Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Moving to Castle Rock CO, now what?

We just put our house up for sale here in GA and will be building on 5 acres in Castle Rock starting withing the next 6 months. They won't let us kill the HUGE elk and mule deer that reside in our neighborhood, So I'll be looking for a place to hunt. Since I don't have any hunting partners in that area yet, I will probably be by myself the first few years. I'm not new to Elk hunting or the mountains, since I grew up in WA and this will be my second go around in CO. But I've never hunted in CO, so it will be completely new to me. What areas have good elk numbers, how about OTC tags vs Draw tags. Is there anyplace to research success rates, seasons, areas, and everything else I will need to know?

The CP&W website has information on all of that, including how many points it takes to draw each unit that's not OTC. I'd start there. There are lots of units you can get a tag in with zero points. Personally I like the western slope better than the east.

jj:

PICKING A HUNTING AREA: Picking an area to hunt is the easiest and the most difficult part of hunting. There are literally millions of acres of public land located in National Forests and on BLM land. So it’s easy to find a place where it's legal to hunt. But finding "the right place" to hunt is more difficult.

Most Western hunters are not going to tell you where their honey holes are located. You're going to have to find your own spot. But there's lots of info available and if you do your home work, you might be able to find a good place to start. If you want to hunt in Colorado, here's how to locate an area.

Get a copy of a road map of Colorado that indicates which land is public. Compare that to the map of game management units in the Colorado Big Game Hunting brochure. Look for units with lots of public land.

Next, look on the CO P&W big game web page for the recap of preference points required to get a license in limited draw units.
http://cpw.state.co.us/thingstodo/Pages/Statistics.aspx
There are more licenses offered than there are applicants in those units that require zero points. Those are places where game populations are at or above management objectives. Look for units which require zero points and have lots of public land.

Then, go to the interactive game management unit maps. http://ndismaps.nrel.colostate.edu/huntingatlas/index.aspx?keyword=gmu&value=54 . There you can find winter ranges, calving areas and summer ranges in each GMU. Finally get a copy of the USGS map(s) for the area and memorize it. With all that info, you ought to be able to pick an area where there are lots of elk and lots of public land. And then you should be able to determine where they are in summer, where their winter range is located, the most likely routes that they use to get from one area to the other, and therefore where they are most likely to be during hunting season.

If you want to put in for the computer draw, here's a link that gives draw expectations. http://cpw.state.co.us/thingstodo/Pages/Statistics.aspx

I’m not familiar with the resources available in other western states, but I would wager that there’s similar info available in all of them.

THE DRAWING SYSTEM IN COLORADO: Learning how the drawing process works is an important part of learning how to hunt elk in Colorado. The state is divided into game management units (GMU). Each year the game managers determine a quota for each species in each GMU and from that determine how many licenses of each species they will issue in order to manage each population. It's a very complicated system. Here's a simplified (maybe over-simplified) summary.

Over-the-counter bull elk tags can be purchased at sporting goods stores, some department stores, gun shops, Parks & Wildlife offices, etc. The number of those licenses is unlimited and they are valid in about half of the GMUs west of I-25. Low probability of success on OTC bull tags but each year a few tags are filled that way. Sometimes it just takes luck.

Cow elk tags are issued only through the draw (there are some exceptions but let's keep it simple for this introductory narrative). There are many GMUs where there are more cow tags offered than there are applicants. The extra tags are called leftover tags and they are offered first-come first-serve at Parks & Wildlife offices in early August. You have a much better chance of bagging a cow elk than you do of tagging out on a bull. A lot of people will hunt for cow elk in a unit where they eventually hope to hunt for bulls and in the process they learn the unit and are ready for the day that they get a bull tag. It probably makes most sense for a nonresident to apply for an either-sex tag.

If you apply for the draw and if you don't get what you applied for you get a preference point. You can also apply for a preference point. Each time that you are unsuccessful you get another point. People with the most points are awarded licenses before people with fewer points.

