The Accurate Reloading Forums THE ACCURATE RELOADING.COM FORUMS Hunting American Big Game Hunting Going to Colorado for first elk hunt, looking for advice.Go | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
| Going to Colorado for first elk hunt, looking for advice. | Login/Join |
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I fully understand why one would want to do that but it doesnt make a lot of sense to do it most of the time. Hot air rises so if you hunt uphill your hunting with the wind at your back. Good luck with that | |||
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Drum, really??? Ya, that's true but!! As you know in the high country, for the first two - three hrs in the morning, and late in the evening, the thermals are "cool", cool air settles, and ALWAYS goes down hill, ALWAYS! Early/late in the mountains, never get above your intended quarry, until the thermals heat up, and start to rise. | |||
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So...hunt low early and late and high at mid day? ________________________________________________ Maker of The Frankenstud Sling Keeper Proudly made in the USA Acepting all forms of payment | |||
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I think a 2-3 hour window in the morning and evening is a bit generous. IME the thermals will start changing as soon as the sun pokes up over the ridge in the morning and after is goes behind a ridge in the evening. Obviously there are variables that will dictate the wind direction but I have seen a lot of stalks ruined when you find yourself out of position and the wind shifts. I prefer a predominate wind direction and I prefer to glass from a vantage point and work my way down or from the side on the stalk. My point being, while you may find yourself hunting uphill to kill an animal I think its a major stretch to say that you should ALWAYS hunt up as the other poster had suggested | |||
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Mid-day, take a nap! No, its not as simple as that and Drummond knows exactly what I mean. The thermals MOST definitely will continue to settle for as long as 2-3 hours after sun-up in the morning, but its up to you to pay attention to when they start to change. It might be 1 hr, it might be 3, it all depends. It will definitely be less in the evening, but once the thermals start to cool, they will definitely start going down again. That could only be the last 30 minutes of light. The crappy part is, the in-between time when the thermals are changing. Sometimes they're up, sometimes they're down? You're not hunting, until you find something to hunt! Wandering around in the woods with a gun in your hand is just that, wandering around in the woods with a gun in your hand. Guys like Drummond, who's a hunting partner of mine, and a couple others I hunt with, all kill BIG STUFF, because they use their head, and their eyes/optics, long before they use there feet. I've killed numerous big bulls in Colorado on public land, including a couple over 380". I've guided a bunch more on public as well, and same goes for big deer. Find what you're after first, then go kill it! Get the best optics you can afford, and use em, lots. Drum can tell you the same I'm sure, but in the high country, the vast majority of the big stuff I've killed/guided, have all been spotted from 1/2 mile to 2-4 miles away. Not always, but definitely the vast majority of the time. If you know where they are, long before they know where you are, the odds are hugely in your favor. Don't be a wanderer. Be a hunter, then a killer! | |||
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Ok, Ya Drum I did not see that one?????? | |||
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That sounds like some great advice right there, thanks! | |||
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Geoffm24 - Good luck to ya man, I hope you knock em dead!!!! | |||
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GeoffM24, best of luck on your hunt, please come back on here and relate how your hunt worked out. Maybe I am looking at things wrong, and yes everyone has given some excellent advice, but from the information you gave in your original post, I feel your hunt is going to be a lot different than some are envisioning. Even the rocks don't last forever. | |||
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That is the benefit of getting all the various opinions and suggestions. Once I get out there I will have a much better idea of what advice will be helpful in my situtation and what won't. I'm also well aware that there is a good chance I'll get nothing, very slim chance I'll get a great trophy, 100% chance I'll make lots of mistakes, and 100% chance I'll learn a lot about mountain hunting and elk hunting. The thing I'm really trying to avoid is stepping out of the truck and saying "Alright, what the hell do I do now". In this situtation even a flawed plan is better then no plan. | |||
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I've been guiding hunts for over 20 years and I think the exact same thing every time I go on a hunt | |||
