I recently retired and have time now. If so that is not allowed unless something has been changed.I thought I had posted a link for photos but did not see but one photo. But scent control is always more important. If you get a chance to hunt the rut, elk are easy to find and are distracted with breeding.The 2nd and 3rd rifle seasons in Colorado are the general (OTC) elk seasons. We would Rifle 1 or 2 hunt in 2021, so learning more about GMU 12 is sort of critical. It’s hard to know what to recommend without knowing exactly what type of elk hunt you are looking for. That is why I recommend people go to states with OTC or General Elk tags and hunt every year so they can learn different areas and learn about elk. Thanks for the stories and comments.Thanks. For Archery, 897 hunters harvested 137 elk (15.3% Success). Do you plan on a backcountry hunt or are you going to stay close to the roads? Into December things change but hunts are rare then. Learn how to de-bone an elk on the ground without gutting it. At camp, change clothes so they don’t smell like smoke. Private land only units are left out.Colorado Parks and Wildlife obtained access to 550,000 acres (State Trust Lands in Colorado totals nearly 3,000,000 acres) by leasing the land. Personally I think it costs way too much to be an out-of-state hunter. Not sure campsites in campground will be available and definitely not worth $13 per night to me…Choose any National Forest, then find a hunt unit that is in that forest.You’ll probably need to rinse off in the creek occasionally because you won’t always be downwind from elk.Just wanted to say thanks for all the great info. Each section is one square mile, which is 640 acres.There are still plenty of public lands to hunt in Colorado. Good luck this fall & I hope you have a great season! There are many things to consider that most first time DIY elk hunters do not know.Just read your OTC elk article. Hunting an area that you don’t know will be challenging. Some of the states make it easy to see only the general season harvest data, but others don’t.
I have sent my wife back to the truck to get the pack while I started butchering, but when I am alone, I usually forget about the pack frame and build a travois (Hey all, I just found this site. How in the hell does that happen do you know? I usually pick the unit based on which National Forest I want to hunt. If you can add some insight it would be much appreciated.Unit 31 – Good elk population – average of good bulls – no forest service range – looks to be a lot of private land.Unit 53 – decent elk population – low pressure- some 300+ bulls. I had this exact same conversation with one of my relatives this week.Some states do a better job than others showing or making it easy to find harvest data and hunter effort. Are you camping? If caught with a bullet in the chamber or firing from your vehicle the fines are hefty. You can’t want it more for them than they want it for themselves.Years ago, I had an old friend that was a falconer. I have learned that the first mile is to warm up your legs. I do it but I do get out and walk a bit. How do I get trail maps and learn about rules for using A.T.V.? Like I said I may be looking at it incorrectly and i am sorry if that’s the case. Not looking at trophies.
This year my choices were the same as usual but did not draw. I will leave my chosen units here with some positives/negatives of the units that my research has found. Most of the highest elevation terrain is better suited for mountain goats and not for elk. My buddy and I have 9 points, we are sick of wasting the money applying and never gaining anything (point creep).
After the rut begins, the best bet may be to call for satellite bulls that are following the action. Out of those 68 hunts, 57 are on private land only tags, so they could be omitted, but that still leaves data for 11 cow elk hunts that are still included with the OTC data.So I decided to simply take all harvest from the 2nd and 3rd rifle seasons and simply remove all data from units that were not have OTC tags.So the data is for the OTC units during the 2nd and 3rd rifle season, but includes antlerless hunters and their harvests.The question about hunting effort is basically: How many days did you hunt?So hunting only an hour vs. hiking and hunting hard all day long are both considered an equal day of hunting (not to mention everyone’s memory is not perfect).Another problem with harvest data in Colorado is it estimated for herd units (Data Analysis Units – DAUs) and not by hunt units, by hunt seasons or by hunt codes (though it could be if CPW made it a priority).So my attempts to get at the truth using imperfect data were not be perfect, but I hoped they were close enough to compare oranges to oranges (or to General Seasons in Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming), but I am beginning to think none of these states want that to happen.This has gotten into more detail than I wanted, but since this data is not available anywhere else I wanted to explain how it was derived.The OTC plains rifle season harvest data is not reported separately and I do not know how to tease that data from the tables as reported, so those hunters and harvests are not part of the All OTC Combined harvest.Map 5. But only one unit (851) has both Limited Entry and OTC archery hunts (and those hunts are separated by OTC hunts being off the State Wildlife Area and the Limited Entry units are on the SWA), so there is no overlap in space (GMUs) between OTC or Limited Archery hunts.So the OTC Archery data can be separated by simply adding the data from all units with OTC tags. Colorado is one of the states that doesn’t.It is easy to compare total harvest to total harvest, but we need the data separated because there are big differences between OTC Bull Only and Limited Bull or Limited Cow hunts. After my trip I was so excited to get others on board that myself and 3 others applied for a late season Arizona rifle hunt but were not drawn.If we were to consider a non-resident Colorado hunt without a guide service what would be best area to consider for OTC tag?I’m trying to keep the excitement going and get others on board for future hunts.
