awkward in shooting sticks. An oval forend is a good compromise over a round forend when it comes to using rests with a sporter style stock because they tend to roll less. I also recommend a longer length of pull for stocks you intend to shoot from prone. Your eye and forehead will be a little further from scope and less likely to be dinged in recoil, which is also a good reason to not go with too heavy of a cartridge.
One good thing about antelope hunting is the terrain is usually gentle enough that you won’t scratch up a beautiful gun. The stability of synthetics and laminates are nice for precision rifles, but properly sealed wood can be nearly as stable. So if you have a nicely stocked rifle, antelope hunting will give you the least amount of heartache. Rocky country can be hard on the gun, so use a tight sling when crawling to keep the gun off the ground (slung across your front). If it’s raining or snowing, the antelope will be difficult to find and you’re probably better off waiting until the storm passes. Therefore, blued steel is rarely a problem in antelope country either.
The most common and useful accessory in antelope country is the bipod. They are a wonderful aid in steady shooting from the prone position. The most stable versions will have you closest to the ground, but you are also limited by grass or shrub heights in some areas. When strategizing on your stalk, look for areas with bare ground, lower shrubs or small dips in the terrain to better utilize a short bipod. I find bipods that are designed to be used while sitting not particularly stable. Longer bipods are certainly better than an unsupported rifle, but a short bipod and shooting sticks seem a better combination. If you have a muzzle break on your rifle, be aware of the dust signature it will put off after you fire. If you place your shot well, it doesn’t matter if the antelope pinpoint your position, but the dust cloud may also obscure signs of a hit for you or your spotter. At a bare minimum place a handkerchief below the ports to minimize the dust.
When considering a bullet for antelope hunting, consider that the bullet needs to expand well at the reduced velocities that are a reality of long range shooting. A high ballistic coefficient is helpful to reduce drop and wind drift, but often requires stepping up in bullet weight, thereby negating the gains in BC. High ballistic coefficient bullets really shine at longer range than most are capable of shooting at, so study the ballistic charts to come up with a bullet that will shoot flat, but still expand. Few rifle bullets will expand reliably below 1800 fps, and even fewer below 1600 fps. Nosler Balllistic Tips and Hornady SSTs seem ideally suited as antelope bullets, provided impacts are kept below 3000 fps. Penetration is low on my list of concerns with an antelope bullet, as their chests are not much more than 12 inches wide and their bones are much lighter than deer’s.
Gun weight is of minor consideration in most antelope country. However, in terrain that is severely broken by breaks, coulees or badlands you may not want a very heavy rifle. Heavy rifles and heavy barrels are great for stable shooting, but a pain to lug around. Also pay attention to the amount of roads in your area. If there is contiguous public land 3 or 4 miles from a road, you’ll want to stay with a sporter weight rifle, something under 10 pounds.
For muzzleloaders, my top priority is a flat trajectory. In states that allow it, I’d consider a .45 caliber. If you’re stuck with a .50 caliber, drop bullet weight as much as possible in order to increase velocity and flatten trajectory to reduce your margin for error. Where scopes aren’t allowed, consider a combination of rear peep sights and front globe sights. The major disadvantage of globe sights, poor visibility in low light situations, is negated by the fact that antelope aren’t very active at dawn and dusk. A long sight radius is helpful in precise shot placement; so long barrels serve two functions here. They slightly increase velocity and increase sight radius, creating less margin for error in your shooting. Another way to increase your sight radius is to move your rear sight further back on the barrel. Most muzzleloaders are designed with a steep drop at heel for shooting from the offhand position. This will make proper sighting more difficult when shooting prone, so consider at least a leather cheek piece to raise your head on the stock to get better alignment with the sights.
Optics:
For rifle scopes on a specialized antelope rig, I like the higher magnifications. There’s little doubt that a 4x scope is sufficient for antelope hunting, but with a thick crosshair, it can be difficult to be precise with shot placement beyond 200 yards. If this gun is a dual purpose rifle and you want a smaller scope, go with a fine crosshair. A thick crosswire may appear to be the same thickness of an antelope’s leg at longer distances. Since you shouldn’t need to make a fast shot in low light on an antelope hunt, there’s no need for thick crosshairs. I’m not concerned about weight in antelope country, so 18-24 oz scopes don’t bother me. Large objectives aren’t necessary, but they often go hand in hand with high magnification. Turrets and bullet drop compensating reticles are also very handy, if you know how to use them.
