Originally published for the Colorado Division of Wildlife Elk Hunting University:
http://wildlife.state.co.us/Hunting/ElkHuntingUniversity/EHULessons/EHUElkHuntTechnology.htm
Technological advancements have affected every aspect of modern life, so it is only fitting that it has affected modern elk hunting. Today’s hunters have tools available to them that were inconceivable even 20 years ago. None of these tools will revolutionize elk hunting, but learning to use them to your advantage can improve your knowledge, your odds of success, your comfort and your safety. Advancements in synthetic materials and metallurgy have created lighter and better performing gear, but the biggest leaps in technology have been in navigation and information gathering. Other articles will go into detail on specific gear selection, but I will touch on some advancements and how you can apply that to your gear. However, the main focus here will be navigation and information technologies to improve the way you hunt and select where or when to hunt.
Synthetic clothing materials have created lighter weight, waterproof, breathable, scentproof, silent fabrics that are all the rage. These aren’t cheap, but neither is wool anymore. Wool is the gold standard by which hunting clothes are measured, and no synthetic can yet rival the warmth and silence of wool, nor do they insulate as well when wet. However, wool is typically heavy, so outer garments are not well suited to the mobile western hunter. Light wool pants, sweaters or shirts, used as an intermediate layer is where wool still shines brightest, as modern synthetic undergarments and lightweight waterproof outer layers can be used over wool clothing. Another modern convenience is the hydration bladder. It hasn’t revolutionized hunting, but it is much more convenient than having to dig through a pack for a water bottle. If you are in the market for a new pack, you’d be wise to focus on those with hydration bladders. Titanium cookware, smaller stoves and lighter tents have also increased the mobility of the back pack hunter.
Rifle stock technology has greatly advanced for those looking to save weight and increase durability. Carbon fiber, Kevlar, Aramid and other materials are being used to drop firearm weight more than any other single advancement outside of titanium receivers. However, while using a titanium receiver requires the purchase of a new gun, simply changing the stock out on your old rifle can save over a pound. Aluminum scope mounts, and smaller, yet brighter optical coatings also allow you to save weight on your gun. Further advancements in gunpowder technology and case design allow hunters to save weight and/or increase power in lighter, more efficient, short action cartridges, and shorter rifle barrels. Archery equipment has also advanced over the past 20 years with lighter, faster equipment for extended range and more accurate shooting.
The above advancements are just that, incremental steps to decrease weight or increase performance for gear we already have. However, the common availability of the personal GPS, satellite phones and beacons has added to the gear we now use. GPS technology is the foundation of our modern star-wars weaponry systems, the way most land surveys are now conducted and preferred method for global navigation. The GPS has many beneficial uses for hunters and outdoor recreational users. It is beyond the scope of this article to explain all of what it does and how it does it. I suggest that you search some websites such as geocache.com (http://www.geocaching.com/) that has some very good articles on buying, setting up, using a GPS. Also, the site has information on almost one million hidden caches that you can search for and develop your GPS skills. Many are probably located right in your neighborhood. A good GPS will cost in the range of $100-400. You pay the extra bucks for more bells and whistles, such as added memory, color screens and better antenna systems. The better GPS receivers are capable of displaying topographic maps. Again, this is usually an additional cost but a wonderful improvement for elk hunting. Many GPS receivers have a built in compass. However, I still prefer to have the old tried and true magnetic compass. And IF your GPS conks out or your batteries die, at least you can tell north from south at anytime or in any weather condition.
A GPS is best used in conjunction with a topographic map that has UTM lines. These should be marked off in 1,000-meter intervals. You will need to setup your GPS to be compatible with this system of grid lines. In the GPS setup screen for “position format” select “UTM” or “UTM UPS”, etc. Under map datum you will need to select the datum that was used for produce your map. On a U. S. Geological Survey 7.5 minute topographic map the datum can be located in the lower left hand corner and it will usually say something like “Polyconic projection 1927 North American Datum. If this is the case, use “NAD27 CONUS” which is an abbreviation for “1927 North American Datum for the Continental U.S.). Other popular map Datums for Colorado includes NAD 83 and WGS 84. The map datum is the mathematical formula that is used to make a flat map from a curved surface. Failure to use the correct map datum will usually result in an error in locations on the ground up to 200 meters! While this may sound overly technical, knowing how to use the X-Y UTM grid system will allow you to find your exact position on a map, rather than just your proximity to objects you marked or those you have preloaded. This is a snap using UTMs. It is just reading a graph with the easting (X coordinate, the distance in meters from the central merdian ) and northing (Y coordinate which is actually the distance in meters north of the equator). The other parameter is zone. Colorado has 2 zones: zone 13 is east of a north-south line that basically runs through an area just east of Parachute CO. The rest of the state west of this line is all in zone 12. Zones are just a way of refining the accuracy of your position from the 3-D earth to a 2-D grid system. See http://www.maptools.com/UsingUTM/ for more info on using UTMs.
So, do you need a GPS? No. But with one, you can use the GPS receiver to navigate to all those hidden and secret elk magnets that you’ve have identified from your remote scouting efforts. You can also use your GPS to locate your camp or car so you should not get lost. You can use your GPS to navigate to your hunting stand in the dark. Just turn on the “tracks” function in your setup and it will leave a “breadcrumb trail” that you can follow to your stand. Hint – make sure that you set your map scale to a low level by zooming in on the screen so you can tell if you are on the trail or not. Once you find your position on a map, you can also determine the best route to the nearest trail or you can find that heading straight back to your truck as indicated by the GPS will take you through an obstacle that is best avoided. The confidence of being able to hunt unknown country, navigate your way home or to a hunt area in the dark is a huge advantage in the modern era of short elk seasons and limited time off from work. I cannot emphasize enough to make sure that if you are relying on this tool for navigation that you have a backup system: a map, compass and extra GPS batteries (usually AA). Failure to find your camp in a late season or wilderness hunt could be fatal - use caution.
Satellite beacons, radios and satellite phones have become common place among hunters. Satellite beacons are useful, especially if hunting solo in a wilderness area. They allow loved one to know your last location, and some models also permit one to send signal letting folks know that you are either alright or in need of assistance. Satellite phones of course allow you direct communication with folks back home, but are expensive. There are services that also rent satellite phones. Radios are much more commonplace than either of the above devices. To avoid ethical and legal violations, radios should only be used to let others in your party know your location and status. Garmin Rino GPSes have the added function of having a radio built in to them. This can be used for direct communication with your party, but the digital radio also sends your location out to other Rino users within range, displaying your location on a map every time you touch the “push to talk” button.
The other major advancement has been in information technology. The internet has revolutionized the speed with which we can obtain information, but also created new sources of marginal, biased sources. Google Earth and Geographic Information System (GIS) overlays have revolutionized remote scouting. Google Scholar and the digitizing of scientific journals have given those with a thirst for knowledge beyond what the average hunting magazine can offer a new source of high quality information. The Colorado Division of Wildlife and other government agencies have also responded to the public’s thirst for previously low demand information by publishing harvest and population survey results, game management plans, habitat management plans and travel management plans on their respective sites for the world to access.
The Colorado Division of Wildlife’s website (http://wildlife.state.co.us) and those of other state game agencies are not just for posting regulations, seasons and license fees. Harvest stats are great if you know what you are looking for. Most people are only looking at success rates, while some also pay attention to hunter numbers. Yet few people bother to truly compare which seasons are best in an individual unit. Without getting into how to select a unit (covered in other articles), one can select the best time to hunt a unit by seeing how success rates and hunter numbers vary over time. Some units are better in earlier seasons, others better in the later seasons. In Colorado, of the four rifle elk seasons, first season is traditionally the highest success rate, which then falls off significantly in second season, bottoming out in third season, then increasing again in fourth season. Second season usually has the most hunters, but other seasons can vary wildly depending on access conditions in each unit, perceptions of historical game movements and tag allotment. Also available through the DOW’s website is the Natural Diversity Information Database (http://ndis.nrel.colostate.edu/maps). This allows a hunter to look over maps of game movements and landownership. The system is a little awkward to use, but it is free. It should be used in conjunction with Google Earth to view aerial photos of the areas in question.
A far more user friendly, but somewhat expensive application is Hunt Data’s Big Game Maps (http://www.huntdata.com). These allow one to overlay elk migration and concentration maps or landownership maps into Google Earth, right over the top of the aerial photos. A slider bar allows you to fade the overlay in and out to make sure you are looking at the correct spot in the photos. If you can’t interpret what you are looking at in Google Earth, then it won’t do you any good. While it may be obvious which features are trees, what hillsides are open and which mountain is bare rock, it does take some getting used to. Aspens and scrub oaks whose leaves have fallen off are extremely difficult to pick out from grassy areas. So look closely. Having some knowledge of what vegetation to expect at different elevation ranges also helps. Looking at a conifer at 6,000 feet or 11,000 feet, a little bit of knowledge should tell you the low elevation trees are pinion pines or junipers, not big spruces or firs. Google Earth will also show you where timberline is in your area, and just how high you may need to be hunting. In some places in Colorado, timberline is barely over 11,000 feet, in others; it is close to 11,700 feet. While some topographic maps will show you that a ridge is barren, you won’t know whether it is alpine tundra or rocky scree without looking at the photos. Identifying parking areas, trails and water sources are also important skills when using Google Earth. You also need to be able to tell the difference between rangeland and irrigated croplands that elk may be feeding in at night.
Your Google Earth maps will also allow you to create wind direction maps. By tilting the viewing angle, you can get a full 3D view. Having an understanding of thermals will allow you to create trails to your hunting areas that will not blow your scent to where you expect the game to be located. Knowing that your scent will fall early in the morning before the sun warms the mountains, then rises until the late afternoon when the sun falls below the horizon will help prevent blown stalks or blowing you scent from your vantage point into the game. In general, hunt up the mountain in the morning, and down it in the afternoon. The prevailing winds blow west to east, but use your maps to sketch out alternate plans for unusual weather patterns. The other great thing about the 3D view is that you can get an idea of the areas that will be visible from a specific vantage point.
Another way to “ground truth” or educate your mind’s eye is to use Google Earth’s embedded photos to get a more realistic view of an area. Look past the hikers posing in the foreground to get an understanding of the scale of the terrain, and type of habitat. Another way to find pictures of an area is to do a search for outfitters or professional photographer’s portfolios to look at the landscape. Looking through outfitter websites will also give you a feel for which trails are being used and possible camp locations. The USFS can also help you figure out where permitted outfitter camp locations are at.
Herd management plans and habitat management plans can also be found on state and federal websites. These will give you a leg up on other hunters for determining where the game may shift their concentrations. Hunters often exclaim that a specific drainage used to be great in the “good old days”, but the elk or deer are just no longer there. The game may have shifted their usage to an area where prescribed burns, wildfire or timber harvest has produced younger, more palatable forage, and the vegetation in the previous drainage is now older, more fibrous, decadent or grown over in a thick stand of lodgepole pines. The USFS will also post travel management plans, letting you know in advance which roads will be gated and which will remain open for hunting season. You can also find out when cattle are being removed from the public land in your area. The National Interagency Fire Center is another site to keep your eye on during the summer. If you aren’t paying attention, you may arrive to a completely blackened landscape in October. No forage and no cover, means no elk. You can also search for historical fire data to try to find 2 or 3 year old fires which may be attractive to game. CDOW herd management plans can also be used to identify problems with achieving desired harvest due to private refuges or other access issues. They can also give you a clue as to whether the DOW will increase or decrease tags and why. The plans typically contain more than 20 years of harvest and population data, so if when someone tells you an area “used to” be great, you may be able to put that information into better perspective.
Internet discussion forums such as those on 24hourcampfire.com, BigGameHunt.net and the Colorado Division of Wildlife’s new forums are a new way of getting local information on specific hunting areas. Asking, “Where is the best place to elk hunt in Colorado?” will not likely garner much response, but asking more detailed questions about an area that you have done your homework on will probably get you better information. If you haven’t done any homework prior to putting your questions out on the internet, you won’t be able to see through “smoke screens” put out by those who don’t want any additional hunters in “their” area. If you don’t want to openly ask a question, use the search functions to see if someone else has asked questions about the area you are interested in in the past. Searches may also turn up individuals who seem more knowledgeable than others, don’t be afraid to send them a private message instead of posting on the public forums.
The single most underutilized resource freely available to hunters is that which is produced by the scientific community. Scientific journals such as the Journal of Wildlife management are full of very specific diet, population, movement and behavioral studies. It is expensive for a private citizen to subscribe to JWM and other journals (about $700 per year), but they are freely available at many university and some larger public libraries. In these journals, place names will be mentioned, oftentimes maps will be incorporated into the document showing home ranges of specific elk herds and how they react to hunter pressure. Preferred seasonal forages will be discovered, and the peak date of the rut can be determined in a specific area. Your university library, if it has a wildlife or ecology department may also have theses by Master’s and PhD students on the elk or deer populations. These can be full books on the behaviors or demographics of an elk herd that you can hunt on public land. If your local university doesn’t produce its own wildlife research, those theses can be had for free through interlibrary loan. Also check out cattle and elk interaction studies in your area, and whether or not elk avoid them or the associated activities with public land ranching or whether elk will prefer to move in behind the cattle, which may be grazing down the coarser grasses, exposing the newer blades for the elk. Don’t forget, that in addition to the published research, there are graduate students conducting new research all the time. Don’t be afraid to find out what students at Colorado State University and other schools that produce significant wildlife research are up to. Graduate students and technicians might love to have someone tag along and help with their data collection. By volunteering your services, you may be able to see where exactly the elk are during the summer, or gain insight you never knew to ask about.
Weather research can also be utilized to better time your hunt or better prepare you for the conditions you will encounter. Weather Underground and Weather.com have historical weather data available, as well as averages. Beyond determining what kind of weather to expect during your hunt, you may be able to fine tune your hunting plans by monitoring how harsh or mild the summer has been. If you were planning a hunt in a canyon country unit, where water is much more critical, you’ll want to do some research to determine where the most reliable water sources will be. During wet years, marginal sources of water may hold game in an area better than a dry year. Many times, smaller creeks won’t flow at higher elevations if the snowpack and summer rainfall was subpar. So don’t place all your planning eggs in one basket, and do some early scouting to help you figure out whether or not a certain water source will be dry. This is another reason to have a backup plan.
It’s not enough to merely educate yourself on elk behaviors, movements, habitats and the like. If you’ve bothered to do your homework, you should have a plan on how to apply that new found knowledge. If your research has uncovered a plant which elk forage on significantly more than others in the Flat Tops, learn to identify that plant, and where it grows. If you’ve determined when the peak of the elk rut occurs in the Poudre Canyon by backdating calving dates, be sure you are out hunting during that time period. If you’ve uncovered a behavioral study that shows elk flee towards the nearest private refuge in South Park at the onset of hunting season, position yourself to take advantage of this. This is the difference between knowledge and wisdom. You must be able to act on the knowledge that all these new information sources can provide, otherwise it is useless and you have wasted your time.
Showing posts with label Colorado. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Colorado. Show all posts
Friday, June 25, 2010
Scouting Tips-The Secrets to Success
Originally published for the Colorado Division of Wildlife Elk Hunting University:
http://wildlife.state.co.us/Hunting/ElkHuntingUniversity/EHULessons/EHUScoutTips.htm
We all have to come to a decision on where to hunt somehow. But deciding where to hunt is dictated by how we like to hunt, how the weather is affecting the game and what we expect the game to be doing. Since most people live near a population center of some sort, and are far from the areas they intend to hunt, some form of scouting or research must be conducted to find a specific place to hunt. This is called scouting. The purpose of scouting is for the out-of-area hunter to gain local knowledge to increase his odds of finding and harvesting elk. Let's go through a couple of scenarios to determine how one might come to a conclusion about where to hunt. Each person will have different priorities based on where they are in their hunting career. Inexperienced hunters typically just want to harvest a legal animal, next we have the trophy hunter, and then the hunter who is just looking for an outdoor adventure or enjoyable experience. While scouting efforts are generally focused on finding game, don’t overlook finding a campsite and coming up with new tactics based on the terrain or manmade features in the area.
The novice:
The novice’s first task is to just select a unit and season. Previous articles have been written on the subject, so we won’t get into that at this time. Let’s say you’ve settled on a unit during a rifle season, now what? As with all scouting for any animal, you need to focus on the habitat needs of elk in order to find them. They need food, water and cover. Whichever is in the shortest supply in our area needs to be our primary focus. Elk are not evenly distributed throughout a mountain range; they are in large pockets with some small scattered herds. We are looking to maximize our chance of harvesting, and are therefore attempting to find the larger herds of elk. So keeping in mind that we need to feed, water and conceal large herd animals, it’s time for a little remote scouting so we can better focus our efforts when we finally set foot on our hunting grounds.
Let's first start with our paper maps. Elk receive a lot of hunting pressure, and it doesn’t take much to force them to move to less pressured grounds. So take a fat highlighter and outline each maintained road, looking for large gaps in the highlighted areas. The highest pressured areas will be maintained roads that connect to other maintained roads. A slimmer highlighter is also useful for the unmaintained and 4WD roads. Hunters will use them, but the more difficult the road, the less traffic you'll have. Unmaintained roads that connect two maintained roads receive more pressure than those that dead end. You'll also want to pay attention to the ATV rules for your area and look for locked gates blocking access to old logging roads that don't need to be highlighted. Lastly, find any marked or developed campground, and use your highlighter to mark off a two-mile radius from that campground. So without even looking at the aerial photos or topography, we now have a just a few major areas to focus our search for a great hunting spot.
