Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Durango scouting trip results

Lots of em out there. Then they ask you "have you seen any elk"? Saw a dude get tickets for being in his truck with one in his chamber and another last year for walking down the road wearing blaze " camo"" which is a no-no in CO. Was actually funny. I was parked side to side w game Warden talking about grouse and stuff when chucky walks right up. Busted!!

We have 7 drainages we are going after primarily. then we will be moving to other side of unit. we have 9 drainages identified that are difficult to reach

One of the hunters returned and scouted last week. He saw 50 elk in the primary area we wanting to hunt one nice 6x6. 3 smaller satellites. The secondary area he saw a big herd with spotting scope 100 plus elk. He seen numerous mule deer above tree line. We are hoping for a little luck come October. We are packing in 4 miles day before second rifle.

I am going to be following this with interest. Take plenty of pics.

Pictures are getting hard to post. Not impossible but harder.

Need to learn how to post pics

What are the odds the elk be above 10000 feet second rifle season

Sign up with Imgur. Piece of cake.

Here is how it works on my Apple

1. transfer your pics from camera to computer.
2. from your computer album, put the ones you want to post to imgur on the desktop screen by drag and drop off to the side.
3. Pull up Imgur, then select the pics you want to put on Imgur from the screen listing, hit "choose" and wait until they are all uploaded to Imgur

From your Campfire posting, go to Imgur, select the picture you want to post, hit the appropriate "copy" heading for forum posting, use the back button to go back to your post and paste it in.

Additional pics can be posted just by using the back and forward arrows between the two sites. If there is a way to post multiple pics at one swoop, I haven't figured it out yet, but I usually want to insert text in between anyway. Which can be done after the pics are placed in the post also.

Oh yes - when I first started with Imgur, I had trouble getting the pics to show, instead of just the link (which works fine with viewer clicking on it, but still...). It seems it wants a little copy first, before pasting the picture in. This lets the viewer see the pic without hitting the link for it.

Now, I'm a tech-idiot, and am likely doing some things the hard way.... but hell, I'm retired and only working 35 hours a week. I got time.

Or you can use the Campfire site posting app Rick installed. I found Imgur to be easier, as it was nearly identical to the Photobucket site that I had been using, and no longer works for Campfire. But that may be because I didn't spend enough time in practice using Rick's app.

I'm not an experienced elk hunter, having been only twice, but I imagine it is a factor of circumstance.

On my last hunt, near Marble, with a NR OTC cow tag, we "camped" in a heated, running-water, plumbed and gas-stoved campground cabin 5 minutes drive from the trailhead at 7500 feet. Several horse-parties had gone up the trail before opening day (second rifle season), as well as at least one ahead of us that morning. A certain rock a couple miles up the trail was our turning off spot to start climbing. It was a nasty one, too - about 60 degrees.

My buddy (Resident) who was accompanying me said the horsers were going to the top of the ridge at 14,000, where there were always a number of such camps. His brother had given us a map from his scouting and several previous hunts with an area on 60 degree mountain side at 11,000 feet circled and marked, "elk here". We found about 20, including at least two bulls, at 10,500, and had her back at the cabin by dark.

Same basic technique you are trying for. Go where the elk go, and the hunters don't. We saw the tracks of just one other hunter (presumably) once we left the trail.

The beer was especially good that night.

Directly proportional to the depth of snow above 10,000.

i have read they will stay till it gets above 12 inches deep

Slim.
I've hunted the San Juans my entire life. Always exceptions, but it goes like this; By late August it's not unusual to have fairly hard freezes above timberline. The grass dries out (elk are grazers) the cows are still nursing a bit, and those nursery herds and bachelor groups start looking for green grass in the timber where the trees hold more moisture and protect from freezing. Then the younger raghorn bulls start getting rutty as the cows begin pre-estrus. It's like an aerial dogfight--they lose altitude. Before Al Gore invented global warming a guy could expect snow by late Oct (2nd season this year) and rarely did we consider hunting above timberline by then.

Generally, mature bucks (muleys are browsers) will stay above timberline inn the San Juans and Sangre De Cristos until the first snow. Last year even though we had a exceptionally dry rifle season, in late Sept we had a cold, snowy week and it pushed the critters down earlier (again there are always exceptions) . Most hunters I know didn't see much in the high country during the first rifle. Now, elk may get pressured back UP if the weather allows as the seasons progress. But all the big herds we see on the alpine in July-Aug generally aren't there by late Aug/early Sept.

I've never seen oak brush much above 8000 ft. You are probably referring to heather or dwarf spruce/fir that don't get very big on the alpine.

Casey

Plenty of timber above 10K where we hunt. YMMV, of course.

i am looking to hunt 10800 to 11400 timber