I grew up in Colorado and share your frustration. Hunting was easy growing up. We could hunt elk close to home and there were elk to hunt. Co dept of wildlife culled our herd so heavily that going home to hunt is just walking or riding trails vacationing now. The heavily pressured herd has moved off national forest through blm to the canyons between farm ground. Access is tough as private blocks the blm below. Yes it is just changing times but living through it wasn’t fun trip.
To be fair, the elk finding the alfalfa in the 1980’s and resulting crop damage payments drove the culling but they way overdid it in my opinion.
there are good hunting areas still but finding them on the internet will be tough. The center part of the Colorado still holds a lot of elk as does nw Colorado. Hold lots of hunters too.
Lessee now....
By the late 1920's--depending on who we ask or what we read--there were somewhere between 500 to 5000 elk in Colorado.
By 1960 there were ~50,000 elk in Colorado.
By 1980 there were ~120,000 elk in Colorado.
By 1990 there were ~220,000 elk in Colorado.
By 2000 there were ~300,000+ elk in Colorado. That represented an over-population of elk.
Colorado significantly increased cow tags for the next 10-15 years, which resulted in harvest figures and success rates which will probably never be duplicated on a statewide level again.
Today we have somewhere between 260,000 and 280,000 elk in Colorado.
Things have indeed changed to make elk hunting success for bulls harder than it was, say, in the 80's and through the 90's, but at this juncture it's not a lack of elk. Although there are factors out there that could change this.
Generally cow elk hunting success depends on drawing a tag if one wants to put enough effort into the hunt. The success rate on cow elk in the 1970's was around 80%, today it's around 40%. In the 70's drawing a cow tag was rare and something to be celebrated. Small number of cow elk hunters resulted in high success. As the number of cow elk tags increased over the years the success rate decreased. An increase in the number of big game hunters in the field have always correlated to decreased hunting success.
SaddleSore,
In some of if not most of the OTC archery units where cow elk can be killed with a bull tag the success rate of archers can meet or even exceed that of OTC rifle bull tags.