Let's take a closer look at these roadless areas. Whether it is federally designated wilderness, or just an expanse of wild country, in a pressured area it is generally recommended that you hunt at LEAST 1 mile from the road. Two miles is much better in the heavily hunted units if you are looking for unpressured animals. Google Earth is a beautiful tool, so learn to use it in conjunction with your maps. It has color photos laid on top of a 3-D image of the earth. Once you learn to “ground truth” what you think you are looking at in Google Earth, you can get a very accurate feel for what the hunting area looks like. Now let's look at the topography and aerial photos. It takes a lot of forage to feed an elk herd, so areas near a large amount of grass or brush is important. We should be able to identify some open areas where the elk will be feeding at night, as there isn’t much forage in heavily timbered areas. Elk can be anywhere between timberline (11,700 feet) and about 7,000 feet in Colorado during the 4 primary rifle seasons. Generally, the warmer it is, the longer the grass will stay palatable in the high country. As the frosts begin to hit the mountains in mid September, the grass will begin to desiccate (go dormant till spring), and only areas with cool season grasses and wetter areas will retain palatable grasses and sedges before the elk must switch to eating brush. Elk are slaves to their stomachs and must eat at least every 8 hours or so. But during hunting season, an elk's first priority is to save its hide, so it will need cover. Don't place much hope on finding elk out feeding in a high pressure unit; you need to find their escape routes and hideouts. Water is rarely lacking during the rifle seasons, so pinpointing elk usage solely by locating water is a little more difficult.
OK, so we've identified a couple of meadows using maps and aerial photos, preferably one with a small creek; not for the water, but for the greener, more palatable grasses. Many of these areas are right near roads or trails. Elk usually won't use these places during daylight, but if there aren't many options available, they will still use them. But since we're looking for a place to hunt on opening morning and we know there will be a lot of pressure on these roads near the meadows, we need to take advantage of that pressure by anticipating how the elk will react to it.
Now let's try to find an open saddle in the timber along a ridge as close to one of these meadows as possible. Try to stay within a mile or so. Saddles are just one of many types of bottlenecks that naturally funnel pressured elk. Drainages leading into and out of major canyons and junctions of several drainages (usually there is good water at these points also) are other great places to focus pressured elk.
So, out of all of our meadows we should be able to find a nearby saddle (or drainage junction) that is at least a mile from a road, with a feeding area between the saddle and the road, below timberline, and that has some sort of opening for shooting lanes and dark coniferous timber nearby that elk may be heading to in order to hide.
Once you’ve identified 3 or 4 good saddles or drainage junctions, it’s time to lace up the boots and spend a weekend or two out scouting. In August, it is unlikely that the main elk herds will be low enough to be using the meadows we’ve targeted. But some units do not have true alpine country for elk to summer in, so it just depends on the unit. Don't be discouraged if you don't see a lot of fresh sign. Instead, look for old sign that indicates elk may have used these meadows. Look at the encroaching brush along the edge of the meadow. Do the ends of the twigs show old browsing pressure? Are the encroaching aspens or pines partially dead for some reason (from browsing pressure and elk rubs, hopefully not bark beetles)? What about the old brown grass from last year or earlier this year? Are the ends of it clipped off like a lawn mower? Elk and deer browsing signs on brush and aspens or other small trees often have a "flag" due to their not having upper incisors. The "flag" is just an outer bark layer left behind after elk or deer bit the stem, and then pulled up, leaving the "flag". Are there any small shrubs that look “stressed”, meaning many dead twigs protruding beyond the few live twigs that still have leaves on them? Or is the shrub no longer round? Stressed shrubs and small trees lose their natural shape when they are subjected to intense pressure from herbivores. Are there any old trails leading up to your saddle? What about the old sign around your saddle or drainage junction? Your hunting area should at least have some of these signs to let you know you are on the right track.
If the vegetation appears “hedged”, where the bottom of the junipers, aspens, scrub oaks and similar trees and shrubs are all the same height, you are likely looking at winter range. That’s fine if you are hunting during the late seasons, but elk rarely present in such concentrations to create hedged environments during the normal rifle seasons. Otherwise, you need to be scouting higher elevations if you aren’t planning a late season hunt. If you are finding shed antlers while scouting, you may also be looking too low.
You likely won’t be able to spot and stalk elk in heavily pressured areas, but from a good vantage on an open saddle you may be able to pinpoint where elk are heading to escape from other hunters. Don’t be afraid to stalk the timber, as elk spend more time in there than the open. If your escape route doesn’t produce for you, you’re going to have to have to go into the timber and pursue the elk. Coordinating a timber hunt with a partner is often more productive, especially if it’s possible to attack the patch from more than one side, pushing elk towards each other.
If trying to pick a patch of timber to still-hunt, the first places you need to investigate will be the flat timbered benches. These are often bedding areas and should show signs of elk usage during your scouting trips. Here, you won’t be looking for signs of browsing, just old tracks and feces. Old rubs are great too. If the area smells like fresh urine, or like cattle are in there, that’s another great sign. Many of these benches also have small ponds that are not marked on any map, but are visible from aerial photos. Focus your efforts near these spots.
Another type of productive timber for still hunting is burned or thinned timber. Both types of timber can be great for cover and feed. Elk tend to feel very comfortable in burns, especially if the trees haven’t fallen yet. They feel concealed, yet are readily apparent to hunters, and the lush new growth offers great forage so they have no need to expose themselves in larger meadows. Along the same lines are thinning operations. These areas have additional light hitting the forest floor, initiating grass and brush growth, but live trees are still in great abundance offering good cover to the elk. However, these areas tend to have good shooting lanes and visibility through the timber for the hunter. To find burns, you’ll need to use your aerial photos, but old logging operations are sometimes difficult to pick out. Instead, look for short spur roads coming off a main road. Many of those small roads will be gated off, blocked with boulders or the entrance to them will be bulldozed. When scouting, give extra bonus points to the roads that cannot be driven on. Aerial photos may not give you an adequate feel for the age of a burn and the amount of standing or down timber, so you need to scout it and decide whether it offers good feed and concealment to elk. And keep looking for sign. Old droppings are good, so are heavily browsed or stressed shrubs, and since the grass is often too long to reveal good trails, look for places where elk hooves have worn down or chipped away the downed logs when they cross them.
If you’ve exhausted the escape routes, the obvious hide-outs, and scouted the timber, yet still can’t find elk sign, it’s time to either choose a new area, or head down into the steep canyons and focus on the heavily timbered north and east facing drainages.
The Trophy Hunter:
Pressured units can be tolerated by the trophy hunter, as long as there aren’t too many roads and access is limited in some areas. Designated wilderness isn’t a necessity, but it helps separate the wheat from the chaff in a real hurry. However, it’s difficult to access many wilderness areas in the later seasons. So you need to have a plan in mind, when choosing which season to hunt the unit. Let’s assume we are hunting 1st rifle season here.
Occasionally, elk can be above timberline during 1st season, but it’s rare. Finding large pockets of unpressured land is our best option here. We don’t want pressure to ever reach the elk we are hunting, but it wouldn’t hurt if pressure would send additional elk our way. But first, we need to have a “measuring stick” so we know what kind of bull is possible in this area. It’s time for you to get up into the high country and glass elk on their summering grounds in July through mid August. In classic high mountain elk country, once the bachelor herds are found and trophy potential is determined, it’s now a matter of figuring out where they might be during hunting season. From archery season through 1st rifle, they will likely be within the same drainage or neighboring drainage where you found them, just at lower elevation. However, the bulls will either be nursing their wounds or still in the rut, so where they are in this stage will dictate how to focus on potential areas to hunt them. If they are still in the rut, they will be with the cows, which means there are a lot of mouths to feed. Only the larger meadows will offer sufficient forage, so you must focus on the lower reaches of the drainage where several creeks begin to form the primary river or creek in the area. This will usually be the largest meadow in the area and the focus of most of the cows and the dominant herd bull. These meadows are best found several miles into a wilderness area. Large south facing slopes on high mountains can also hold the herds, but only with a good source of nearby water.
In canyon country, pinpointing where a herd bull will be during the rut is more difficult. However, water can be scarce here. So, search for good meadows within a mile of water, but isolated from the roads by over a mile. Typically, canyon country elk herds are smaller and more evenly dispersed near the major water sources.
If the elk have quit bugling, you need to instead focus on smaller secondary meadows where the bulls will be trying to recover as much weight as possible to survive the winter. The very best places are the rare north and east facing meadows when it is warm out. These are often very small meadows, less than 200 yards wide, surrounded by heavy timber and good water. Level benches for bedding areas are not important for finding solitary bull bedding areas. The only thing in the world these bulls want is to be left alone, so they can eat and rest. Your focus here needs to be over 2 miles from the nearest major road and over a mile from any secondary road. These small pockets don’t have to be north or east facing, but they do need to have good forage. During a warm year, the bulls may go back up to higher country if there is still good feed available.
Lone bulls are also much more likely than cow/calf groups to use steep hillsides. Below most steep mountains is a slide area, with strips of timber between the slides, springs, small ponds and creeks at the base, and open grassy hillsides in places where the slide is sufficiently old. These little pockets provide all the food, water and cover a lone bull will need for the month or so before winter really sets in and he is forced to descend to lower elevations.
Because their potential meadow locations are so varied, spot and stalk hunting is much more critical, especially if you have trophy standards. Your scouting efforts should be focused on vantage points overlooking as many of these basins, meadows, and hillsides as possible, rather than trying to pinpoint a single small meadow. From one vantage point, many old slide areas can usually be seen, as well as the small pockets in the timber below. Road access to your vantage point is fine only if the points you are glassing are a long way off. If there is a tempting terrain feature to hunt immediately below your vantage point, and no barrier like a ridge or creek for a hunter to cross to reach that area you are glassing, you’ll need to find a different vantage. There must be very little disturbance reaching the area you will be glassing during hunting season.
The “Quality Experience” Hunter:
This hunter is one who is just looking to see wildlife and feel like he has some ground to himself. Trophy quality may not matter to this person and he will be combining tactics of both the trophy hunter and the meat hunter. This person is looking to enjoy the experience and isn’t necessarily looking for an armed death march to the furthest peak.
If you’ve settled on your unit, it’s time to decide how you want to hunt it. Some people like to find good roads to drive and glass the distant hillsides; others prefer a solitary still-hunt into the dark timber, while still others prefer to hike a nice vantage point to see what Mother Nature brings them. This hunter will also be conscious of the season to hunt. In some places, first rifle season has the least pressure, in other areas it’s the 4th season. Even 3rd season in some over-the-counter units can have fairly light pressure, but 2nd season is almost never the best choice for this hunter. As an archer, this hunter wouldn’t bother going out during the first several weeks of the season, and would rather pick his time to coincide with the peak of the rut. Here in Colorado, the third and fourth weeks of September are as good as it gets. And most of the bowhunters and muzzleloader hunters have already packed it in for the year. If we assume this hunter is a 3rd season rifle hunter, he can generally count on the roads still being accessible and snow in the high country pushing elk a little further down the mountain. This hunter is more focused on the honey holes outside of the wilderness, along migration corridors and pockets of public land near private lands. Depending on how you hunt, consider hunting the longest ridges extending from the high peaks. Many of these are easily accessible from the roads, and often provide a downhill hike (at first). The longest finger ridges usually have several saddles for migrating game or those seeking refuge from other hunters. Those same ridges usually have one or two good places to glass the surrounding ridges or meadows below. The trick here is to just keep walking further than most hunters and get an earlier start. The best places during the later seasons will have vantage points or will be above south and west facing brushy slopes. We can’t count on the grasses being palatable during the late seasons, so we need to be mindful of secondary food sources like scrub oaks, bitterbrush, sagebrush, serviceberry and mountain mahogany. Water is less important during the later season hunts, but will still be utilized. Standing water will likely be frozen over, even if there is no snow. Summer scouting should focus on these brushy food sources that can be seen from a safe distance without disturbing the elk during hunting season.
Utilize the tips on finding browsed and grazed plants that were described earlier when examining these hillsides during the summer. Buck deer rubs are useful signs in these areas, even if you are elk hunting, because deer are primarily browsers (as opposed to grazers), and the presence of deer rubs indicates late October and early November preferential usage in those brushy areas. If hunting for elk, focus mainly on the grass availability on exposed south facing hillsides above running creeks. These creeks will likely still be running during the late seasons, offering more reliable water sources.
In many parts of the west, irrigated private croplands are adjacent to public lands. Those private lands rarely have sufficient cover to hold elk, but the forage is irresistible to them. Use your aerial photo to look for any croplands next to public lands. Elk and deer will likely be feeding at night and early in the morning, but at some point they will reenter adjacent public lands. When scouting, look for sagging barbed wire, downed fencing, clear trails, hair snags on the wire, and other sign to indicate likely entry and exit points to these fields. But be certain you are on public land when attempting to hunt these locations.
Not all hunters have the stamina to hunt the backcountry. So finding isolated pockets that pressure will rarely touch near a road should be the focus if the above sounds like the Trail of Tears to you. For those who can exert themselves over short periods, but cannot sustain the effort, use your maps and aerial photos to find places close to, but not visible from the roads. Oftentimes, a road will pass just a quarter mile underneath a ridge, and many hunters will never bother to look at what’s on the other side. Sometimes, a difficult terrain feature such as a creek with steep banks separates the road from an unseen meadow. In most mountainous country, a road winds back and forth as it gains elevation. These gaps between the roads are also useful for short hunts, especially when coordinated with a partner or two who will park the vehicle at the bottom for you to hunt toward. Some maps do not show the road windings in sufficient detail and many aerial photos fail to show the roads underneath the timber, so scouting is crucial here. If there is ever more than a ¼ mile gap between the roads, consider it huntable.
Last Minute Scouting:
For those who can’t put the boots to the ground in elk country during the summer time, it is strongly recommended you give yourself at least one full day of scouting prior to the season opener before seriously hitting the hills. You’ve presumably narrowed down your hunting area by various remote scouting methods, whether by paper map, aerial photos, interviews, etc. But let’s say you are trying to narrow down your hunting area near two drainages where you’ll be camping. Your first order of business is not to spook game out of the country. You must minimize your intrusions at this time. You’ll have to walk with your eyes more than your legs at this time, so dawn and dusk should be spent glassing or driving the roads and glassing. When driving snow covered or dirt roads, keep a careful eye out for any trails indicating elk crossing the road. Note whether elk appear to be crossing back and forth on this road, or whether it was a one-way trip. If the snow is less than a day old, consider following those tracks. During the late morning and early afternoon, skirt any timbered potential bedding area as well as you can and do not skyline yourself when coming over ridges. Don’t be too concerned if there are elk carcasses in your new spot, consider it validation.
Unlike the summer scouting, the freshest sign wins when you’re only a day or two from the start of the season. When reading fresh sign, a little additional knowledge will tell you what the elk are eating and the likely sex of the animal you found. When elk are feeding on green grasses, their feces tend to be clumped and extremely soft. When elk have switched their feed to brush, their droppings become much harder and individual pellets tend not to clump together. If you think they are feeding on grasses, the elk are probably feeding in a wet meadow. If you think they are feeding on brush, it is likely on a south or west facing hillside. Some people can’t tell deer or moose sign from elk sign. Cow elk and small bulls tend to have tracks about 3 inches long, more mature bull elk have tracks around 3.5 inches long. A standard, factory loaded .30-06 cartridge (and most standard and belted magnums) is 3.3 inches long, .308s and other short action cartridges (including the short magnums) are 2.8 inches long. So, if the track is longer than a short action cartridge, but shorter than a standard, It is likely that of a cow elk. Anything significantly longer than a .30-06 is probably a bull, except when you are in moose country. However, moose tracks are much larger than elk tracks, often closer to 5 inches long. Their droppings are almost always slightly red, grainy and elongated from the willows that they prefer to eat.
In many ways, hunters need to be amateur biologists in order to properly read the signs the elk are leaving. If you are unsure of what you are looking at and how to interpret the signs, take a picture so you can show someone more experienced than yourself. Be prepared to ask specific questions of everyone you encounter while out scouting, but if you haven’t done your homework you won’t know when to disregard and when to accept information as gospel. You are at a severe disadvantage if you haven’t set foot in your hunting area before the season starts. The only way to move yourself further along the learning curve is to spend more time in the elk woods. The local, area-specific knowledge you gain from doing so is worth infinitely more than reading generic books and articles. Understanding what the sign is telling you and what do with that sign is a crucial step in becoming a good elk hunter. Our hunting seasons are short, so you will not get the necessary field time to become a knowledgeable elk hunter by spending only 5 days in the woods each year. Get out there, scout intelligently, learn your hunting grounds, become a more successful hunter.
http://wildlife.state.co.us/Hunting/ElkHuntingUniversity/EHULessons/EHUScoutTips.htm
We all have to come to a decision on where to hunt somehow. But deciding where to hunt is dictated by how we like to hunt, how the weather is affecting the game and what we expect the game to be doing. Since most people live near a population center of some sort, and are far from the areas they intend to hunt, some form of scouting or research must be conducted to find a specific place to hunt. This is called scouting. The purpose of scouting is for the out-of-area hunter to gain local knowledge to increase his odds of finding and harvesting elk. Let's go through a couple of scenarios to determine how one might come to a conclusion about where to hunt. Each person will have different priorities based on where they are in their hunting career. Inexperienced hunters typically just want to harvest a legal animal, next we have the trophy hunter, and then the hunter who is just looking for an outdoor adventure or enjoyable experience. While scouting efforts are generally focused on finding game, don’t overlook finding a campsite and coming up with new tactics based on the terrain or manmade features in the area.
The novice:
The novice’s first task is to just select a unit and season. Previous articles have been written on the subject, so we won’t get into that at this time. Let’s say you’ve settled on a unit during a rifle season, now what? As with all scouting for any animal, you need to focus on the habitat needs of elk in order to find them. They need food, water and cover. Whichever is in the shortest supply in our area needs to be our primary focus. Elk are not evenly distributed throughout a mountain range; they are in large pockets with some small scattered herds. We are looking to maximize our chance of harvesting, and are therefore attempting to find the larger herds of elk. So keeping in mind that we need to feed, water and conceal large herd animals, it’s time for a little remote scouting so we can better focus our efforts when we finally set foot on our hunting grounds.
