Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Mule Deer Hunting Around Meeker, Hayden, or Craig, CO

I tried posting earlier without much luck and have one week left before the hunt. I've done a bit of research for mulies on public land (units 12, 13, 23, and 24) in the area. Has anybody hunted the area? Any advice, direction, or heads-up would be greatly appreciated. We have two buck tags.

Thanks!!

Years ago i hunted between craig & meeker at a place called Duffy Mtn. I have a 4x5 & 5x6 hanging on the wall and a friend has a 6x6 hanging on his wall. Out of our group of 7 in 3 yrs and not all of us had deer tagswe took out 11 Mule deer only 4 were does. it's a good area.

I hunt elk up the White River above Meeker (on the boundary between 23 and 24) and the number of deer I saw this year was much lower than in previous years. Apparently there was a pretty significant winter kill in this area. I would concentrate on the lower areas where conditions may not have been so severe last winter. I saw only one decent buck in five days where I would have seen between half a dozen and a dozen in previous years. Didn't see that many does, either...

E-mails that I was getting last winter from the locals told of deer hanging around the sides of the roads down low and picking up what they could. Lots of road-killed deer...

Good luck!

My partner and I just returned from hunting Duffy Mt.and all the surrounding area. The winter kill in that area was devastating. Hunted 5 days and only saw 4 does and 2 fawns (and we hunted hard). In one valley on Duffy we found 12 carcasses. The previous 3 years we pulled out 10 bucks. We used to be 4 hunters but are now down to 2. We left 4 days early in disgust. What we did see was Antelope everywhere. Good luck, I hope you have better luck than we did.

I was in 12 a couple of weeks ago. As usual we saw plenty of does & fawns but I only saw one buck the whole time I was out there & he was just a little guy.... wait now.. No i did see another buck, a decent one just below our spike camp as we were packing out back down to our base camp.

I know I saw more deer than elk, but still, numbers seemed down.

Winter kill, no kidding there, and it really effected the elk.

Good luck!!

Just got back from unit 12, spent a week in the backcountry,
with horses, never saw a buck. The only guys we talked to on
the way home that had seen bucks were down at sleepy cat.

Craig

we were a little north of there. I've actually got a short video clip of a little fork buck on my cell phone at about 15 feet away from me. I was on a ridge holding my cell phone out trying to send a txt home about the mnt lion i had just seen & this little buck comes walking by, stops, stands & looks at me. I was already holding the phone out in front of me trying to find a signal so I swung it over, pointed it at hin & hit the camera button. I was trying to take his picture but ended up with a little movie clip instead.

Craig, how did you do in unit 12? Were you there for elk?

Dave

we were after elk but didn't score. only talked to one camp
that killed anything and it was a cow elk. we were camped 5
miles from the trailhead at pagoda peak. most of the shooting
we heard was below us. hunted up slide creek and rough creek
and in the saddles. Had rank horses from sombero and 2ft of snow in camp tues, came out on wed.

Craig

We've done the sombrero rodeo before.

yikes, sorry to hear it didn't work out for you.

that's a little too much snow.

snarpezal, You go in thru indian run? Sorry you couldn't bloody the panniers. Don

Don

we went in from the trail head at ripple creek pass and up to pagoda lake, camped there and then went on up from there. panniers and sawbuck worked perfect, had a couple of wrecks but all survived. My fault on the horses, let them bring them from
williams fork, they were barn and buddy sour, too close to home for them, i know better. took my brother-in law and he was alt sick every day even tho he's a high country backpacker. he's tough tho. we still had a big time.

Craig

huntsman22,

I was told about the indian run area having a good concentration of deer. Do you know anything about the area?

Most of the good deer country is on the williams fork or Milk and Deer creeks. Private land and scrub oak. That said, the forest holds some great bucks, just harder to find. Snow and rut will bring them down into the Axial, Isles and Duffy mtns. and Williams fork. I imagine that last winter took it's toll, even tho I don't live up there anymore, to know first hand. Don

We did see plenty of deer in the milk creek area.

as always though, bucks are bucks. you know they are there to tend to the number of does we saw but they just don't let themselves be seen like the does & fawns if they can help it.

