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

The area I'm hunting in does not have an either sex hunt. So I'm not sure what tag to get. I'm leaning towards cow because their's more of them but the area does have some decent bulls just not as many. This is a first for me. What do you all suggest?

First hunt? Get the cow tag.

Where are you going?

Gunnison W.elk wilderness. Why cow elk?

Because if you get a cow tag you're sure to see many large bulls.

Seriously though, the cow tag is a good bit cheaper, but if you'd be happier with a bull, get a bull tag. If you'd be happy with any elk, you've got better odds with a cow.

Yeah I thnk that's good advice. I'm mostly after the meat. Bull elk next year. Seeing a bull and having a cow tag is the way my luck runs your right about that.

Meat or antlers? I've shot a lot of both and on the average, the cows are more tender and better eating.

It's good to get your trigger finger used learning to hunt elk if you have not been successful before.
Cows are all I hunt anymore unless I happen o get an either sex tag

I love the flavor of Elk,

and I don't care what any one else says, All the Bulls I've eaten, were "chewey"

You want good meat? A Cow tips the odds in your favor.

since there are more cows that is what we did. Can't eat the antlers anyway.

of course we saw mostly bulls and few cows, but just were not in the right place at the right time.

Personally I"ve become quite conscious of quality management and simply can't bring myself to shoot a couple year old small 4 or 5 point raghorn just to say I did. I don't have that mentality.

I'll get a bull tag for shooting one for the wall one of these days. If I get around to it. As long as cow tags are available and even if they were same cost as a bull, i'd be looking for the cows.

I'll weigh in by recommending a cow. Never had a bad one, and they have all been better than bulls, even spikes. And a mature cow produces more meat than a spike. You are virtually guaranteed to see a big bull you can do noting but look at if you have a cow tag. Enjoy the trip and learn about elk.

Good hunting.

Another vote for cow.

Unit 54 or 53? I'd go for the cow tag.

Sounds good cow tag it is.

ZiggY:

Check page 43 of the 2015 Colorado Big Game hunting brochure. There are either-sex tags offered in every season in unit 54. I think that's the best option for a nonresident.

KC

I'm not familiar with 54, all of my scouting was done in 53. All of my maps are of exact locations in 53. I've researched 53 for along time, their was not much else to do until I could finally manage the hunt. What can you tell me about 54? I picked 53 because I was given exact game crossings and started scouting from there. I took off 1wk last yr to check it out. In 54 I was givin large drainges as a starting point but the locations were not exact and required more time to scout.

Rifle or bow hunt?

A large number of cow noses/eyes and archery range is not always such a good combo. (Although being in elk is always good).

Be sure to take a camera with the cow tag.
Here is my experience last bow season with a cow tag in my pocket.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-hMqgfpimODRk5sOFZIWnc4ZWc/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-hMqgfpimODRG0teW5UYS1XdGc/view?usp=sharing

I have seen more nice bulls come out of 53 than 54. Specifically the northeastern quadrant going in over Bechwith pass. Last year a young fellow took a bull that was at least 380. During the early hunts and at least about 1/2 away into the 1st rifle season, the better bulls usually get pushed back into 53 and the cows head for the bottom land hay fields on private land. There is a reason that there are so many cow tags left for muzzleloader season.

I don't think anyone is going to give out specific locations of their honey holes. Especially on a forum with 30K-40K members.

I have been hunting 54 for 20 years on and off and I still don't have any, what some would call honey holes. Every elk I have killed in that unit has come hard .
If someone believes cows are a sure thing hunt, they haven't hunted in 54 very often.

While I think there sure can be honey holes, as nomadic as elk are, I just don't think its nearly the same as a trail crossing for white tails.

Elk just seem to do whatever and for no reason at all typically... obviously they have their reasons, but nothing firm enough to form a set pattern, other than elk have always, for us, been where you find them. And that means about nothing really.

with 54 you'll be doing a lot of hiking, but this is what it's all about. TONS of good areas in there, with a nice herd. I live in Crested Butte, so I know the area pretty well, beautiful country. I would say either tags with a cow tag as backup. As far as the area to hunt, weather will be your determining factor.

Has Ziggy said what season he's considering yet?

Elk just have bigger territories. Many herds whether 5 or 50 will make big loops, staying in one location and feeding 2-3 days before moving on ,unless threatened.

