Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Looking for elk on a topo map...

Apologies if I'm crossing a line - have not yet figured out the etiquette and what kind of questions are "pushy."

Is it possible to figure based on a topo map what kind of terrain is good elk country? How would a person start to educate themselves on where to look?

Looks like I'll be hunting OTC this year. I went with a colleague last year and helped him pack out his kill. Am solo hunting this year - have been doing a lot of backpacking and thirteeners this summer, and the plan is to backpack in up to 5 miles, camp, and see what I can do. Not terribly optomistic about my chances, but at worst, it'll be a nice week of camping/hiking.

I live up in Evergreen but am open to any areas. We hunted Routt National Forest last year - big elk population but opening day sounded like New Orleans on a Saturday night.

Absolutely. I've been hunting the same area for nearly 10 years and found two new honey holes recently by looking at maps. I used Google Earth to take a closer look and then hit them on foot. One of the spots is a meadow that sits on a bench and the other is the head of a drainage where multiple trails intersect. Pay attention to where the roads/trails are and focus on places that aren't easily accessible.

Yes, I wrote this a few months ago... It might help:
http://wildlife.state.co.us/Hunting/ElkHuntingUniversity/EHULessons/EHUScoutTips.htm

Sure you can and I do it all the time for new areas.

When I was a young man, I took a old man with limited vision elkhunting with me. Basicly all he could see at any distance was outlines of things, light and shadows of the meadows and valleys. About 10:30 on the morning when the sun was shining bright, he pointed to a distant meadow across the valley from us and said there would be elk in that meadow in the evening and then pointed out the canyon they would come out of. You guessed it, he was correct and I killed my largest bull to date.

I've thought about that a lot over the years. All he could see was a visual topo of the area and of course had many years of hunting elk experience. So it does work.

The one thing you can see from google earth sometimes is what type of vegetation... if you read enough too... soil types have something to do with location also....which you mostly can't tell from aerials.

What I'm saying... I've found deer and elk via topo, but not every "hotspot" you find, will have animals or the ability to hold animals... you could find a nice remote bench in a steep area, hard to get to etc.... and if you went in opening morning at 2am with GPS or however... never having seen it, you might be on a bench in the middle of a boulder field....

Jeff

Thanks, guys. I'm looking forward to reading exbiologist's article.

I do it all the time for predator hunting in our National Forest.
On my last elk trip I miscalculated(read in screwed up) and got altitude sickness real bad. Luckily I had pre-researched an alternate area at 9K and was able to keep hunting. Ended up finding a honey hole but ran out of time in the end and came home empty handed. I'd be headed back to it this year, but I missed out on my tag for Unit54. Right now I'm paper scouting for 55 and have the responsibility of finding a spot good enough to put my brother and his hunting buddy onto some bulls. All from over 1,000 miles away with no on ground scouting before hand. It can be done, but it requires much luck and a little help from guys on the forums (like this one) who live localy.

Good write up, thanks for the link.

Spot

You're welcome. I enjoy writing stuff like that on occasion.

Thanks for that article. I have hunting the wapiti for YEARS and never seen any! I found out that I was hunting too close to the roads, and most likely, not hunting hard enough. I'm going to study some Google earth too!