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I just think that if you are going with a group that even part of the members have done this a few times in the past and were successful to some degree, you will be a lot better off this first time, following their lead. You have gotten a lot of really great and worthwhile advice from folks, but the conditions you may be hunting under may be nothing like what some of these folks have experienced, their advice is based on the conditions they are used to hunting under. Your group may not be hunting above 8000 or 9000 feet, you may not encounter any snow on your hunt. You might end up hunting in black timber, or pinyon ridges dropping off into sagebrush flats. I just think listening to what your hunting partners on this trip advise you on, might be the really big difference between your success or failure on this trip. JMO. Even the rocks don't last forever. | |||
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Looks like somebody didnt thing the advice given was very good  | |||
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GeoffM24 - Best advice I can give you is to call Drummond. He's a super-nice guy, who loves to help other hunters, and he KNOWS what he's talking about. Send him a PM, he will send you his number, I guarantee it. Remember one very important piece of info. Find something to hunt first, then go hunt it! Doing things like, "hunting" in dark timber, what a waste of freakin time!!! When the elk go in the timber, leave em alone. Don't just wander around acting like you're "hunting", that's just another huge waste of time and energy. Get to and find the highest vantage points in the area, and find the game first(OPTICS). Then make a plan for killing em. Heck you might spot em 3 miles away and have to hunt em that evening, or the next morning, etc. But elk are VERY EASY to spot, even at great distances. So, find em first, then go hunt em. Not the other way around. | |||
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WRONG!!!! I think all of the advice given is great. Not one thing wrong with any of the advice given because it all comes from personal experiences. What I am looking at however, is Geoff24 is going on his First hunt, with a group that some or most of the others in the group have done before, and from Geoff's posts at least one of these individuals has done for a fairly long period of time.
How many guides want someone to book a hunt and then have that person show up in camp without having listened to one thing they were told about gear to bring or what the conditions the hunt would be conducted under? Not many would, that is why they send out lists of what to bring etc. etc.. This is Geoff and his buddies First elk hunt, it is Not the first hunt of the group they will be hunting with. As I stated, he has no idea what the conditions will be where he will be hunting. If a person goes back thru and reads Geoff's posts some points stick out to me:
I am probably wrong but that statement leads me to think that the hunt is going to be done either in black timber or aspen groves, not in opoen parks or sagebrush flats.
That statement leads me to believe their not going to be roughing it a whole lot and hunters are not just going to be off doing their own thing. The bits and pieces I am gathering from Geoff's posts, his hunt is going to be like a guided hunt done out from a bunkhouse, not a drop camp. No Drummomd, I think all of the advice that you and everyone else gave is perfect for someone doing their first D-I-Y hunt in the Rockies. That ain't the case here. Geoff and his buddy are going into a camp with experienced hunters hunting in an area they are both familiar with and successful in. I maintain that Geoff and his buddy, since they were invited on this hunt, play along with the already established SOP by this group and enjoy themselves on this first hunt and then figure out what they liked/did not like about it and plan a hunt of their own for the future. Somehow, I do not see any profit in a hunter going on a first time hunt for anything, with an established group that has done the hunt before and has a system that works, with equipment or ideas that are possibly 180 degrees opposite of what the group has been doing. To me that is the fast track for never getting invited back. So Drummond you and anyone else that has enough of an ego to think that I am putting down the advice you have given, your wrong, I am not. All I am saying is that for this first hunt, Geoff and his buddy need to go along as part of the team and see how the group plays the game instead of coming in trying to be wild cards. Just My Opinion whether you like it or agree with it or not. Even the rocks don't last forever. | |||
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GeoffM24, Just returned from my archery hunt in the Flat tops.Here are a few things I learned. 1. Don't overdress in the morning better to be a little cold at the start.Take something in your pack to put on later if need be. 2. Start Early we were walking up the mountain at 4:30 AM. Walking in 3 to 6 miles a day. 3. Take a pair of Gaiters the grass is lush and wet and you'll be wet from the knees into your boots very quickly. They are also great in snow. 4. Take good Binos the Elk were hard to find this year but we were into Elk everyday. Hope your hunt is a good one. | |||