I have sent my wife back to the truck to get the pack while I started butchering, but when I am alone, I usually forget about the pack frame and build a travois (Hey all, I just found this site. How in the hell does that happen do you know? I usually pick the unit based on which National Forest I want to hunt. If you can add some insight it would be much appreciated.Unit 31 – Good elk population – average of good bulls – no forest service range – looks to be a lot of private land.Unit 53 – decent elk population – low pressure- some 300+ bulls. I had this exact same conversation with one of my relatives this week.Some states do a better job than others showing or making it easy to find harvest data and hunter effort. Are you camping? If caught with a bullet in the chamber or firing from your vehicle the fines are hefty. You can’t want it more for them than they want it for themselves.Years ago, I had an old friend that was a falconer. I have learned that the first mile is to warm up your legs. I do it but I do get out and walk a bit. How do I get trail maps and learn about rules for using A.T.V.? Like I said I may be looking at it incorrectly and i am sorry if that’s the case. Not looking at trophies.
This year my choices were the same as usual but did not draw. I will leave my chosen units here with some positives/negatives of the units that my research has found. Most of the highest elevation terrain is better suited for mountain goats and not for elk. My buddy and I have 9 points, we are sick of wasting the money applying and never gaining anything (point creep).
After the rut begins, the best bet may be to call for satellite bulls that are following the action. Out of those 68 hunts, 57 are on private land only tags, so they could be omitted, but that still leaves data for 11 cow elk hunts that are still included with the OTC data.So I decided to simply take all harvest from the 2nd and 3rd rifle seasons and simply remove all data from units that were not have OTC tags.So the data is for the OTC units during the 2nd and 3rd rifle season, but includes antlerless hunters and their harvests.The question about hunting effort is basically: How many days did you hunt?So hunting only an hour vs. hiking and hunting hard all day long are both considered an equal day of hunting (not to mention everyone’s memory is not perfect).Another problem with harvest data in Colorado is it estimated for herd units (Data Analysis Units – DAUs) and not by hunt units, by hunt seasons or by hunt codes (though it could be if CPW made it a priority).So my attempts to get at the truth using imperfect data were not be perfect, but I hoped they were close enough to compare oranges to oranges (or to General Seasons in Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming), but I am beginning to think none of these states want that to happen.This has gotten into more detail than I wanted, but since this data is not available anywhere else I wanted to explain how it was derived.The OTC plains rifle season harvest data is not reported separately and I do not know how to tease that data from the tables as reported, so those hunters and harvests are not part of the All OTC Combined harvest.Map 5. But only one unit (851) has both Limited Entry and OTC archery hunts (and those hunts are separated by OTC hunts being off the State Wildlife Area and the Limited Entry units are on the SWA), so there is no overlap in space (GMUs) between OTC or Limited Archery hunts.So the OTC Archery data can be separated by simply adding the data from all units with OTC tags. Colorado is one of the states that doesn’t.It is easy to compare total harvest to total harvest, but we need the data separated because there are big differences between OTC Bull Only and Limited Bull or Limited Cow hunts. After my trip I was so excited to get others on board that myself and 3 others applied for a late season Arizona rifle hunt but were not drawn.If we were to consider a non-resident Colorado hunt without a guide service what would be best area to consider for OTC tag?I’m trying to keep the excitement going and get others on board for future hunts.