Which is easier?
Colorado
Contributors to this thread:
I’ve been on 4 deer hunts. I’m 1 for 4, killing a meat buck. I’ve barely even seen any deer. Heck, I can’t even fill a doe tag!!!!
I’ve been on 5 elk hunts. I’m 3 for 5 and have been in range of elk on the other 2.
Are elk easier to find and kill than deer or am I just lucky? I even find elk on deer hunts, but for the life of me can’t find any decent bucks.
I did find some bucks in archery elk season and will be after them with rifle 3rd season this year, who knows if they’ll still be around 2 months later.
It may be the type of country you are looking for deer in. I can generally find bucks very quickly in the summer until they strip out about anywhere in western Colorado. With a little time I can usually find a few really nice ones. What kind of optics do you have?
Iv had deer hunts that were shooting fish in a barrel never really seen that with elk, and only ever didnt fill a deer tag once in my life lots of years ate elk tag soup though.
When I was a kid, there was a decent muley population basically everywhere we elk hunted. We have 150K - 200K less deer now.
What Glunt said. In the '70s there were deer all over in our elk area, some huge bucks. Now you can go years between seeing a buck during September.
Which makes you wonder why they have so many doe tags?
$$$$$$$$$ oh, and more $$$$$$$$$
I've hunted here 13 years and still haven't shot a mule deer. Admittedly, I have passed on a number of them that weren't big but apparently I suck pretty bad at stalking big ones! I've shot 3 elk in that same time frame (rifle). In general I'm very good at locating the species I don't have a tag for....
My guess is that CP&W is trying to cut down on the spread of CWD among mule deer, more than make $. Elk management is another story.
UCSD, I discussed this with CPW biologists. Its all about maintaining the preferred buck-doe ratio. Bucks are more susceptible to CWD and EHD and are hunted too. So if the preferred ratio is, say, 5:1 then they need to kill off more does than the estimated buck mortality, but also taking into consideration fawn mortality.
Does any knowledgeable elk hunter feel bull elk are harder to hunt that a mature mulie? I know I sure don't. In the mountains anyway.
Notch another one. 3rd seaoson rifle deer. Deer 1, me 0. And of course I could have killed elk. It’s amazing the number of deer racks I see in the back of pickup trucks.
Someone new to muley populations could look at the CPW herd objectives, the current population and available tags and think things look ok.
I always assumed herd objectives were primarily driven by habitat carrying capacity. Our muley situation opened my eyes. In 1969 the harvest was 147,000 deer. 2016 was under 37,000.
"The good old days" is an over used saying but for those that didn't get to see Colorado's muley population in it's prime, it was pretty amazing. I caught the tail end of it and took it for granted.
Right there with Lou & Don, even in the early to mid 1980's Muledeer numbers were good, Ken Caryl Valley was the largest wintering/breeding grounds for Muledeer on the front range, not anymore! "The Good Old Days" are gone for now, probably for ever. I remember going with my Dad in early seventy's when he could get a sportsman's license, deer/elk/bear/mnt. lion all on one tag, you rarely seen elk, but tons of deer. And you rarely seen whitetail deer on the plains or river bottoms. Miss the old days, but with the growing human population in Colorado things are going to change even more, afraid not for the better either.
@uscdryder
Wanna shoot a deer? Ill give you some great 3rd season deer intel in trade for the location of the elk you saw :)
Bonus points if you can see my car. Double points since the picture is sideways!
Bonus points if you can see my car. Double points since the picture is sideways!
Brad I’ll gladly share. But you are part of the “hunt smarter, not harder” group. Unfortunately, I’m dumb too dumb to be part of that group and have come to the conclusion that the only way I can kill something is to almost kill my self first!!!
I found an almost land locked section of BLM that just crossed a main road. That was the way into it!
On a positive note I didn’t see another person or person track up there!