Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Guys that set up camp in the middle of basins.....

Gratitude. You too.

Then we can smoke our cigars and enjoy our single malt scotch in celebration AFTER WE TAG OUT!!!!! :-)

"I miss the good old days when I was alone in the backcountry."

I can understand where your coming from. I'd love nothing more than to make my plan here in IL knowing that no one else could possibly be hunting 'my spot'. Unfortunately that's not the way it is...and it's not going to go away. With better/lighter gear, backpack hunting becomes easier and easier every year. When I started bowhunting whitetails, there were very, very few bow hunters. A 30 yard shot was a poke. Guys didn't have that kind of patience. I now share the woods with 10 times as many hunters as I did back then. Now a 50-60 yard shot is doable with discipline and practice. Also crossbows are now legal...enter another crowd. it just aggravates me when guys feel like they own a certain area of public ground...it is public ground! Yes, I may mess you up, and you may be very well messing me up while your standing over there thinking you know it all. I'm not looking for a pissing match here. If a couple of hunting parties run into each other...share info like men, like hunters should. Work together and enjoy the successes no matter who kills. If a guy told me at the trailhead that he'd been dogging an elk for two weeks in area a...I'd tell him, I'll be in area b...I hope you get him, and if you need some help let me know. We'd shake hands and part ways.

Public land, public wildlife. Dealing with people is part of the game, good or bad.

Yup, it aggravates me when guys think they've "staked a claim" to public land too. To get back to the original post, I think that's why some guys make their camps in prime areas--to try and keep others out by "claiming" the area. I've actually had guys tell me to keep out of certain areas. If I'd wanted to hunt those areas, I'd have hunted them. But, like someone else said, if I come into an area and someone is already there hunting, I'll courteously back out, and more often than not, receive the same in return. It is aggravating when that doesn't happen.

I've had more positive experiences than bad ones when sharing information on where I plan to hunt though. I'm not a guide so people aren't necessarily dying to know where I plan to hunt, LOL. It's all in the context of the conversation. I hunt the same general area every year, and the last two conversations I've had about hunting space were with people new to the area and already packed in and camped near where I hunt. I've walked into their camp alone, broken the ice with the usual hunt camp small talk, and told them where I planned to hunt. They volunteered where they planned to hunt and we stayed out of each other's way.

Now, if I'm packing meat out and someone asks me where I hunt, that's an entirely different story and that's happened too. One year my hunting partner and I packed two elk out past a camp near the trailhead. When we came out with the second one, a guy from the camp started pressing us for where we'd gotten the elk. We tried to be polite by saying things like "a few miles in" but he wouldn't take the hint so my partner finally said "look, we're not going to tell you about our hunting spot."

Here's where the story gets humorous. The guy told us he'd been hunting the area for five years without success, and asked where we thought he should hunt. Just to shut him up, I picked a landmark about 3/4 of a mile in, right on the trail, and told him we'd seen a lot of sign there, and that's where I'd hunt if I were him. So we got to the truck, put the meat on ice, and hiked back in for another load. Later that afternoon as we were coming out with the rest of the meat, we ran into the guy, right where we'd told him to hunt, and he had a dead elk on the ground, tells us it just walked up within 30 yards and he planted it. He thanked us profusely. We had a few good chuckles about that, but in the end it all worked out.

You're a gentleman, unfortunately, you are the exception rather than the norm. It's gotten to be horrible. The competition, the jealousy, the ease in which information is shared. It is not the same sport it was just a decade ago.

As for sharing successes you're preaching to the choir. I guide hunts for a living and LOVE every second of it. I help my friends and have helped perfect strangers but I am not about to tell people I don't know what I'm doing during the hunt. There's a time and a place for it and in the field during the season isn't it for me. I've been burned too damn many times by "communicating" and I just don't want to do it. If a guy has a tag for a species I'm not hunting I'll point him in the right direction but that's as helpful as I'll get.

Live out west and see the BS that goes on and you'll know what I'm talking about.

And please understand, I will never ask a man where he hunts. Some of my best friends have killed big animals and while I know the unit I have never asked for a location within the unit. It's like asking a rancher how many acres he owns. It's personal and in an era of very few secrets you keep that stuff close

There are exceptions to every rule and if somebody needed or wanted info on a unit thats so tough to draw that they may get a tag once every 15 years then it's a little easier to share info than it is with a unit that you can hunt every year. Tell one guy and he'll tell a buddy who shares it with a couple friends and so on and so forth

I love seeing hunters on public land for the sake of the sport...too often we feel we are competing against one another but more hunters mean the hunting heritage is going to be passed down. That is always good.

To the OP, I say do your best and use common sense and if you make a mistake with location, learn from it and do it better next year or move this year if their is time. I ONLY hunt public land for the sheer challeng of it, I could pay a guide to take me to an elk he has fed on his ranch all year and harvest it but how much fun would that be? I actually have had to shift gears mid hunt due to others in the area but I go in further and hunt longer and still have a great time. I never base a successful hunt on the harvest of the animal. I hope we are not losing that as a community of sportsmen. It's nothing to get upset about, there is always tomorrow or next year. I have seen an elk walk up to a group of guys "smoking cigars and drinking scotch" around a small fire...it didn't spook until everyone went head over ass to get at a rifle. There are no rules because the wapiti cannot read.