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I hunt in the same area a little later in the season and the advice here is pretty good. Your group may have a great spot and everything worked out as described but it is nice to be prepared in case things aren't "normal". A poly underwear top medium woll pants and light windbreaker and super light ball cap is typically what I wear to start out a hike up to a hunting spot in as low as 5-10 degrees but I'll pack a light vest, a heavier cap or beanie with face mask and a jacket to layer when it's time to sit. That layering stuff really works on a mountain hunt on foot when it might be 65 or 15 degrees in ths same afternoon. Good boots, an accurate rifle, decent binoculars, enough water are the essentials. Little things like chapstick with sun block, high calorie snacks make a difference in comfort. Waterproof layers, flagging tape, small compass or GPS have a pretty good return for the little bit of space and weight to carry them. But since the biggest mistake of first time Elk hunter is packing too much stuff and dressing too warmly it is hard to fault your original groups advice. The challenge of packing an elk out is hard to explain to deer hunters since you have 3 deer laying there in one animal if you kill a good bull and you may be doing it at 10,000 ft to add to the enjoyment. Get the hide off the animal and hang the meat in as shaded an area as possible, even in snow they can spoil if you can't get it all out the same day. Enjoy yourself - I tell every hunter to try an elk hunt before they get too old and fat to really enjoy it. The country is beautiful and the exercise is enough to make you want to stay in shape all year. | |||
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What about an update on this one. Did the OP do the hunt and if so how did things turn out???? Even the rocks don't last forever. | |||
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I was going to post when I got back but then I decided to cool off a little before posting. Let me start off by saying that the information on here proved to be nothing short of CRUCIAL on this hunt. After the first morning my roommate from college and I were on our own and not on speaking terms with the "experts" by the end of the hunt. Let me start at the beginning. Two days prior to the flight out my former coworker (Tony) who would be flying out with me and my former roommate from college (Pat) informs me that he let his FID card lapse and couldn't get a new one prior to the flight. This is par for the course for Tony. Naturally the TSA at the airport asks him if he has a valid FID in this State of residence and he lied and said yes, lucky for him she didn't ask to see it. The three of us flew out a couple days early to get used to the altitude as recommended here (great advice). It is at this point that my former coworker informs me that he just lists his FID card number for his Hunter Safety course number to apply for his Colorado license and hopes he doesn't get checked because he has neither. An FID is not a hunter safety course and does not meet the requirements. He feels it is ok because he has been doing it for 5 years now, I just shake my head. We get to the cabins and check in and everything goes smoothly, we are the first out of the ten person hunting party to arrive. We talk with the Cabin owner who used to be an elk guide and he mentions the season has been tough with the hot weather (it was REAL hot the first 2 days). He said the Elk were down low on the private ranches and way up on top of the mountain. The cabin owner would prove to be exactly correct. My gut tells me he's right as I have had trouble with warm weather hunts in the past. The day prior to the hunt the 3 of us go out scouting. My former coworker brings a beer with him, not my style but no guns, no problem. He is showing us the areas to head up in the morning and some of the spots where Elk have been taken in the past. He finishes his beer and throws the can on the ground. I look at my roommate Pat and shoot him a look saying (really, he's just going to throw his beer can on the ground). I pick it up and we continue scouting. At the end of the scouting as we are heading down I say "hey what happened to that beer can?", without hesitation he says "I crushed it and put it in my pocket", to which I replied "I'll give you $100 for that beer can" This was met with silence. After the scouting trip we were planning our opening morning and since my roommate from college and I were very gung ho we wanted to get out good and early. My former coworker resisted this as it "wasn't how they did it". Something wasn't adding up here. We thought nothing more of it until John (the guy who has been going for 18 years) shows up late the night before opening day. He comes to our cabin after dark urging us not to go out so early; against out better judgment we agree to go out a little later. We also mention to John what the cabin owner had said about the Elk and the weather, John quickly shoots his theory down as nonsense and says “he is just a hotelier what