With all due respect to the deceased, my elk hunting mentors were good people but not very good at hunting elk. Still, they helped me get started, for which I am very grateful, and over the last 34 years I’ve learned. Slowly.
Some things I’ve discovered doing Colorado public land (mostly) and RFW (4 IIRC) hunts:
1. Hunt where the elk are. Sounds simple and natural but they move. A lot. And a long ways. We used to camp high every year and basically hunt within a few miles of camp. Some years we would see elk, other years none. Now we camp low with access to main roads and may hunt various areas up to 60 miles from camp, depending on the tags we have and conditions on the ground. If the weather is good we may hunt high, if bad we may hunt low. If there is fresh overnight snow on the ground and no tracks, we look elsewhere.
2. If you want meat in the freezer, get a cow tag.
3. Persistence pays. My hunting buddies tend to hunt the weekend and maybe Monday and they don’t hunt every year. I hunt every year, stay the week and have taken more elk than all of them put together.
4. Pay attention to the migration patterns. When the migration is on the elk will come to you if you are in the right place. Since 2010 I’ve taken 2 cows and a 6x6 bull migrating through a little patch of public sage land about a half mile deep and a quarter mile across that borders a state highway. We’ve taken more migrating elk out of other sage land. The migration can be your friend.
5. Hunting slower often yields better results. We used to put 35 or more miles on our boot soles during our elk hunt, often to no avail. Now that I’m older I might do 15 or 20 but success rates have gone way up, in part because I spend more time resting and looking and see more elk.
6. Good binos are your friend – use them. Leave the pocket-sized glasses at home.
7. Success often comes late in the season when most hunters have gone home.
8. The presence of other hunters is not necessarily a bad thing and can be an advantage. Figure out where the elk are likely to be, where the hunters are going and what the elk will do in response to the pressure. (Including staying put. We’ve found elk in small patches of woods that hunters simply bypassed.) We have a favorite spot where elk get pushed back onto public land by hunters on private land.
9. Food, water, shelter. Elk need these.
10. Know what you are going to do after you pull the trigger. A hunting buddy and I got three elk (2 cows and a bull) down on a mountaintop 3 miles from the truck. Only freezing cold weather kept up from losing any meat. It took us 3 days to pack the meat out on our backs. Never again. Hunting farther from the road may or may not bring greater success but it guarantees a longer pack out when success is the result.