Older mature bulls will revisit the same hidey holes after the rut. I know a few of them, but years ago, I stopped trying to get into them figuring it wasn't worth the grief. I tell some younger guys about them every once in awhile when they say they want to kill and elk no matter what.

Ditto for cows, they use the same breeding and calving grounds most years and the same migration routes to and from winter ranges, unless some dumb smuck shoots the lead cows who are more familiar with the route.

When someone unknowingly bust into a herd of elk and they go ten different directions, that is totally different than if they catch your wind or see a movement a ways off and sneak off into the timber. Get into good elk country and you will find their trails that look like cattle trails from them using the same paths over and over.

Hunt country that has little or no hunter pressure and they are fairly predictable. Hunt country with a lot of pressure, and you change your tactics to figure out how the elk respond to that and what other hunters are going to be doing

During the rut in Sept, every bull bigger than a spike will be mixing it up at least a little. Even the young ones do some head butting and their version of bugling, more like a squeek. By Oct, the bigger ones have lost weight which takes a lot of time and good feed to put back on. That feed usually isn't available until the next Spring. An elk in declining condition will always be tougher than one in a good growing condition.

Ziggy:

When you wrote "Gunnison W. Elk Wilderness" I thought you were talking about the eastern half of the West Elk Wilderness, which you would access from Gunnison. Unit 54 is a big unit and you have to break it down into smaller areas to make any sense of it. I've hunted most of it at one time or another since 1978. Last year I hunted the Pass Creek area and didn't see many elk but that was mostly because the weather was warm and dry and they were way back up high.

The western part of 54 would be accessed through Crawford and Paonia or maybe over Beckwith Pass like saddlesore mentioned.

I can't give you exact game crossings in unit 54. I agree with others who wrote that those don't work for elk because their macro patterns (annual summer/winter migrations) are predictable but their micro patterns are not. I could show you some elk trails so big that you could drive a pickup over them but predicting when they will be there again is impossible.

KC

You could sit on a whitetail trail and probably wihtin 3 days or less see a whitetail.

You, at least lets say I, could find an elk trail and sit all season and never see one due to various issues. At least IMHO.

Walked 12 miles one morning to find sign... found it, but it looked old, but only a couple of days old... walked it agian with the wife the next morning and back... to verify it was a few days old and just nothing there right then. I bet we could have hunted that portion the whole season and been SOL... instead we moved around and found them the next evening, appx 15 miles away

A year ago, we hunted high and low and never saw a track. Then one day late in the season, we had 4 or 5" of snow. By evening, the elk appeared and we saw a bunch of them. The next morning my partner and I shot 2 cows within sight of the road. We just drove through the sagebrush and loaded them up.

Although I have the capability of riding a ten mile radius. The two areas I hunt, we ride in about 3 miles and last year killed two elk there in ML season. One opening day, one the next and the saw elk there three more days. One fellow just could not hit one. We have killed elk there every year for 5-6 years within a half mile radius. Another area, we consistently kill at least one elk in the same place every year. Last year rifle season we killed two.The same area, I have killed three elk within 200 yards of each other in different years.

A new area, I might ride those ten- twelve miles the first year or so to find the elk, but once I know the area, I very seldom move much.

In the bowl below. I killed 8 bulls in 8 years running. Most of them were within 200 yards of each kill. I don't hunt it anymore because I told a few guys about it, they went then without me, they told their buddies, who told their buddies and soon you couldn't find an elk there because all those guys didn't know how to hunt elk and ran them all out.

That's beautiful scenery

I suggest you may need to hunt elk a little more or find better elk trails.

We hunt 3rd season in a different unit and I almost always draw for a cow and buy OTC bull tag. Like everyone else id suggest a cow tag if you can only have one but the years I've had one the other has a way of showing up, once within 40 yards of the parked truck. This year I passed a small cow opening morning and didn't get an elk. If I hadn't zigged when I should have zagged it would have been better, my hunting partner saw 5 bulls in the meadow I said that id hunt on the last day......naturally I went somewhere else...... some years are that way, some years they walk right up to you.

Unless you specifically hunt for horns, never pass up a legal elk. Those smaller cows are sure tasty. I never begrudge myself taking the easy ones close to the truck because I have paid my dues taking the hard ones.