does he know”. Opening morning finally comes and we head out full of excitement. We can actually hear the Elk bugling in on a private ranch as we get out of the truck. We start a trek up the horse trail to our scouted out area. We make good time till we come to the ridge we are going to climb up. We start climbing this very steep hill with no trail making lots of noise. This is bad, very bad I think to myself. The wind is hitting us in the face as we climb and I know anything below us will scent us and anything above will get spooked by the noise of fighting the hill. Eventually we get 1/4 of a way up the mountain and spread out to set up. The plan is to sit till 1/2 hour after sunrise and then stalk hunt. Again this isn't my style but what John has recommended we do. We don't see anything all day but 2 guys in the party shoot cows. At the end of the day I smell a rat and start asking questions as I put together what the hell is going on here. To cut a long story short John and a couple of the other guys are dropping in above us and setting up on clearings they can get to quicker, easier, quieter, and faster than us on a different trail. They HAD US BIRD DOGGING for them!!!!! They were using us to move the Elk to them! My former coworker is not an experienced hunter and never put two and two together after 5 trips with John and his crew even though he has never shot an Elk and any of his trips. Needless to say my roommate and I are not bird dogging for anyone. At this point Pat and I go out on our own. The rest of the group only hunts mornings. After inquiring numerous times about this the reason trickles out, evening hunts cuts into beer drinking and bullshitting which is fine if that is what your there for. We decided to hunt the morning in our own spot off a different horse trail, take break midday and then go back out in the evening. This is when the story gets good. We hunt the morning and afternoon and don’t see anything but felt much better about how we were hunting. We talked to my former coworker Tony prior to going out on our afternoon hunt and he said he took a “neck shot” at a cow but missed. Tony is not a good shot and a neck shot at an Elk standing in front of tree is not smart but we thought nothing more of it. That evening after dinner Pat and I were enjoying a beer at our cabin and thinking about the next day’s hunt when John and one of the other guys from the hunting party come over to us. He asks us how the hunt went and we told him we didn’t have any luck but did see 3 huge Elk taken off the Flat Tops about 5 miles in by a couple outfitters. He snaps back with a snide comment about that’s fine if you want to spend $7,000 on a hunt. We then proceeds to tell us that Tony shot an Elk and wounded it and Tony told John that we wouldn’t help him look for it. He then starts to call us scumbags for not helping Tony and we stop him right there and say “what the hell are you talking about, we didn’t even hunt with Tony today and were off the mountain at the time he supposedly shot this Elk” At this point John doesn’t know what to say because he was all fired up to rip us a new one and we literally had no idea what he was talking about. It was obvious at the point that Tony had lied about looking for the Elk at all but John was so far in he tells us where the group is hunting tomorrow and tells us we are not welcome there. Pat and I just look at each other stunned with that “what the fuck just happened” look. Quickly that passes and I want to kill somebody. I’m so furious I’m shaking. Pat clams me down and tells me he knows how to handle it. A few days later we cornered Tony and asked him what the hell was going on. He was scared shitless and came up with some bullshit story about seeing something on a log where he thought the Elk might have been shot and wasn’t sure if it was piss or blood. Can you believe that bullshit!! My guess is he didn’t look at all for a wounded Elk and when John started quizzing him on how he looked for it he got caught in one lie after another that somehow involved us! At this point Pat and I continue to hunt on our own climbing from 7,500 at the base to 9,500 to 10,000 feet looking for Elk. The problem is with the heat the Elk are going high into the cold mountains or staying on the private ranch down in the valley. At points I can see 250 Elk, I hear them bugle at night but there is nothing I can do since there is no pressure on the private ranch in the valley and the Elk wisely stay there. The scenery was wonderful and the workout was top notch, thank god I had Pat with me as we get along perfectly. As the week ticked by the guys with the outfitters were bringing in Elk because they could get in farther and faster and had great scouting info. Even before the hunt I knew this was the way to go but these guys swore they did it hard core and hiring an outfitter wasn’t real hunting. Well here are a few things about how these “real” hunters in this group of 10 hunt. 1) They only pack out 80-100 pounds of the best meats not even gutting the Elk. Not only is this disgusting, lazy, wasteful, and morally wrong but it is illegal. 