Let's first start with our paper maps. Elk receive a lot of hunting pressure, and it doesn’t take much to force them to move to less pressured grounds. So take a fat highlighter and outline each maintained road, looking for large gaps in the highlighted areas. The highest pressured areas will be maintained roads that connect to other maintained roads. A slimmer highlighter is also useful for the unmaintained and 4WD roads. Hunters will use them, but the more difficult the road, the less traffic you'll have. Unmaintained roads that connect two maintained roads receive more pressure than those that dead end. You'll also want to pay attention to the ATV rules for your area and look for locked gates blocking access to old logging roads that don't need to be highlighted. Lastly, find any marked or developed campground, and use your highlighter to mark off a two-mile radius from that campground. So without even looking at the aerial photos or topography, we now have a just a few major areas to focus our search for a great hunting spot.
Let's take a closer look at these roadless areas. Whether it is federally designated wilderness, or just an expanse of wild country, in a pressured area it is generally recommended that you hunt at LEAST 1 mile from the road. Two miles is much better in the heavily hunted units if you are looking for unpressured animals. Google Earth is a beautiful tool, so learn to use it in conjunction with your maps. It has color photos laid on top of a 3-D image of the earth. Once you learn to “ground truth” what you think you are looking at in Google Earth, you can get a very accurate feel for what the hunting area looks like. Now let's look at the topography and aerial photos. It takes a lot of forage to feed an elk herd, so areas near a large amount of grass or brush is important. We should be able to identify some open areas where the elk will be feeding at night, as there isn’t much forage in heavily timbered areas. Elk can be anywhere between timberline (11,700 feet) and about 7,000 feet in Colorado during the 4 primary rifle seasons. Generally, the warmer it is, the longer the grass will stay palatable in the high country. As the frosts begin to hit the mountains in mid September, the grass will begin to desiccate (go dormant till spring), and only areas with cool season grasses and wetter areas will retain palatable grasses and sedges before the elk must switch to eating brush. Elk are slaves to their stomachs and must eat at least every 8 hours or so. But during hunting season, an elk's first priority is to save its hide, so it will need cover. Don't place much hope on finding elk out feeding in a high pressure unit; you need to find their escape routes and hideouts. Water is rarely lacking during the rifle seasons, so pinpointing elk usage solely by locating water is a little more difficult.
OK, so we've identified a couple of meadows using maps and aerial photos, preferably one with a small creek; not for the water, but for the greener, more palatable grasses. Many of these areas are right near roads or trails. Elk usually won't use these places during daylight, but if there aren't many options available, they will still use them. But since we're looking for a place to hunt on opening morning and we know there will be a lot of pressure on these roads near the meadows, we need to take advantage of that pressure by anticipating how the elk will react to it.
Now let's try to find an open saddle in the timber along a ridge as close to one of these meadows as possible. Try to stay within a mile or so. Saddles are just one of many types of bottlenecks that naturally funnel pressured elk. Drainages leading into and out of major canyons and junctions of several drainages (usually there is good water at these points also) are other great places to focus pressured elk.
So, out of all of our meadows we should be able to find a nearby saddle (or drainage junction) that is at least a mile from a road, with a feeding area between the saddle and the road, below timberline, and that has some sort of opening for shooting lanes and dark coniferous timber nearby that elk may be heading to in order to hide.
Once you’ve identified 3 or 4 good saddles or drainage junctions, it’s time to lace up the boots and spend a weekend or two out scouting. In August, it is unlikely that the main elk herds will be low enough to be using the meadows we’ve targeted. But some units do not have true alpine country for elk to summer in, so it just depends on the unit. Don't be discouraged if you don't see a lot of fresh sign. Instead, look for old sign that indicates elk may have used these meadows. Look at the encroaching brush along the edge of the meadow. Do the ends of the twigs show old browsing pressure? Are the encroaching aspens or pines partially dead for some reason (from browsing pressure and elk rubs, hopefully not bark beetles)? What about the old brown grass from last year or earlier this year? Are the ends of it clipped off like a lawn mower? Elk and deer browsing signs on brush and aspens or other small trees often have a "flag" due to their not having upper incisors. The "flag" is just an outer bark layer left behind after elk or deer bit the stem, and then pulled up, leaving the "flag". Are there any small shrubs that look “stressed”, meaning many dead twigs protruding beyond the few live twigs that still have leaves on them? Or is the shrub no longer round? Stressed shrubs and small trees lose their natural shape when they are subjected to intense pressure from herbivores. Are there any old trails leading up to your saddle? What about the old sign around your saddle or drainage junction? Your hunting area should at least have some of these signs to let you know you are on the right track.
If the vegetation appears “hedged”, where the bottom of the junipers, aspens, scrub oaks and similar trees and shrubs are all the same height, you are likely looking at winter range. That’s fine if you are hunting during the late seasons, but elk rarely present in such concentrations to create hedged environments during the normal rifle seasons. Otherwise, you need to be scouting higher elevations if you aren’t planning a late season hunt. If you are finding shed antlers while scouting, you may also be looking too low.
You likely won’t be able to spot and stalk elk in heavily pressured areas, but from a good vantage on an open saddle you may be able to pinpoint where elk are heading to escape from other hunters. Don’t be afraid to stalk the timber, as elk spend more time in there than the open. If your escape route doesn’t produce for you, you’re going to have to have to go into the timber and pursue the elk. Coordinating a timber hunt with a partner is often more productive, especially if it’s possible to attack the patch from more than one side, pushing elk towards each other.
If trying to pick a patch of timber to still-hunt, the first places you need to investigate will be the flat timbered benches. These are often bedding areas and should show signs of elk usage during your scouting trips. Here, you won’t be looking for signs of browsing, just old tracks and feces. Old rubs are great too. If the area smells like fresh urine, or like cattle are in there, that’s another great sign. Many of these benches also have small ponds that are not marked on any map, but are visible from aerial photos. Focus your efforts near these spots.
Another type of productive timber for still hunting is burned or thinned timber. Both types of timber can be great for cover and feed. Elk tend to feel very comfortable in burns, especially if the trees haven’t fallen yet. They feel concealed, yet are readily apparent to hunters, and the lush new growth offers great forage so they have no need to expose themselves in larger meadows. Along the same lines are thinning operations. These areas have additional light hitting the forest floor, initiating grass and brush growth, but live trees are still in great abundance offering good cover to the elk. However, these areas tend to have good shooting lanes and visibility through the timber for the hunter. To find burns, you’ll need to use your aerial photos, but old logging operations are sometimes difficult to pick out. Instead, look for short spur roads coming off a main road. Many of those small roads will be gated off, blocked with boulders or the entrance to them will be bulldozed. When scouting, give extra bonus points to the roads that cannot be driven on. Aerial photos may not give you an adequate feel for the age of a burn and the amount of standing or down timber, so you need to scout it and decide whether it offers good feed and concealment to elk. And keep looking for sign. Old droppings are good, so are heavily browsed or stressed shrubs, and since the grass is often too long to reveal good trails, look for places where elk hooves have worn down or chipped away the downed logs when they cross them.
If you’ve exhausted the escape routes, the obvious hide-outs, and scouted the timber, yet still can’t find elk sign, it’s time to either choose a new area, or head down into the steep canyons and focus on the heavily timbered north and east facing drainages.
The Trophy Hunter:
Pressured units can be tolerated by the trophy hunter, as long as there aren’t too many roads and access is limited in some areas. Designated wilderness isn’t a necessity, but it helps separate the wheat from the chaff in a real hurry. However, it’s difficult to access many wilderness areas in the later seasons. So you need to have a plan in mind, when choosing which season to hunt the unit. Let’s assume we are hunting 1st rifle season here.
Occasionally, elk can be above timberline during 1st season, but it’s rare. Finding large pockets of unpressured land is our best option here. We don’t want pressure to ever reach the elk we are hunting, but it wouldn’t hurt if pressure would send additional elk our way. But first, we need to have a “measuring stick” so we know what kind of bull is possible in this area. It’s time for you to get up into the high country and glass elk on their summering grounds in July through mid August. In classic high mountain elk country, once the bachelor herds are found and trophy potential is determined, it’s now a matter of figuring out where they might be during hunting season. From archery season through 1st rifle, they will likely be within the same drainage or neighboring drainage where you found them, just at lower elevation. However, the bulls will either be nursing their wounds or still in the rut, so where they are in this stage will dictate how to focus on potential areas to hunt them. If they are still in the rut, they will be with the cows, which means there are a lot of mouths to feed. Only the larger meadows will offer sufficient forage, so you must focus on the lower reaches of the drainage where several creeks begin to form the primary river or creek in the area. This will usually be the largest meadow in the area and the focus of most of the cows and the dominant herd bull. These meadows are best found several miles into a wilderness area. Large south facing slopes on high mountains can also hold the herds, but only with a good source of nearby water.
In canyon country, pinpointing where a herd bull will be during the rut is more difficult. However, water can be scarce here. So, search for good meadows within a mile of water, but isolated from the roads by over a mile. Typically, canyon country elk herds are smaller and more evenly dispersed near the major water sources.
If the elk have quit bugling, you need to instead focus on smaller secondary meadows where the bulls will be trying to recover as much weight as possible to survive the winter. The very best places are the rare north and east facing meadows when it is warm out. These are often very small meadows, less than 200 yards wide, surrounded by heavy timber and good water. Level benches for bedding areas are not important for finding solitary bull bedding areas. The only thing in the world these bulls want is to be left alone, so they can eat and rest. Your focus here needs to be over 2 miles from the nearest major road and over a mile from any secondary road. These small pockets don’t have to be north or east facing, but they do need to have good forage. During a warm year, the bulls may go back up to higher country if there is still good feed available.
Lone bulls are also much more likely than cow/calf groups to use steep hillsides. Below most steep mountains is a slide area, with strips of timber between the slides, springs, small ponds and creeks at the base, and open grassy hillsides in places where the slide is sufficiently old. These little pockets provide all the food, water and cover a lone bull will need for the month or so before winter really sets in and he is forced to descend to lower elevations.
Because their potential meadow locations are so varied, spot and stalk hunting is much more critical, especially if you have trophy standards. Your scouting efforts should be focused on vantage points overlooking as many of these basins, meadows, and hillsides as possible, rather than trying to pinpoint a single small meadow. From one vantage point, many old slide areas can usually be seen, as well as the small pockets in the timber below. Road access to your vantage point is fine only if the points you are glassing are a long way off. If there is a tempting terrain feature to hunt immediately below your vantage point, and no barrier like a ridge or creek for a hunter to cross to reach that area you are glassing, you’ll need to find a different vantage. There must be very little disturbance reaching the area you will be glassing during hunting season.
The “Quality Experience” Hunter:
This hunter is one who is just looking to see wildlife and feel like he has some ground to himself. Trophy quality may not matter to this person and he will be combining tactics of both the trophy hunter and the meat hunter. This person is looking to enjoy the experience and isn’t necessarily looking for an armed death march to the furthest peak.
If you’ve settled on your unit, it’s time to decide how you want to hunt it. Some people like to find good roads to drive and glass the distant hillsides; others prefer a solitary still-hunt into the dark timber, while still others prefer to hike a nice vantage point to see what Mother Nature brings them. This hunter will also be conscious of the season to hunt. In some places, first rifle season has the least pressure, in other areas it’s the 4th season. Even 3rd season in some over-the-counter units can have fairly light pressure, but 2nd season is almost never the best choice for this hunter. As an archer, this hunter wouldn’t bother going out during the first several weeks of the season, and would rather pick his time to coincide with the peak of the rut. Here in Colorado, the third and fourth weeks of September are as good as it gets. And most of the bowhunters and muzzleloader hunters have already packed it in for the year. If we assume this hunter is a 3rd season rifle hunter, he can generally count on the roads still being accessible and snow in the high country pushing elk a little further down the mountain. This hunter is more focused on the honey holes outside of the wilderness, along migration corridors and pockets of public land near private lands. Depending on how you hunt, consider hunting the longest ridges extending from the high peaks. Many of these are easily accessible from the roads, and often provide a downhill hike (at first). The longest finger ridges usually have several saddles for migrating game or those seeking refuge from other hunters. Those same ridges usually have one or two good places to glass the surrounding ridges or meadows below. The trick here is to just keep walking further than most hunters and get an earlier start. The best places during the later seasons will have vantage points or will be above south and west facing brushy slopes. We can’t count on the grasses being palatable during the late seasons, so we need to be mindful of secondary food sources like scrub oaks, bitterbrush, sagebrush, serviceberry and mountain mahogany. Water is less important during the later season hunts, but will still be utilized. Standing water will likely be frozen over, even if there is no snow. Summer scouting should focus on these brushy food sources that can be seen from a safe distance without disturbing the elk during hunting season.
Utilize the tips on finding browsed and grazed plants that were described earlier when examining these hillsides during the summer. Buck deer rubs are useful signs in these areas, even if you are elk hunting, because deer are primarily browsers (as opposed to grazers), and the presence of deer rubs indicates late October and early November preferential usage in those brushy areas. If hunting for elk, focus mainly on the grass availability on exposed south facing hillsides above running creeks. These creeks will likely still be running during the late seasons, offering more reliable water sources.
In many parts of the west, irrigated private croplands are adjacent to public lands. Those private lands rarely have sufficient cover to hold elk, but the forage is irresistible to them. Use your aerial photo to look for any croplands next to public lands. Elk and deer will likely be feeding at night and early in the morning, but at some point they will reenter adjacent public lands. When scouting, look for sagging barbed wire, downed fencing, clear trails, hair snags on the wire, and other sign to indicate likely entry and exit points to these fields. But be certain you are on public land when attempting to hunt these locations.
Not all hunters have the stamina to hunt the backcountry. So finding isolated pockets that pressure will rarely touch near a road should be the focus if the above sounds like the Trail of Tears to you. For those who can exert themselves over short periods, but cannot sustain the effort, use your maps and aerial photos to find places close to, but not visible from the roads. Oftentimes, a road will pass just a quarter mile underneath a ridge, and many hunters will never bother to look at what’s on the other side. Sometimes, a difficult terrain feature such as a creek with steep banks separates the road from an unseen meadow. In most mountainous country, a road winds back and forth as it gains elevation. These gaps between the roads are also useful for short hunts, especially when coordinated with a partner or two who will park the vehicle at the bottom for you to hunt toward. Some maps do not show the road windings in sufficient detail and many aerial photos fail to show the roads underneath the timber, so scouting is crucial here. If there is ever more than a ¼ mile gap between the roads, consider it huntable.
Last Minute Scouting:
For those who can’t put the boots to the ground in elk country during the summer time, it is strongly recommended you give yourself at least one full day of scouting prior to the season opener before seriously hitting the hills. You’ve presumably narrowed down your hunting area by various remote scouting methods, whether by paper map, aerial photos, interviews, etc. But let’s say you are trying to narrow down your hunting area near two drainages where you’ll be camping. Your first order of business is not to spook game out of the country. You must minimize your intrusions at this time. You’ll have to walk with your eyes more than your legs at this time, so dawn and dusk should be spent glassing or driving the roads and glassing. When driving snow covered or dirt roads, keep a careful eye out for any trails indicating elk crossing the road. Note whether elk appear to be crossing back and forth on this road, or whether it was a one-way trip. If the snow is less than a day old, consider following those tracks. During the late morning and early afternoon, skirt any timbered potential bedding area as well as you can and do not skyline yourself when coming over ridges. Don’t be too concerned if there are elk carcasses in your new spot, consider it validation.
Unlike the summer scouting, the freshest sign wins when you’re only a day or two from the start of the season. When reading fresh sign, a little additional knowledge will tell you what the elk are eating and the likely sex of the animal you found. When elk are feeding on green grasses, their feces tend to be clumped and extremely soft. When elk have switched their feed to brush, their droppings become much harder and individual pellets tend not to clump together. If you think they are feeding on grasses, the elk are probably feeding in a wet meadow. If you think they are feeding on brush, it is likely on a south or west facing hillside. Some people can’t tell deer or moose sign from elk sign. Cow elk and small bulls tend to have tracks about 3 inches long, more mature bull elk have tracks around 3.5 inches long. A standard, factory loaded .30-06 cartridge (and most standard and belted magnums) is 3.3 inches long, .308s and other short action cartridges (including the short magnums) are 2.8 inches long. So, if the track is longer than a short action cartridge, but shorter than a standard, It is likely that of a cow elk. Anything significantly longer than a .30-06 is probably a bull, except when you are in moose country. However, moose tracks are much larger than elk tracks, often closer to 5 inches long. Their droppings are almost always slightly red, grainy and elongated from the willows that they prefer to eat.
In many ways, hunters need to be amateur biologists in order to properly read the signs the elk are leaving. If you are unsure of what you are looking at and how to interpret the signs, take a picture so you can show someone more experienced than yourself. Be prepared to ask specific questions of everyone you encounter while out scouting, but if you haven’t done your homework you won’t know when to disregard and when to accept information as gospel. You are at a severe disadvantage if you haven’t set foot in your hunting area before the season starts. The only way to move yourself further along the learning curve is to spend more time in the elk woods. The local, area-specific knowledge you gain from doing so is worth infinitely more than reading generic books and articles. Understanding what the sign is telling you and what do with that sign is a crucial step in becoming a good elk hunter. Our hunting seasons are short, so you will not get the necessary field time to become a knowledgeable elk hunter by spending only 5 days in the woods each year. Get out there, scout intelligently, learn your hunting grounds, become a more successful hunter.
