Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Colorado Cow ML Hunt 2011

We are looking to go back to Colorado next year for a cow (we were skunked last year.) We would like to try muzzleloader season for a cow and was wondering how difficult it is to draw a cow tag for the muzzleloader season? It looks like from reading this forum that it takes several points to draw a bull tag in the good areas but what about a cow tag?

We hunted the Durango area last year and it was quite a haul from Kentucky. We were hoping to maybe find an area that is a little easier to get to that has decent numbers of cows. Perhaps in the North or Northwestern part.

I have perused the EHU section on the website but it really doesn't talk much about strictly hunting cows and was wondering if anyone might be able to steer us in the right direction?

Good luck and hunt safe

Depends on the unit. Checdk out the statistics page on the DOW website.

Here is a list of hunt codes and the minimum points required per unit.

http://wildlife.state.co.us/NR/rdonlyres/FAB33AB5-33BA-4BF4-9E40-12418F55E7BB/0/ElkMinPP10.pdf

For a cow tag for ML, look for codes that start with EF (elk female) and end in M (muzzleloader). There are also some either sex tags too, they start with EE.

In general folks didn't seem to realize that they wouldn't be able to draw bull tags with a 2nd choice, so cow tags got much easier to draw this year. Cow hunting is hard with a muzzleloader as most calling is designed to encourage bulls to come in. So instead you have to pursue bugling bulls (I think).
Here's the article I wrote on the effect of the loss of the statewide muzzy tag:
http://westernhuntingdata.blogspot.com/2010/06/effects-of-new-colorado-draw.html

Usually in ML season, the bulls have not started to round up the cows yet. You will see spikes and young raghorns running with the cows. Lost cow calls, mews, and distressed cow calls work well, but do not use excessively.I called acow in this past seaosn