Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Lets Talk all the Non Success Issues

I like to do the MZ hunt when we can, but it seems with the popularity in archery and MZ that its getting crowded sometimes.

We usually hunted the 3rd rifle and sometimes the 4th rifle. Used to great, but word of mouth got around and every person in the world seemed to be in the area. The elk learned and now the don't come as far down as they used too. So we tried the 1st rifle last year in the limited draw and the elk hunting was excellent. Saw many fine bulls and tons of cows. Took a dandy CO bull opening morning. We are trying again this year. Hunting pressure was light. Especially after the weekend.

I haven't heard anyone talk about being agressive when you see an elk. Lots said about being where the elk are and that is paramount. But once an elk is sighted,knowing what to do is second only to finding an elk to hunt. My theory is to close the gap FAST! Get into that 100 yard range (bowhunting) then slow up and seal the deal. I've taken 3 bulls in 3 years all on the first evening of the hunt doing this and you can bet I'll try it again next season. Find an elk, close the gap, make it happen!

Ater mulling everything over I finally figured out where I went wrong,must of been the damn blue tape on the muzzle.....grin

Told ya!

Damn, and there I was thinking I could get away with the blue tape, I'll have to now make it a point to find black tape.

I have a list just like that. Places where you could bet money you will get a shot at an elk if you sit for a day or two. I cant force myself to sit for elk. Saving those spots for when my body tells me I have to.

I have a few places like that, they were showed to me by my dad. He didn't hunt them but my elderly great aunt and uncle did. Certain saddles that were easily reached from the truck Dad could push elk past them at least once a season, alot of times they were the only ones in our party to get shooting and sometimes an elk. My wife killed a young 5 point in one two years ago. She was mad cuz she thought I was just getting her out of my hair. She trusts me now!!

I figure when any of us (Grandpa is 92, Dad is 72, I'm 47 and my boy is 15) are too old to hunt anymore, we'll dis-enroll from the Access Yes program where we let others do it, and shoot our elk off one of the pivots where the bstards insist on tearing down the fences and eating our hay...

You know, we spend months during the off-season arguing about bullets, cartridges, what it takes to shoot an elk from 500 yards, but this thread really points out the realities of elk hunting. Finding them can really be the hard part.

Finding em always has been the hard part for me. Once found I may not have been able to seal the deal, but they are much easier to deal with if you can find them, vs not ever finding em..

This was my first archery tag since '87. I got home tonight. My 15-year-old son missed 5 shots. I tried like hell to get him a bull and had only one real bull come it- a 400+ inch bull but he got impatient and peeked around his tree to see the bull and got busted. This resulted in a hurried and longer shot- I saw many, many bulls- well into the 200s. I counted 80 bulls one afternoon. I was hunting in mostly open country and getting close was the hard part. The rut really didn't kick in until 2 days ago. Last night I "bugled" two bulls in as we butchered another with the headlights of the truck- when they are hot, they will come in.

Elk can and will move a LONG ways. We had a bull move 20 miles overnight several times. This is easy country and they won't move nearly as far in rough mountains or timber. The moon is a BIG deal. They were hot several days before the full moon and then shut down until 8 days after. I had my tent set close to the action and was serenaded to sleep several nights. It was deathly quiet for a week.

Elk hunting can't be analyzed generically as there are vastly different types of terrain and conditions. What I encountered in AZ this year where they are living in sparse cliffrose, algerita bushes and knee-high sage doesn't mean anything when you are talking high-country elk in timber etc.

I have a remote spot I used to camp at that NEVER has any pressure- they are ALWAYS there and fun- it's thick timber and this is a poor way to trophy hunt so I rarely go there anymore.

If you are NOT in a spot like this, you need to be able to move 5 or more miles to where elk are. Bowhunting is vastly different than rifle hunting. Had I been carrying a rifle this year, I could have killed any one of 40 different bulls that were 375 or bigger bulls. As it was, I only got close enough to two of them- those are tough odds. With one exception, every bull that was killed in the two areas I hunted (that I could find anything out about) were killed sitting on water. Only one guy was able to call in a respectable bull close enough to kill it. The little guys were easy, but the big boys were more cautious.

The more you go out, the more you learn.

Let me start by saying thank you to the veterans for sharing your knowledge. I leave for 1st rifle season in CO in a couple weeks and I am fired up for my first crack at a bull elk on a backpack D-I-Y hunt on public land. My buddy and I have done the mule deer thing for 2 years. We've graduated from the "Am I going to survive this gig," refined our gear and look forward to another great year. So far, we're not a threat to the animal population but that's okay because I am loving the whole process. Many around here (Tx) look at us like we're crazy but we have the mountain hunting bug in a bad kinda way.

