I would like to hunt Colorado for Elk or Muleys. Any advice for a first timer on hunting the upper elevations?

My advice is for rifle elk hunting. I have no advice for archery or muzzle loader hunting, as I do not personally know about those kinds of hunting.

You will need to select a game management unit (GMU) and a hunting season. You should make these selections with a good understanding of where elk are at different times of year and whether there are sufficient public lands where the elk will be. Elk like to be up high, at or just below tree line, until snow drives them down off the mountains. Elk are driven down off the mountain maybe between the third week of October and the 1st week of November. Please confirm this timing with others before you rely on it. The movement down the mountain is referred to sometimes as elk migration: it just means the elk are moving down off the mountain to their winter yard, wherever that may be. Of course, you will also want to select a GMU that is known to hold sufficient quantities of elk. A good place to begin your investigations is to buy the Colorado Big Game CD that is available for purchase from the Colorado Division of Wildlife. This CD should give you information on numbers of animals killed in different GMUs as well as draw rates. I personally prefer the first rifle season -- which is an elk only season. During the first elk rifle season you may have the best chance to hunt undisturbed elk, at least opening morning. Typically, elk are at between 10500' and 12000' elevation during this first Colorado rifle season. The non-resident fee for either sex elk is $550 last I checked.

A variety of rifles and cartridges will work well for elk. .30-06 shooting 180 grains is a very successful round. More powerful rounds than .30-06 are used with success. Some use .270 shooting 150 grain bullets with success. Be prepared to handle the large size of an elk if you kill one. A bull will weight more than 450 LBS; a cow will weigh more than 300 LBS. You don't drag these animals out like you might a deer: you field dress it, skin it, and cut it into manageable portions right there. If you are going to carry it out yourself, try not to shoot your elk 1000' down a steep hill from your truck or in the middle of a nightmare field of blown down timber. I won't be easying getting the elk out of such places. Carry a couple of sharp knives with you -- two in case the first one breaks. Carry a good bone saw to saw off the antlers as required by the hunting regulations. If you are packing your meat out yourself, you will of course need some sort of pack. I use the Bullpak with satisfaction, but no doubt there are other suitable packs.

The weather ranges from 15 degrees to 60 degrees in the best weather you will see at hunting altitude in the first rifle season. If the weather is poor, it can be 20 degrees cooler than that. Snow is always possible. In three seasons of elk hunting in Colorado I have never seen rain, but that doesn't mean it can't happen. Wear clothes for layering. When you are hiking up hill to your ambush site, you will shed clothes. When you have sat for an hour in the cold or as night falls, you are going to get cold and will need to put clothes back on. Have a warm hat and gloves. Wear stout boots. You can expect to do a lot of walking on rough ground.

Carry sunglasses. Mountain sunlight has a lot more ultraviolet in it than at sea level. If you have any snow, that light is really going to bombard your eyes. Carry lip balm. Many people try to camp close to their hunting grounds so they can more easily walk in before first light. You will need to plan a camp. Alternatively, you might stay in a hotel in town and drive to the trailhead.

As for the elk hunting itself. Elk are prey species -- preditors want to eat them. They are very cautious generally. Thus, they will eat only at first and last light and will bed during the middle part of the day in some good protective cover. You might look for a bedding area that is along a flat part of a ridge that is not too far away from open pastures. Elk are big animals and hence eat a lot. Additionally, elk tend to congregate. It takes a good sized piece of pasture to feed 15-35 elk. You will want to do a lot of hiking to find elk sign when hunting -- unless you are lucky and know where they are from the get go. Because elk congregate, it may be that all the elk in a 10 square mile area are located in some particular 10 acre piece of that area and nowhere else. Unlike deer, elk do not distribute themselves uniformly over ever square mile of ground.

If you know any elk hunters, ask them for advice. If you can get yourself invited to join an elk camp, that would be the best solution. Do not be afraid to do this. Probably most people get started in elk hunting like this. If you are invited, be on your best behavior: carry your share of the camp chores, clean up after yourself, pay your share of the costs, be cheerful. This good behavior may go a long ways toward getting you reinvited next hunt.

Everyone has to start somewhere. I'm sure a first time elk hunter feels intimidated and has uncountable questions. It isn't an insurrmountable problem. You learn one thing at a time.