There are several GMUs where the OTC bull tags are not valid and bull tags are issued through the draw. You can draw a bull tag in some of those units with only a few preference points and some have pretty good success for representative bulls. These units are where a lot of elk hunters get their bulls.

There are a hand full of premium units that are managed to produce trophy bulls and there are only a few tags issued each year. Success rates are very high and quality is very high. In those units it now takes a couple of decades worth of points to draw a license and the number of points required increases slowly. It will eventually get to the point where it takes so many points that those units will be defacto once-in-a-lifetime units.

You can apply for up to four choices on the application. Each year I apply for a preference point as my first choice. Second and subsequent choices do not use up your points. My second choice is a cow tag in a unit that has historically had leftover cow tags so I'm pretty sure I'll get that tag and it's also in a unit where OTC bull tags are valid. So each year I get another preference point and I go into the field with a cow tag and a bull tag. I shoot the first cow that I see and spend the rest of the season looking for a bull. I now have 18 preference points for elk. I've shot 32 elk since 1978, although only eight of them have been bulls and they are all big five point (5x5) or small six point (6x6) bulls.

Pronghorn and deer tags are issued only through the draw and the system is similar to that for elk.

Colorado issues very few licenses for moose, rocky mountain bighorn sheep, mountain goats and desert bighorns. You have to apply for three years just to get into the draw and start collecting points. One should consider any license for any of those species as a once-in-a-lifetime tag although if you were to start applying for and gathering points when young it's conceivable that you could hunt those species two or three times in a lifetime.

Internet is the easiest way to apply. Here's the home page for CO Parks & Wildlife.
http://cpw.state.co.us/

There are so many options that there is no easy answer for just how and what you should apply for. There is a lot of info on the CO P&W web site and you need to spend mucho, mucho hours studying all that's available. Concentrate on big game statistics.
http://cpw.state.co.us/thingstodo/Pages/Statistics.aspx

When you're ready to apply, start here.
http://cpw.state.co.us/BuyApply/pages/hunting.aspx
In Colorado there is no separate big game hunting license. Your elk tag is your hunting license. They will send your license/tag in the mail.

You must have completed a hunter education course if you were born after January 1, 1949. You also need to buy a $10 habitat stamp. If you don't draw any tag, everything but a small application fee is refunded.

KC

The 2016 Big Game Brochure for CO is now online at the CPW website.

jj:

Send me a PM once you get to town. I'll buy you a beer (or cup of coffee).

KC

P.S. saddlesore also lives in the area. Maybe we can entice him into spending a sunny afternoon on the patio of the La Casa Fiesta restaurant?

Or, if you're in a German mood, Jaeger Schnitzel at Edelweiss on East Ramona. What more appropriate meal is there when you're there to discuss hunting than hunter's schnitzel??

Well one things for sure, it looks like I'll be drinking more beer in CO, and I'm not sure I thought that was possible. Thanks for the tips guys. I can't wait to start hunting out West again. I really missed the hunting while living in GA.

I do believe Coyote Hunter lives in the Castle Rock or Parker area

Let me know when you get to town.... I don't know much.... But I like a cold beer.

I'm an hour east of the Springs.

Thanks for all the replys guys! You honestly have no idea how much I'm looking forward to moving back out West.

Whitebird. Can you get Mac and Jack's African Amber in CO? If you can, I might also need the number of a good AA clinic. That's one thing I missed the most when I moved from the PNW. It will be nice to have good beer again in CO.

jetjockey,

I lived in the Castle Rock area for 30 years or so. First place was on 60 acres about 6 miles west of town, then at Perry Park, and finally at North Castle Pines. Talk about being around big bulls and bucks! Lots of private land around CR, with tons of elk, mulies, and black bear. If you can talk your way onto one of the ranches, hunting can be great. Most of them, however, are now tied up by outfitters.
Back in the day, I was able to hunt these critters on land I owned, or within 30 minutes of my house. Not any more!

