One tip for OTC Colorado
Elk
If you could give one tip for hunting OTC in Colorado what would it be.
Find some elk before you start "hunting" elk.
Ditto greg simon...
Hunt where the elk are, not where they have been or where you think they should be.
Try your best and be satisfied with the understand that the experience my be your only reward
Allow yourself plenty of time(hunting days). You're probably going to move.
Do not bugle, very few cow calls. Over calling will kill you in a populated hunting unit. Get in close, and wait. Calling is overrated and not needed to kill elk, unless you are in a good low pressure draw unit.
Beg, borrow or steal any extra days you can. Time is a giant multiplier when it comes to killing elk with a bow.
Do plenty of map recon, and scouting if possible, and have plans A, B, C and D.
Don't assume you have to "bivy" in 7 miles to find elk.
Find the sweet spot that is farther from the parking lot than the day-hunters wanna go, but closer to the parking lot than the horseback hunters wanna be.
I agree with every one of these guys...all the advice above has worked for me!
Be prepared for lots of hunters. Scouting is worthless in easily accessible areas as the hunting pressure will change everything once the season opens. Remember you are competing with small game hunters, bear hunters, muzzle hunters, turkey hunters,etc. I think long term experience in a particular area makes all the difference in OTC and new spots can be very disappointing because you have no idea about the pressure until the season starts. Just my two cents.
We will also be hunting wilderness area. Planning to get in 2-4 miles and stay overnight a few times. Our hunt is the 12th - 20th of September. Looks like we will atleast have the moon on our side.
Enjoy yourself. Have real expectations for an otc hunt. Expect the unexpected, with that many hunters in a given area your bound to see some things that will make you laugh and even amaze you. I always do. Shoot the first legal elk that you have a shot on unless your hunting for the whole month than MAYBE pass on a few that are below your expectations.
Start your hunt NOT at a trailhead. Stop along the road before then. Hike across a stream and then uphill for a hour or more(all uphill). Unless there is a road on the backside you will almost be alone.....
i have hunted Colorado otc four times and nothing ever happened the way I thought it would. be prepared to make adjustments, total adjustments.
Look around, take it all in, and have fun!
Be prepared to move - possibly to another unit. If there are not elk where you are hunting, you are wasting your time. As has been said previously - go to the elk (typically where there are fewer people).
For me and a lot of the guys I hunt with, 2-4 miles in is still pretty close to the truck... Morning or afternoon run in-and-out just to see if there are any elk there.
Be extremely mobile, and use your tire rubber more than your legs. Hit different areas from a base camp, and be prepared to move base camp if needed. If you find elk to far to hunt on foot form base, THEN pack inn closer.
Biggest mistake most noobies make is to do what you plan to do. (Hike blindly into a wilderness area 2-4 miles and hunt from there).
Plan on the wind swirling. That means move slowly until you can move quickly. Noise doesn't matter, scent is a stalk ender.
Jaquomo:
"Be extremely mobile, and use your tire rubber more than your legs. Hit different areas from a base camp, and be prepared to move base camp if needed. If you find elk to far to hunt on foot form base, THEN pack inn closer.
Biggest mistake most noobies make is to do what you plan to do. (Hike blindly into a wilderness area 2-4 miles and hunt from there)."
Received the exact same advice on my first elk hunt. Arrowed my bull on day seven in the 3rd area hunted that week. Yes, we moved base camp twice the first week. Both of us tagged out in that 3rd location.
stay mobile. do not commit yourself to an area by hiking in to get away from the crowds unless you know the area holds elk the day you are hunting and you have scouted and patterned them. Don't spend one minute hunting an area unless you have steaming sign and a lot of it.
Don't get discouraged by elkless days. They will be many
Have access to the internet by Sept 30th so you can buy a WY preference point after your hunt.
IKE :> Just follow lou :>
Anybody following me had better have a full tank of gas and be ready to drive 30 miles over bad roads to relocate after a morning hunt.
Last season in my new area I'd identified (via maps and satellite) and pre-scouted ten different spots on the ground during the summer. Most of those were rejected after the season started due to hunter pressure or no elk.
This season, four of my six "hot spots" are places I found on the fly last year by patterning other hunters. My hot spots are .5 - 1.5 miles from roads, scattered over about 400 square miles. Hunters are much easier to pattern than elk. Once I figure them out, I find elk.