Hey Northern Dave,

Thanks for posting a few responses to my post about deer hunting around Meeker, Hayden, Craig, etc! I really appreciate that!!

In your last response you mentioned seeing a lot of deer along Milk Creek. I've also received some information about deer in Yellowjacket Pass and Aldrich Lakes (west of Milk Creek) and some activity at Sleepy Cat (east of the other places). I see on my map that Milk Creek runs between these areas. Here's the question...

How it it getting around there? I understand it will be easy to drive my truck to Yellowjacket Pass. Once up, what's it like to get around? Hike in? ATV's? General access?

Thanks for the information!!

Robert

well, if you want to get down to milk creek from the top of yellow jacket you're going to need someone to hold your beer for you cause it gets bumpy to say the least

IMO it's a much safer bet getting in & out of there with a truck in the early seasons & even then there is a chance of getting snowed in. We take tire chains even for the early season because even rain can make it tough getting back out of there.

when you are on top of yellowjacket the timber cover is dense, lot of dark timber up there. As you go down towards Milk things thin out to stands of aspen & way down in there it thins out to open sage & grass valleys.

I'm usually in there for elk but I've taken notice of the deer for sure. I see the most deer in those sparse aspen areas.


We can see sleepy cat from most places we hunt in there.

ATV's aren't allowed off the forest roads so IMO there value back there is pretty limited. We do see a lot of ATV's in there but people seem to just use them as a more quick & nimble way of traveling from there camp to and from a point of foot entry where they might wish to hunt.

I got no prob with the ATV's because most guys with them out there seem respectful of the horses. just keep that in mind, a lot of your horse guys really have it in for the ATV's be it right or wrong that's just the way it is so if you encounter or meet a horse or horses on those roads you can earn some respect from the horse guys by pulling over & shutting your machine off while the horses pass and by idling past horse camps keeping the engine noise & machine speed to a minimum.


I've been past the road for aldrich but never taken that road.

about a 1/4 way down from the top of yellowjacket in about any direction the ground is really heavy with rock. makes for very bumpy going. then down lower from the heavy rocky areas it gets muddy.

we've had years where we've hooked 2 trucks together with long tow straps & put the better of the 2 trucks in the lead getting up & out of the milk area. It can get bad so even if you could get a camper down in there in one piece, I don't know if you would ever get it back out. best to leave campers and other trailers up on top. the trailhead down by milk is for tent camps.

If i was going for deer in that area with a camper i'd leave the camper up top or part way up yellowjacket & I'd hunt down to the quakies for deer. If i had doe tags it would be a no brainer, damn things are everywhere. As for the bucks, I've seen very few decent legal bucks back there that I could have got a confident shot at, but I guess that's how the bucks are huh?

Good luck & if I can help or if you have any more questions about the area PM me if you like, it aint like i live there though. my experience there is limited to our elk trips but i'll try & help if i can.

Dave

I spent ten days in area 25. Same story about the deer and elk. All the locals, forest service and outfitters I talked to claimed a big winter kill. I saw about 5 does,took one,no bucks, and the only elk were about 1 milea way. Most seemed to go nocturnal as it was really warm and full moon. Some elk were talking in the middle of the night,but went to the timber by 5AM.

Sure wish some one from DOW would explain to me why they had a two deer limit and two elk limit in these areas when they know they had significant winter kill. All I can think of is that they did not want to give up license revenue. The DOW was pretty quite all year about winter kill.The latest hunting guide of Colorado Outdoors Magazine said to expect a banner year.I guess they meant a banner year of revenue

we also were very dissapointed with the number of animals we saw this year. we were totally clueless as to the massive winter kill until we were there & hearing about it from locals.

Spoke with the local DOW offices. They are still saying the winter kill was not as bad as publicized and the word on the street. They are stating the warm weather is the cause for the low animal counts.

well, if everything was dead then I guess i would have been tripping over bones out there, and I wasn't.

So I hope what they told you was right, it's very likely that it is.