Effects of new Colorado draw regulations
If you don’t care about elk hunting in Colorado, bear with me. Colorado is the 800 pound gorilla of elk hunting, is the state I follow the most closely and is the state and species 90% of Eastern and Midwestern hunters are most interested in. As some hunters are in a constant state of thinking for the future, knowing how and where to spend your scouting efforts and research this summer and a complete understanding of the effect of the new draw rules may help you with your future application strategies.
Anyway, last year the Colorado Division of Wildlife announced they would finally offer a hybrid draw system, but only for the highest demand hunts. Previously, Colorado operated on a pure preference system, where the applicant with the most points got the tags (only state in the US with this type of draw). There was no chance for an applicant with fewer points to acquire a high quality permit in Colorado’s Northwest trophy units. The point creep also made it unlikely that some applicants would ever draw before dying or quitting hunting. Units 2, 10 and 201 require 15-20 points to draw, even for archery, and the number required was going up yearly. So, in order to give applicants with fewer points some sort of a chance of drawing, the DOW decided to go with a hybrid draw, where 20% of the tags would be randomly allocated to applicants with 5 or more preference points. However, that also meant that the tag quota would be reduced for the 80% preference point draw, increasing the points required.
Secondly, the Colorado Division of Wildlife also decided to do away with the former “statewide” muzzleloader elk tags and exert more control over hunter distribution. The old statewide tag was valid in most of the OTC archery units, which made up about 50% of the mountainous regions of Colorado. There were both bull and cow tags available in the statewide tag system and the old cow tags were list A. Meaning those who drew a statewide muzzleloader cow tag could not buy an OTC or leftover bull tag. By controlling the cow and bull harvest more closely with muzzleloader hunters, the DOW now offers List B cow elk muzzleloader permits. But, by breaking up the units from the statewide system to individual hunt codes, it was difficult to predict how many points would be required to draw each unit, especially without knowing the tag quotas ahead of time. We knew how many muzzleloader hunters hunted each unit, and there was talk of reducing muzzleloader hunter pressure in some areas, so combined with the hybrid draw, this year more than ever was a bit of a crapshoot for applications.
Lastly, the Gunnison Basin units, 54, 55 and 551 were removed from the statewide OTC archery tag, causing further confusion to anyone trying to predict how to use their applications. These were popular units, but the archer pressure was making it difficult for the DOW to hit their harvest objectives with the rifle hunters. To increase total harvest, the DOW decided to reduce the archer numbers which were scattering significant numbers of elk to refuges off of the public lands. Biologists also chose to reduce 1st rifle season pressure, so that there would be more elk and less pressured elk available for the OTC 2nd and 3rd rifle seasons. Added to those strategies were additional late season cow permits.
Anyway, this is will be a review of where the applicant pressure went. It’s possible that the preference points required for muzzleloader, hybrid and non hybrid trophy units won’t stabilize for several more years. Many hunters aren’t as savvy with applications as those with westernhuntingdata.com, do not read the draw summaries, do not have a cohesive application strategy and will continue to make unwise application decisions. But for those who try to have a strategy with long and short term goals, it’s difficult to predict an outcome when there are major changes to the mechanism by which we acquire our sought-after tags. So the point of this whole article is to educate ourselves on how to play the system as wisely as possible. I will probably send this out again next application season as a reminder.
I was curious to find out whether the new hybrid draw reduced the number of points required in the middle tier trophy units: 40, 61 and 76, and what effect the loss of the statewide muzzleloader tag would have on tag availability. Would fewer hunters apply first for a preference point and then try to draw a tag with a second choice? What would happen with the cow muzzleloader tags? Would more people be willing to apply for the northwest trophy units with one-third to one-half the required points hoping to steal a hybrid tag? Would more people apply for a preference point in the hopes of earning the 5 points required to by hybrid eligible? Would some people simply give up trying to draw the northwest trophy units knowing that the number of points required will keep increasing? What effect would the limitation of archers in the Gunnison area have on the draw? There are also Ranching for Wildlife bull and either sex tags available to Colorado residents only that became part of the hybrid draw, but that will not be the major focus of this report. There were very few deer tags that were hybrid eligible (as with the elk, hybrid units required 10 or more resident preference points to draw) and no other major changes, so I will not be taking a close look at the effects on the deer draw.
The whole preference system is based on simple supply and demand, so we first need to take an overview of the demand on limited Colorado elk tags. For 2010, there were 191,747 elk applications for 147,849 limited tags. This is continuing a downward trend from the 192,606 applicants in 2009, 197,413 in 2008, and 198,044 in 2007. The limited tag quotas hardly changed between 2010 and 2009, but are down from 156,925 in 2008 and 165,366 in 2007. The main decrease in applicants came from nonresidents, with 77,504 in 2010, 79,764 in 2009, 86,818 in 2008 and 88,522 in 2007. Resident applications are on the rise though, with 105,209 in 2010, 104,017 in 2009, 101,870 in 2008, and 101,104 in 2007. So both applications and tags are down from recent numbers, but overall limited tags represented 77% of applications in 2010, versus 83% in 2007. This indicates that the recent reduction in applications were not in line with the reduction in tags. So preference points required should increase slightly.
Every either sex or bull hunt in units 2, 10 and 201, plus muzzleloader in 1 and 61 and early rifle in 1 were all part of the hybrid draw (Have I told you unit 1 is fool’s gold yet? Most folks have no idea it is not on par with 2, 10 or 201, with harvest stats similar to standard crowd controlled draw units.). Several either sex RFW tags and the Bosque Del Oso hunts were also included. On average, the preference points required went up at least 1 point for nonresidents in these hunts and in some cases, the resident preference points also increased. Remember, the hunts requiring 6 or more resident points have an 80/20 resident to noresident tag allocation split, not the standard 65/35. So it stands to reason that across the board, the hybrid units would have an increase in nonresident preference points required. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the northwest trophy units that jumped in points the most, but the 3rd season special Bosque Del Oso hunt (unit 851), going from 13 resident and 15 nonresident points to 15 resident and 19 nonresident points. If you average the point increases for all the hybrid eligible hunts, on average they increased 1.36 points.
Ok, so the hybrid units take even more points to draw now. What are the odds of drawing a hybrid tag with fewer than the required minimum points? Let’s look at unit 2 early rifle: Unit 2 went from requiring 16 resident and 18 nonresident preference points to 17 resident and 19 nonresident points. Unit 2 early rifle applicants increased from 1113 in 2009 to 1385 in 2010. Those applicants with just 5 points increased from 42 to 91, and total applicants with 5 or more points increased from 568 to 902 (58% increase) for the 0.5% (5 out of 902) chance of drawing one of the randomly allocated tags. 0-4 point applicants also went up 15% from 296 to 342. That increase in 5 or more point applicants could have sucked a lot of potential high point applicants out of other potential draws, but my guess is that it mostly just reduced the applicants applying for a preference point only. 2010 preference point only applicants went down from 65,782 in 2009 to 62,999 in 2010.
Unit 2 early rifle was typical of many of the hybrid draw hunts. So, what about the non hybrid trophy units? What happened to those? Looking just at non hybrid hunts in units 40, 76 and 61, plus the RFW bull and either sex hunts, on average they increased 0.5 points. So for the most part, point creep is still affecting these units. Only a few hunts required fewer points in 2010 compared to 2009. Unit 76 first rifle decreased from 6 resident and 10 nonresident points to 5 resident and 9 nonresident points. That may have had more to do with the DOW adding an early rifle hunt than with folks trying to draw a hybrid tag. Another big loser was the Silver Spur RFW hunt, going down from 11 points in 2009 to 7 in 2010. But those were exceptions; the point creep is still having an effect on these trophy units. Several of these hunts are nearing hybrid eligibility, and it’s hard to say how many additional applicants will choose to participate. It’s also possible that many high point applicants realized that they might never draw the Northwest trophy units while they are still healthy and mobile, so they put in for these slightly lower tier units. Unit 76 first rifle required 9 resident points last year, but the addition of an early rifle hunt has changed the dynamic. Unit 61 first rifle also required 9 resident points in 2009 and did not gain an early rifle hunt. I expected applicants to decide they would rather earn points while having a chance in the hybrid draw. Unit 61 first rifle season increased in nonresident points required in 2010, from 14 to 15, but total applicants were down from 1641 in 2009 to 1477 in 2010. Savvy applicants with 5 to 8 resident points and 5-13 nonresident points seemed the most logical to jump ship and apply for hybrid draw hunts with no chance of drawing unit 61 first rifle, but at least a slim chance of drawing a hybrid unit. Sure enough, residents with 5-8 points decreased from 387 to 267, and nonresidents with 5-13 points decreased from 283 to 181. It seems that no more than the normal number of applicants decided they were done waiting on a tag, and applied with up to 3 more points that required the year before.
Now, if you’re still with me and not bored to tears, is there a way to take advantage of the increase in applicants in the “holding pattern” of earning points in the hybrid draw? Possibly, but unlikely. There will have to be an increase in the tag quotas for these high demand non hybrid units. If you’re watching the population objective and status and sex ratios carefully, you may be able to anticipate an increase in tags and poach a tag from 76, 40 or 61 at some point with 1 or 2 points fewer than the previous year. But that’s the only reason I can contemplate applying for these units when you have 1 or 2 points below the minimum number of points. It’s also possible that the word about the hybrid draw has not fully gotten out yet, and more high point applicants will choose to take that route instead of continuing to apply for non hybrid hunts, thereby reducing the point requirements. It seems more likely that 40, 61 and 76 will soon become part of the hybrid draw as they reach 10 resident preference points for the muzzleloader and early rifle hunts (61 is there already).
Alright, so what effect did the new muzzleloader tag system have on the draw? For starters, the cow tags that only had a moderate chance of drawing in 2009 with a 2nd choice, are for the most part available as leftovers this year, despite no real increase. It seems many applicants tried to apply for bull or either sex muzzleloader tags with 1st, 2nd or 3rd choices, instead applying for the cow tag with a second choice as they usually do. To illustrate: in 2009, there were 13,068 applications for the statewide muzzleloader bull tag which required 0 points for residents (but only about 15% chance of drawing with 0 points) and 2 points for nonresidents, and about 20% of those applicants applied with 2nd choice or later with no chance of drawing. Conversely, in units 6/16/17/161/171, the either sex muzzleloader tag now requires 1 resident point and 3 nonresidents points, yet 32% of applicants applied with 2nd choices or later. Now maybe that was because this tag was now either sex instead of bull only. But units 80/81 had a similar phenomenon with a bull only tag, as the resident and nonresident points increased 1 point each, and 32% of applicants also applied with 2nd or later choices and no chance of drawing. And what about the OTC rifle units that were not part of the statewide muzzleloader tag in 2009 like that Flat Tops and Bear’s Ears? Both units had point requirements increase, by 1 each for residents and nonresidents in the Flat Tops and 1 point for nonresidents in the Bear’s Ears. So, if several units increased their point requirements, it stands to reason that some must have decreased unless there was some sudden surge in muzzleloading interest. Sure enough, two units did decrease in their point requirements, and another two units increased in the resident point requirement, while decreasing the nonresident point requirement.
Below is a list of former statewide units that had a net increase in points required (either resident or nonresident or both):
6/16/17/161/171
14/214
15/27
18/181
21/22/30/31/32
25/26/34/231
28/37/371
38
53
54
70/71/72/73/711
74/741
80/81
551
Below are the two former statewide units that had a net decrease in points required:
35/36/361
86/691/861
Below are the two former statewide units with no net change, but increased in resident point requirements, yet decreased in nonresident points required:
3/301
59
Interestingly, the loss of the statewide muzzleloader tag may have cleared up confusion with previous applicants who did not understand the system, and chose to apply to crowd controlled units. Units 48, 56, 57/58, and 69/84 all had a net loss of points required. The preference point requirements might not stabilize for several years as savvy applicants chase list B cow tags with 2nd, 3rd or 4th choices and fewer applicants apply for bull and either sex tags with 2nd or later choices. I’d venture to guess that list A cow tags will continue to be had with 3rd, 4th and leftover choices for the foreseeable future, while the list B cow tags eventually go back to only being available with 2nd choices.
It’s difficult to put a finger on what happened with the limited archery tags in 54, 55 and 551. Each of these units had the previous archery hunter numbers reduced by nearly 40%, so it’s surprising they are available as leftovers. There were probably several factors at play leading up to the draw. It appears that many residents chose not to be limited to a single unit, as nonresidents outdrew residents in 54 by a margin of 102 to 157, but residents preferred the better access and slightly closer units of 55 and 551 by a combined margin of 353 to 202. That makes sense as nonresidents will most likely have just one week to hunt, and residents might hunt 2 or 3 weekends out of the month long season. The majority of Colorado’s population lives nearly 4.5 hours from those 3 units, so it seems likely that Gunnison residents were the majority of the residents who bothered with drawing those tags. I know several folks who hunt more than one unit during archery season and didn’t want to be tied down to going all the way to Gunnison every weekend. It’s also possible that many hunters still aren’t aware of the changes and intend to hunt their old units on the OTC archery tag. Although the tags are now available as leftovers, others were unsure whether they could be drawn as 1st or later choice tags. In 54, 14 applicants wasted 1 or 2 points each to guarantee the tag. Similar issues occurred in 55 and 551, with several hunters throwing away as many as 5 points for a tag that could be had as a leftover (of course they didn’t know that at the time). It’ll be interesting to note whether the leftovers are quickly picked up or if they continue to be available all season. It might take a full season of enforcement/reminders for hunters hunting on OTC tags to realize the new changes, or maybe the area will never see much significant archery demand again. If it’s an issue of awareness, with OTC hunters trying to hunt the Gunnison country, expect the tags to be harder to draw next year (but I’d still wager a second choice tag if I intended to hunt there). If the reason for the lack of interest is resident travel commitment, the tags will continue to be available as leftovers. And now what’s going to happen to the former OTC hunters who did hunt the Gunnison area? Were they mostly Front Range residents who will now continue to pressure the closest OTC units? Will they pile into neighboring units? There’s several hundred displaced hunters now.
So those are the biggies. There’s nothing we can do to change our applications for this year, but keep these affects in mind for this year’s leftovers and next year’s applications. You still cannot draw a second choice muzzleloader bull tag. Many bull and either sex muzzleloader tags had an increase in the preference points required for nonresidents. Only a few decreased the requirements, but that may not hold true for next year. We have cow muzzleloader tags available for the first time in several years. Don’t expect too many of those tags to fall to leftovers next year, especially List B tags. We know the preference point requirement for the Northwest trophy units will continue to increase. There will likely be a few more hunts added to the hybrid draw in the next several years. You may be able to get lucky and draw a non hybrid tag if you choose not to participate in the hybrid draws, which only give you a .5% chance of drawing. We won’t know what to make of the newly limited archery units in 54, 55 and 551 until we see whether the leftovers are quickly purchased or if they remain available throughout archery season.
I know this may have been tedious, but if you are trying to plan for future hunts, it helps to try to understand the effect of new regulations on tag demand. Good luck out there.
Anyway, last year the Colorado Division of Wildlife announced they would finally offer a hybrid draw system, but only for the highest demand hunts. Previously, Colorado operated on a pure preference system, where the applicant with the most points got the tags (only state in the US with this type of draw). There was no chance for an applicant with fewer points to acquire a high quality permit in Colorado’s Northwest trophy units. The point creep also made it unlikely that some applicants would ever draw before dying or quitting hunting. Units 2, 10 and 201 require 15-20 points to draw, even for archery, and the number required was going up yearly. So, in order to give applicants with fewer points some sort of a chance of drawing, the DOW decided to go with a hybrid draw, where 20% of the tags would be randomly allocated to applicants with 5 or more preference points. However, that also meant that the tag quota would be reduced for the 80% preference point draw, increasing the points required.
Secondly, the Colorado Division of Wildlife also decided to do away with the former “statewide” muzzleloader elk tags and exert more control over hunter distribution. The old statewide tag was valid in most of the OTC archery units, which made up about 50% of the mountainous regions of Colorado. There were both bull and cow tags available in the statewide tag system and the old cow tags were list A. Meaning those who drew a statewide muzzleloader cow tag could not buy an OTC or leftover bull tag. By controlling the cow and bull harvest more closely with muzzleloader hunters, the DOW now offers List B cow elk muzzleloader permits. But, by breaking up the units from the statewide system to individual hunt codes, it was difficult to predict how many points would be required to draw each unit, especially without knowing the tag quotas ahead of time. We knew how many muzzleloader hunters hunted each unit, and there was talk of reducing muzzleloader hunter pressure in some areas, so combined with the hybrid draw, this year more than ever was a bit of a crapshoot for applications.
Lastly, the Gunnison Basin units, 54, 55 and 551 were removed from the statewide OTC archery tag, causing further confusion to anyone trying to predict how to use their applications. These were popular units, but the archer pressure was making it difficult for the DOW to hit their harvest objectives with the rifle hunters. To increase total harvest, the DOW decided to reduce the archer numbers which were scattering significant numbers of elk to refuges off of the public lands. Biologists also chose to reduce 1st rifle season pressure, so that there would be more elk and less pressured elk available for the OTC 2nd and 3rd rifle seasons. Added to those strategies were additional late season cow permits.
Anyway, this is will be a review of where the applicant pressure went. It’s possible that the preference points required for muzzleloader, hybrid and non hybrid trophy units won’t stabilize for several more years. Many hunters aren’t as savvy with applications as those with westernhuntingdata.com, do not read the draw summaries, do not have a cohesive application strategy and will continue to make unwise application decisions. But for those who try to have a strategy with long and short term goals, it’s difficult to predict an outcome when there are major changes to the mechanism by which we acquire our sought-after tags. So the point of this whole article is to educate ourselves on how to play the system as wisely as possible. I will probably send this out again next application season as a reminder.