2) They have poached bears without licenses in the past here and one did get caught 3) They just want to shoot something and shoot it fast so they can drink 4) They have never taken an Elk skin down the mountain, too heavy So much for “real” hunters. Pat and I met some great other hunters in Camp from Texas, Colorado and elsewhere and we had a great experience on our own in some gorgeous country but I will say these bad hunting experiences do sour my desire to spend the money and take the time off to deal with hunting camp bullshit. I have done a wide variety of hunting and everywhere I go I tire of the “we are real hunters, ______hunters take the easy way out”. A couple of years ago on a bow hunt for deer the camp kept going on and on about how rifle hunters weren’t real hunters and could kill whatever they want out to 800 yards. Personally I like all kinds of hunting and they all offer pros and cons. I tell yeah I’m growing real tired of this infighting in the hunting world about who is a real man or not. Bottom line for me is that to do it right you really need to hire an outfitter that knows an area you are not familiar with, you need to do your own research (thanks again to AR) because many times the “experts” you end up with are anything but, and having a drama free hunting camp is much harder to find then it should be. | |||
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Many Thanks for the update, and am sorry that your first hunt ended up that way. One of the reasons I have never went on a big game hunt with a group, is from the stuff I have seen in deer camps here in Texas. I was pretty hard on you, becaiuse I have seen new guys come into a camp with all sorts of ideas, and things go to hell really fast. You did gain some valuable, although costly knowledge. You are correct about dropping the money for a guided hunt, a reputable guide/outfitter has an established system that works. A loosely knit group of guys doing a hunt usually results in all of the "Old Hands" getting game while the newbies work their ass off. You also found out, again in a costly and painful way, that some folks try and talk a good line, when in actuality thei concept of hunting either skirts legality or completely crosses the line into illegal actions. Hope your next hunt will be better. Even the rocks don't last forever. | |||
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Geoff - Sorry to hear it bro, but at least you spent some quality time, in a beautiful place, with a good friend! I haven't gutted an elk that I've had to pack out, in years! No reason for it, at all. Getting all the meat, including the tenderloins, can easily be done without ever removing the guts. | |||
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Right on about not gutting them anymore. I have not gutted one in many years and because of its location, the moose that I shot this year was not gutted either. My Newfie guide was not used to doing it as they usually gut them first, but I told him the way that I like to do it and we just jumped in! | |||
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Man I gotta look into this no-gutting thing! Sounds a whole lot easier. Sorry the hunt didn't work out man, it was a tough year all over the state. My camp was totally skunked. I only saw 4 cows in 9 days of fairly hard hunting. Totally understand what you mean about guys saying they "hunt hard" when it actuality its a hard morning, followed by lots of beer and football games. I'm NOT a football fan, that is probably one part of hunting season I don't look forward to each year, having to put up with the games. Meh, oh well. If you think every possible niche has been filled already, thank a wildcatter! | |||
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If they are talking about the same thing I am thinking about, it really is easy. Instead of making the cut up the chest and belly, start at the tail and cut up the back all the way to the head/neck. Then just start working the hide down over the hams/back straps/shoulders. Dis-joint the hams at the joint in the pelvis, cut the shoulders off, cut out the back straps, then reach in and take out the tenderloins. Once you do it a time or two it gets really easy and quick. Even the rocks don't last forever. | |||
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Unless you are in Alaska. Then add, "Take out all the rib meat and neck meat." | |||
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Hey neck meat makes good burger and stew meat! If you think every possible niche has been filled already, thank a wildcatter! | |||
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We also are required to take the neck meat, obviously that's easily done without removing the guts. | |||
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Aaron maybe some day I'll finally sell one of these spare kidneys and I'll book a hunt with you, then you can show me first hand  If you think every possible niche has been filled already, thank a wildcatter! | |||
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The Accurate Reloading Forums THE ACCURATE RELOADING.COM FORUMS Hunting American Big Game Hunting Going to Colorado for first elk hunt, looking for advice.
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