If I meet someone at a trail head and the conversation of where each of us are going starts, I'll usually give general direction information. If they say they're going X, I'll go Y and so on. Usually there's enough land to support eveyone. If someone tells me they're going to X and show up at Y with me, I'll call them on it.

Lotta times it seems that no matter where I camp it makes somebody mad. I'm always in "their" spot, in the breadbasket, kitchen, bedroom, etc. Or, like hunt sonora says, I find a good basin I want to hunt, and instead of camping in it I camp in the next drainage over, only to find that the next drainage is some guy's secret spot that he has scouted all summer etc.

My friends and I seem to kill plenty of game within a few hundred yards of camp, and our presence doesn't seem to run all the game out.

I couldn't get your partner to tell me about your hunting spot either. Maybe you can get him to tell you about mine. Test that "young man's" moral fiber a bit.

As far as the general drift of this thread, I quit hunting last time I lived in Colorado because I got tired of competing with guys on horses. It just became a given with me to stay out of the backcountry during hunting season. Now that I'm back and have found a decent spot, you can be sure I won't be communicating with others about it. Definitely not all of the yahoos at the TH who never seem to make it into my "basin of interest".

Dude, I already have not only the coordinates, but the digital photos from the trail cams he snuck in and put up right at your honey hole.

Seriously though, this was about 10 years ago, before I even met that youngster and whipped him into shape. Same place though.

I love seeing them in your spot too........just kidding, that is a good way to look at it. I always advise people new to elk hunting to have more than one place they've scouted to hunt, and to be ready to move at the drop of a hat. Even if you hunt the same spot year after year and most of the time have it to yourself, in any given year you never know who's going to be there, and it's not their fault that they chose the same spot you did.

I've killed quite a few animals in pockets other hunters pass by in their rush to get further back.

Have also seen a lot of animals blown out of area because of pre-season "scouting" on foot. It's a lot better to scout with a spotting scope from a long ways away--and after the season opens scout the rest of the hunters, and figure out where they aren't going.

I tend to camp lower and in the timber. I can usually expect a bit of hump in the morning to get to where I want to be.

As far as sharing info, I've tried that. Doesn't always work. Last year when we pulled up to the trailhead there were a group of guys on horses. I walked over and asked them how far they planned on going. There's only a couple of spots in that entire drainage really suitable for the 8 horses and mules they had. I usually use one of them for the llamas I use. Their response was "a ways" with a bit of a sarcastic tone and look. So I turned to walk away and then turned around and told them if you plan on being down by the so and so after so and so gulch please tell me so I don't waste my time hiking that far. The wrangler looked a little perplexed and stated that in fact that was exactly where he planned to camp. I said thanks and told him we'll stop short of that so we don't bump into each other. In the end one of his mules didn't feel like working that day and dumped his entire load on the trail. We just went on past him.

Or, you can tell them we're going (name a place accessed by your trail head), but that's too stupid for anyone to believe you'd go there. Then go there.

If it's too stupid for anyone to believe you'd go there, there's probably a reason for that.

Yeah, that...and the climbing harness, rope, belay devices, ascenders and other assorted pro hanging off your deer hunting pack at the trailhead are dead giveaways that you are stupid. Really stupid.

Have had some hilarious conversations and listened to some when a slightly clueless hunter or fisherman was asking for info I was not going to give him. Polite but ambiguous is my rule of thumb. Sometimes I imply without lying, in a way that can lead a person to jump to a wrong direction conclusion I did not say.

After one such conversation over the carcass of an opening day buck by our rig, my BIL burst out laughing. He had remained silent during the questioning from two fellows who had pulled up before we got the buck out of sight. He said, �You didn�t lie to them but they are headed up the opposite side of the valley because they think that�s where we shot this buck!�

It always puzzles me when people head for where a big buck was killed. The buck ain't there anymore!

Years ago, a few minutes before dawn on opening day of pronghorn season, my wife and I were cruising down a gravel road toward our usual spot when I saw something suspicious half a mile off the road. It turned out to be a bedded herd. We were sitting there trying to figure out how best to stalk them when another pickup pulled up beside us, holding a pair of hunters. The driver rolled down his window and said, "See anything?"

Eileen said, "We just got up."

He nodded and said, "Well, little lady we'll push some over to ya!" And tore off down the road.

In another 45 minutes we were gutting a pair of antelope.

I get it I guess(kind of). I'd never tell someone that I saw a huge animal and where exactly. But to trade some info on some common patterns, terrain features, and what not, I will share willingly to help a fellow hunter. I guess my biggest peeve is being lied to at the trailhead about were someone's going...not so that I can move into your spot, but so that I can move further away and find my own. Then we bump into each other, everyday for 3 days. Just seems inefficient to me. As far as the original post goes, hopefully I'm never that guy who sets up camp in the middle of the herd. Being from so far away, and with no scouting ability, I'm sure I'll have my share of mess ups as far as where my camp is at. Scouting would be valuable for a multitude of reasons. Wish I lived further west.