I was curious to find out whether the new hybrid draw reduced the number of points required in the middle tier trophy units: 40, 61 and 76, and what effect the loss of the statewide muzzleloader tag would have on tag availability. Would fewer hunters apply first for a preference point and then try to draw a tag with a second choice? What would happen with the cow muzzleloader tags? Would more people be willing to apply for the northwest trophy units with one-third to one-half the required points hoping to steal a hybrid tag? Would more people apply for a preference point in the hopes of earning the 5 points required to by hybrid eligible? Would some people simply give up trying to draw the northwest trophy units knowing that the number of points required will keep increasing? What effect would the limitation of archers in the Gunnison area have on the draw? There are also Ranching for Wildlife bull and either sex tags available to Colorado residents only that became part of the hybrid draw, but that will not be the major focus of this report. There were very few deer tags that were hybrid eligible (as with the elk, hybrid units required 10 or more resident preference points to draw) and no other major changes, so I will not be taking a close look at the effects on the deer draw.
The whole preference system is based on simple supply and demand, so we first need to take an overview of the demand on limited Colorado elk tags. For 2010, there were 191,747 elk applications for 147,849 limited tags. This is continuing a downward trend from the 192,606 applicants in 2009, 197,413 in 2008, and 198,044 in 2007. The limited tag quotas hardly changed between 2010 and 2009, but are down from 156,925 in 2008 and 165,366 in 2007. The main decrease in applicants came from nonresidents, with 77,504 in 2010, 79,764 in 2009, 86,818 in 2008 and 88,522 in 2007. Resident applications are on the rise though, with 105,209 in 2010, 104,017 in 2009, 101,870 in 2008, and 101,104 in 2007. So both applications and tags are down from recent numbers, but overall limited tags represented 77% of applications in 2010, versus 83% in 2007. This indicates that the recent reduction in applications were not in line with the reduction in tags. So preference points required should increase slightly.
Every either sex or bull hunt in units 2, 10 and 201, plus muzzleloader in 1 and 61 and early rifle in 1 were all part of the hybrid draw (Have I told you unit 1 is fool’s gold yet? Most folks have no idea it is not on par with 2, 10 or 201, with harvest stats similar to standard crowd controlled draw units.). Several either sex RFW tags and the Bosque Del Oso hunts were also included. On average, the preference points required went up at least 1 point for nonresidents in these hunts and in some cases, the resident preference points also increased. Remember, the hunts requiring 6 or more resident points have an 80/20 resident to noresident tag allocation split, not the standard 65/35. So it stands to reason that across the board, the hybrid units would have an increase in nonresident preference points required. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the northwest trophy units that jumped in points the most, but the 3rd season special Bosque Del Oso hunt (unit 851), going from 13 resident and 15 nonresident points to 15 resident and 19 nonresident points. If you average the point increases for all the hybrid eligible hunts, on average they increased 1.36 points.
Ok, so the hybrid units take even more points to draw now. What are the odds of drawing a hybrid tag with fewer than the required minimum points? Let’s look at unit 2 early rifle: Unit 2 went from requiring 16 resident and 18 nonresident preference points to 17 resident and 19 nonresident points. Unit 2 early rifle applicants increased from 1113 in 2009 to 1385 in 2010. Those applicants with just 5 points increased from 42 to 91, and total applicants with 5 or more points increased from 568 to 902 (58% increase) for the 0.5% (5 out of 902) chance of drawing one of the randomly allocated tags. 0-4 point applicants also went up 15% from 296 to 342. That increase in 5 or more point applicants could have sucked a lot of potential high point applicants out of other potential draws, but my guess is that it mostly just reduced the applicants applying for a preference point only. 2010 preference point only applicants went down from 65,782 in 2009 to 62,999 in 2010.
Unit 2 early rifle was typical of many of the hybrid draw hunts. So, what about the non hybrid trophy units? What happened to those? Looking just at non hybrid hunts in units 40, 76 and 61, plus the RFW bull and either sex hunts, on average they increased 0.5 points. So for the most part, point creep is still affecting these units. Only a few hunts required fewer points in 2010 compared to 2009. Unit 76 first rifle decreased from 6 resident and 10 nonresident points to 5 resident and 9 nonresident points. That may have had more to do with the DOW adding an early rifle hunt than with folks trying to draw a hybrid tag. Another big loser was the Silver Spur RFW hunt, going down from 11 points in 2009 to 7 in 2010. But those were exceptions; the point creep is still having an effect on these trophy units. Several of these hunts are nearing hybrid eligibility, and it’s hard to say how many additional applicants will choose to participate. It’s also possible that many high point applicants realized that they might never draw the Northwest trophy units while they are still healthy and mobile, so they put in for these slightly lower tier units. Unit 76 first rifle required 9 resident points last year, but the addition of an early rifle hunt has changed the dynamic. Unit 61 first rifle also required 9 resident points in 2009 and did not gain an early rifle hunt. I expected applicants to decide they would rather earn points while having a chance in the hybrid draw. Unit 61 first rifle season increased in nonresident points required in 2010, from 14 to 15, but total applicants were down from 1641 in 2009 to 1477 in 2010. Savvy applicants with 5 to 8 resident points and 5-13 nonresident points seemed the most logical to jump ship and apply for hybrid draw hunts with no chance of drawing unit 61 first rifle, but at least a slim chance of drawing a hybrid unit. Sure enough, residents with 5-8 points decreased from 387 to 267, and nonresidents with 5-13 points decreased from 283 to 181. It seems that no more than the normal number of applicants decided they were done waiting on a tag, and applied with up to 3 more points that required the year before.
Now, if you’re still with me and not bored to tears, is there a way to take advantage of the increase in applicants in the “holding pattern” of earning points in the hybrid draw? Possibly, but unlikely. There will have to be an increase in the tag quotas for these high demand non hybrid units. If you’re watching the population objective and status and sex ratios carefully, you may be able to anticipate an increase in tags and poach a tag from 76, 40 or 61 at some point with 1 or 2 points fewer than the previous year. But that’s the only reason I can contemplate applying for these units when you have 1 or 2 points below the minimum number of points. It’s also possible that the word about the hybrid draw has not fully gotten out yet, and more high point applicants will choose to take that route instead of continuing to apply for non hybrid hunts, thereby reducing the point requirements. It seems more likely that 40, 61 and 76 will soon become part of the hybrid draw as they reach 10 resident preference points for the muzzleloader and early rifle hunts (61 is there already).
Alright, so what effect did the new muzzleloader tag system have on the draw? For starters, the cow tags that only had a moderate chance of drawing in 2009 with a 2nd choice, are for the most part available as leftovers this year, despite no real increase. It seems many applicants tried to apply for bull or either sex muzzleloader tags with 1st, 2nd or 3rd choices, instead applying for the cow tag with a second choice as they usually do. To illustrate: in 2009, there were 13,068 applications for the statewide muzzleloader bull tag which required 0 points for residents (but only about 15% chance of drawing with 0 points) and 2 points for nonresidents, and about 20% of those applicants applied with 2nd choice or later with no chance of drawing. Conversely, in units 6/16/17/161/171, the either sex muzzleloader tag now requires 1 resident point and 3 nonresidents points, yet 32% of applicants applied with 2nd choices or later. Now maybe that was because this tag was now either sex instead of bull only. But units 80/81 had a similar phenomenon with a bull only tag, as the resident and nonresident points increased 1 point each, and 32% of applicants also applied with 2nd or later choices and no chance of drawing. And what about the OTC rifle units that were not part of the statewide muzzleloader tag in 2009 like that Flat Tops and Bear’s Ears? Both units had point requirements increase, by 1 each for residents and nonresidents in the Flat Tops and 1 point for nonresidents in the Bear’s Ears. So, if several units increased their point requirements, it stands to reason that some must have decreased unless there was some sudden surge in muzzleloading interest. Sure enough, two units did decrease in their point requirements, and another two units increased in the resident point requirement, while decreasing the nonresident point requirement.
Below is a list of former statewide units that had a net increase in points required (either resident or nonresident or both):
6/16/17/161/171
14/214
15/27
18/181
21/22/30/31/32
25/26/34/231
28/37/371
38
53
54
70/71/72/73/711
74/741
80/81
551
Below are the two former statewide units that had a net decrease in points required:
35/36/361
86/691/861
Below are the two former statewide units with no net change, but increased in resident point requirements, yet decreased in nonresident points required:
3/301
59
Interestingly, the loss of the statewide muzzleloader tag may have cleared up confusion with previous applicants who did not understand the system, and chose to apply to crowd controlled units. Units 48, 56, 57/58, and 69/84 all had a net loss of points required. The preference point requirements might not stabilize for several years as savvy applicants chase list B cow tags with 2nd, 3rd or 4th choices and fewer applicants apply for bull and either sex tags with 2nd or later choices. I’d venture to guess that list A cow tags will continue to be had with 3rd, 4th and leftover choices for the foreseeable future, while the list B cow tags eventually go back to only being available with 2nd choices.
It’s difficult to put a finger on what happened with the limited archery tags in 54, 55 and 551. Each of these units had the previous archery hunter numbers reduced by nearly 40%, so it’s surprising they are available as leftovers. There were probably several factors at play leading up to the draw. It appears that many residents chose not to be limited to a single unit, as nonresidents outdrew residents in 54 by a margin of 102 to 157, but residents preferred the better access and slightly closer units of 55 and 551 by a combined margin of 353 to 202. That makes sense as nonresidents will most likely have just one week to hunt, and residents might hunt 2 or 3 weekends out of the month long season. The majority of Colorado’s population lives nearly 4.5 hours from those 3 units, so it seems likely that Gunnison residents were the majority of the residents who bothered with drawing those tags. I know several folks who hunt more than one unit during archery season and didn’t want to be tied down to going all the way to Gunnison every weekend. It’s also possible that many hunters still aren’t aware of the changes and intend to hunt their old units on the OTC archery tag. Although the tags are now available as leftovers, others were unsure whether they could be drawn as 1st or later choice tags. In 54, 14 applicants wasted 1 or 2 points each to guarantee the tag. Similar issues occurred in 55 and 551, with several hunters throwing away as many as 5 points for a tag that could be had as a leftover (of course they didn’t know that at the time). It’ll be interesting to note whether the leftovers are quickly picked up or if they continue to be available all season. It might take a full season of enforcement/reminders for hunters hunting on OTC tags to realize the new changes, or maybe the area will never see much significant archery demand again. If it’s an issue of awareness, with OTC hunters trying to hunt the Gunnison country, expect the tags to be harder to draw next year (but I’d still wager a second choice tag if I intended to hunt there). If the reason for the lack of interest is resident travel commitment, the tags will continue to be available as leftovers. And now what’s going to happen to the former OTC hunters who did hunt the Gunnison area? Were they mostly Front Range residents who will now continue to pressure the closest OTC units? Will they pile into neighboring units? There’s several hundred displaced hunters now.
So those are the biggies. There’s nothing we can do to change our applications for this year, but keep these affects in mind for this year’s leftovers and next year’s applications. You still cannot draw a second choice muzzleloader bull tag. Many bull and either sex muzzleloader tags had an increase in the preference points required for nonresidents. Only a few decreased the requirements, but that may not hold true for next year. We have cow muzzleloader tags available for the first time in several years. Don’t expect too many of those tags to fall to leftovers next year, especially List B tags. We know the preference point requirement for the Northwest trophy units will continue to increase. There will likely be a few more hunts added to the hybrid draw in the next several years. You may be able to get lucky and draw a non hybrid tag if you choose not to participate in the hybrid draws, which only give you a .5% chance of drawing. We won’t know what to make of the newly limited archery units in 54, 55 and 551 until we see whether the leftovers are quickly purchased or if they remain available throughout archery season.
I know this may have been tedious, but if you are trying to plan for future hunts, it helps to try to understand the effect of new regulations on tag demand. Good luck out there.
Hold em or Fold em
Many of you have hunted the same units for several years and have noticed changes in the elk and deer numbers. In some cases, the animals are still “there”, but not in the same numbers in the same drainages you traditionally hunt. In other cases, the population has been severely reduced, sometimes due to intentional or accidental management decisions, other times due to factors out of our control. Populations fluctuate due to natural variables, but wildlife managers usually try to keep them steady around an objective.
Many hunters distrust the population surveys that the Colorado Division of Wildlife produces. But it’s what they use, and what is going to dictate their management decisions. So if you’ve been unhappy with the deer or elk hunting lately, it pays to look at the current population in relation to the objectives. If that population doesn’t appear to have changed much, you may want to consider doing some more research and scouting to see what has changed in other parts of the unit. Did the Forest Service close a road, creating a new sanctuary? Was there a fire in a neighboring drainage, producing younger, more palatable forage? How long has it been since the last mechanical or natural disturbance in your area? Maybe the plants have become older and tougher where you hunt. Maybe the trees are now thicker, with less light hitting the soil, shading out the more desirable forbs. Did a spring quit running? Has the livestock management changed? What about timber management? Did the rancher whose fields that the elk or deer used to raid change crops, get a new outfitter or quit outfitting? Any of these things and many more can change the distribution of game in your area without changing the population. Most hunters hunt just a small percentage of the total area available in a unit, so it pays to have a little better perspective regarding the population and habitat changes (if any) in that unit.
Nature is never static. Nothing stays the same; plants grow, animals reproduce, snow storms wipe out deer populations, fires set back succession of plant species. Add in human interaction with nature and you have more changes. Thankfully, we can arm ourselves with information and monitor or anticipate these changes, which may affect our decision making processes. Even if the habitat hasn’t changed much, rancher and farmer attitudes toward wildlife might, putting pressure on the Division of Wildlife to allow a larger antlerless harvest. We hunters tend to abhor change, but wishing things would stay the same will not make it so.
So what might make you decide whether to look for greener pastures or whether stick it out? Take a look at where the population is in relation to objectives. This won’t tell you anything about the game distribution, but it should tell you whether the wildlife managers will try to let it build back up to the numbers that you once saw. If so, you ought to consider sticking it out. Hunting during those leaner years, while frustrating, will make you more knowledgeable about the area. You might also consider a temporary move to different ground with the intention to return when things get a little better. But if you’re unhappy with the numbers and it appears that the wildlife managers intend to either keep the numbers at their present level, or worse yet, intend to further reduce it, it’s probably time to consider folding up shop in that unit.
Most state game departments do not produce nearly the quantity or quality of information that the Colorado Division of Wildlife produces for public consumption. Some states don’t do population estimates, many do not have population objectives. So I can’t be of much help outside of Colorado, but the following is a list of DAUs whose glory days may be returning, and whose sun has set. It’s not a complete list, just some highlights and doesn’t include those who are on their way down due to being way over objective (ripe units for those seeking new ground while your old unit builds back up). I don’t have complete population data prior to 2004, so this will be more about recent history.
DEER:
The winter of 2007-2008 really worked over the deer herds in Colorado, so many of these units show similar patterns in their populations: near objective, then a precipitous drop that didn’t show up until after the 2008 post hunt survey. For other units, the winter compounded an intentional decline. Deer populations also fluctuate much more than elk, as they tend to breed at an earlier age and often producing twins and triplets, but are much more vulnerable to smaller predators and the weather.
The Flat Tops, units 11,12,13,22,23,24,211,131,231: This deer population has seen its glory days and it’s not coming back any time soon. In 2005, this herd was over 105,000 animals, representing nearly 18% of Colorado’s deer population in just one herd. It was also 50% over objective. Combined with lots of tags, and some harsh winters, the population plummeted to its low of 61,450 this past year. The DOW intends to let the population build back up towards the objective, but it will probably never number near 100,000 animals again.
The Uncompahgre Plateau, units 61,62: In 2006, the Uncompahgre deer herd was nearly 40,000 animals. After the harsh 2007 winter, whose damage wasn’t fully realized until 2008, this deer herd now stands at less than 22,000. It will come back, but it will take time. Antlerless tags have been reduced by 66% for 2010, but the DOW projects very little population gain for next year. Even at a 20% growth rate, which assumes almost no doe harvest and mild weather, it will be no less than 3 years before the population can get close to the 36,000 deer objective. If this was your deer hot spot, you might consider hunting somewhere else for a few years.
Poudre Canyon, units 7,8,9,19,191: This has always been a popular area, but the proximity to Colorado State University and the prevalence of Chronic Wasting Disease made it the target of an experiment to find out to what degree CWD is density dependent. Reducing the population from a high of 13,900 in 1993 to just 5,700 in 2007 with a tremendous number of doe tags was intentional. If you moved due to the poor recent hunting, I can’t blame you, but it is on the way back up and quickly. The new population objective is 12,000, and the past two years have shown significant gains, which are projected to continue beyond the present 8,700 and 9,300 in 2010. If you’ve left, don’t come back yet, because it’s still shy of the early 90s. But it should be close to peaking by 2012 or 2013.
Gunnison- Powderhorn, Cimarron, West Elk and Taylor Park-units 54,55,551,64,65,66,67: The area around Gunnison received the most publicity during the severe storms and emergency winter feeding operation of 2007 and 2008, but losses were much more widespread. Each of these DAUs were significantly over objective in the mid 2000s, and had been for many years. Combined with the overpopulated elk outstripping the winter range and able to outcompete deer for precious forage, the area was primed for a fall. While the DOW attempted to compensate for the losses during the following hunting season by cutting tags in half, the deer population was still down by more than 8,000 in the 2008 post hunt survey. This isn’t a deer and history lesson, so which areas are coming back, and which ones aren’t? The Powderhorn units (66,67) will not be coming back to their high of the early 90s and early 2000s. They were way over objective, so the harsh winter only helped the management goal, and the herd is now at objective. It’s a quality managed deer unit, so the buck ratio is going to be kept high, but don’t expect to see nearly as many bucks as you once did. The Cimarron units (64,65) will be coming back, although they have continued to decline since the major winter die off. Presently these units are at their low of 8400 deer, down from nearly 15,000 in 2006. The objective is 13,500 and doe tags have been completely eliminated for 2010. The West Elk (54) and Taylor Park (55,551) units will be on the rise also, but they will not be near their previous highs in the early and mid 2000s. Unit 54 had 9200 deer and was 40% over the objective of 6500 back in 2004 but has since plummeted to about 4,000 and hasn’t grown at all since that harsh winter. This is a unit that will take a while just to return to objective, which it had previously exceeded since the 80s, so don’t expect it to ever return to what you had been used to. The Taylor Park units were nearly twice their objective of 6,500 in the early 2000s, and are now presently struggling to break the 4,000 deer mark. You might want to give either of these last two DAUs 5 or 6 years before considering them again (and you’ll need nearly that many preference points to hunt them anyway).
