Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Elk Hunting in the Snow

Thanks MtnHtr. Good luck with all your endeavors, hunting or otherwise.

On the OTC, I know where the elk have been and where other hunters don't seem to go. I just need to work really hard to get one in front of me. Gonna be a chore. But I just enjoy the process of being out in some of God's best country trying to keep reasonably warm and enjoying the process.

the elk hunting in arizona snow is cold but i have seen some nice ones.

MarineHawk,

Considerable good advice on here already, from some hunters who clearly have experience in hunting elk.

From my experience, I definitely prefer the quiet snow like others here have already said. But that crusty snow may not be as detrimental as you might think. I have walked into elk when conditions were not quiet, and it made me think that the crusty snow may not actually be as noisy as I thought. Moving slowly and at an unsteady pace is always a help too.

The phrase crusty snow covers a lot of different snow conditions. If it is super crusty, really noisy, and you are sneaking in the dark timber, you may not have a lot of luck where shots would be close. If the snow is deeper, even though crusty on top, it might be a bit quieter.

If all I had for conditions for elk hunting was crusty snow, I would go out anyway.

As for camping, I doubt a camp a mile away is a big problem unless it is a very noisy camp, or is poorly located where the likely scent stream is pouring down into the hunting area.

Hunting out of a small backpacking tent over 17 days for bighorn sheep did not seem to cause any problems. Sheep are not known for their noses of course, but their noses do indeed work. Other creatures around the tent site were not particularly put off either, although this was at high elevation. Elk tend to be noisy, and a hunter can get away with making noises that a whitetail would not tolerate.

I would certainly try to avoid camping where I expect to hunt the elk however. They are not going to tolerate you being in the middle of their area.

Best is to spot your elk at a distance and then close in on them, if possible.

MarineHawk,

I might add that there have been times when I could not find an elk no matter what I tried to do. Times like that were when I started to question everything I was doing. Maybe I wasn't being quiet enough, maybe I was going too fast, maybe I was looking in the wrong places, maybe I needed a lucky rabbit foot and didn't have one!

Whatever the problem was, I just couldn't seem to figure it out! Nothing was working! I was hunting hard all day long, and I could not even get a glimpse of an elk.

And then, my wife would come into camp after a hard day of elk hunting and tell me where the elk were located!! And maybe she was packing a load of elk meat too! She has always has a knack for finding elk even when I was convinced there were no elk to be found!

No matter how hard you hunt, if you aren't hunting in the right place at the right time, you probably won't find any elk. And when the elk decide to move, or leave, they don't fool around about it.

Crusty snow and elk camps a mile away are most likely not the problem. The problem is figuring out where the elk are!

WyoM70

Thanks for the helpful comments WM70. The two recent years (not counting last year when worked precluded the hunt), there were recent elk tracks everywhere in the snow. I couldn't tell if they had moved through and were gone or were hiding in the cover. I will try for a bull OTC or draw, but I hope I can draw the PLO cow tag for where my property is. Then, I would have four months week-on, week-off to work on that, starting in early September. Unlike deer, who seem more easily spooked during hunting season, the elk seem spooked all year long. I'm gonna work extraa hard this year.

Also, the sounds from crunching through snow may not be as bad as it sometimes seems. I walked right up on my hunting buddy one year from behind and he never heard me. Perhaps it just sounds loud to me.

Hunting in the snow is pretty normal where I live in Saskatchewan. I don't have much to add to several excellent posts above but the simple advice, If you think the elk will hear you, try to sound like an elk. Wear NO clothing that makes noise when a branch slides across it, even your boots should be of a soft material or rubber. Walk like an elk, not a human. Short steps, irregularly spaced, stop to look and listen often. If you think you're going to spook an elk, do a calf call or cow call. Even after you spook an elk, a call will often calm them down if they don't really know what spooked them.
Be ready for shots at closer range than you think they will be. Carry your rifle in your hands, or slung muzzle down over your non- shooting shoulder. Keeps snow out of the muzzle and is almost as quick to shoot as hand held.

Here’s a more-specific set of questions:

As Plan-A-Stage-1, we may sit above this pond where there always has been a lot of elk activity in past years, based on the density of tracks there in newly-fallen snow during the 1st and 2nd rifle seasons:





This is an aerial map. You can see that same pond in the upper-center:



Assume there are no other hunters around, which, so far, has been the case. We would be camping 2-3 miles downhill on the road that runs SW/NW that goes below and to the east of the pond. Assume some snow, but not so much that I can’t get my 4x4 up that road.

The road below the pond is about 700 yds from the pond at its closest and never in view of the area in the bowl around the pond.