Anyway, had the opportunity to scout my unit in the middle of Sept. I was a little bummed that I didn't see any elk but I found lots of sign in the hard to reach gulch I'd scouted from afar. I got familiar with the area and barring heavy snows, I believe the elk will be as mentioned above, within 1000' of timberline. I understand covering territory to find where the elk are is critical but the last thing I want to do is bust them into the next drainage. I'm all for hard work but its hard enough the way we're hunting without making it any harder on ourselves. While covering ground in the morning, the wind was angling down the mountain until about 9am. The wind flipped about 9:30am 180 degrees. Typical mountain thermals and I'm just not sure how to account for this when still hunting. How do you cover all this ground changing gulches or ridges with the wind flipping like it does? I hate the thought of losing 1000' elevation or gaining 1000' of elevation to go way above timberline or way below a "likely-area" to avoid blowing elk that might be there. Is that what you do? Seriously?

Within the timber, have you seen the elk bed on the super steep slopes or are they more likely to gravitate towards the benches and points? The area I want to start will likely get more elk as the hunt progresses. I'm thinking about picking a bench near timberline opening morning to catch elk being pushed up or over into my gulch. Start moving once the wind swaps but looking for the techniques from you veterans.

More than likely, it will be like my turkey hunting experience. Write the book on what not to do and you learn what to do by accident, then start over.

I don't buy the archery pressure thing. I've hunted both rifle and arhery and there are by FAR more rifle hunters than archery hunters. In 2007 for all manners of take the state wide average was 22%. For the first rifle it was 32%. For second rifle it drops to 20%. For 3rd rifle it drops to 13%. For 4th rifle it goes up to 17%. For late season hunts, after they have been chased around for months it jumps to 44%. It's a matter of knowing the animals and getting lucky. But there's a reason why some hunters are successfull year after year and others are never successfull.

BB I'll say this, and its only my opinion, but if you are trusting your gut to find them in that gut on the mountain come season, its a big risk.

Personally I"d rather bust them if that happens, though I cover ground during the day when they are bedded, if I've no luck early and late... and its hard to bust them that way, but can happen. But at least if I bust them I have live tracks to follow.... to find them.

Now if you gulch happens to be an escape route you are good.

I can remember a hunt in the 80s where someone showed us an area, had old sign and said they'd be back, that was a long week of archery and never saw an elk ever...

Good luck!

Jeff

Boils down to knowing the area and having time to pre scout....Co. is too far from NY for that to be plausible for me...heck went out last night to scout for deer on a property I know inside out saw 14 deer (4 buck) with in 5 minutes of sneaking in......

Pre scout doesn't do that much good if they are 20 miles away the next morning, but knowing the territory and where to maybe look is a plus.

Whitetails are about as reverse from elk as I've ever seen.

Jeff

Totally depends on where you are. In AZ and NM for example, ALL tags are carefully allotted and there are often more archery hunters than rifle hunters as they know the success rate will be lower and can issue more tags without impacting the herd negatively. I saw what archery pressure can do- watched a couple of herds Monday-Thursday (opening day was the next day. By close of business Friday- all 250 of the elk were completely gone. This is open country that can be glassed from afar with big eyes and there is NO doubt that they were gone. They had to move at least 5 miles to leave this area. Many went onto a indian reservation and others just dispersed away in smaller groups as to be harder to locate. I quit that group after the first morning circus and hunted smaller groups in other areas to avoid all the pressure. Even the ones my son and I chased bailed out of the area to where there was no hunt. Don't underestimate human pressure.

Maybe in Tx...deer here don't take kindly to presure and will either skidadle or burry them selfs,seems if ya know the area and tread lightly both species will be comfortable and stay put(provided there is food and cover)May be different in fenced feeder places......

Whitetails will stay put. Elk will not. They'll bug out most times, and then dive deep. Whitetails, we simply know their area and make the right move at the right time, doing that with an elk that could be 20 plus miles away won't work.

At least I"ve found that with our pen raised pet feeder deer that we name before killing, they haven't moved, they've only holed up.

I"ve rarely found elk holed up in one tiny part of a mountain the whole year, if that were the case they'd be much easier to hunt. Heck they've gone from one big mountain to another in a day easy, I followed a moving out herd one day for just over 11 miles on foot and they were still going and headed who knows where. I never caught them, only followed fresh tracks and sign that we stumbled across early that morning.

Of course without the negative comments we could be hunting different deer, I often hunt public land and those deer are always in the same area, sometimes holding tight other times out and about depending on pressure, but always in the same area, that may not be the same as your deer further up north do.

One thing I have learned is tracks can sometimes be misleading, but fresh crap is only fresh for a little while. Meaning we saw what we thought were fresh tracks in the area we hunted this year but all the crap was old. Finally found an area with fresh crap and fresh tracks and on the North side of the slope at 11,600 ft we finally found the elk. Moral of the story look for fresh [bleep] it don't lie, but it can hit the fan .