State Bridge, units 15,35,36,45: In 2006, the deer herd exceeded 24,000, with an objective of 21,000 and was among the top deer densities in the state. Harsh winters combined with generous doe quotas and a reduced population objective (several habitat, disease and human issues) knocked the population down to a low of less than 14,000 in 2008. The new objective is 15,000 and the present population is hovering around there at this time. This is a population that will not return to the tremendous densities of the recent past. It’s still among the higher densities in the state, but it will not be going back to what it once was in the 1980s and early to mid 2000s.
Glade Park, unit 40: This herd has been below objective for over 30 years. Even with virtually no doe harvest, the unit has stagnated, despite good fawn production. The lack of a population increase points to a probable winter range habitat problem, which is likely compounded by an overpopulated elk herd in the area. It’s tough to make a call on this unit, as the population is roughly half the 12,000 deer objective and has been for some time. The population has declined from its previous high in the mid to late 80s of rougly 13,000 deer, but the objective at that time was 16,000 deer. Given that herd hasn’t grown in 20 years, despite management efforts, I see no reason to believe it will again without major habitat improvements or maybe a decline in the elk population.
Grand Mesa, North units 41,42,421 and South units 52,411,521- The north herd has always been about 3 times as large as the south herd. In the 1980s, this herd was over 40,000 deer. Presently, it stands at just 20,000, significantly below the 29,000 deer the DOW was managing for. The herd was just over objective prior to the 2007 winter, which takes most of the blame for the present population. However, this herd is not coming back. The population objective was just reduced to a maximum of 23,000 due to the Division’s feeling that closer to 30,000 would be unsustainable with increased energy development and decreased winter range quantity and quality. The Southern Grand Mesa herd was hardly affected by the winter of 2007. Previously the herd had been at the objective of 10,500, but the herd has since declined by 15% in 2009 as the deadly combination of drought and harsh local winter conditions showed a larger than expected decrease this past year. This herd should come back, but it was never anything like the North Grand Mesa herd. If you enjoyed the recent deer hunting here, you might give it two years before coming back.
Bear’s Ears, units 3,301,4,441,5,14,214: In 2004, this deer herd numbered nearly 48,000. Attempts to bring the herd back under control with liberal a doe quota was slowly working. But once again, the winter of 2007, combined with lots of doe tags, knocked the population down below 36,000 this past year. The objective had been 37,000, so doe tags are being reduced by over 50% this year. It’s unlikely this herd will push 50,000 again in the near future. There’s still a lot of deer, but it won’t be like it was just 6 years ago.
Aspen, Eagle, Glenwood-units 43,47, 471, unit 44 and 444- The 2007 winter in Gunnison received the most publicity, but that same winter took a tremendous toll on the deer populations in these units. Most dramatic was south of Eagle in unit 44. This herd is 80% lower than what it was in 2006! The 2006 post hunt population was over 10,000 animals, 30% over the objective of 7,000. The herd has plummeted to less than 2,000 animals according the 2009 post hunt survey. It is going to be a looooooong time, if ever, for this population to return even to objective. There have been virtually no doe tags issued for several years, but the population has not rebounded. While not exactly cheery news, the 50% decline in unit 444 from the 2004 highs will likely rebound much sooner. The population is presently about 20% below the objective of 5300 deer, but should bounce back quickly. In two years, the population in 444 probably won’t be pushing 7,000 like it was in 2004, but should be closer to objective by 2011 or 2012, barring another disastrous winter. The Aspen units, 43,47,471, have lost over 65% of their deer since 2006. The 2006 high of 16,400 deer was 50% over objective, bottomed out in 2008 at just 5,770 and has since rebounded slightly to about 6,400. This unit will not see anywhere near the numbers of the mid 2000s anytime soon. It will recover, but not to the level you may have been used to.
Delores, units 70,71,711- Yet another huge deer herd that has lost nearly 40% of the herd from recent highs. While slightly over the 34,000 deer objective in 2006 at 36,000 deer, this herd now stands at just 22,000. However, and I’m not one to armchair quarterback normally, but I do not understand the mere 25% reduction in doe tags and projected 2010 population decline to just 19,000 animals. I don’t hunt there, so it’s not my problem, but if you do, you might deer hunt somewhere else for a few years. Keep an eye on what the DOW does so you can time your return, but it’s hard to project when that might be given the current tag quotas and projected declines. I actually don’t believe the population will continue to decline into the 19,000 range with the 800 doe tags being issued, but for some reason the DOW’s population model expects it to. Tread carefully here. It could be at objective in 4 years, or it may never return.
Saguache, units 68,681- In the early 2000s the population was being managed for 8,500 deer and the population was just under 9,000. The herd management plan describes the reintroduction of doe tags in 2006 and 2007 as “erroneous”, when the DOW falsely believed it was over objective. To put it mildly, the deer herd was decimated, and fell to just 3,700 animals. The new objective is just 4-5,000 animals and the population is there at the present time. This herd will not be returning to the mediocre numbers it enjoyed between the 1960s and early 2000s. It is now half of that previous population and will be staying there, apparently with local public support.
Elk
Elk present different management challenges than deer. It’s easy to build the population up by simply reducing the antlerless tags, as the Colorado winters generally aren’t harsh enough to hurt them, and the large predators aren’t present. But reducing an elk population is much more difficult, as during the early seasons they often inhabit difficult to access wilderness areas, and flee to private refuges when the guns start going off. So, it stands to reason that in Colorado, there are very few populations significantly below objective that will be allowed to grow. Instead this is a list of units that have declined in recent years, and will not be allowed to grow back to the numbers you were once accustomed to.
Units 35,36 State Bridge/Eagle’s Nest: In 2004, the elk population exceeded 6,600 animals. However, the objective was just 2,950 and presently stands at 3700. So, not only will this population not come near the highs seen in the middle of the last decade, the wildlife managers intend to continue the heavy cow harvests and late season hunts until the population is less than 50% of what you had come to expect 6 years ago. It’s time to move on, the glory days are gone.
Bear’s Ears, units 3,301,4,441,5,14,214: The area around Craig had seen some fantastic elk hunting in recent years. Good public access at higher elevations with no wilderness, and enough BLM and state lands at lower elevation to take advantage of a large migratory herd made this a popular unit. The elk herd numbered nearly 26,000 in 2006, but has since been hammered with either sex and antlerless tags. The winter of 2007 contributed to the decline by pushing the elk closer too close to the travel corridors along Highways 13 and 40, denting cars and trucks in addition to the elk population. The herd now numbers around 17,000 and is projected to decline into the 15,000 range, with the objective being 16,500. I’m not convinced they will hit 15,500 elk projection in the 2010 post hunt survey, as the DOW has cut the 1st season cow tags in half for the second straight year. There are still good numbers, but if you were hoping the population would build back up to the mid 20,000 range again; it might be time to move on. Tags have become much more difficult to get this area as demand has not fallen off yet. Folks I hunt with used to rely leftover 1st season cow tags, but they have completely dried up.
Poudre Canyon, units 7,8,9,19,191: Just 10 years ago, the elk population was over 6,000 animals and well over the population objective of 3,300. A tremendous surge in cow tags, plus late season hunting as part of the CWD monitoring project knocked the population down towards the objective by 2008. There has been a slight increase in the objective to about 4,200, but the present population is just 3,800, so the increase will not be particularly noticeable. If you enjoyed the hunting here in the late 90s and early 2000s, the elk numbers will not return in the foreseeable future. It’s probably time to move on.
Big Thompson/Estes, unit 20: This population will not be coming back to the recent highs in the middle of the past decade. Well over 4,000 elk were present with an objective of 2,400. Several late season hunts were instituted, but the real problem was the Rocky Mountain National Park elk never left their sanctuary of the Park or town of Estes. Over 200 cow tags were issued in each of 3 late seasons, and the local herds on National Forest lands were annihilated. Additional culling in the park by government personnel and volunteers has helped knock the population below objective to around 2,100 elk. The attempt to solve the Park’s population problem with hunting on National Forest lands solved nothing, and now the public land hunting is the worst it has been in years. And since there are very few cows left on the public land, it won’t be getting much better unless the distribution of the elk herds change.
San Juans, units 75,751,77,771,78: We’ll end with some good news. This population had been near the objective of 19,000 for several years, but a series of larger than expected harvested knocked the population down from 20,000 to around 17,000 recently. The change may not be drastic, but can be quite noticeable, as the herds that were hit were mostly led by cows on public lands. The DOW has pulled back slightly on the cow tags for this coming year and is trying to hit the objective with slow growth due to the reluctance of surpassing 19,000. So if you noticed fewer elk the past few years here, they will be back in a couple years. Give it three years.
I understand the hesitance to leave your old stomping grounds. Traditions, proximity and local knowledge all play a role in why we continue to return to places even after we know they will never produce like the “good old days” or even just 5 years ago. As a unit-hopper, rarely hunting the same place twice, I know full well the difficulties and expenses in scouting new country. But you can approach these new places with an optimistic attitude, rather than stay put and grouch about the fact that the deer or elk are no longer present in the numbers you once knew. If you’re willing to expand your horizons, there is still a lot of good elk and deer hunting to be had. And if you aren’t willing to leave your spot, well, that’s your choice too. But at least consider re-scouting it to find whatever hot spots are left. If you believe that your pasture is greenest, that’s great, but it doesn’t hurt to take a look around.
With experience comes wisdom, but not all of it may apply to a new location. So weigh the consequences of leaving your spot for somewhere new. Despite the decline in game numbers in your area, are you still successful? How much do you really care about success, and how attached are you to the memories of your old camp? Is your wife going to ban further hunting trips if you don’t come home with game soon? How confident are you in your abilities to find elk or deer in new places? These are just some of the questions you might ask yourself before folding up or holding on.
Many hunters distrust the population surveys that the Colorado Division of Wildlife produces. But it’s what they use, and what is going to dictate their management decisions. So if you’ve been unhappy with the deer or elk hunting lately, it pays to look at the current population in relation to the objectives. If that population doesn’t appear to have changed much, you may want to consider doing some more research and scouting to see what has changed in other parts of the unit. Did the Forest Service close a road, creating a new sanctuary? Was there a fire in a neighboring drainage, producing younger, more palatable forage? How long has it been since the last mechanical or natural disturbance in your area? Maybe the plants have become older and tougher where you hunt. Maybe the trees are now thicker, with less light hitting the soil, shading out the more desirable forbs. Did a spring quit running? Has the livestock management changed? What about timber management? Did the rancher whose fields that the elk or deer used to raid change crops, get a new outfitter or quit outfitting? Any of these things and many more can change the distribution of game in your area without changing the population. Most hunters hunt just a small percentage of the total area available in a unit, so it pays to have a little better perspective regarding the population and habitat changes (if any) in that unit.
Nature is never static. Nothing stays the same; plants grow, animals reproduce, snow storms wipe out deer populations, fires set back succession of plant species. Add in human interaction with nature and you have more changes. Thankfully, we can arm ourselves with information and monitor or anticipate these changes, which may affect our decision making processes. Even if the habitat hasn’t changed much, rancher and farmer attitudes toward wildlife might, putting pressure on the Division of Wildlife to allow a larger antlerless harvest. We hunters tend to abhor change, but wishing things would stay the same will not make it so.
So what might make you decide whether to look for greener pastures or whether stick it out? Take a look at where the population is in relation to objectives. This won’t tell you anything about the game distribution, but it should tell you whether the wildlife managers will try to let it build back up to the numbers that you once saw. If so, you ought to consider sticking it out. Hunting during those leaner years, while frustrating, will make you more knowledgeable about the area. You might also consider a temporary move to different ground with the intention to return when things get a little better. But if you’re unhappy with the numbers and it appears that the wildlife managers intend to either keep the numbers at their present level, or worse yet, intend to further reduce it, it’s probably time to consider folding up shop in that unit.
Most state game departments do not produce nearly the quantity or quality of information that the Colorado Division of Wildlife produces for public consumption. Some states don’t do population estimates, many do not have population objectives. So I can’t be of much help outside of Colorado, but the following is a list of DAUs whose glory days may be returning, and whose sun has set. It’s not a complete list, just some highlights and doesn’t include those who are on their way down due to being way over objective (ripe units for those seeking new ground while your old unit builds back up). I don’t have complete population data prior to 2004, so this will be more about recent history.
DEER:
The winter of 2007-2008 really worked over the deer herds in Colorado, so many of these units show similar patterns in their populations: near objective, then a precipitous drop that didn’t show up until after the 2008 post hunt survey. For other units, the winter compounded an intentional decline. Deer populations also fluctuate much more than elk, as they tend to breed at an earlier age and often producing twins and triplets, but are much more vulnerable to smaller predators and the weather.
The Flat Tops, units 11,12,13,22,23,24,211,131,231: This deer population has seen its glory days and it’s not coming back any time soon. In 2005, this herd was over 105,000 animals, representing nearly 18% of Colorado’s deer population in just one herd. It was also 50% over objective. Combined with lots of tags, and some harsh winters, the population plummeted to its low of 61,450 this past year. The DOW intends to let the population build back up towards the objective, but it will probably never number near 100,000 animals again.
The Uncompahgre Plateau, units 61,62: In 2006, the Uncompahgre deer herd was nearly 40,000 animals. After the harsh 2007 winter, whose damage wasn’t fully realized until 2008, this deer herd now stands at less than 22,000. It will come back, but it will take time. Antlerless tags have been reduced by 66% for 2010, but the DOW projects very little population gain for next year. Even at a 20% growth rate, which assumes almost no doe harvest and mild weather, it will be no less than 3 years before the population can get close to the 36,000 deer objective. If this was your deer hot spot, you might consider hunting somewhere else for a few years.
Poudre Canyon, units 7,8,9,19,191: This has always been a popular area, but the proximity to Colorado State University and the prevalence of Chronic Wasting Disease made it the target of an experiment to find out to what degree CWD is density dependent. Reducing the population from a high of 13,900 in 1993 to just 5,700 in 2007 with a tremendous number of doe tags was intentional. If you moved due to the poor recent hunting, I can’t blame you, but it is on the way back up and quickly. The new population objective is 12,000, and the past two years have shown significant gains, which are projected to continue beyond the present 8,700 and 9,300 in 2010. If you’ve left, don’t come back yet, because it’s still shy of the early 90s. But it should be close to peaking by 2012 or 2013.
Gunnison- Powderhorn, Cimarron, West Elk and Taylor Park-units 54,55,551,64,65,66,67: The area around Gunnison received the most publicity during the severe storms and emergency winter feeding operation of 2007 and 2008, but losses were much more widespread. Each of these DAUs were significantly over objective in the mid 2000s, and had been for many years. Combined with the overpopulated elk outstripping the winter range and able to outcompete deer for precious forage, the area was primed for a fall. While the DOW attempted to compensate for the losses during the following hunting season by cutting tags in half, the deer population was still down by more than 8,000 in the 2008 post hunt survey. This isn’t a deer and history lesson, so which areas are coming back, and which ones aren’t? The Powderhorn units (66,67) will not be coming back to their high of the early 90s and early 2000s. They were way over objective, so the harsh winter only helped the management goal, and the herd is now at objective. It’s a quality managed deer unit, so the buck ratio is going to be kept high, but don’t expect to see nearly as many bucks as you once did. The Cimarron units (64,65) will be coming back, although they have continued to decline since the major winter die off. Presently these units are at their low of 8400 deer, down from nearly 15,000 in 2006. The objective is 13,500 and doe tags have been completely eliminated for 2010. The West Elk (54) and Taylor Park (55,551) units will be on the rise also, but they will not be near their previous highs in the early and mid 2000s. Unit 54 had 9200 deer and was 40% over the objective of 6500 back in 2004 but has since plummeted to about 4,000 and hasn’t grown at all since that harsh winter. This is a unit that will take a while just to return to objective, which it had previously exceeded since the 80s, so don’t expect it to ever return to what you had been used to. The Taylor Park units were nearly twice their objective of 6,500 in the early 2000s, and are now presently struggling to break the 4,000 deer mark. You might want to give either of these last two DAUs 5 or 6 years before considering them again (and you’ll need nearly that many preference points to hunt them anyway).
State Bridge, units 15,35,36,45: In 2006, the deer herd exceeded 24,000, with an objective of 21,000 and was among the top deer densities in the state. Harsh winters combined with generous doe quotas and a reduced population objective (several habitat, disease and human issues) knocked the population down to a low of less than 14,000 in 2008. The new objective is 15,000 and the present population is hovering around there at this time. This is a population that will not return to the tremendous densities of the recent past. It’s still among the higher densities in the state, but it will not be going back to what it once was in the 1980s and early to mid 2000s.