I agree with everything above. Get to know the area you are hunting and do not discouraged after a year or two of bad luck. Once you know an area, let hunting pressure work in your favor and get into the areas the elk will escape to and wait. More times than not, you will hike less and the other guys around you will do the grunt work.
Mike
Don't - draw a general tag in WY.
Blinds and treestands - using whitetail tactics - can and do work! Find elk first... then hunt....
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X-2 on following Lou around! Now that I know what his rig looks like and approximately where he lives, come Aug 29 I'll be keeping watch from a safe distance. I just hope I don't cross his path while he's manscaping ;)
Jaquomo,
Patterning other hunters...finding out where they're concentrated, and then hunting elsewhere?
"Hunters are much easier to pattern than elk. Once I figure them out, I find elk."
I give that one quote of the year to this point.
Don't over call. Seems like it's getting harder and harder to call bulls in, now we just locate bugle and then sneak in on them. have fun. good luck
Don't get drunk the night before opener or your head will explode at 8000'.
Don't pass on any legal elk.
PAbowhunter, exactly. And if you're really lucky the Google Earth time slider will show you a view taken in September. In one of my areas I was able to mark all the camps and parked trucks from September 8th of the previous season, then plot them on a map. Great eye opener.
I've never done Colorado OTC, but a friend does it a lot. He told me he studies maps to find the highest "roads" possible, drives to the end, packs back in, and starts his hunt.
Now, this fella is in great shape, and a damn good hunter. He avows to the old "a week to find em, and a week to hunt em" theory.
He never calls, instead glasses and patterns as best as possible. Says he hunts them pretty much like whitetails...sets up between bedding and feeding areas, and goes from there.
He's taken some real dandies in Colorado and New Mexico, and works his butt off in the process. I've seen his results...impressive.
If I don't find elk in two days I move on. Can't imagine spending a week to try to find them.
A week to hunt them in the transition areas after I find them, sure.
If you go a day without seeing or hearing them, move on. I can't remember many days where I didn't see or hear an elk. Seeing them could be a long ways off but if I don't see or hear them I'm in the wrong spot.
Also, a wet week can make elk turds look fresh when they have already left due to pressure.
No see, no hear, out of here.
Thanks for clarifying, Jaquomo. Funny, on my first hunt in 2012, I did have September 2011 imagery, taken during the muzzy overlap I believe. I used it to tell me where I could camp, coming the whole way from PA. I probably should have used it to tell me where not to camp!
I agree, don't set up camp that far in unless you KNOW elk are in there.Be more mobile at first.You could try driving some forest roads at night letting out locator bugles to find elk a lot of people miss.And you can almost be sure its not another hunter bugling back at you.You can do the same along trails by going in early in the dark and working your way into the area you found on maps I would always have 3 different spots in mind at minimum.Found my best odds at a kill always came first 2 days I got into the elk.After that they seem to wise up,and I go look for another group to hunt a few days HAVE MORE THEN ONE OPTION
elk will be were elk will be !! many great looking hot spots on goggle earth that come up empty ,think outside the box ive seen elk at 6,000 and at alpines
Watching this one closely. If I go another year without drawing a tag I might self destruct! I hVe been hesitant to spend the money in a CO tag because of a bad experience I had hunting there 25 years ago. Never saw an elk! It's time to give CO another chance I think.
Co has excellent website to look up population,hunter density and harvest numbers.If I were the 2 of you I'd go on there and pick a unit and give it he11.Worse case is you'll have a mountain vacation.Best case is finding a great spot for when you don't draw other places.Either scenario is better then work.
Just be careful with the CO website. The population densities include huge herds that stay in private ranches, the success percentages include said ranches, and the small random sampling-extrapolation gives absurdly skewed success rates in some areas.
My unit has always been 7-8% archery success for the past 25 years. Suddenly it jumped to 23% in one year. In 25 days of hunting I never saw an elk in a camp, only personally know of two hunters who killed elk, one cow a and one raghorn, yet it's supposedly one of the top areas in the state now?
Your right, that's just a start point then some required map reading.I would consider the guy who offers his service on here;start your hunt.May shave some years off of figuring out a unit,and he gives different areas to check out