Pre-dawn, would you spend the hour or so, slugging your way up hill on foot through the snow to get to your target positions? Or would you drive up fairly-quietly and have the head-start that would provide? I’m not sure whether or not the elk, if any, up in the bowl would be able to hear that fairly-quiet Jeep Gladiator.

Getting up and around that bowl is quite a steep set of climbing above tree-line, which we would have to do in any event.

If you have any insight, would the elk be more spooked by people approaching on a long march for several miles along that road, or by a giant machine creeping up the same path?

The other completely-different option is to camp a couple of miles north of the view of the bowl and approach that way, which would be easier to avoid spooking anything in that bowl and valley, but sometimes that is not an option due to access road not being passible due to deep snow, as it is on the north slope, and it also comes with additional challenges for getting out an elk if we are fortunate.

Any comments would be most appreciated.

Either people or a vehicle, if they hear or see you,they are gone.. Even in the dark you can push them out.Last option is the best

+1

The sound of a vehicle approaching is the last thing I'd want them to hear.

Hunting in the snow is way overrated. Yes, it's good for tracking but you're tracking because the animal heard you and took off. Snow is usually squeeky or crunchy. Frozen snow is way too noisy. Of course, you usually don't have a choice. If it snows, it snows, and you aren't going to change it other than by staying in camp or going home.
That said, I've taken my share of deer and elk in snow.

Thanks for the helpful comments guys.

My first hope, is to draw a bull tag in the Unit on which my property sits, which would make things easier. I'm also going to apply for a 5-month-long private-land-only cow tag there, which I can get in addition to a bull tag and which should be easier to get.

If I don't draw that bull tag, I will do OTC in the area shown above. If it's not too snowy to access the northern camp area, I likely will do that. I don't think the elk in or below that bowl will hear us coming because we would be approaching from the other side of a ridge. But, if there is too much snow to access the northern camp, we would have to come from the south. If the snow is too deep, I suppose we could access the northern camp by renting snowmobiles, but I'm not too keen on that. There's about a 50/50 chance that the northern road will be accessible based on past experience.

MarineHawk,

Are you thinking of the 3rd season? In the photos that area looks high enough that the elk may not be there by mid Nov this year, even though you saw tracks a week or so earlier. The vantage point you took the photo from appears to be a excellent spot. That area does look plenty "elky". Assuming that the motor vehicles haven't shot at them in the previous seasons the elk don't care much if they can't see the vehicles. I killed both my bulls a 20 minute straight line slow walk away from well traveled two track roads--but that was also in very thick timber.

I would choose to come in from the route that gives you that vantage point in the photo.

RC,
Hunting in 4" of fresh powder in the timber is the ultimate. Cut a set of lone tracks, take off after them as quickly but as quietly as a guy can and get the jump on them. Sometimes. Sometimes they get the jump on me........

Thanks for the comments Alpine.

In the past, that pond during first and second rifle has so many tracks around it in fresh snow, it looks like an elk city.

The vantage point is on the N/E edge of that bowl. I can only approach from the north in the 50% chance that the logging road doesn't have too much snow. I applied as my primary for a 2nd rifle bull tag in a different unit where I have 130 acres of mountain land with a lot of elk ad on which I have a cabin. I also applied for a five-month long private-land-only cow tag for the unit on which my property lies, and which I can get in addition to any bull tag.

If I don't get a bull tag for that unit, I will get an OTC bull tag for second rifle in the place pictured above. That is Oct. 30–Nov. 7. Three years ago, I did the same, and there were elk tracks everywhere, but I never saw one. Two years ago, I did the same place solo during 1st season, but could only hunt a couple of days because of a nasty divorce and tremendous work demands, factors that won't come into play this time around.

The elk will clear out at seeing headlights way before they will at engine/truck noise....

Just to crystalize the specific issue: I can drive that truck with just the fog lights on. If the moon is out, without even that. It's an uninhabited old logging road. And the path of the truck would not be visible from the bowl above. I don't have glass-packs on it. It's pretty damn quiet--not like an ATV or whatever.

I'm not claiming that's it's a good idea. I'm just giving the context.

elk don't know the difference between head or clearance or backup or foglights. All they have to see is a light, whether it's direct or reflected off off of fog, trees, ice, whatever. If you can't get in in total darkness(or under red light), they'll start moving off.

True......

There are exceptions to everything. A few years ago we were driving down a road in new snow just before total dark and spotted a herd of elk on a snowy hillside about 1/4 mile away. The only way to approach them in the morning was up that road. Before light the next morning, I drove up the road to near where they were, parked, and hiked the 1/4 mile to where we'd seen them, getting within easy range when it was barely getting light, just enough to walk without a light. They were still there, out in the open looking down on my pickup, and I shot a cow as soon as I had legal light. The difference here was that it was a well used road with some summer homes plus snowmobilers used it a lot. They were used to seeing cars both day and night.