Glade Park, unit 40: This herd has been below objective for over 30 years. Even with virtually no doe harvest, the unit has stagnated, despite good fawn production. The lack of a population increase points to a probable winter range habitat problem, which is likely compounded by an overpopulated elk herd in the area. It’s tough to make a call on this unit, as the population is roughly half the 12,000 deer objective and has been for some time. The population has declined from its previous high in the mid to late 80s of rougly 13,000 deer, but the objective at that time was 16,000 deer. Given that herd hasn’t grown in 20 years, despite management efforts, I see no reason to believe it will again without major habitat improvements or maybe a decline in the elk population.
Grand Mesa, North units 41,42,421 and South units 52,411,521- The north herd has always been about 3 times as large as the south herd. In the 1980s, this herd was over 40,000 deer. Presently, it stands at just 20,000, significantly below the 29,000 deer the DOW was managing for. The herd was just over objective prior to the 2007 winter, which takes most of the blame for the present population. However, this herd is not coming back. The population objective was just reduced to a maximum of 23,000 due to the Division’s feeling that closer to 30,000 would be unsustainable with increased energy development and decreased winter range quantity and quality. The Southern Grand Mesa herd was hardly affected by the winter of 2007. Previously the herd had been at the objective of 10,500, but the herd has since declined by 15% in 2009 as the deadly combination of drought and harsh local winter conditions showed a larger than expected decrease this past year. This herd should come back, but it was never anything like the North Grand Mesa herd. If you enjoyed the recent deer hunting here, you might give it two years before coming back.
Bear’s Ears, units 3,301,4,441,5,14,214: In 2004, this deer herd numbered nearly 48,000. Attempts to bring the herd back under control with liberal a doe quota was slowly working. But once again, the winter of 2007, combined with lots of doe tags, knocked the population down below 36,000 this past year. The objective had been 37,000, so doe tags are being reduced by over 50% this year. It’s unlikely this herd will push 50,000 again in the near future. There’s still a lot of deer, but it won’t be like it was just 6 years ago.
Aspen, Eagle, Glenwood-units 43,47, 471, unit 44 and 444- The 2007 winter in Gunnison received the most publicity, but that same winter took a tremendous toll on the deer populations in these units. Most dramatic was south of Eagle in unit 44. This herd is 80% lower than what it was in 2006! The 2006 post hunt population was over 10,000 animals, 30% over the objective of 7,000. The herd has plummeted to less than 2,000 animals according the 2009 post hunt survey. It is going to be a looooooong time, if ever, for this population to return even to objective. There have been virtually no doe tags issued for several years, but the population has not rebounded. While not exactly cheery news, the 50% decline in unit 444 from the 2004 highs will likely rebound much sooner. The population is presently about 20% below the objective of 5300 deer, but should bounce back quickly. In two years, the population in 444 probably won’t be pushing 7,000 like it was in 2004, but should be closer to objective by 2011 or 2012, barring another disastrous winter. The Aspen units, 43,47,471, have lost over 65% of their deer since 2006. The 2006 high of 16,400 deer was 50% over objective, bottomed out in 2008 at just 5,770 and has since rebounded slightly to about 6,400. This unit will not see anywhere near the numbers of the mid 2000s anytime soon. It will recover, but not to the level you may have been used to.
Delores, units 70,71,711- Yet another huge deer herd that has lost nearly 40% of the herd from recent highs. While slightly over the 34,000 deer objective in 2006 at 36,000 deer, this herd now stands at just 22,000. However, and I’m not one to armchair quarterback normally, but I do not understand the mere 25% reduction in doe tags and projected 2010 population decline to just 19,000 animals. I don’t hunt there, so it’s not my problem, but if you do, you might deer hunt somewhere else for a few years. Keep an eye on what the DOW does so you can time your return, but it’s hard to project when that might be given the current tag quotas and projected declines. I actually don’t believe the population will continue to decline into the 19,000 range with the 800 doe tags being issued, but for some reason the DOW’s population model expects it to. Tread carefully here. It could be at objective in 4 years, or it may never return.
Saguache, units 68,681- In the early 2000s the population was being managed for 8,500 deer and the population was just under 9,000. The herd management plan describes the reintroduction of doe tags in 2006 and 2007 as “erroneous”, when the DOW falsely believed it was over objective. To put it mildly, the deer herd was decimated, and fell to just 3,700 animals. The new objective is just 4-5,000 animals and the population is there at the present time. This herd will not be returning to the mediocre numbers it enjoyed between the 1960s and early 2000s. It is now half of that previous population and will be staying there, apparently with local public support.
Elk
Elk present different management challenges than deer. It’s easy to build the population up by simply reducing the antlerless tags, as the Colorado winters generally aren’t harsh enough to hurt them, and the large predators aren’t present. But reducing an elk population is much more difficult, as during the early seasons they often inhabit difficult to access wilderness areas, and flee to private refuges when the guns start going off. So, it stands to reason that in Colorado, there are very few populations significantly below objective that will be allowed to grow. Instead this is a list of units that have declined in recent years, and will not be allowed to grow back to the numbers you were once accustomed to.
Units 35,36 State Bridge/Eagle’s Nest: In 2004, the elk population exceeded 6,600 animals. However, the objective was just 2,950 and presently stands at 3700. So, not only will this population not come near the highs seen in the middle of the last decade, the wildlife managers intend to continue the heavy cow harvests and late season hunts until the population is less than 50% of what you had come to expect 6 years ago. It’s time to move on, the glory days are gone.
Bear’s Ears, units 3,301,4,441,5,14,214: The area around Craig had seen some fantastic elk hunting in recent years. Good public access at higher elevations with no wilderness, and enough BLM and state lands at lower elevation to take advantage of a large migratory herd made this a popular unit. The elk herd numbered nearly 26,000 in 2006, but has since been hammered with either sex and antlerless tags. The winter of 2007 contributed to the decline by pushing the elk closer too close to the travel corridors along Highways 13 and 40, denting cars and trucks in addition to the elk population. The herd now numbers around 17,000 and is projected to decline into the 15,000 range, with the objective being 16,500. I’m not convinced they will hit 15,500 elk projection in the 2010 post hunt survey, as the DOW has cut the 1st season cow tags in half for the second straight year. There are still good numbers, but if you were hoping the population would build back up to the mid 20,000 range again; it might be time to move on. Tags have become much more difficult to get this area as demand has not fallen off yet. Folks I hunt with used to rely leftover 1st season cow tags, but they have completely dried up.
Poudre Canyon, units 7,8,9,19,191: Just 10 years ago, the elk population was over 6,000 animals and well over the population objective of 3,300. A tremendous surge in cow tags, plus late season hunting as part of the CWD monitoring project knocked the population down towards the objective by 2008. There has been a slight increase in the objective to about 4,200, but the present population is just 3,800, so the increase will not be particularly noticeable. If you enjoyed the hunting here in the late 90s and early 2000s, the elk numbers will not return in the foreseeable future. It’s probably time to move on.
Big Thompson/Estes, unit 20: This population will not be coming back to the recent highs in the middle of the past decade. Well over 4,000 elk were present with an objective of 2,400. Several late season hunts were instituted, but the real problem was the Rocky Mountain National Park elk never left their sanctuary of the Park or town of Estes. Over 200 cow tags were issued in each of 3 late seasons, and the local herds on National Forest lands were annihilated. Additional culling in the park by government personnel and volunteers has helped knock the population below objective to around 2,100 elk. The attempt to solve the Park’s population problem with hunting on National Forest lands solved nothing, and now the public land hunting is the worst it has been in years. And since there are very few cows left on the public land, it won’t be getting much better unless the distribution of the elk herds change.
San Juans, units 75,751,77,771,78: We’ll end with some good news. This population had been near the objective of 19,000 for several years, but a series of larger than expected harvested knocked the population down from 20,000 to around 17,000 recently. The change may not be drastic, but can be quite noticeable, as the herds that were hit were mostly led by cows on public lands. The DOW has pulled back slightly on the cow tags for this coming year and is trying to hit the objective with slow growth due to the reluctance of surpassing 19,000. So if you noticed fewer elk the past few years here, they will be back in a couple years. Give it three years.
I understand the hesitance to leave your old stomping grounds. Traditions, proximity and local knowledge all play a role in why we continue to return to places even after we know they will never produce like the “good old days” or even just 5 years ago. As a unit-hopper, rarely hunting the same place twice, I know full well the difficulties and expenses in scouting new country. But you can approach these new places with an optimistic attitude, rather than stay put and grouch about the fact that the deer or elk are no longer present in the numbers you once knew. If you’re willing to expand your horizons, there is still a lot of good elk and deer hunting to be had. And if you aren’t willing to leave your spot, well, that’s your choice too. But at least consider re-scouting it to find whatever hot spots are left. If you believe that your pasture is greenest, that’s great, but it doesn’t hurt to take a look around.
With experience comes wisdom, but not all of it may apply to a new location. So weigh the consequences of leaving your spot for somewhere new. Despite the decline in game numbers in your area, are you still successful? How much do you really care about success, and how attached are you to the memories of your old camp? Is your wife going to ban further hunting trips if you don’t come home with game soon? How confident are you in your abilities to find elk or deer in new places? These are just some of the questions you might ask yourself before folding up or holding on.
Trophy Potential
Throughout the years, it has been difficult to determine trophy hotspots outside of areas that claimed to specifically manage for older age classes of animals. Trophy hunters were told to peruse the B&C or P&Y record books to uncover areas that have produced well in the past. However, the record books generally only recorded a county of kill, which won’t always be useful in determining an individual unit. Additionally, those kills may have been 100 years old, or so few and far between, that the records are virtually useless for determining places that routinely produce older animals. Also, keep in mind that a Boone and Crockett class animal is a freak of nature, whose antlers far exceed anything else in his age class.
Age, genetics and nutrition all play a role in producing large antlers, but age is the single most important factor. There is currently no practical way to determine the genetic potential in an area, and nutrition is usually sufficient in a mild year to come close to maximizing an animal’s antler growth for his age class.
However, at WesternHuntingData.com, we have devised two statistics to help you determine which areas have the greatest potential for older age classed animals. One of the statistics in our data sets shows the % of male animals harvested yearly. Obviously, harvesting a lower % of male animals increases the likelihood of allowing bucks or bulls to live an additional year, thereby growing larger antlers. Comparing between units to see which ones kill a smaller % of males is primarily how the statistic was designed, but can you use those statistics to determine an age class of animals to expect to be able to harvest? YES! Here’s how:
Let’s pick on my favorite unit to bash, unit 12 in Colorado, the most popular of the famed Flat Tops units. Unit 12 is part of a Data Analysis Unit where 45% of the available bulls are harvested yearly. Think about that, spikes aren’t generally legal, so hunters are harvesting over 45% of the bulls age two and older (spikes are almost always yearlings). Since spikes aren’t legal, that 45% bull harvest is a lot of pressure on the two and older class. So what’s the chance of harvesting a 3 year old bull? You have to make some assumptions here, but let’s assume a typical 40 calf: 100 cow ratio, with half of those calves being bulls, all of whom grow up to be spikes the following year. Now, in a unit whose pre season (not postseason) sex ratio is 40 bulls: 100 cows, it could be that nearly half of the bulls available are spike antlered yearlings. So, a 45% bull harvest, could be more like a 90% harvest of bulls age 2 and up if half of the bulls are spikes. The chance of surviving past age 2 is about 10%! Yikes. So since your typical 2 year old is a raghorn 3x4, 4x4 or maybe 5x5, and most three year olds are 5x5s or skinny 6x6s, what’s the chance of finding mature 6x6 5 year old bull? Nearly impossible, but let’s try to do the math. If a bull has about a 10% chance of survival from age 2 and on, to make it to hunting season of age 5, we multiply 10%(odds of making to age 3)x10%(to age 4)x10% (to age 5)=0.001, or 0.1%. That’s 1 in 1,000 bulls.
HOWEVER, this isn’t the whole story. These are the odds for the entire DAU (11,12,13,23,24,25,26,33,34,231,211,etc), not just unit 12. There is a lot of elk on private land that never ventures onto public ground, so maybe on those properties there is a 10% chance of making it to 3 years old or older. Not in unit 12. By applying the elk density to just the public land (which is likely higher than the entire DAU, so these are conservative estimates), and then extrapolating the number of available bulls, that 90% bull harvest jumps dramatically. You’re now looking at 288% of the extrapolated number of bulls being harvested (this is what we call the public pressure index). Of course they aren’t killing 288% of the bulls, but this number is useful in comparing other units. More than likely, private land harvest is having a significant impact on the total number of bulls harvested, thereby inflating the success rate. This number also shows that hunters are likely killing a heck of a lot higher % of bull elk on public land than on neighboring private lands. So in reality, the chance of finding a bull over 2 years old is almost impossible on public land. Compare this to unit 10, a famous trophy unit, not far from unit 12. The DAU% bull harvest is just 3% and the public pressure index is virtually identical (0.0477 or 4.77%), suggesting the vast majority of these elk are harvested on public lands. Well that’s a trophy unit, and it takes 13 resident preference points to hunt there. Would you believe that there are OTC units in Colorado that harvest less than 20% (and some less than 10%) of the available bulls in the DAU? And they clearly aren’t coming just off of private land when they have public pressure indices that are the same as or better than trophy units like 40 and 76 (but not quite as good as 10). So, in a unit where 20% of the bulls are being harvested on public land, what’s the chance of finding a 5 year old bull? Assuming no natural mortality and no spike harvest, the odds of the bull you found being 5 or is nearly 22%. That’s not bad at all. These units are out there and they are available over the counter. Nobody talks about them for a reason.
Similar things apply in every state. In some states (Montana for instance), spikes are legal with the bull tags in some units, so there is far less pressure on the older bulls. There are Oregon general season tags for units where less than 10% of the bulls are harvested yearly. In Idaho, a handful of units harvest less than 10% of the bulls, and many general units harvest under 20% of the bulls.
Now for deer, especially in places where spikes are legal, the odds of making it to an older age group change slightly. If yearlings are legal, we have to apply these mortality rates to yearlings. And of course, natural mortality is much higher with deer. Now let’s pick on unit 52 in Colorado. The % of bucks harvested in that DAU (includes 521 and others) is just 21%. So to make it to age two, you are looking at 100-21=79%. Well that’s pretty good, but we all dream of 4x4s, not big forkhorns. So to make it to age 3, assuming no natural mortality, multiply .79x.79=53%. Once again not bad, thank goodness for all deer tags being controlled in Colorado. But we forget about the public pressure index, which suggests closer to 80% of the available public land bucks are harvested. So in unit 52, you might be seeing all sorts of great deer on the ranch land as you drive up into the national forest, but all of a sudden, the big deer are gone, and you are only seeing little forkhorns. That’s because to make it to just to age two, that little buck’s odds are just .2x.2=.04, or 4%, not including natural mortality. So there is a chance of seeing a two year old, but it’s pretty slim.
So think about these things when selecting a unit if trophy potential has any meaning to you. Be honest with yourself, if you won’t be happy settling for a raghorn or forkhorn, whose meat is certainly delicious, don’t shoot it. Leave that animal to someone who would be happy with him. And if all you are seeing are little bucks, and you aren’t happy with them, you’re probably in the wrong unit.
Good luck this season
Age, genetics and nutrition all play a role in producing large antlers, but age is the single most important factor. There is currently no practical way to determine the genetic potential in an area, and nutrition is usually sufficient in a mild year to come close to maximizing an animal’s antler growth for his age class.
However, at WesternHuntingData.com, we have devised two statistics to help you determine which areas have the greatest potential for older age classed animals. One of the statistics in our data sets shows the % of male animals harvested yearly. Obviously, harvesting a lower % of male animals increases the likelihood of allowing bucks or bulls to live an additional year, thereby growing larger antlers. Comparing between units to see which ones kill a smaller % of males is primarily how the statistic was designed, but can you use those statistics to determine an age class of animals to expect to be able to harvest? YES! Here’s how:
Let’s pick on my favorite unit to bash, unit 12 in Colorado, the most popular of the famed Flat Tops units. Unit 12 is part of a Data Analysis Unit where 45% of the available bulls are harvested yearly. Think about that, spikes aren’t generally legal, so hunters are harvesting over 45% of the bulls age two and older (spikes are almost always yearlings). Since spikes aren’t legal, that 45% bull harvest is a lot of pressure on the two and older class. So what’s the chance of harvesting a 3 year old bull? You have to make some assumptions here, but let’s assume a typical 40 calf: 100 cow ratio, with half of those calves being bulls, all of whom grow up to be spikes the following year. Now, in a unit whose pre season (not postseason) sex ratio is 40 bulls: 100 cows, it could be that nearly half of the bulls available are spike antlered yearlings. So, a 45% bull harvest, could be more like a 90% harvest of bulls age 2 and up if half of the bulls are spikes. The chance of surviving past age 2 is about 10%! Yikes. So since your typical 2 year old is a raghorn 3x4, 4x4 or maybe 5x5, and most three year olds are 5x5s or skinny 6x6s, what’s the chance of finding mature 6x6 5 year old bull? Nearly impossible, but let’s try to do the math. If a bull has about a 10% chance of survival from age 2 and on, to make it to hunting season of age 5, we multiply 10%(odds of making to age 3)x10%(to age 4)x10% (to age 5)=0.001, or 0.1%. That’s 1 in 1,000 bulls.