Oh, I just about forgot. If you actually end up going on such a high altitude elk hunt, you will want to be in excellent physical condition. If you are overweight, you better change that. If you have never hiked vigorously in the mountains above 11000', it would be worth your while to go find out what that is like. It is hard to convince people how difficult a challenge that physical environment is. Get your weight down near the BMI value of 25 or less for your height. Do aerobic conditioning and strength exercises. The main objective is to build endurance. An elk hunt is hard work and goes on for days. It isn't enough to hunt hard one day only. You may need to hunt hard 5 days and then have a bonus 2 extra days of hard work to perform if you take an elk on your last day hunting. Do not expect to be in good enough condition to avoid being out of breath sometimes. That will happen notwithstanding. You want to be able to keep going out day after day without just giving it up. I find that walking is good exercise, just takes longer than running to get an equivalent workout. I do both: I walk 2.2 miles everyday, sometimes twice per day. Then I run every other day. On intervening days I do strength exercises: sit-ups, squats, lunges, bicep curls, sit-ups, wrist-curls, and a variety of odd exercises that I don't know a common name for. I also climb the 7 flights of stairs to my office twice a day when preparing for an elk hunt.

Once you go elk hunting you will become addicted. It is the most exciting hunting I've ever done. And elk meat is EXCELLENT eating. I made some elk backstraps this past Saturday night for my wife, teenage daughter, and me. There weren't any left overs.

Very well said "loki". Spoken like a person who has actually been there and done it, everything said is spot "on".
I would just re-emphasize the physical conditioning. The more you can be in shape for "steep" off camber ankle twisting hiking off trail at high altitude the better off you'll be. This doesn't mean go to the gymn and bulk up this means get in great all around shape. You'll thank yourself if you do.
Once again "loki" well thought out and well said.

+1

quote:

I would like to hunt Colorado for Elk or Muleys. Any advice for a first timer on hunting the upper elevations?

Just a couple of questions. Have you applied for a tag before/do you nhave any prefernce points for elk or mule deer? Are you looking at doing a D0-It-Yourself hunt or booking with an outfitter/guide?

I do not know if the information is accurate or not, but I have read that for 2013 elk tags were going to change over to draw only, like mule deer tags are. Has anyone else heard or read anything about this?

Be in shape. especially if you are from a low elevation locale.

i live at 6500 feet and start hunting elk at bout 8,000 feet and go up from there.

during the deer hunt my m.o. was to hit the canyons near here.
walk up a mountain and glass all the next drainage, circle around hiking and glassing back down to the road then hike or hitch back to the vehicle.
drop down the road to the next canyon then do the same thing.
we hit 2-3 a day for 12 straight days.
took 8 days straight 2 busted stalks [and a missed shot by the girl] to finally get my deer.
40 yds from the road. [siiiigh] on the way back out.
it took another 4 days to finally get my girls deer.
colorado is about the same only south of here.
hunting the western and southwestern side of the state will increase your odds of getting a deer/elk [maybe not a huge one but getting one]

All elk tags will be by draw only when the current 5 year plan ends which is 2015.

Excellent advice so far. One thing I would stress is giving yourself time to adjust to the elevation. I live at 6000 feet but when you hit that 9000 to 10000 band it really zaps you. 12000 feet is rare air and serious problems can occur. Good luck to you.

Want to shoot a big muley? Either start stacking points and be ready to hunt after about 2 more elections years, or be ready to drop some serious dough for a land owner tag through an outfitter.

Most of whats been posted about elk already is good advice. Although be ready for that to be all completely wrong as well. You can read every book/article/magazine ever printed on elk, and the info will be true....if the weather is right. Colorado is all about the weather all year long, and the weather in your season. Last week I went from near 70 degrees on opening day, rain, snow, to a -6 morning 3 days later, to consistent 20 degree days. This happened in the span of 4 days. Figured with a long hot summer and low water the elk would be up high. Nope, they were down low, and there was a TON of green all over the place with water everywhere.

Be ready to walk. Best way to prepare is find a personal trainer for a while, and have him teach you about HIIT. You can build up to walking all day long, but it only helps a little when you are making hikes that go a few thousand feet in elevation, in only a few hundred yards as the crow flies.

Not trying to rain on your parade, just saying, there will be a lot of work involved to make a good, memorable, fruitful hunt. But you are on the right track asking people more then a few days before you leave lol be surprised how often that happens

quote:

Originally posted by BighornBreath:
All elk tags will be by draw only when the current 5 year plan ends which is 2015.

I'm pretty sure this has been proven to be a rumor and nothing more. Colorado makes too much money on over the counter elk tags and the elk herd is not under any threats. When they put all the deer tags on quota it was because the deer herd was in serious decline. And this is not the case for elk.

