I'm not familiar with 54, all of my scouting was done in 53. All of my maps are of exact locations in 53. I've researched 53 for along time, their was not much else to do until I could finally manage the hunt. What can you tell me about 54? I picked 53 because I was given exact game crossings and started scouting from there. I took off 1wk last yr to check it out. In 54 I was givin large drainges as a starting point but the locations were not exact and required more time to scout.
Ziggy:
When you wrote "Gunnison W. Elk Wilderness" I thought you were talking about the eastern half of the West Elk Wilderness, which you would access from Gunnison. Unit 54 is a big unit and you have to break it down into smaller areas to make any sense of it. I've hunted most of it at one time or another since 1978. Last year I hunted the Pass Creek area and didn't see many elk but that was mostly because the weather was warm and dry and they were way back up high.
The western part of 54 would be accessed through Crawford and Paonia or maybe over Beckwith Pass like saddlesore mentioned.
I can't give you exact game crossings in unit 54. I agree with others who wrote that those don't work for elk because their macro patterns (annual summer/winter migrations) are predictable but their micro patterns are not. I could show you some elk trails so big that you could drive a pickup over them but predicting when they will be there again is impossible.
KC
