Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting New Mexico GMU 49

First time heading into this area.

Anyone hunted here or have some input?

My bud's FIL has property we'll be hunting, glad I was invited

Fine.

What cartridge and bullet would you use for elk in GMU 49?

I have hunted this unit several times, but the last time was about 15 years ago. There were a lot of elk then, and a fair amount of hunting pressure. We hunted the area south and west of Palo Flechado Pass.

Much of the area that we hunted was supposedly controlled by the ski area, but no one ever bothered us. There were a lot of old logging roads that could be walked (but not driven). The roads were laid out on the contour and this made for really good stalking. We'd put one guy up high, the second guy a couple of roads below and the last guy another couple down. Elk tended to use the old roads for travel ways and one or two of us killed bulls every year we hunted there.

Farther west in the National Forest, virtually all of the logging roads had been closed to any kind of vehicular acess, even extreme ATVs. Although we hunted these areas which were pretty isolated, we found more elk in the transition zones lower down than in the higher country.

You can get winter there early--one year we had 13" of snow on the second day of the first hunt and lows around zero for several days. A good wall tent with a good stove was most welcome. We made it a point to spend a couple of long weekends during the bow and muzzle loader seasons scouting and picking a camp site. This always paid off for us when the season opened.

As far as rifles go, we killed elk with 7mm Rem Mags and a .280 back then. Shots were not long. If I hunted there today, I would use something with a little more oomph. The bulls we shot were never DRT, but always managed to make it to a nasty blowdown and die right in the middle of it. It meant that you spent some time sawing and chopping to get enough room to even dress one out properly...

Hope this helps.

mudhen,


Thank you very much! It helps immensely. I've never been to the area, just my buddy, and he pretty much hunts the no motor access by himself.

He has done well there, but needs some more feet for the packing and getting into that area (his FIL has bad knees).

Sorry, but I had to bait some replies with cartridge and bullet talk

Thank you, sir.

Nate

there some elk out there, like previously written alot of logging roads and your shots probably will be less than 250 yards. thick country