Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Roughest and Easiest Elk Country

A common theme around here is that everyone's favorite (or in many cases, only) elk country is as "rough as it gets". That got me thinking as to where the roughest and easiest elk hunts are, that folks go on. I am not talking about once in a lifetime draws on the southern Idaho desert or the Gila, etc. I am referring to general hunts or relatively easy draws a guy can get every few years. I am also not referring to dealing with bears, bugs, spiny plants, remoteness or late hunts where snow levels get dangerous. I am referring specifically to ruggedness.

I have hunted and killed elk in 3 states (plus Alaska, but that was a tough draw) and the terrain has ranged from rolling hills to cliff faces. For me:

Easiest----Palouse Prairie (Idaho), though there are some hellacious canyons there but luckily I never killed one in the bottom of one of those. Runner ups would be the Sapphires (Montana), the Wyoming Range (Wyoming) and the Wyoming side of the Uintas.

Roughest---The Bitterroot Mountains (Montana) with a close second being the Bighorn Crags (Idaho).

The Bob Marshall, Wind River Mountains, Salmon River Mountains, Selway, Sawtooths, White Clouds, Sierra Madres and a few others are somewhere in between these extremes.

Whatcha got?

Easiest would be the elk hunts in Eastern CO. Hardly a hill to speak of. Most rugged I ever hunted here in Colorado would be the Zirkel Wildernss area, east of Steamboat Springs. I wore out two mules in one season hunting there. 2nd would be the West Elk Wilderness, north of Gunnison CO

Roughest I ever got into in CO was on the Gore Range by Kremmling. There are some very steep and rough canyons full of dark timber with lots of blown down trees. Big bulls like to get into it and hide and you have to dig them out. It will be a running shot at close range and a very hard pack to get them out. Easiest I ever got into in CO was in Unit 2 for cows. Rolling sagebrush and cedar points. Nothing real steep or rough. Absolute huge bulls there but it takes 25 points to draw so I hunt cows there.

If you can get mules in it's not that rough... while funny it's true... Told Dennis about a canyon that always holds bulls, said you kill a bull at daylight easy, then two days packing it out. He said no problem, I'll use the mule, told him you can't get a mule in. He figured he could get the mule in anywhere, till we went scouting, then it was, nope, can't get a mule in there.

Ended up going in and killing one the forth day of the season as the easier spots weren't producing. No problem, hike in with headlights, at first light shoot a bull across the canyon at 250 yards, then the hard part comes, one guy has to go down then back up and find the bull, the other guy has to stay in place and guide him with a radio. I've done this multiple years in the exact same place and each time swear I'll find the bull without help, when I think I'm in the spot and close, I'm never even close. After Dennis guided me to the bull and it was his turn to come over, I guided him by voice, when he finally made it 30 minutes later he's like... that's the farthest 250 yards I've ever hiked.

Units 23, 27 and 8 have some rugged elk country in Az. I've hunted the San Juans, Dark canyon in Colo and unit 6 in NM that have elevation and steepness.

For pure meanness it's Az.





Some easy places up on the Mogollon rim to shoot a cow and get a truck to it.

Colorado was a nice easy walk, elevation was only bad part. Montana black tail was the same w a few grizz encounters. Toughest hunting was Idaho, 30 miles North of Salmon. You could roll a rock from the top of a moutain to the bottom. Only way to get around was on a 7” wide game trail.

I've had some really experienced elk guides tell me there is no place you can kill an elk that you can't get a horse or mule to. A couple of them guided in Idaho's Bighorn Crags. They may or may not be right, but I've seen and killed elk in places I sure as hell wouldn't be comfortable getting my horses into, but not many. Steepness is one thing, but adding deadfall jungles to it is another.

I was just there this morning, SE of Lost Trail Pass. That is steep country no doubt but not anywhere near the worst Idaho has.
Riding a dirt bike with a pack full of elk meat on that 7" wide trail with 5 inches of snow is......"interesting".

Do tell, eh?

Not much to tell, but riding out with the elk meat didn't happen yesterday if that's what you're asking.

