It can be done. I've managed to kill 4-5 bulls, including 2-6pts, in the past 8 years in Colorado in the second season and I live 1500 miles away. In full disclosure, I did spend alot of time in the early 2000's working from our Denver office and made 1-2 scouting trips a year to new areas. I know a couple of areas fairly well.
I posted this earlier today but to me the name of the game in Colorado is to hunt where no else does - a rather obvious, congratulations Captain Obvious statement. I've had good luck hunting two types of situations - steep/deep/ugly and the area between the horse guys and dayhunters. The area between the 2 tends to be 2-3 miles from any road, access point, trail, etc. Go over a ridge or two, then start hunting.
My favorite example of steep/ugly is the West Elk Wilderness area - hunt down in the canyon. It contains elk most of the hunting season and some dang nice bulls. Have a game plan for getting one out of there before you venture down in. It will suck getting one out of there. Trust me........
The issue with hunting the buffer between the horse and dayhunt guys is knowing where the horse guys and outfitter camps are. Some only hunt 2-3 miles from the road. We hiked in ~ 4.5 miles or so in 2016 to an area I'd scouted in previous years. We set camp, then had 2 guys with horses ride right through our camp. They promptly set up camp ~ 1/2 mile away. Then proceeded to chop wood, and a make a bunch of noise.
I hunted on the ridge above camp the opening morning and ran into 3-4 guys which I didn't expect. Most were sitting in nice looking openings/meadows/vantage points. I ran into their outfitter camp the first evening on the way back to my camp. I hunted the timber all day and saw 6 the first day - all moving away from hunters. I hunted the same stretch of timber the next day and killed a raghorn in AM still hunting in the timber. It was/is the smallest bull I've killed to date but I was glad to have him given all the traffic in the area. I ran into 3-4 more guys the second day that hadn't seen anything. Moral of the story - hunt where others don't. In this case it was in a strip of black timber that led away from guys into more far flung places. I've killed almost all of my bulls still hunting in the timber in the AM. I shot the CO raghorn at less than 30 feet. Still hunting in the timber seems to be a lost art - try it in areas that look to be travel corridors.
As an interesting aside, one of the other guys with us shot a decent 5 pt hunting back toward the road and closer to private property - where no one was. He saw the elk the day before and simply wandered over there the following AM. No one around except a couple of guys with knives <G>