In flat, open country, a rangefinder is extremely valuable. But the biggest drawback to most designs is the poor ranging of nonreflective targets (like antelope) at longer distances. Here’s where it pays to have the best you can afford. Beyond 300 yards trajectory matters and many of the cheaper laser rangefinders are worthless at those distances. If there are no large rocks in your area to get a good reading, investing in a higher quality rangefinder makes sense. Trying to get a reading on antelope, grass clumps and brush can be an exercise in futility.
Many people think a spotting scope is useful in antelope country, but unless you are good enough to trophy judge the difference between 13 or 14 inch long horns, or 70 versus 80 point B&C scores, leave it at home. Remember, antelope do not hide, so there is little need to try look under every sagebrush bush with a 60X lens.
Binoculars are useful if you are doe hunting. Does are obvious when they are standing next to a buck, but sometimes you’ll come up on a lone antelope and not have a reference for the black cheek patch and the ears may be obstructing smaller horns. 8, 10 or even 12X binoculars can be put to good use here. In hilly country with a good vantage point they are also useful for determining whether antelope spotted at long range are moving or lying down and helping to pick your visual cues for waypoints on a stalk. If there is any snow on the ground, antelope can sometimes be difficult to pick out when lying down.
Clothing and Footwear:
Here’s where the habitat really matters when antelope hunting. In some mixed grass prairies, you can get away with tennis shoes and shorts. In Great Basin sagebrush country, or with badlands, breaks or coulees, you’ll want something with better ankle support if you’re climbing in and out of minor drainages. While knee high snake boots aren’t normally necessary, they can give you a little piece of mind in early season hunts. If you’re hunting steep, rocky ground, get something closer to 8 or 9 inches high. In steep, rolling sandhills and sandsage, you’ll want high ankle support. Insulation really isn’t necessary in most antelope country and uninsulated boots will keep your feet cooler on longer hikes. Waterproofing isn’t necessary either, but I like it as I sometimes can’t quite clear a smaller creek. Typical upland bird hunting boots can be comfortable in the longer grass of the mixed grass prairie.
Regarding clothing, noisy clothes aren’t a big concern, but durability is when slithering around in the rocks and cactus. Knee and elbow pads are useful due to the 1 to 3 inch high prickly pear cactus that is so common in all but the mixed grass prairies and sandhills. If you aren’t planning on bringing elbow pads, a fleece or thick jacket and leather gloves may help ease the pain on some stalks. Scent proofing can’t hurt, but I wouldn’t purchase it just for an antelope hunt. Antelope do use their sense of smell at shorter ranges. I’ve underestimated their noses many times and have been frustrated by fickle winds when trying to get within 100 yards when guiding youth hunters. Sage-heavy camo patterns look odd in open prairies where the only thing resembling a shrub is a sharp yucca. Waterfowl camo blends well with most prairies, but not so much in the sagebrush deserts.
Packs and Camping Gear:
I frequently hear from people stating their desire or willingness to pack into some remote area to hunt antelope. That just isn’t necessary, and more than likely will be unproductive because you just can’t cover enough ground. Antelope are generally spotted and then stalked from a road. If they aren’t in the square mile you are presently in, you just drive on to the next piece of public land where they are visible or stalkable. Throughout most antelope country, the landownership pattern is too spotty for you to want to commit to one small area.
Due to the accessible nature of most antelope country, backpacking gear and horses are just a burden. Camper trailers and RVs can get you close to most of the country you might hunt. It’s unlikely you will experience a significant snowfall in early to mid October throughout most of the plains, so tire chains are probably superfluous.
A small backpack that you can use as a shooting rest is very convenient in antelope country. On rocky ground(typical in Cold Desert/Hot Desert/Great Basin or just overgrazed country), it is easier to get a steady rest over a pack than it is with a bipod. But if the grasses are over 6 inches high (anywhere outside of the deserts and shortgrass prairie habitats), it’s difficult to use a pack as a rest. You’ll rarely be out of sight of your truck for very long, so you don’t necessarily need a large pack that holds a lot of gear. A wheeled game hauler is a nice luxury but antelope are easy to drag with two guys. On longer stalks, it’s probably faster to just drag the antelope back with you rather than go back to the truck for the hauler. A portable game tripod and winch for skinning and butchering is a very useful addition to the camp gear. Cooling the meat off in warm weather and getting the meat into a cooler to keep it clean will make the meat much better for the table.
