Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Diy hunt bull or cow?

Problem is that anywhere you camp is gonna jack somebody up.

Still think the best trick for most is to get early and high so you can cut off the escape routes when the walkers and riders push them over the escape routes and be prepared to shoot over a fair distance (600 yards).

Therefore, camping in the valley where they feed won't work, so we camp on the back slope of the ridges we hunt. Usually try to be at least 1000 yards away from where we setup and off the obvious travel routes. We generally cold camp and stay real quiet. Lot of the time that means the smaller backside bowls off the bigger ridges, but thats gonna irritate somebody who wants to work the bowl from below and wants to ride through every day. Of course we count on them to push the elk out over the saddle anyway.

Like has been said, courtesy goes a long way as does an understanding of the logistics. After we hump 6 to 8 hours and gain 3000 vertical feet the day before opener, I am simply not coming off the high ground. I try to be 3 to 6 miles in. Not going to turn around and do it every day or I would be blasted and only get five hours of sleep per night.

I think many of the horse hunters stay at the trailhead instead of going deep because they can hooch up in their RVs and have great big dinners every evening with big campfires and lots of social activities. No offense meant, but that's generally what we see at the trailhead when we hump off the hill. If I could stay in comfort and let a horse carry me, that's what I would do too - seriously that would be awesome.

However, If the horse hunters would go in once and setup their camps 8 to 10 miles in, they would never cross our paths. Then the trailhead campers could do their 3 mile walk ins up the valley every morning to hunt the drainages above and they would not cross anybody else's path either. The backpackers would cover the middle zone.

I agree that scouting without a weapon in your hands just pushes the elk out of the area. If you live locally, that my be an option since you can get in there 3 or 4 weeks earlier, but not when you live out of state to and get in to Utah or Colorado the day before.

No offense intended. I stay at the trailhead in a little 6&1/2 ft truck pop up because I have spent the last 30 years packing camps in and setting up. I can't do that anymore and I don't drink liquor or beer at all anymore. However ,I agree, you will jack someone up sometime ,but not all. But I do kill elk every year and most at 50-75 yards.

Mostly in Colorado if you go in 10 miles, you start to hit hunters coming from the other side. There are no big tracks of wilderness in CO like there is in WY and MT

Sounds like you are doing it right Conrad 101st

I don't know if we are doing it right or not. But we do bust a sweat trying. ;-)

We seemed to do better until the last five years. Used to run over 50% kill ratio with DIY backpacking, but had a slump lately. Seems like the honey holes we used to hunt have dried up. It's like you said; people start to creep in on you when they see you are having success. Its no secret where you are generally hunting when people see you headed out and then they see you humping meat back to the truck. That, and the elk herds seem to vacate certain areas. Colorado started issuing either sex rifle tags for the unit we hunted in Colorado back in the early 2000's and that put gobs of pressure on the animals. So we left colorado and went further north and west. Did good, but now those areas are getting lots of pressure too.

Either way, its still the highlight of the year.

As to the original question, cow or bull. You're already dropping the cash for tag, fuel & food, plus burning vacation so I'm of the mindset to go for bull with the realization that if I don't tag out I'm still happy because after you bust ass, that first Amstel light you drink after you get back to the truck will taste all the better. It's about the experience, not the meat.

I would tend to look at it a little differently. Obviously, anywhere you camp has the potential to interfere with someone else but there are degrees of "jacking someone up" and as you pointed out, a little common sense and courtesy goes a long ways.

If you camp next to the road or at the trailhead where there's already going to be a lot of vehicular and human traffic, I think it's hard for someone to say you're jacking them up.

Likewise, if you pack in several miles but camp right next to the trail where there's gonna be some traffic anyway, you're minimizing the degree to which you're jacking others up.

If you get back in off the trail but take care to camp away from travel, feeding, and bedding areas and camp cold and quiet, you're minimizing the degree to which you'll jack somebody else up.

If everyone did that there wouldn't be many threads like this.

My backpack camp is 25 yards from the trail. Any closer and the damn elk will be stepping on me.

I hate to admit it but I once shot a 6x6 from my tent when we slept in on day 3. He came right through the bowl with 6 cows and bugled 75 yards out. I shot him while wearing no shirt, boxers and unlaced boots. Mind you we still had a 9 hour hike to get him out so we weren't exactly slacking in the overall scheme of things, but we definitely were that morning.

We have shot a few bulls from the tent. The Texans on here say elk don't use the same trails and are very unpredictable.

I got a 14 year old kid his first elk in about 15 minutes this year. Also got another friend his first elk in 30 minutes. Good thing elk are sketchy or we might have got skunked.

Depends on the bedroom. I have a spot you can kick the same bull out of the same bed five days in a row. You will never kill the sob and he knows it. He will just circle right back to home.

Everybody has stories about elk they saw from camp. I guess that means it's a good idea to set up a tent city right where they live. I've had 'em come by the tent and turn inside out when they saw us or winded us. Probably should've just stayed in camp after that, no doubt they'd have come back.

Many years ago I set up camp on a narrow bench, it was the only flat ground around. There was some soft ground next to camp, with a large set of very fresh tracks and lots of elk sh**. Elk were moving along the bench. That night about midnight, I heard a single elk walk right up to camp, stop, turn around, and go back the way he came. We stayed four more days and he didn't come through again. At least, he didn't leave any more fresh tracks where he'd been leaving them.

Dang. Shooting those tame, potato chip eating camp elk, eh?

Potato chips make them flavorful.

Helps with the marbling, right?

The funniest story is when my brother hoofed it off the mountain and got down to the trailhead. Some horse hunters graciously offered to let him sleep in the back of a horse trailer because it was sleeting.

The door was wide open and he felt the trailer sway. He flips on his petzl and there's a medium bull moose with his front legs up in the trailer eating loose hay. Luckily it just backed out and wandered off.

My good luck story is one I've told before. I shot a bull way up on the side of a steep hill. There was a good trail at the bottom and it was about a mile out to the road. I quartered it and packed out the antlers and giblets in my day pack. Before I headed back up with my backpack, a couple guys stopped by to look at the rack. One of them had a cow tag so I told him he could follow me back up and I'd show him where I'd seen a herd of cows the night before.

I got him on his way and started dragging the quarters down off the mountain. When I got to the trail with the last 2 quarters, the other guy was there with 2 horses wanting to know if he could 'borrow' my elk. The horses were 2 colts that had never packed and he wanted to break them in. I spent 2 seconds mulling it over and kissed his feet. The horses were great. We loaded 2 quarters on each and they just walked right out with them.

Sometimes I win one.

I borrowed a terrain map from a friend in Carbon City.. He had an area on the mountainside (to 11,000 feet) noted - "elk here".. found 'em at 9,500, right where his circle was.

Danged if it didn't work...

Guessing you wouldn't believe me when I say that I've watched a calf elk with his head inside the my tent flaps?

Yeah, there are instances where guys have got away with camping right where the elk hang out but odds are that you'll spook them clear out of the country. It's much safer to camp at least 1/4 to 1/2 mile downwind of where you think the elk might be.

I've seen calves do things that mature animals won't, so no that wouldn't surprise me. I've seen them come in to calls multiple times after being run off, and I've seen them come in while the rest of the herd hangs back nervously circling at a distance, clearly uncomfortable, and trying to get the calf out of there.

So I don't believe calf behavior is relevant in a discussion on hunting mature animals.