Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting NW Colorado snow 2024

Looks like the Steamboat, Rabbit Ears area is getting hammered with snow again this year. Will this be another year of bad winter kill? Anyone up there know of the lower elevations are getting hammered to, or just the mountains?

Unlikely.

What the press doesn’t report (because they’re wholly ignorant) is 25 years of drought on winter habitat had more to do with the mortality in north central Colorado and the Red Desert than the winter.

By historical standards the winter there was far from unprecedented. By more recent standards it was a surprise to the more recent immigrants—which includes half of the people in Colorado.

The late spring and early summer rains in addition to the snow that stayed put because of more historically typical cold temperatures provided a lot of moisture on the winter range this past year.

Despite the big week of snow the Yampa River Drainage is at 98% of normal. Nothing to worry about yet.

I live in the mountains near the divide. House is at 9,000'. Not enough snow to cover the ground here.

Hmmmm
My 8400’ looks differently than your description.



LHS

They got a lot of snow in the northern part of the state last week , which now puts the snowpack near the 30 average again. 20+ years of the 30 year average have been drought though.

The next two weeks look dry and warm.

CDOT says latest snow cycle was close to — but not quite — the ‘worst in 100 years’
An avalanche slide on Berthoud Pass hit 10 cars last weekend, while another slide on the Colorado mountain pass occurred in an area near Winter Park where a slide reportedly hadn't happened in at least 30 years

Summit and the Ridgeline of Park county is getting hammered with snow. There's another storm expected this weekend: 1-2 FEET more. This is only the beginning.

I was at a CPW meeting last night.They reported snow was an average winter so far. Lot of growth on the sage brush because of last summer rains,meaning more winter food

Big wet system passing over the next few days

Lots of mountain snow for Utah & Colorado

For us...6K' & higher

https://www.ksl.com/article/5086253...s-expected-to-impact-utah-over-next-week

👍
We’ve had a mild winter with two snow storms since late November. The critters went into the winter in good shape.
I’m kinda expecting a late spring though.

This last foot really helps our moisture outlook but holy crap there is no game. Yesterdays dog walk I spotted 21 elk and 22 deer, where there should have been 1500 head. How many times do you circle 22 deer in a helicopter to count 16000 to be over objective and increase tag #'s?

Curios here. Speaking of snow and elk.We had about a foot over the weekend. I think NW Colorado got a little more

Having just received the Colorado Outdoors Annual Preference Point Issue, I was anxious to see what the elk herd count numbers were since that winter kill last year. I have saved all the issues since 1990 or so.

Comparing the 2023 herd count in E-06 which covers most of the winter kill area to the 2024 herd count, it shows a
herd reduction of 1690 elk ( 40581 vs 38891) which is only about 5 %. The year before count shows a reduction of less than 300 elk. Last winter there was a prediction of 40% winter kill which would be about 16,232.

Can anyone shed some light on this. Am I looking at the right year.

It still shows in excess of 300,000 elk for the entire state

Well SS, the short answer is they lie... a LOT! The long and nuanced answer would require whisky and a fire, which in your case would be worth it. Splitting the difference and giving enough info while not needing to replace any computer keyboard keys is as follows.

I'm going to assume you know the actual physical activities of how the count is done in CO. Flying a section (1 mile) of a given habitat type and extrapolating that count to all subsequent sections of same habitat type. This is a TERRIBLE model for counting during a hard winter when they are very concentrated, it gets better in a winter when they are scattered in more borderline winter habitat. Just the details of this could be one fire/bottle worth of discussion.

Once you understand the mechanics of it... Then you watch how they actually DO it. Sitting on a knob with glasses and scope in -25 windy conditions isn't a very crowded activity I can assure you. You watch them haze and drive animals from one section to another paying special attention to antlered (if they have post hunt buck/doe ratios to make work) Until 3-10 miles later the exhausted animals go over the far hill Having been counted many times over.


as they haze the animals they get them all up and moving in their preferred direction for the next section to be counted then buzz off 5 miles and do the same there, returning to each "drive" after the animals have crossed to the next "to be counted" section.

Now they have raw data, severely flawed by the field work but data none the less. Then they can do the extrapolation to the square miles of lumped in habitat of similar nature. The trouble is the animals will ALWAYS have favourite draws, benches, and flats where for whatever reason and they know exactly what they are, whether it is out of the wind or better food or better sun exposure they will hold 90% of the animals. CPW claims falsely to do a random draw of these sections in 640 acre squares In practice they always fly the same favoured areas and then use their model to say that snow bound empty wastelands have the same # / square mile.

When you go to the meeting and say what you saw they simply say you are mistaken we dont do that, we know what we are doing you are just not capable of seeing the big picture, you dont even have a helicopter.

Oh I know that. I find it incredible that they actually lie so blatantly. I never trusted their heard count.

I have an email into the senior biologist.Let's see how they spin that.

Inflation is @ 3% and elk are @ 300K

They are overworked, underpaid, and have our best interests at heart.

As Jeremiah Johnson said "that is all you need to know"

for now.....

Haven't checked the snowpack report, its usually twice as honest as the big game counts... at least until the ski areas close then it gets way more accurate.

but we are closing on a 2 wire winter ands got a big dump last night on the winter range. Animal counts would be in the <10% of historic averages range but those massive herds of 5 deer here and 7 elk over there are in very good condition.

Not a rib showing, they're gonna give them woofs a good run before being ripped to shreds.

CPW replied that the numbers in the 2024 Preference point issue are 1 year in arrears.So the 2024 issue is really for the 2022 post hunt, that was before the 2023 winter kill.

CPW replied that the numbers in the 2024 Preference point issue are 1 year in arrears.So the 2024 issue is really for the 2022 post hunt, that was before the 2023 winter kill.