Other Specialized Gear:
I mentioned knee and elbow pads and snake boots in the clothing section and a rangefinder under the optics. But decoys and blinds are other pieces of gear to consider for the archer. Decoys should not be used during rifle season. Long sits in a blind are accepted by archers, but rifle hunters will benefit from being more mobile. Crow calls and doe bleats are often used by bow hunters to get a buck to stand still for a shot, but similar noises can be made with your mouth. A map and GPS with UTM grid coordinates is another useful tool. BLM lands are often illegally posted as private lands, but more often there is no sign at all. So it’s important to know exactly where you are. There will not always be a fence to help you differentiate between public and private lands, and sometimes a fence separating public land pastures will confuse you if you aren’t well equipped with maps.
Like most men, I find gear planning an integral part of hunt planning. Can you hunt antelope without any of the fun stuff mentioned above? You bet. Having general purpose gear allows you to handle a lot of hunting situations to some degree of adequacy. But if you’re looking for an excuse to purchase something new or specialized, or don’t know which categories of your gear cache could use the most updating; hopefully this article was of some use to you.
I’ll follow up with elk and antelope gear pairing articles in the following weeks.
As I mentioned in last week’s introduction, even antelope country varies, certainly not as much as deer or elk, but it’s important to understand the basic habitat features in your hunting area. I’m going to go over the major differences in each habitat and how your gear selection might be affected. The rangeland texts have 3 broad categories of range; deserts, prairies and grasslands, each of which have several subcategories. Of the deserts, you have Sonoran, Mojave, Chihuahuan, and Cold Desert (or Great Basin) deserts. Your prairies are generally categorized as tallgrass, mixed, shortgrass, Palouse and fescue. The grasslands are categorized as California, semidesert and mesquite-acacia woodlands. Each habitat is dominated by specific grass and brush species, some which can dictate your antelope gear and tactics. I’ll try to address these where the habitat difference may affect gear selection as we go.
The Antelope Gun:
I’m not going to get into archery equipment for antelope, other than to say you need to be prepared for longer shots. Archery equipment is also less fascinating to me, so I’ll focus on rifles, and throw in a little bit on muzzleloaders. When looking over your choices for what to take on a hunt, first know the legalities of the state you are hunting. Many states do not allow .22 caliber centerfires, even for antelope, most states have limitations on magazine capacities for semi autos, some states also have different minimum calibers for elk and larger game. We all know, or should know, shot placement trumps all talk of cartridge choice, action design, stainless vs blued or synthetics vs wood arguments. But I’m going to go through some scenarios and thought processes for elk, deer and antelope gun selections, including personal preferences, beliefs and feelings with the understanding that when I declare something better or more suited for the object at hand, it implies all other variables being equal.
As I mentioned before, not all antelope habitat is equal, and therefore some specialized guns are more suited to certain types of terrain. However, you should be prepared for windy country and long distance shot opportunities. The Interstate 80 region of Wyoming is the only gap in the Rocky Mountains, which acts to really focus winds more than anywhere else in the United States. And there’s a lot of antelope there. Antelope usually feel safest in areas with the least amount of cover so they can see danger coming. Antelope are also close to half the weight of deer and even more lightly built with a slightly smaller vital zone. This means that above all, you’ll want a rifle that allows you to be precise in your bullet placement. Magnums aren’t necessary, but because they flatten out the trajectory and higher velocity cartridges drift less in the wind (given equal weight and ballistic coefficient), they tend to be quite popular. Retained energy is of low priority when selecting a chambering for antelope, but it usually goes hand in hand with flat trajectories and minimal wind drift.
Other factors to consider when selecting or building an optimum antelope rifle includes stock style and rifle weight. Some specialized stocks, such as the newest generations of tactical stocks and many thumbhole stocks are designed to be shot from the prone position. A wide forend is also handy when resting the rifle over a pack, but awkward in shooting sticks. An oval forend is a good compromise over a round forend when it comes to using rests with a sporter style stock because they tend to roll less. I also recommend a longer length of pull for stocks you intend to shoot from prone. Your eye and forehead will be a little further from scope and less likely to be dinged in recoil, which is also a good reason to not go with too heavy of a cartridge.
One good thing about antelope hunting is the terrain is usually gentle enough that you won’t scratch up a beautiful gun. The stability of synthetics and laminates are nice for precision rifles, but properly sealed wood can be nearly as stable. So if you have a nicely stocked rifle, antelope hunting will give you the least amount of heartache. Rocky country can be hard on the gun, so use a tight sling when crawling to keep the gun off the ground (slung across your front). If it’s raining or snowing, the antelope will be difficult to find and you’re probably better off waiting until the storm passes. Therefore, blued steel is rarely a problem in antelope country either.