Because Colorado sells over the counter elk tags, many non-residents go there when they cant draw in other states. They by elk tags for over $400 a pop. The DOW needs that money to operate and isn't going to kill that golden goose off.

Thanks to everyone for sharing their experiences and for all your recommendations and I apologize for not responding sooner. I've got 2 Mauser customs in the works and got sidetracked. I appreciate every reply. At 58 years old, I'm not sure I can go through what it takes to be successful on an elk hunt. I'm about 45# overweight and am on high blood pressure meds for a heart condition. The ol' ticker is kept in check so I'm not a walking time bomb or anything. But, all things considered, I'm thinking that for my first ever "special hunt", I might be better suited to hunting for Muleys at lower elevations and am probably going to consider a 3-4 day muley hunt through an outfitter. I'm informationally challenged at this point with respect to outfitters and I have to say that I'm concerned about being "surprised" after I get to the camp. After 58 years, one tends to get a little gun shy in the trust department. No pun intended of course. So, I suppose my amalgamation of all this talk would be that I want to "treat myself" to something special after all these years of white tail hunting locally here in Pennsylvania. Does anyone out there have first hand experience with a certain outfitter that they have used extensively that can do the "heavy lifting" so to speak. Colorado, Wyoming, whatever..... I would probably want to donate a good bit of the meat since my Wife won't eat venison. She'll just have to go out for dinner alone when I savor the backstraps and chops. All help appreciated. Again, my most sincere thanks.

the majority of my deer are ground into burger with beef suet added in.
the loins and back straps are about all we cut into anything.
i make some of the burger into jerky myself which is super simple and good too.
an outfitter is a good way to go if you don't wanna or can't do the effort.
your chances go up a lot.
hunting public land out west isn't easy,there are a lot of road hunters,campers,and competition.
before the rifle hunts even start, the bow hunts have gone on for a month.
and logging/wood cutting could be going on at anytime before or during the hunt.

If possible, get there a day or two early, let your body become used to the altitude before you exert yourself.

Drink plenty of water, even if you don’t think you are thirsty, keep hydrated.

Stop and rest often, don’t let yourself become exhausted and out of breath. If you do, when you are huffing and puffing and trying to catch your breath, a big bull will step out and stand there laughing at you, and you won’t be able to hold your rifle steady enough to hit him. (I know this from experience)

Keep an eye on the weather, in the Rocky Mt.s, it can go from warm and sunny to a freezing white out blizzard in about 15 minuets, and if your caught miles from camp in a T-shirt and tennis shoes, you will freeze. (I know this from experience)

To find elk, cover lots of ground, the best way to do this is with a pair of binoculars. If you are not seeing fresh elk sign, move to a different Mountain or drainage. Keep moving and glassing till you find them, THEN start hunting them

Many thanks to Lamar and Anaconda for more information. I appreciate the input. CB

quote:

Originally posted by custombolt:
I would like to hunt Colorado for Elk or Muleys. Any advice for a first timer on hunting the upper elevations?

Something else you may consider. I see you say you are overweight and not in great shape in a later post. You might want to consider a Wyoming pronghorn antelope hunt. You can hunt them at relatively low altitude, about 3,000 feet. The effort is not nearly as great. The success rate is very high. Just something else to throw in your thoughts. If that interests you, post a separate query about how to do a DIY pronghorn hunt in Wyoming. I'm sure you would get many posts. Key is selecting a unit with many antelopes AND public land. On the other hand, you can also get an outfitted hunt for maybe about $1,500-$2,000. Often one just stays in a hotel and the guide picks you up and takes you out to where they know there are some pronghorn antelope present and where they already have cleared access with land owners.

Well I am 47, and a few more pounds overweight than Custombolt, but I just got back from the 2nd rifle season in Montrose, Colorado.

I went with a group of guys, some local to the area, some from Texas, and we got to campsite the wednesday before opening day. We were at 9700 feet and the altitude was a serious issue for this fatboy. My nose bled for the first 3 days for no reason, and omg the air was thin.
We set up tents, cut wood, and scouted for game.

Me and a couple others didnt get drawn to hunt cows in unit 61 like some of my friends, so we dropped about $615.00 on bull tags and ATV permits. We hunted unit 62.

The weather didnt exactly cooperate,it was warm and very windy the first 4-5 days, then cooled off (14 degrees) and a light snow. Where we hunted there was very little open area, it was as dense as a river bottom, but with aspens and pine.

I hunted with a good friend who had just retired from USAF and was in MUCH better shape than I. He walked miles and miles and saw some cows but no bulls. I averaged about 3 miles a day, and saw lots of sign and muleys, but no elk. I tried to hunt like I do in Texas; walk to crossing game trails and sit a spell, but that didnt work.

