Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting advice on late season cow elk hunting please

Some advice on late season cow elk hunting please.

Heading off next week, central Alberta.
At least a foot of snow is down.
And it will be cold.
The area is cattle country, so hay and grain fields with mixed bush.

Hunted elk before, but 1st time for cows.
Any advice will be great, thanks...

Open fields, snow, cow elk? Sounds easy enough.

When you see a cow. Shoot it.

Shoot the one closest to the road and don't shoot more than one.

Look for areas where they can most easily get feed; grassy south-facing slopes or places that get windswept of snow.

If this is a cattle and farming region, check with farmers in the area. They usually are more than willing to rid themselves of the elk that eat their grass and wheat crops so will usually readily share info on where to find them.
If you have a game management group like Fish and Wildlife, call them to see if there have been any game complaints in your area. I've done this a couple times and found lots of farmers that were glad to have you come and shoot their local elk.

Good luck with the hunt.

Bob

unless it's very cold or they're very undisturbed, they won't likely be out in the field during shooting light.

look for the edge cover - here I've often found their bedding/staging areas within 500 yds of the food source itself (hay).

they'll be on the move inside the cover early/late but well within shooting light.

Not sure I can agree with that. This is winter range time. Right outside of town here there's a huge meadow that is their winter range. They're out there all day feeding.

no biggie. here they sit up on the saddles during the day and come down at night.

Must be a Utah thingy.

If you can get to the hunting area the afternoon before, get there and glass. Even from the road or some vantage point. The elk usually like to come out later afteroon and start feeding. This is where they feel secure too. They will likely come out very early in the morning to the same areas. This will give you an opportunity to put the move on them. If you can't get within range, I wouldn't pursue them in the later morning. If left alone, they will come out again the next early afternoon and now you can be ready. If the day turns "warmer and sunny" they will sometimes just bed down right there in the meadows, relax, take up some rays and get up later to feed again.
Keep us posted and have fun.

I've killed more than a few elk. Way more than a few, truth be told.

They've gotta eat, so pushing deep snow is pretty fruitless. I tend to work the edge of the snow or a bit higher. Places where they can feed, either by day or night, and where they can water.

In full daylight, you'll often find a "crown of elk" positioned around the end of an open ridge. The old bitch lead cow does that for the herd's protection. There is ALWAYS a way to work the terrain and the wind and right into the herd.

Then the fun begins.

Yeah, shoot at one cow and no other until it is dead. I've seen that clusterf**k way too many times.

kd

My area has a lot of hunter pressure till end of nov.
Both for the elk and trophy whitetail.

Good idea re the call to fish and wildlife.
I will be staying with a farmer so have a network there.

Is there a good way to young healthy one from the heard at a distance?

Unlike some of the old bull elk, I've never had a cow taste strong, gamey, or tough. Shoot the easiest one and call it a day. Just make sure it isn't a young button head bull or small spike before you pull the trigger.

Bob

I have, it was a tough, old cow. My son killed it on a ranch, I doubt it would have gotten that old on public land.

I shot a cow this fall that had been with Noah on the ark. Even at that, she's pretty good eating. We had some loin chops last night that were very tender.

We've had some long discussions here on the pros and cons of boning in the field. I've concluded from my own experiences that an elk that's boned before it stiffens up tends to be much tougher than one that's boned later. This one was boned about 8 hrs after killing it.

I'm one that believes there's something to that particular school of thought. But this one was not boned in the field, it was just old. One knee joint was so scarred and arthrictic we had a hard time separating it. And you could see a difference in the meat, it was marbled with connective tissue.

It was a late hunt in the snow, and most all the elk were herded up in big herds, but this one was off by herself, and one of the biggest cows I've ever seen. I think it ws just about her time.

As I've said before, you'd be hard pressed to find a worse elk hunter on the fire, but here is how I'd do an out of area late season cow hunt.
The first thing I'd do is contact the area biologist. This will save you DAYS of floundering around in the field. These guys want to see elk harvested, so he will be your friend.
When you get to an area the biologist has suggested, try to see where the elk are feeding, where they are bedding and what time day and night they are moving. If there is lots of hunting pressure, you might just have to pick a saddle and wait for an elk to run past you.
If there is not a lot of pressure, position youself where you can intercept them between bedding and feeding. The feeding area could be a crop field, a windswept side hill. PAY ATTENTION TO THE PREVAILING WIND.
Even in bitter cold, I have seen elk back into timber as the sun comes if there is some hunting pressure. The first hour of the day is golden.
In my smattering of experience, it seems as though the biggest challenge in elk hunting is to get where there are elk. Once you get near elk, they don't seem as difficult to hunt as a whitetail or even a mule deer buck. They are big, easier to see because they are often in herds, don't bolt as quickly as a deer and move enough so that if you are around them, sometimes you can just sit and let them come to you.

Straight from the World's Worst Elk hunter

I keep hearing that, but unless you can get the whole elk out. Most everybody bones out the backstraps and loins. Did they seem tough?

I took this picture at noon.

I got lucky this year. I was able to skid the whole elk down a snowy hillside and get the truck right to it so I brought her out whole. Last year I had to use the llamas for a 2 mile pack out down a steep mountain. However, I got that one in the evening and didn't bone her until morning when I got there with the llamas and she was very tender. Many times, though, I've had no choice but to bone immediately. Of the toughest elk I can remember, every one was one of those.