The most common and useful accessory in antelope country is the bipod. They are a wonderful aid in steady shooting from the prone position. The most stable versions will have you closest to the ground, but you are also limited by grass or shrub heights in some areas. When strategizing on your stalk, look for areas with bare ground, lower shrubs or small dips in the terrain to better utilize a short bipod. I find bipods that are designed to be used while sitting not particularly stable. Longer bipods are certainly better than an unsupported rifle, but a short bipod and shooting sticks seem a better combination. If you have a muzzle break on your rifle, be aware of the dust signature it will put off after you fire. If you place your shot well, it doesn’t matter if the antelope pinpoint your position, but the dust cloud may also obscure signs of a hit for you or your spotter. At a bare minimum place a handkerchief below the ports to minimize the dust.
When considering a bullet for antelope hunting, consider that the bullet needs to expand well at the reduced velocities that are a reality of long range shooting. A high ballistic coefficient is helpful to reduce drop and wind drift, but often requires stepping up in bullet weight, thereby negating the gains in BC. High ballistic coefficient bullets really shine at longer range than most are capable of shooting at, so study the ballistic charts to come up with a bullet that will shoot flat, but still expand. Few rifle bullets will expand reliably below 1800 fps, and even fewer below 1600 fps. Nosler Balllistic Tips and Hornady SSTs seem ideally suited as antelope bullets, provided impacts are kept below 3000 fps. Penetration is low on my list of concerns with an antelope bullet, as their chests are not much more than 12 inches wide and their bones are much lighter than deer’s.
Gun weight is of minor consideration in most antelope country. However, in terrain that is severely broken by breaks, coulees or badlands you may not want a very heavy rifle. Heavy rifles and heavy barrels are great for stable shooting, but a pain to lug around. Also pay attention to the amount of roads in your area. If there is contiguous public land 3 or 4 miles from a road, you’ll want to stay with a sporter weight rifle, something under 10 pounds.
For muzzleloaders, my top priority is a flat trajectory. In states that allow it, I’d consider a .45 caliber. If you’re stuck with a .50 caliber, drop bullet weight as much as possible in order to increase velocity and flatten trajectory to reduce your margin for error. Where scopes aren’t allowed, consider a combination of rear peep sights and front globe sights. The major disadvantage of globe sights, poor visibility in low light situations, is negated by the fact that antelope aren’t very active at dawn and dusk. A long sight radius is helpful in precise shot placement; so long barrels serve two functions here. They slightly increase velocity and increase sight radius, creating less margin for error in your shooting. Another way to increase your sight radius is to move your rear sight further back on the barrel. Most muzzleloaders are designed with a steep drop at heel for shooting from the offhand position. This will make proper sighting more difficult when shooting prone, so consider at least a leather cheek piece to raise your head on the stock to get better alignment with the sights.
Optics:
For rifle scopes on a specialized antelope rig, I like the higher magnifications. There’s little doubt that a 4x scope is sufficient for antelope hunting, but with a thick crosshair, it can be difficult to be precise with shot placement beyond 200 yards. If this gun is a dual purpose rifle and you want a smaller scope, go with a fine crosshair. A thick crosswire may appear to be the same thickness of an antelope’s leg at longer distances. Since you shouldn’t need to make a fast shot in low light on an antelope hunt, there’s no need for thick crosshairs. I’m not concerned about weight in antelope country, so 18-24 oz scopes don’t bother me. Large objectives aren’t necessary, but they often go hand in hand with high magnification. Turrets and bullet drop compensating reticles are also very handy, if you know how to use them.
In flat, open country, a rangefinder is extremely valuable. But the biggest drawback to most designs is the poor ranging of nonreflective targets (like antelope) at longer distances. Here’s where it pays to have the best you can afford. Beyond 300 yards trajectory matters and many of the cheaper laser rangefinders are worthless at those distances. If there are no large rocks in your area to get a good reading, investing in a higher quality rangefinder makes sense. Trying to get a reading on antelope, grass clumps and brush can be an exercise in futility.
Many people think a spotting scope is useful in antelope country, but unless you are good enough to trophy judge the difference between 13 or 14 inch long horns, or 70 versus 80 point B&C scores, leave it at home. Remember, antelope do not hide, so there is little need to try look under every sagebrush bush with a 60X lens.
Binoculars are useful if you are doe hunting. Does are obvious when they are standing next to a buck, but sometimes you’ll come up on a lone antelope and not have a reference for the black cheek patch and the ears may be obstructing smaller horns. 8, 10 or even 12X binoculars can be put to good use here. In hilly country with a good vantage point they are also useful for determining whether antelope spotted at long range are moving or lying down and helping to pick your visual cues for waypoints on a stalk. If there is any snow on the ground, antelope can sometimes be difficult to pick out when lying down.