Can you explain WHY that bowl was an elk honey hole? What drew them there year after year? What was it that made it so good? Would it be good again if it had less pressure?

Years ago, the Flat Tops in CO were the premier hunting spot in the state. Then several hunting rags started to write about it. I had hunted further east and that got over crowded, due to easier access the elk got driven out. I found this area and the sides of the bowl were covered with blow down timber where the elk stayed in. Below the rocks were aspen and good grass and trails where they moved along those meadows. No one had the gumption to climb thru that blow down ,except a few of us. We found a few game trails that we could access with our mules to get the elk out once we shot them. The few outfitters then and other hunters, moved thru this area as they all wanted to get up on top. We,from past hunting, found out that those big herds everyone seen up in the meadows, baled off the top and took up residency under the first rock shelf once bullet started to fly.

People started to notice that and the forest service let more outfitter permits for the area. Besides them and the DYI'ers ,you could not find a drainage that didn't have a camp in. Up on top, it was tent city. They camped right in the center of the elk's living rooms. They never did understand that if you did that, you had to keep a quiet camp, but still stay some distance away. No yelling, pots banging around axes chopping wood, driving tent stakes, etc. It wasn't long before the elk said the hell with that and moved again further west. I could still go in there and kill elk, if I was physically able. The guys I have told about the area, still didn't hunt it the way I explained. They never got high enough.

Yea, stop the pressure and they will find it again. But that won't happen.Hunters are too greedy and will never camp where they should. Everyone thinks that if they don't camp there, someone else will. Especially the back packers who think they have to be right there because they don't want to hike to their hunting areas every morning. You will hear some say that is BS, that they kill elk right near their camp. Yea, until they drive them out. You go into that meadow now, and you will find three-four camps there in elk season.

Thank you for the explanation.

Not to generalize, but the guys who camp in the middle of where they should be hunting over where I hunt are horse and mule packers. I never understood why someone with livestock needs to get way back off the main trails.

Correct,I should have clarified that too. I have seen horse camps in that meadow with big electric corrals set up. Finally the FS had to put signs up forbidding camping in certain locals.
In the early years, we packed in and camped down the canyon , but the last few years we hunted it, we camped down at the FS campgrounds and rode in every day 5-6 miles. Still killed elk.

What I meant was that back packers would bushwhack way up into that dark timber and setup camp right at the edge of the aspen. Effectively camping in the elk's kitchen or bedroom.

Further down the canyon, a horse camp always setup along a stream that was the crossing point for the elk from one mountain to the another, which shut that down .

There are idiots in each group,no doubt. The problem is most hunters don't give crap about other hunters and quite a few don't know how to hunt elk.

One year while deer hunting in Colorado I struck up a friendship with a group of guys from NJ. They had pulled a camper into an area I was scouting out, and I'd stop and chat/have coffee with them.

They were there to hunt elk, and had not seen one yet. I wasnt even seeing elk sign in the area they were in,and with them being first timers I decided to help them out a little.

I marked an area on the map that they should try. I had been seeing a bachelor group of bulls there, including four 6 point bulls and all would have been outstanding for the area.

I told them what time to be there (the elk were using a ridge in the mornings to come/go to the river).I was curious if they'd take my advice so I went to the area the next morning, if the guys didnt show I was going to go to town and buy myself a tag. (season hadnt opened yet)

They showed up on time, the bulls were there right on schedule.They were an excited group of guys! They said they were going to move camp closer as they were set up in the other side of the unit, good idea I thought,thought nothing of it really...

Well days later I went to see how they did on opening morning, as I pull up i see they had set up their trailer between the ridge the elk were using and the river...I could not believe what I was seeing. Needless to say, they didnt get anything.

I put them on a spot that had a group of nice bulls that had a routine,had road access that everyone else was just blowing thru, and they set up camp on it! I still cant believe it.

Roscoe. That is typical about 80%of the hunters.

Yep amazing the amount of hunters that set up camp near bedding areas and feeding areas. Scouting avoids this but how many bother to time to scout

Or they come in two days before opening day and procede to "SCOUT" all thru the timber where the elk bed. They see elk, but then wonder where they went opening day

Yup. If you kick an elk out of his bedroom, he'll next be seen 5 miles away. Some guys just can't comprehend that.

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.