Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game how is hunting/living in Park County, Colorado?

I am asking this becuse I know someone who has property for sale in this area. This is all rural land and this AD was posted on my company's intranet. I have not seriously thought of buying but curious about the area and if this is a good place to hunt? I will have to inquire with the owner on the particulars. AD says it is in Park County, Colo and
1.5 hrs W of Colo springs
.5hr south of Hartsel
1.25hrs south of Fairplay.

as everyone knows...if hunting in colorado requires me to be a resident WHO LIVES in Colo then this is much less of a deal for me. But I think this is becoming typical of many states that require resident to hunt there must live there.

This property does not have a resident on the property so its purely for hunting.

I am on a fact finding mission. Anyone here bought Colorado land out of state and became shocked at what they did not know beforehand?

Hunting in Co does not require you to be a resident. If you want to take advantage of the lower costs associated with resident licenses, you must live here. Non-resident landowners gotta buy nonresident tags. With a few exceptions......

That particular area south of Hartsel is mostly open high prarie arid land.

Decent for proghorn and you might find a few deer and th eelk at times migrate thru it.

It has some timber the further south and west you go.The closeryou get to Canyon City ,the better it is but it is still mostly open grass country with little or no water. If it was prime land, they would not be advertising it all the way back in VA.

North of Hartsel a few hundre head of elk winter ,just south of Kenosha Pass usually. To the east the are big areas that have been subdivided into 40 acre tracks,but never took off as there is no water for wells, except for the Platte river that runs thru private land.

I imagine they are selling 40 acre plots there and forty acreas doesnotmenasqaut for hunting,.Start think a thousand as a minimum

Search for Hartsel using Google Earth and then work south.You will get a pretty good idea of what it is like. You desciption sounds like it maybe about 25 miles south of Hartsel.

As for living there, think 20 below for weeks on end in the winter and wind that will blow you over most of the year.

hey guys...thanks for the suggestion. I need to go back and look at the AD but if I remember correctly the AD states there was a water source. I will check it out and get back to you. Also the guy is not advertising it "way over to VA" lol. This guy is a person who lives in Colorado and works at the mil base there and is advertising this property because he says he is going to lose his job due to sequestration. So I do not know...but he is asking 96k for 160ac. not too bad but as a FYI in VA you will find these 160ac going for 300k easily...if not more. I know things can be cheaper in Colo.

I took a flight to Denver for business and met a couple folks on their way home to Steamboat Springs and Denver and they got out of eastern VA because of high cost and taxes. but they said jobs in Colo is not as plentiful as on the east coast.

From your guys post it would appear that the land the guy has is not in a hot area. I was just wodnering if I bought a property would I have any more advantage to hunt pronghorns and maybe cow elk and fill my freezer just because I own the land and not necessarily live there.

I know for a fact in WV land is pretty cheap but to hunt there you got to own land if you want to hunt as a resident. so that to me makes it not a good deal.

I am all for shooting varmints lol.

BTW when I was in Colorado last summer and driving home I saw a bunch of ground hogs in the suburbs and thought (that is if you call them ground hogs) to myself...we eastern shooters wish we had more of them. BTW this was between Aurora and the Denver airport or the airport just north of Aurora.

Those were prarie dogs,not ground hogs.

You will still have to draw for the pronghorn tags.Don't think 160 acres will get you landowner tag,but I'm not an expert about that.I looked at the pref point issue and it says 8 points required to draw a buck pronghorn tag.For elk, it looks like there were 200 cow tags available for all 4 seasons combined and 227 applicants, 150 bull tags and 54 aplicants. That sort of tells you how good the elk hunting is.

I was perusing the CO Big Game Brochure this AM and noticed on the 2nd page that all late seaoson cow hunts for this area have been dropped.It states the elk population is below objectives.

Saddlesore you are killing me. I just bought three acres in Red Hill Forest, just across the valley from James Mark Jones. I was going to try and hunt it this year and you are ruining my 6X6 fantasies.

coupla Park co. bucks taken near Hartsel...

Lee. I have looked that country over several times.A little further south than this post mentions I think. Around Black Mountain,west of Co HWY 9 and a little north of the Park Co Line.

There was a small heard of resident elk there, but most migrated in late from the west.One WCO told me they came as far away as Buffalo Peaks and crossed the Arkansas River to get there. Access was the pits as one rancher owned a small strip of land a few hundred yards long that you had to cross to get to the NF. He opened it up a few years when he wanted to get crop damage money from the DOW because the elk were eating his hay stacks It is a hit or miss thing depending on the migration and how much snow there is.I have not checked it out for several years though.

You might be able to pull an elk out of there,but I sure would not buy 160 acreas in that vacinity with the intentions of hunting.

There are also a few elk up around Guffey,but a lot of private land that the elk go go on and off of. Probably a little bit better deer hunting than elk.

Heck, they even kill a few elk every year in that little saddle south of Wilkerson Pass on hwy 24.

I hunted Guffey in the NF last year. 3rd Rifle, and didn't see anything but muleys. I looked real hard at that saddle at Wilkerson Pass, but thought it was too close to Hwy 24 for any elk to be there. Gonna try and hunt Rendecker Ridge, its 1400 yards across the valley from me, and hunt late 4th season or later, and maybe I can stumble across a cow trying to find Kenosha Pass.

Huntsman, I've got my daughters wedding to go to in Ohio during muley season, otherwise I'd try and draw a tag, as those muleys in the pics are beasts.