Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting WY elk below 9000 ft

I'm not elking this year, unfortunately.

I'm thinking of putting in for next year with my hunting partner. We have some preference points to burn, though maybe not enough.

We are pretty much do-it-yourselfers for the most part and prefer to pack in a few miles. We don't like crowds so we avoid areas with roads and we avoid opening weekends like the plague.

So, with all of those caveats, I have to add one more. My partner seems to get hit with elevation sickness every time we start camping above 10K.

So, where in Wyoming can one find elk at 9000 or less w/o getting run over by truck/atv hunters?

I keep seeing these photos, here and elsewhere, of huge bulls shot in sagebrush or ponderosa, relatively early in the seasons and at what seems like low altitudes. Maybe they are all photoshopped - but probably not.

Any suggestions?

unit 79. No ATVs in the park and most folks never seems to wander more than 1/4 mile from the road.

79 - is that the Jackson Hole feedlots? Not hardly interested in that.

Did you look at a map? 71 will get you away from crowds and motors too.

79 is not a feedlot hunt
elk are migrating to lower elevations
need COLD weather and SNOW to
work thou.

I did look at the map but may have misread it. It looked like 79 was a tiny unit in the Teton NP, but the map resolution on this laptop is crap.

Counting on cold and snow is always dicey - especially when you really need it. Did that once west of Chama, NM and got lucky even though the conditions were not favorable for migration at the time.

I'll look more closely. I see it now. 79 is a tiny unit for sure but worth investigating. Area 71 is at least 85% wilderness. Not entirely out of reach, but as a nonresident, I have to count on a third person to get us into the majority of the area and his time is limited.

Best bet is probably the hard to draw area's like the Shirley Mtns, Green Mtn, and the west side of the Big Horns.
Other wise as a nonresident you run up against the wilderness/guide requirements, or you have to find places with some sizable "roadless" area's (21,15,13,and parts of 110) that you can be back a 1/4 mile or so from the road and loose alot of the extra hunting pressure. But the problem there comes if it does snow and the elk migrate down to the desert or get into private lands.

21 has roads all over it, wilderness, crowds and no elk. Stay the hell away from it.

You are part right, but with the majority of the Forest Service lands under the white arrow, a person can still hunt between Hiway 70 the continental divide to the Jack Creek Road, and over to the Deep creek road, and have a good chunk of country to do the pack in hunt Brents talking about. Especially since the idiot azzholes pulling all the crap on Haggarty Creek and getting that road access shut off.
Look at the head basins of Haskins,Lost, Haggarty, Mill, Savery, and Deep creek for some relatively quiet hunting.
Plus there is country along between the Battle Creek canyon and the Huston Park Wilderness that takes shoe leather to get into and therefore not alot of traffic.
I also wouldn't discount using the access on the east side of Battle Mtn, to pack across and bivouac on the north slope in the oaks.
Biggest draw back is those elk aren't reall gutsy up along the divide and 6-8 inches of snow can kick them out. We've been stuck up in there more than once when it dumped 2ft over night, and the only thing left was a couple of old buck deer and some grouse.

Many thanks for the suggestions. I have access to a large map collection at the library here and can research these areas fairly well.

Sadly, my wife has two perfectly useless, but healthy horses that could make this all a lot easier. However, the wife isn't loaning them out. They are broke to bloody mule deer. But it was Tamra that I should have been training, not Rusty. But that's okay. I've got another elk or two left in these legs

have spend alot of time in 71, not very many people but u may
need a guide if non-res, its real wild up there lots of bears
and wolfs and big elk

Brent it's just as well to leave the horses home anyway. No need to have to get up 2 hours early just to do chores, when you're sorta spozed to be semivacation and having fun.Plus they have the same troubles adjusting to altitude that we do.
Also in the region I described in 21, alot of the good places where you'll kill elk it's almost to steep and to rocky for horses , a good mule might do alright, but the chances of a major wreck are still pretty high.
One of my favored meadows is 220 yds across, if they come out on the timber on the uphill side you can hit your bull in the lower chest and bust his spine just about everytime, that's how steep it is near the top of some of those ridges.

You need to send your sarcasm meter in for repair. Yours seems to be.....broken.

Well no I figured it was the typical keepem out of my hunting territory crap. Which is nonsense,2 more hunters would be almost unnoticable, but as there are probably people reading this with serious interest in getting some info they can use to work with.....

Monday night additional cow/calf in 21. Had 25+ square miles of mountain all to myself. Not another person around. Elk running around everywhere and most under 9000 feet.
We have an elk problem in 21.

wyoelk, your first note tickled my often insensitive sarcasm detector. So, I was prepared to investigate. These have been very helpful posts and I really appreciate them.

Looks like you have some groceries for the winter. She should be taste in the extreme. Been a few years since I have had elk in my freezer and that needs to change.

Thanks,
Brent

Dont think that 21 is always like that. This coming monday the general season starts and to say the circus is in town will be an understatement. We backpack up into the wilderness to get away from it.

Give the clowns a few days to booze up, wear down and run out of gas for the atv's and 21 gets real nice again.

There are plenty of spots that hold elk for a person willing to put on boots and park the atv.

The area holds lots of elk but it isnt known for a trophy area. A person willin to work will see several rags, five and six point bulls to shoot.

Tag is cake to draw with one preference point.

Yup down on the stockdrive, there'll be lights strung in the trees, don't know if they still bring the collapsable dance floor so they can all line dance with each other or not... Only drove by and saw the circus once when we had to go to Savery to use the phone...
But the last couple of years up Haggerty when the screaming and shouting and loud music echo'ld up and down the canyon most of the night and the constant barrage of 9 mill target practice was going on during the day,,More and more elk carcasses just basically had the backstraps and part of the hams gone, and doe/fawn deer heads buried in the brush almost out of sight of the road, I knew that 27 years of my elk hunting spot was coming to a close. and sho nuff the road got closed...
So now I'm not sure what we're going to do, but what's left of our bunch is planning on one last hunt up there this next week.
In a number of ways I am glad that road is closed from the bottom, at least now maybe folks that haven't had heart problems and old age isn't making arthritis in knee joints, can enjoy the small clearings, and meadows, and drink from those cold cold springs in the rock slides, and enjoy what we once knew of the peace and solitude up there.And there are a few really good bulls, but they didn't get that way by hanging around when the noise started....

Sorry to hear that Ranch. That's the reason we gave up on the little sandstone area for bulls. Way to many azzholes blasting la-bamba and 9mm at night.

Great for bow hunting and even better for cow season but that place can go to hell during the circus season.

We did our line dancing in Dixon but they closed the place down. I see it's open again this year.

Your road closure made for a long hike uphill out of the lake. I'm ok with that for now.