Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Colorado First season success stories?

Not hearing a lot of first season success stories. Headed up by Meeker for second season. Wondering if its worth it with all the winter kill?

I just did points for both CO and WY due to last winter. Probably take 3 to 5 years to recover

Don’t know but a processor in Craig told us they were slammed during archery season. The next three years will be the worst due to poor calf survival this past winter IMO.

Hunted that general area during first rifle. Very few elk seen after opening morning. Two bulls for six hunters - both shot opening morning.

Wifey was in elk but had to abort due to her dad having heart issues. So no luck on her cow hunt

My son had a cow tag for a Front Range unit, and shot a cow Sunday, at last light. The herd had 2 bulls bugling, which is how we found the herd.

We got to about 240yds from a cow facing us, and he took the shot. I heard the bullet hit, and she dropped so fast we thought he missed.

Using a T-C Icon in 243 and an 80gr Barnes TTSX, the bullet busted the left shoulder, shredded the left lung and wound up in the stomach/intestines somewhere. I was impressed.

I have always loved to recover bullets from animals, and have a number of Partitions I've recovered, but, so far, not a single Barnes, and I've been using them since 1992.

I'm sure I could have found this one, but, with my headlamp batteries failing, we needed to gut her and get going.

And, it was his first elk hunt!

Was in that area for both archery and 1st season. In five days of archery we saw only three cows at 250 yards, ironically from the parking area as we were leaving. In five days of 1st rifle, we saw zero elk the first three days including preseason (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday = zero elk). Sunday we saw a herd of about 15 bedded down at 1200 yards. Was able to stalk and take a cow. But we never saw elk again the rest of the week. Saw three moose, dozens of deer, and dozens of pronghorn. Elk and fresh elk sign were almost non-existent.

A buddy hunted the same area we hunted last year. And last year we saw over 60 elk opening day. No joke. This year he saw three small bulls, one of which was a spike, in that exact same area over five days. He didn't see a single cow.

I've been hunting northern CO since 2012 and Flat Tops before that. This was by far, one of the worst years ever for seeing elk or elk sign.

Good luck to you. My advice is walk a lot, glass a lot, and be open to changing hunting areas.

Was able to take a smallish 5x5 bull NW of Steamboat on the 4th day of early rifle season last week. Saw pretty decent numbers of elk but not a lot of legal bulls

I hunted NW of Steamboat too, about two weeks ago. Usually a huge migration coming down from Bear Ears Mountain was rather thin and the bulls that were shot had atypical antlers. I passed on a decent 5x5 with normal height and spread the very first morning despite the guide strongly urging me to take it because of the winter kill. I did shot a lone bull whose antlers formed clubs on both sides where they should have spread to a 5x5 or 6x6. Others in camp were similar, so I suspect lack of nutrition impacted antler development.

Here's a pick of the clubbed antlers

This is a photo of the elk

It was pretty dismal from where I saw it from. No shooting hunters everywhere no elk and no elk sign (very little anyway). Last day I saw two bulls 2 miles away, it was quite exciting...

For the 7th time in 38 yrs I did not tag an elk. Of course it could be a function of the accumulation of birthdays...

Good thing there are whitetails in abundance so as to avoid starvation.

So… we need some wolves to help out the situation, eh?

Im betting there is a sizeable number of CPW folks who are really looking forward to having a toothy scape-goat to blame for their own cash grab/lead poisoning herd reductions.

A few months in and they will claim "not our fault we were doing GREAT"

Congrats!

Congrats Duckster! What rifle and load did you use?

Ron

I had debated some on what rifle to use but settled on the old .30-06. I had a copy of "Handloads That Work" by our own Mule Deer and worked up a load with a 180 gr. TTSX under 58 gr. of Hunter. Shot really well in my Cooper .30-06. The shot was not anything crazy, 177 yards. At the first shot the bull went all stiff legged so I knew he was hit pretty hard but I went ahead and put another one in him as I didn't want him wandering off into any thick stuff.