I was hunting in Hamilton last year, Units 12 and 13. I saw 58 elk, 50 cows on an alfalfa field bordering the Williams Fork in Unit 12, 5 cows across the street in Unit 13 and 3 bulls together in Unit 13, I killed one of those bulls. I hunted the same ranch in 2008 and saw 600 elk in one herd! The deer herd is also piss poor, I used to see between 20-40 deer a day, last year I hunted 4 days and only saw about a dozen scrawny deer. The outfitter wanted me to shoot a 4x4 that had about a 12" spread, I've shot bigger deer in New Jersey. Three guys in the group did shoot slammer deer.
When I went to the meat processor in Craig, I couldn't believe the number of forks, 3 points and small 4 points people were shooting (mostly non-residents) just to fill their tags, IMO, this is going to severely hurt the trophy potential. Colorado better start putting a point restriction on deer. I know some people like to shoot small deer for food, not sure how to fix this. For the record, I'm a non-resident. I love hunting Colorado, seems like things are going sideways.