Clothing and Footwear:
Here’s where the habitat really matters when antelope hunting. In some mixed grass prairies, you can get away with tennis shoes and shorts. In Great Basin sagebrush country, or with badlands, breaks or coulees, you’ll want something with better ankle support if you’re climbing in and out of minor drainages. While knee high snake boots aren’t normally necessary, they can give you a little piece of mind in early season hunts. If you’re hunting steep, rocky ground, get something closer to 8 or 9 inches high. In steep, rolling sandhills and sandsage, you’ll want high ankle support. Insulation really isn’t necessary in most antelope country and uninsulated boots will keep your feet cooler on longer hikes. Waterproofing isn’t necessary either, but I like it as I sometimes can’t quite clear a smaller creek. Typical upland bird hunting boots can be comfortable in the longer grass of the mixed grass prairie.
Regarding clothing, noisy clothes aren’t a big concern, but durability is when slithering around in the rocks and cactus. Knee and elbow pads are useful due to the 1 to 3 inch high prickly pear cactus that is so common in all but the mixed grass prairies and sandhills. If you aren’t planning on bringing elbow pads, a fleece or thick jacket and leather gloves may help ease the pain on some stalks. Scent proofing can’t hurt, but I wouldn’t purchase it just for an antelope hunt. Antelope do use their sense of smell at shorter ranges. I’ve underestimated their noses many times and have been frustrated by fickle winds when trying to get within 100 yards when guiding youth hunters. Sage-heavy camo patterns look odd in open prairies where the only thing resembling a shrub is a sharp yucca. Waterfowl camo blends well with most prairies, but not so much in the sagebrush deserts.
Packs and Camping Gear:
I frequently hear from people stating their desire or willingness to pack into some remote area to hunt antelope. That just isn’t necessary, and more than likely will be unproductive because you just can’t cover enough ground. Antelope are generally spotted and then stalked from a road. If they aren’t in the square mile you are presently in, you just drive on to the next piece of public land where they are visible or stalkable. Throughout most antelope country, the landownership pattern is too spotty for you to want to commit to one small area.
Due to the accessible nature of most antelope country, backpacking gear and horses are just a burden. Camper trailers and RVs can get you close to most of the country you might hunt. It’s unlikely you will experience a significant snowfall in early to mid October throughout most of the plains, so tire chains are probably superfluous.
A small backpack that you can use as a shooting rest is very convenient in antelope country. On rocky ground(typical in Cold Desert/Hot Desert/Great Basin or just overgrazed country), it is easier to get a steady rest over a pack than it is with a bipod. But if the grasses are over 6 inches high (anywhere outside of the deserts and shortgrass prairie habitats), it’s difficult to use a pack as a rest. You’ll rarely be out of sight of your truck for very long, so you don’t necessarily need a large pack that holds a lot of gear. A wheeled game hauler is a nice luxury but antelope are easy to drag with two guys. On longer stalks, it’s probably faster to just drag the antelope back with you rather than go back to the truck for the hauler. A portable game tripod and winch for skinning and butchering is a very useful addition to the camp gear. Cooling the meat off in warm weather and getting the meat into a cooler to keep it clean will make the meat much better for the table.
Other Specialized Gear:
I mentioned knee and elbow pads and snake boots in the clothing section and a rangefinder under the optics. But decoys and blinds are other pieces of gear to consider for the archer. Decoys should not be used during rifle season. Long sits in a blind are accepted by archers, but rifle hunters will benefit from being more mobile. Crow calls and doe bleats are often used by bow hunters to get a buck to stand still for a shot, but similar noises can be made with your mouth. A map and GPS with UTM grid coordinates is another useful tool. BLM lands are often illegally posted as private lands, but more often there is no sign at all. So it’s important to know exactly where you are. There will not always be a fence to help you differentiate between public and private lands, and sometimes a fence separating public land pastures will confuse you if you aren’t well equipped with maps.
Like most men, I find gear planning an integral part of hunt planning. Can you hunt antelope without any of the fun stuff mentioned above? You bet. Having general purpose gear allows you to handle a lot of hunting situations to some degree of adequacy. But if you’re looking for an excuse to purchase something new or specialized, or don’t know which categories of your gear cache could use the most updating; hopefully this article was of some use to you.
I’ll follow up with elk and antelope gear pairing articles in the following weeks.
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