Across the road in unit 61 7 hunters in our cammp collected 4 nice cows, a muley doe, and the biggest black bear seen by me or the DOW this year. The other hunter missed a cow and was going back out the day we left.

I am hooked, and plan on entering in the draw for a cow this spring, and also know now I need to be in much better shape.

We both carried a compass and a GPS, and I never used the compass, but used the GPS everyday. We had large ALICE packs, Ron used his in the field and I used a small daypack and left my ALICE in the truck at trailhead. A small light you clip on ur cap or a light with headband is invaluable both in camp and in the woods.

Those who say to get with some locals or other hunters are spot on...I wouldn't have had nearly as nice a time if I had gone by myself or with one friend. There's too much work to do for one or two.

Even though we didnt see any bulls in unit 62, I'm going back, but want to hunt cows in 61.

They grilled the tenderloins of 2 elk one day with fried eggs and toast, and 9 starving elk hunters couldnt polish off the steaks. I was forced to take one with me in a sandwich for the evening hunt.

The list of rifles that killed in camp were a 308 marlin express, a 30-06, 7 Rem Mag, 300 H&H, and a 325 Win Mag.

Regards,
Eterry

ETerry,

Yea using those whitetail tactics don't always work on Western game. They're not quite as ingrained to stick to habits, times and routes as much as I read about whiteys doing. Now this last season we DID start to pattern some small groups of cows and likely a bull or two, but it was less sticking to a trail, and more sticking to a certain altitude and seeming to always be moving a clockwise circle around the mountain. But, setting up on various spots where we had seen sign, still didn't produce any results.

I've hunted elk for quite a few years now, both archery and rifle. For rifle I've been fortunate to fill my tag 7 out of 7 with an over the counter license. One thing I think is very important about that is to hunt in areas that 4 wheelers are NOT allowed, whether a state area or a wilderness area. We hunt along wilderness area boundaries and limited use areas that 4 wheelers and their like are not allowed. Makes a big difference in the amount of pressure the game receives. That said, over the last couple years we have gotten a little lazy as we've been building specialized equipment to take longer shots... Now I don't want to start a pissin match between hunting and shooting as I've shot elk at 40 yards, and a couple over 600, but is is a very effective method of harvesting western game. Of the 7 elk I've harvested with rifle, 5 were less than 150 yards. The other two were at 600 and 856 yards and in the last couple years along with a very good mule deer buck at a bit over 1000. Either way, all of them were in restricted areas that allowed foot or horse traffic ONLY. Getting them out is a real bitch, but I kind of look at it as paying your dues either before or after the shot...most often after.

Another thing to look at and this is very similar to whitetails, is to look at the north/west slopes as bedding cover (dark timber) and the quakies/openings as the feeding areas. The elk will move into those feeding areas overnight and it is very possible to intercept them in the early morning periods when they're not run all over hell by motorized traffic. Now all that is a little different if your hunting area is covered by nothing but scrub oak. In those situations we find a good vantage point on an opposite slope and do a ton of glassing. Typically we shoot the elk from that point and then spend the rest of the day killing ourselves getting across whatever drainage we shot across and packing the animal out...it's all part of the fun!

quote:

Originally posted by custombolt:
Does anyone out there have first hand experience with a certain outfitter that they have used extensively that can do the "heavy lifting" so to speak. Colorado, Wyoming, whatever.....

I'm sending you a PM with a recommendation for a Colorado outfitter that I and at least one other AR member have used for mule deer in Colorado. The hunt will fit the style you're looking for.

This is the "management" buck I tagged.

I see you're getting up there in years, just like me. Don't let the age thing deture you from an elk hunt. Elk can be found at lower altitudes as well as up high. If you decide to go to the higher elevations the main concern I see is altitude sickness. I live and was raised at 6000 ft. and have got sick at 10000 ft. Conditioning is a key factor but staying hydrated is the most important thing in my opinon. Try not to over work yourself while hunting.

If you get a mild case of altitude sickness you will feel drunk. Unsteady, shakey, and a headache from hell. If that happens, drink lots of water and get to a lower altitude as quickly as possible. You won't feel better untill you are at a lower altitude and hydrated and rested. Your Dr. can give you some pills that will help keep you from getting sick but you need to start them a few days before you go up.

I speak from expierence on this. I missed my son getting a big bull because someone was leading me off the mountain and into town because I was so sick. There has been some great advice given in this thread and I hope you get the chance to hunt elk, it's a great time.