Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Colo Drought and 2012 elk season

This is the worst drought year here in CO in ten years. At this moment, wildfires are burning all over the state..
I"m gonna hunt lower elevations, near water, in the 1st rifle season, if it hasn"t burned up.
Anyone thought about their plan B, if conditions are the same, or worse?

I'll be hunting a unit 3rd season for deer and last season for elk in a unit that borders a unit that has burned here in CO.

I think I'll be targeting areas near a source of water if we don't get monsoonal moisture which typically begins near the 4th of July. I am thinking for deer I'll hunt near the edge of the burn given no regrowth of feeding areas the rest of the summer. For elk I'll target areas dependent on snow, however; the lack of moisture up high might push them down sooner even if we don't have snow.

If I was hunting unit 19, I'd wait until the fire is contained until I make plan B. Plan B for me would be no deer tag, and a leftover ES tag 4th season in 11/211. Basically plan B for me would suck.

Bighorn:

We will have to do a lot of scouting this year. Yes water will be important. But I think food sources will be even more important. If my wife's vegetable garden is any indication food is going to be scarce this year. So elk hunting may be easy this year if we can find the few patches of good food and stake them out.

KC

I have a RFW cow tag during December. This tag is for GMU's 3,4,301,214,and 441.Hopefully I can find the herds in their annual migration routes if they are not burnt off.

Dusty, I thought RFW tags were for one specific ranch??

Check your 2012 Colorado Big Game brochure. Blue Sage Ranch December 15-19. They have land in all of the areas I listed. I have hunted on Blue Sage before and you have access to all of these areas.

Nice deal there. The one RFW hunt I went on with my son was very tightly-controlled as far as where you could go.

I have an outfitted hunt scheduled for Sept 8th - 13th near Craig, Colorado - hopefully it turns out to be a great hunt despite the dry conditions!!


Good luck to all in Colorado - stay safe & good hunting!!!

I have a 1st rifle tag also. I'm just going to keep an eye on good water and grass and then spend a good bit of time after archery season closes listening and glassing. It is so dry that new fires can erupt anywhere at anytime so that may enter into the equation before the season rolls around too.

I hope the CDOW doesn't see the need to cancel hunting in certain units due to fire danger during hunting season, especially the early archery and rifle hunts.
The national forest areas will be especially susceptible to closures.
My own plans are going to be on private lands, where water and available feed will be hopefully better than the higher, drier areas. Two years ago, I hunted during muzzleloader season west of Boulder, and set up camp near timberline. What we found that it was so dry up high that most of the beaver ponds and creeks had dried up, and the elk were all at lower elevation, on private lands we did not have permission to hunt.

I doubt that DOW will cancel any hunts,but NF and BLM might restrict access as they have the authority to do so.In 2002 or so, when it was just as dry the only restriction was on fires etc.That is when I started to heat with a propane heater.

Hope you're right- also hope that the Waldo Canyon fire doesn't burn down into Queens Canyon, and the area around the scar near the Mountain Shadows subdivision- that's some critical bighorn sheep habitat.

I don't see anything comparable to 2002 yet, but I do see some big differences from one region to another.

The very worst area I've seen so far this spring is the Animas River basin between Durango and Silverton.

In 2002 it was so dry the diciduous trees didn't even leaf out in many places and the lack of shade exacurbated the problem. Scrub Oak and aspen were lucky to get dime sized leaves. Statewide snowpack was 53%, outdoor water restrictions were enforced, John Martin and Pueblo Res shrank to very tiny sized - especially John Martin. Whole herds of antelope would be grazing in the highway ditches just feet away from the speeding traffic and you saw no fawns that year. You could walk across the Arkansas river bed and never get your feet wet. The Hayman fire raged across the Tarryall for weeks. Local livestock was being sold off cheap and hay was being trucked in from other states at premium prices.

I killed an elk at about 10,500ft in 2002. It seemed to me like it was the year following the drought - '03 when the elk became much harder to find.

I'm glad I didn't spend a lot of preference points on a particular hunt unit this year.

You might be pleasantly surprised at the impact a fire can have on bighorn sheep habitat! A relocated herd in UT got about 35K "new" acres after a fire. In this case it killed a lot of junipers (way too many to begin with) and allowed alot more grass/forbs to grow. DWR tracking showed sheep in the new burns within 2 months going after new sprouts.

Burns can be beneficial, not only to the bighorns, but other species as well. Controlled burns offer the best chance for habitat mitigation, as they are somewhat selective. Massive wildfires, on the other hand, are indiscriminate as to what and how much gets burned. In the case of the Hayman fire in Colorado, some ten years ago, some of the area burned so intensely that the soil was actually sterilized. A lot of effort has been put into the Hayman burn area to try to get it reforested, in an effort to control runoff erosion and further damage to the watershed.

As far as the bighorn population goes- I am actually more concerned about the effect of prolonged intrusion from thousands of people fighting fire, overhead bombing runs by C130's and helicopters dropping water and slurry, firelines being bulldozed, etc.- bighorns are very highly susceptible to stress-related disease, and this type of activity has to be very stressful.

I understand your concerns and am glad you understand fire is not all bad. Too many make that assumption, especially if it mucks up a honey hole for a year or two. The fire I referred to that helped the bighorns burnt 50+K acres in 2.5 days. It was fast, but not super hot and the upper elevations came back great. Some of the lower elevations that got seeded did pretty good, but some areas became more infested with cheatgrass unfortunately. Course those were mostly just stands of greasewood, which I'm not sure is good for anything...

It's pretty easy to say fire is not all that bad when it is not knocking at your door steps.
Try convincing the 6000 people evacuated from west of Colorado Springs at present,with more to follow or the 190 owners or so of homes lost in the fire near Ft Collins

CO usually starts getting rain in August. If that holds true this year, then I would not worry about any closures, etc.

Nothing will change. I'll go where the elk are in my unit.

Amen saddlesore-
Thankfully, so far no one has lost their home in the Waldo fire.
I hear the home loss count in the High fire near Ft. Collins is now nearly 250.