It is technical riding. Not for beginners and if your tire slides off the trail you better know what to do.

I spent many years in Grand County. Always could see the gore range from some of the lofty perches I frequented.. Never got into that part of the state and it looks mighty gnarly from a distance! ...... Actually, when I think of a few SAR missions many years ago, I did spend a little time in em, but I don't recall getting into any serious elevations! Too much beautiful hunting grounds out there and I only got into a small portion of it over the course of 25 years! I wonder how much of that area is going to burn in the coming years as I hear that many areas are chock full of dead timber!

Gotcha. I thought maybe you had just whacked an elk and I was looking for a story.

Buddy got a smallish 6x6 on the Oct 15 opener, but I have not got an opportunity yet this year.
Luckily the snow had largely melted off the south slopes by the time we were getting that bull out.

Past years have been a bit different.

I hunt SBW very often and some say it’s rugged. I agree but wow what a gorgeous (and bountiful) place to hunt without all the traffic. I think the scariest thing most hunters ever see is fully equipped kit for 10 days without civilization at 8-9000k. Heaven to me. The easiest spots for me rely too much on luck or draw. Selway/Bitterroot offers awesome opportunity for the hardy soul. Just my .02

A few years ago I read an article by a guy who'd spent his life outfitting in all of the mountain states. He listed Idaho as being the roughest. His reasoning was that while Idaho isn't the highest (high point 12,660'), the valleys are the deepest and the slopes the steepest. When you get on top in many states, you can stay up there. In much of Idaho, it's constant up and down and it's a long way up or down.
That's his opinion. I know it's steep and rough here but I have no basis for comparison.

Many guys I hunted with who had gone to Idaho said the same thing about the ups and downs compared to where we mostly hunted , the Troublesome basin. There are some steeps there for sure, but there are a whole lot of ridges one can stay on all day without too much effort!

I’ve mainly hunted Oregon all my life.
Oregon coast, trying to get to the bottom of one those clear cuts is no joke. I gave up on the jungle.
One year we hunted hell’s canyon/imnaha and you might as well bring a fork and a knife if you shoot one in the bottom. Told my self I’m not going back unless I got horses/mules

Roughest spot I ever hunted was the Snake river unit at Hat Point. Deepest gorge in the US and we were young and stupid so we tried to hike it down to the river and back while hunting one day. We may have made it almost half way starting at dawn and barely made it out at pitch black dark thirty.... I was glad we didn't get anything that day....

I've been in some very rough and steep country several times hunting deer and elk, but what I found was even average country can be extremely challenging when you add in heavy snow and extreme weather. I've been in weather a couple times in some up and down country where I really wasn't sure I was going to make it back to camp....

Combination of altitude, steep, and thick timber. Probably a couple places in the Northwest portion of the San Juans, or a couple canyons on the Uncompahgre Plateau, but the canyons are less than 9k ft in altitude.

Easiest was the sagebrush and junipers out back of our old ranch, I did kill a couple elk there decades ago.

I grew up babysitting our cattle on our summer permit in what is now a designated wilderness area, while pushing cow ponies into places I would not do to a horse today. I try to tell people there are places a guy is not going to get a horse into.

Last year my son and I killed bulls on almost flat terrain, but the timber was so thick a guy could spend a day or more chainsawing a path for the horses back to the elk. It was a whole lot easier to don the backpacks and carry them out--luckily it was less than 45 minutes to the truck with each load.

Medium size mules or lamas can't make it over the downed timber without high centering even with the panniers empty, if they would even attempt to go over to begin with. Timber is too close together for loaded panniers to fit through. Been there and tried that in the past.

My llamas have saved my tail a number of times, getting my elk out of where I wouldn't have gone without them. Last year was an exception. We had cow tags in a wintering area and the elk like to winter in fairly flat land. I shot mine off the side of gentle ridge with a road down the top. I drove to right above the elk, unloaded my Razor from the trailer, and drove down to her. I dragged her back to the pickup and winched her up the loading ramps into the pickup whole. It took me longer to hike back for the pickup than it did to pack and load her.