Do you have any pref points for elk built up? If you do, there are opportunities for cow elk on a great RFW unit just south of Castle Rock. Myself, my son, and best friend have all harvested elk there in the past few years.
There are large numbers of elk now, east of I-25, again on private land, but permits for these areas are relatively easy to get. The CDPW doesn't really want to see large elk herds in this area. If you don't mind paying an outfitter, opportunities are close and convenient. The area around Kiowa and Elbert has many of these elk.

Eastern Colorado, east of I-25, is one of the best places to find a trophy mulie in the state. Again, private land, and tied up by outfitters.

I suggest you go to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife website- they have a wealth of information on hunt seasons, statistics, etc.
If you are not coming to CO for 6 months or so, I suggest you begin applying for preference points this season, for any species you may want to hunt in the future.

Welcome to Colorado.

Bighorn. We bought 5 acres in Keene Ranch. If you lived in Perry Park, I assume you know where that is. Your right, there are some HUGE deer running around there. There's several deer in Keene Ranch that easily push 200. But they will never be killed by a hunter because they aren't stupid, and they aren't leaving Keene Ranch. Hopefully we will be in Castle Rock sometime in April or May.

hey JJ,

I'm new to the Denver area as well, right now living around Golden, if you're interested in grabbing a few beers and going over the rules/regs and where to possibly scout for OTC licenses, I'm in.

went hunting last season with my dad around Spanish Peaks 3rd season. Didn't see anything but have been told they are there. Did see lots of muleys and turkey

+1

For sure start applying for the following
Deer
Elk
Pronghorns
Bighorn Sheep
Mountain Goats

I've never bothered applying for moose in CO. When I want to hunt moose, I hunt in Alaska

BTW for deer, elk and pronghorns, stop collecting points and "spend" them when you are somewhere between 4 and 8 points. There are lots of good units where you can draw a buck tag or bull tag with that many points. After that you enter no-mans land because there aren't a lot of units that require more points than 8. I have 18 points for elk and don't want to spend them on a unit that only requires only 4 or 6 points. But the few units that I'm waiting for require 20+ points to draw a tag. I have 3 + 13 for mountain goats and 14 for pronghorns.

KC

KC pretty much laid it out for you.

The interactive NDIS map is golden, especially for narrowing down your search for elk in your chosen season. I would add to that, if you want to get fancy. that you can import the different layers (GMU boundaries, summer concentration, winter concentration, etc) into google earth, which I have found to be useful when really digging into what the terrain looks like.

Another thing I would add, is that IMHO there are two philosophies to points in CO: you save them for 10-20 years and throw down on one epic hunt or you never accumulate any and draw a 0PP tag first choice every year. After collecting points and hunting crappy units for the first few years I decided to spend the ones I had and take a first choice hunt every year. Again, IMHO this is a better strategy for me. Since I don't place a lot of importance on antler size, I feel like i get a better hunt more consistently. Some of the older guys on here (Im 34, been hunting in CO for 5 years now) have some great "B" spots so they can afford to take leftover or OTC tags while they accumulate points and still kill elk.

Considering the above and given that I have recently been in the exact same spot as you, my advice is this: download the preference point data pdf from last year and circle hunts that require 0 or 1 PP (sometimes you have to settle for a good hunt every other year) and start making a short list from there by cross referencing success rate.

Good luck and keep us posted on your progress!

It took me 21 years to draw a trophy hunt area in CO.I hunted every one of those 21 years while I was applying and killed elk every year. That was in 2007.Since then I have hunted every year,two elk season each year, killing at least one elk every year, a few years two, without accumulating one point. It is not hard to do if you really want to hunt. In 2015,I killed a white tail, a 5x bull elk, a doe antelope and cow moose. You can sit home and think about points, hunt every few years or go hunt every year.

I'd be game for that and would be happy to buy the drinks.

AJ if you don't want to make the drive down to the springs, beers always flowing at my brewery in Broomfield! Come on by any time (and that goes for any member that makes the drive or lives in the Denver/Boulder metro area). I'm right off Hwy 36

I would go with KC he is correct.