HOWEVER, this isn’t the whole story. These are the odds for the entire DAU (11,12,13,23,24,25,26,33,34,231,211,etc), not just unit 12. There is a lot of elk on private land that never ventures onto public ground, so maybe on those properties there is a 10% chance of making it to 3 years old or older. Not in unit 12. By applying the elk density to just the public land (which is likely higher than the entire DAU, so these are conservative estimates), and then extrapolating the number of available bulls, that 90% bull harvest jumps dramatically. You’re now looking at 288% of the extrapolated number of bulls being harvested (this is what we call the public pressure index). Of course they aren’t killing 288% of the bulls, but this number is useful in comparing other units. More than likely, private land harvest is having a significant impact on the total number of bulls harvested, thereby inflating the success rate. This number also shows that hunters are likely killing a heck of a lot higher % of bull elk on public land than on neighboring private lands. So in reality, the chance of finding a bull over 2 years old is almost impossible on public land. Compare this to unit 10, a famous trophy unit, not far from unit 12. The DAU% bull harvest is just 3% and the public pressure index is virtually identical (0.0477 or 4.77%), suggesting the vast majority of these elk are harvested on public lands. Well that’s a trophy unit, and it takes 13 resident preference points to hunt there. Would you believe that there are OTC units in Colorado that harvest less than 20% (and some less than 10%) of the available bulls in the DAU? And they clearly aren’t coming just off of private land when they have public pressure indices that are the same as or better than trophy units like 40 and 76 (but not quite as good as 10). So, in a unit where 20% of the bulls are being harvested on public land, what’s the chance of finding a 5 year old bull? Assuming no natural mortality and no spike harvest, the odds of the bull you found being 5 or is nearly 22%. That’s not bad at all. These units are out there and they are available over the counter. Nobody talks about them for a reason.
Similar things apply in every state. In some states (Montana for instance), spikes are legal with the bull tags in some units, so there is far less pressure on the older bulls. There are Oregon general season tags for units where less than 10% of the bulls are harvested yearly. In Idaho, a handful of units harvest less than 10% of the bulls, and many general units harvest under 20% of the bulls.
Now for deer, especially in places where spikes are legal, the odds of making it to an older age group change slightly. If yearlings are legal, we have to apply these mortality rates to yearlings. And of course, natural mortality is much higher with deer. Now let’s pick on unit 52 in Colorado. The % of bucks harvested in that DAU (includes 521 and others) is just 21%. So to make it to age two, you are looking at 100-21=79%. Well that’s pretty good, but we all dream of 4x4s, not big forkhorns. So to make it to age 3, assuming no natural mortality, multiply .79x.79=53%. Once again not bad, thank goodness for all deer tags being controlled in Colorado. But we forget about the public pressure index, which suggests closer to 80% of the available public land bucks are harvested. So in unit 52, you might be seeing all sorts of great deer on the ranch land as you drive up into the national forest, but all of a sudden, the big deer are gone, and you are only seeing little forkhorns. That’s because to make it to just to age two, that little buck’s odds are just .2x.2=.04, or 4%, not including natural mortality. So there is a chance of seeing a two year old, but it’s pretty slim.
So think about these things when selecting a unit if trophy potential has any meaning to you. Be honest with yourself, if you won’t be happy settling for a raghorn or forkhorn, whose meat is certainly delicious, don’t shoot it. Leave that animal to someone who would be happy with him. And if all you are seeing are little bucks, and you aren’t happy with them, you’re probably in the wrong unit.
Good luck this season
What Ifs and Backup Plans
What ifs and backup plans
By the end of June, most hunters should have a pretty good idea of what tags they drew or didn’t draw. For some of you, it’s the same areas you’ve been hunting for 20 years, for others this may be the first time out west. Regardless of how long you’ve been hunting public lands in the west, there’s always a little bit of uncertainty and anxiety leading up to a hunt. Now is the time to be creating backup plans and going through “what if” scenarios, not the day you are scheduled to arrive in hunting camp.
Some of you will not have your application strategy go according to plan. So now what? What’s left if you still want to hunt Western big game? If you drew you what you expected, you may now be looking to add additional licenses in your area for the same season, or different seasons if you like to spread things out. If you didn’t draw what you expected, you’ll want to go to Plan B. But not yet, first figure out why you didn’t draw, so you don’t make the same mistake next year. Did you have a proper understanding of the draw process? Look at the drawing summaries. Was there a reduction in permits? An increase in demand? Did you understand or even look at the odds before applying?
If it’s mid-summer and you don’t have any licenses, what are your options? Of course, each state handles things a little differently. In some states, residents can purchase unlimited general licenses, but the nonresidents are limited. Colorado, Idaho, Oregon and Washington are going to be your only options for unlimited nonresident bull elk tags. Many states will have leftover limited licenses, mostly cow and doe tags, sometimes in marginal areas, other times in merely undersubscribed areas with a large number of tags.
If you want a buck deer license, you’re in luck because those are much easier to come by. Colorado has a few leftovers every year, mostly along the Northern Front Range. Wyoming usually has large numbers of leftover “region general” tags that are good for a large number of units. Utah often has Northern Region buck deer licenses left after the draw, but they go quickly. Idaho almost never sells out there nonresident general deer tag quota (good for most of the state). Oregon and Washington have unlimited general deer tags, with Oregon’s valid mostly in the western half of the state for blacktails, but eastern Washington does have some general mule deer licenses. California will usually have a large selection of blacktail licenses, many of which are pracically unlimited, but the mule deer zones are mostly draw only. Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico will have a handful of leftover buck deer tags also.
Of the fringe western states, Nebraska is one of your best bets for mule deer tags still. Public land is severely lacking in nearly all regions but the Pine Ridge, whose tags are available first come first served. At $209, it is still one of the better deals in mule deer hunting(although half the deer in the area are whitetails), and usually doesn’t sell out until the season starts. And did I mention you could have two buck tags?
If you live in or near the state you want to hunt, or will have time before the leftovers are gone and are considering new country, take a spin around the unit. Familiarize yourself with the terrain, vegetation and access. See if these things suit you and the style of hunting you prefer. In most states, you still have plenty of time to check out new ground before having to make your decision amongst the leftover and general units. Do some brief scouting, but allow yourself some time to compare this new spot with another area. If you wait until the last minute to check out the new ground, and then don’t like it, you’re kind of stuck.
If you’re hunting familiar ground this fall, do you need a Plan B? Yes! Do you know of additional suitable camp sites if your regular place is occupied? What are you going to do if there is a fire, a road closure, emergency drought relief cattle grazing, new timber harvest or energy development in your old spot? How would these things change your hunting? Keep an eye on the local forest service and BLM sites. Go through any posted management plans. Keep yourself abreast of timber sales or energy leases. Those practices may open new roads that may or may not be good for your hunting. It’s far better to know about these changes and be able to plan ahead for them, then to show up and unexpectedly find your old campsite that used to be at the end of the road but now connects to a paved highway with gas trucks moving up and down it. There are various government sites that will help you keep abreast of stream flow and fire conditions. You probably don’t need to check on them every day, but once a month during fire season should be sufficient. A fire in early summer might be a benefit to the habitat in your area, attracting even more game if followed by good rains. But a fire in September could have a devastating effect on cover and forage.
What about scouting? I wrote a pretty comprehensive article a few months back for you, but here’s another review of it: http://wildlife.state.co.us/Hunting/ElkHuntingUniversity/EHULessons . Be sure to keep checking back with the Elk Hunting University Lesson Plans for more articles written by other Colorado Division of Wildlife Huntmasters. In your summer scouting, make sure you do not focus all of your efforts in a single area. Not only is it fun to see new country, but you can make more informed decisions when you have a basis for comparison. When checking out new country, dissect the unit by the major drainages to help spread out your efforts and to be able compare relative abundance of sign. If you’ve only seen one area, how can you have much of a backup plan? Make sure you have a plan when scouting, don’t just bumble around randomly sniffing the Wood’s Rose and hoping to find elk or deer. Have a checklist of things you hope to see or verify, and locations you expect to find them.
If you’ve done your homework, hopefully you will be prepared if you show up two days before the season starts and find your first choice area is 50 other people’s first choice also. If you had a plan for how to use heavy pressure to your advantage, you’ll still be fine. But if you thought you were the only one who would be hunting the beautiful meadow a half mile past the road closure, time to enact Plan B. What will you do if the weather isn’t exactly what you had hoped for? What are you going to do if it is windy, or snowing or raining or hot and dry? Plans A, B, C and D might have to be scrapped for Plan E.
Other problems can occur that may be difficult to anticipate. Some people cannot handle the higher elevations and thinner air in the west. Talk to your doctor ahead of time about prescription medications that may help you cope. Keep in mind that the elderly will have the hardest time acclimating to higher altitudes. In an elk camp of mine at a mere 9,000 feet, we had a 70 year old from Tennessee wake up with nausea, aching joints, headaches and dizziness from altitude sickness. By descending to lower elevation, and resting for another day, he was able to continue his hunt. If we didn’t have an alternate area to hunt, he would have been stuck in a motel in Craig, Colorado while his friends and relatives were hunting the high country without him. Make sure you aren’t fixated solely on high elevation areas. Even if you can physically handle the elevation, snow conditions may restrict your access temporarily. Lower elevation canyons can be rich in game, but difficult hiking.
Don’t overlook the demands placed on your vehicle(s). Fresh air filter, oil and oil filter is just a start. Chains aren’t just useful for snow, but can be crucial to your survival on muddy roads. At a bare minimum, make sure your tires have a decent amount of remaining tread.
Without being too much of a pessimist, make a list of “if A, then B” scenarios. Think about what could ruin your first plan, and what you would do about it. A few years ago, I found a beaver had built a dam just barely downstream of a road I was planning on using to access my hunting grounds. I considered trying to cross it in the Suburban I had, but quick prodding with a stick told me that was a recipe for disaster. By having good maps, I figured out a new, convoluted route to my hunting spot, which I liked much more due to the difficult access. That wasn’t much for preparation, but it changed my mental ranking of spots I was considering hunting by changing the previous parameters. Keep in mind that hunters do not like having to cross country that they cannot legally hunt. So in some places it makes sense to try to find pockets of country that are relatively accessible, but rejected by the public due to regulations making it less desirable. While studying your maps, you will find a crucial road being blocked by private land. Many county websites have their plat maps digitized, so it can be simple to figure out who owns that property so you might come up with an access arrangement.
Any scouting you conduct this summer will likely change what you thought you knew about an area and how you thought you may want to hunt it. So be flexible and be prepared. Know what you are going to do ahead of time when you are thrown for a loop.
There is no offseason to the dedicated. The end of application season is upon us, but it is now scouting season. Scouting season isn’t just for the upcoming fall, you should have your eyes open to future possibilities during your travels and adventures. You likely won’t get a chance to see much of the country you plan to apply for during the next application season if you don’t plan for it now. So if you take a little extra time this summer, you may be able to sharpen your long and short term plans. You do have long and short term plans, don’t you? Might be a topic for a future article.
By the end of June, most hunters should have a pretty good idea of what tags they drew or didn’t draw. For some of you, it’s the same areas you’ve been hunting for 20 years, for others this may be the first time out west. Regardless of how long you’ve been hunting public lands in the west, there’s always a little bit of uncertainty and anxiety leading up to a hunt. Now is the time to be creating backup plans and going through “what if” scenarios, not the day you are scheduled to arrive in hunting camp.
Some of you will not have your application strategy go according to plan. So now what? What’s left if you still want to hunt Western big game? If you drew you what you expected, you may now be looking to add additional licenses in your area for the same season, or different seasons if you like to spread things out. If you didn’t draw what you expected, you’ll want to go to Plan B. But not yet, first figure out why you didn’t draw, so you don’t make the same mistake next year. Did you have a proper understanding of the draw process? Look at the drawing summaries. Was there a reduction in permits? An increase in demand? Did you understand or even look at the odds before applying?
If it’s mid-summer and you don’t have any licenses, what are your options? Of course, each state handles things a little differently. In some states, residents can purchase unlimited general licenses, but the nonresidents are limited. Colorado, Idaho, Oregon and Washington are going to be your only options for unlimited nonresident bull elk tags. Many states will have leftover limited licenses, mostly cow and doe tags, sometimes in marginal areas, other times in merely undersubscribed areas with a large number of tags.
If you want a buck deer license, you’re in luck because those are much easier to come by. Colorado has a few leftovers every year, mostly along the Northern Front Range. Wyoming usually has large numbers of leftover “region general” tags that are good for a large number of units. Utah often has Northern Region buck deer licenses left after the draw, but they go quickly. Idaho almost never sells out there nonresident general deer tag quota (good for most of the state). Oregon and Washington have unlimited general deer tags, with Oregon’s valid mostly in the western half of the state for blacktails, but eastern Washington does have some general mule deer licenses. California will usually have a large selection of blacktail licenses, many of which are pracically unlimited, but the mule deer zones are mostly draw only. Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico will have a handful of leftover buck deer tags also.
Of the fringe western states, Nebraska is one of your best bets for mule deer tags still. Public land is severely lacking in nearly all regions but the Pine Ridge, whose tags are available first come first served. At $209, it is still one of the better deals in mule deer hunting(although half the deer in the area are whitetails), and usually doesn’t sell out until the season starts. And did I mention you could have two buck tags?
If you live in or near the state you want to hunt, or will have time before the leftovers are gone and are considering new country, take a spin around the unit. Familiarize yourself with the terrain, vegetation and access. See if these things suit you and the style of hunting you prefer. In most states, you still have plenty of time to check out new ground before having to make your decision amongst the leftover and general units. Do some brief scouting, but allow yourself some time to compare this new spot with another area. If you wait until the last minute to check out the new ground, and then don’t like it, you’re kind of stuck.
If you’re hunting familiar ground this fall, do you need a Plan B? Yes! Do you know of additional suitable camp sites if your regular place is occupied? What are you going to do if there is a fire, a road closure, emergency drought relief cattle grazing, new timber harvest or energy development in your old spot? How would these things change your hunting? Keep an eye on the local forest service and BLM sites. Go through any posted management plans. Keep yourself abreast of timber sales or energy leases. Those practices may open new roads that may or may not be good for your hunting. It’s far better to know about these changes and be able to plan ahead for them, then to show up and unexpectedly find your old campsite that used to be at the end of the road but now connects to a paved highway with gas trucks moving up and down it. There are various government sites that will help you keep abreast of stream flow and fire conditions. You probably don’t need to check on them every day, but once a month during fire season should be sufficient. A fire in early summer might be a benefit to the habitat in your area, attracting even more game if followed by good rains. But a fire in September could have a devastating effect on cover and forage.
What about scouting? I wrote a pretty comprehensive article a few months back for you, but here’s another review of it: http://wildlife.state.co.us/Hunting/ElkHuntingUniversity/EHULessons . Be sure to keep checking back with the Elk Hunting University Lesson Plans for more articles written by other Colorado Division of Wildlife Huntmasters. In your summer scouting, make sure you do not focus all of your efforts in a single area. Not only is it fun to see new country, but you can make more informed decisions when you have a basis for comparison. When checking out new country, dissect the unit by the major drainages to help spread out your efforts and to be able compare relative abundance of sign. If you’ve only seen one area, how can you have much of a backup plan? Make sure you have a plan when scouting, don’t just bumble around randomly sniffing the Wood’s Rose and hoping to find elk or deer. Have a checklist of things you hope to see or verify, and locations you expect to find them.
If you’ve done your homework, hopefully you will be prepared if you show up two days before the season starts and find your first choice area is 50 other people’s first choice also. If you had a plan for how to use heavy pressure to your advantage, you’ll still be fine. But if you thought you were the only one who would be hunting the beautiful meadow a half mile past the road closure, time to enact Plan B. What will you do if the weather isn’t exactly what you had hoped for? What are you going to do if it is windy, or snowing or raining or hot and dry? Plans A, B, C and D might have to be scrapped for Plan E.
Other problems can occur that may be difficult to anticipate. Some people cannot handle the higher elevations and thinner air in the west. Talk to your doctor ahead of time about prescription medications that may help you cope. Keep in mind that the elderly will have the hardest time acclimating to higher altitudes. In an elk camp of mine at a mere 9,000 feet, we had a 70 year old from Tennessee wake up with nausea, aching joints, headaches and dizziness from altitude sickness. By descending to lower elevation, and resting for another day, he was able to continue his hunt. If we didn’t have an alternate area to hunt, he would have been stuck in a motel in Craig, Colorado while his friends and relatives were hunting the high country without him. Make sure you aren’t fixated solely on high elevation areas. Even if you can physically handle the elevation, snow conditions may restrict your access temporarily. Lower elevation canyons can be rich in game, but difficult hiking.
Don’t overlook the demands placed on your vehicle(s). Fresh air filter, oil and oil filter is just a start. Chains aren’t just useful for snow, but can be crucial to your survival on muddy roads. At a bare minimum, make sure your tires have a decent amount of remaining tread.
Without being too much of a pessimist, make a list of “if A, then B” scenarios. Think about what could ruin your first plan, and what you would do about it. A few years ago, I found a beaver had built a dam just barely downstream of a road I was planning on using to access my hunting grounds. I considered trying to cross it in the Suburban I had, but quick prodding with a stick told me that was a recipe for disaster. By having good maps, I figured out a new, convoluted route to my hunting spot, which I liked much more due to the difficult access. That wasn’t much for preparation, but it changed my mental ranking of spots I was considering hunting by changing the previous parameters. Keep in mind that hunters do not like having to cross country that they cannot legally hunt. So in some places it makes sense to try to find pockets of country that are relatively accessible, but rejected by the public due to regulations making it less desirable. While studying your maps, you will find a crucial road being blocked by private land. Many county websites have their plat maps digitized, so it can be simple to figure out who owns that property so you might come up with an access arrangement.
Any scouting you conduct this summer will likely change what you thought you knew about an area and how you thought you may want to hunt it. So be flexible and be prepared. Know what you are going to do ahead of time when you are thrown for a loop.
There is no offseason to the dedicated. The end of application season is upon us, but it is now scouting season. Scouting season isn’t just for the upcoming fall, you should have your eyes open to future possibilities during your travels and adventures. You likely won’t get a chance to see much of the country you plan to apply for during the next application season if you don’t plan for it now. So if you take a little extra time this summer, you may be able to sharpen your long and short term plans. You do have long and short term plans, don’t you? Might be a topic for a future article.
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