Frustrated and PO'd
Colorado
So, the Friday before elk opened we set up our pop-up camper in the unit where I have a moose tag. We only spent one quick night and went home to get the rest of our food and take care of some last minute chores before heading back in for scouting and the season. We had intended to be gone only 2-3 days. While home, something else came up. I hadn't seen my dad, who will be 90 on Sept. 10, for over a month, and didn't expect to see him until we got back from hunting. A few days after I last saw him, he went from his assisted living facility to the hospital for 6 days, where I couldn't visit due to the virus. From there, he needed to move to a nursing home and 14 days of quarantine. They were not allowing visits anyway. About a week after his quarantine ended, when we were getting ready to head back to camp, they started allowing visits by appointment. So we delayed a couple more days, so I could see him. The move from assisted living to a nursing home was pretty hard on an already frail guy.
So our camp sat empty for almost a week. When we got back to it, someone had slashed both tires on the camper! What kind of POS would do something like that!? There were other places to camp in the area close by, including one about 60 yards away with intervening trees between it and us. If you really want to be an A-hole, just camp right next to us, and we'd figure it out when we got back. Only a real cowardly scumbag would destroy someone else's equipment like that.
After spending the entire day chasing down a couple of tires, and changing them, we spent the next day resting and deciding what to do. We can't hunt AND guard the camp at the same time. We've been hunting and camping all over that area for over 45 years, and have NEVER had anything messed with. We always take a day or two off to get re-supplied and cleaned up once in a while.
We're back home now, to wait out the storm, and try to decide if a cow moose is worth hunting if we have to put up with morons like that.
You can't fix stupid.......or forktards who slash tires.
agreed, what the hell possesses people to just randomly destroy someone else's property? you can only hope that what goes around comes around on idiots like that.
Can you set up a trail camera?
I saw on a Colorado hunting Facebook group today a post where a guy came back to his truck after hunting all morning and somebody dumped human feces all over it.....
Could have been a lot worse given it was a pop-up. There's a whole different class of people hanging in the hills this year. Maybe this weather will drive them out.
This ain't the Colorado I moved to back in 1984. Once my kids are graduated, I'm leaving.
Sorry for your lost time, and $$. Hope your dad is doing ok.
Sick bastards.
Definitely not the same place as back in the 80’s where I would park my truck at a trailhead for a week with the keys in it and unlocked with no worries that anything would happen.
Hopefully bottomed out and everything will get better from here on out!
That sucks I'm hearing about a lot of these situations all over the state. With Covid and everything their are a lot of tools in the woods that would otherwise not be there. I'm with grasshopper as soon as my youngest graduates (six years) we are out of here.
This year has been the most crowded Ive ever seen the mountains. My plan A spot for the opener was in the Zirkel, I pulled into the trailhead and there were 27 trucks there the day before opener, so I moved to my plan B. I had to come back Friday to pick up my son so we could hunt over the weekend, and it took us almost 9 hours to get out near Meeker because of I-70 traffic....
Ziek, so sorry that a$$hat have effected your hunt...I hope that your Dad is doing well, set up a couple of trail cams around your camp and go get a moose. You've waited years for that tag and months in planning your hunt, don't let some a$$hat ruin your hunt!
You can always find another place to hunt. But you won't always get the time to visit you Dad. Hope he recovers and you get to spend many more valuable times with him.
As for the tire slashers, it has been mentioned in many other threads, ("Side arms in Colorado are for two legged varmits"!)
Probably just some high school kids I wont worry about it to much. It does suck but move on.
That stinks. Unfortunatly there are a few bad people everywhere. Can't do much unless they show up again. All you can do is handle the damage and get back to living as planned. If you stay home they get a win.
The woods were a mess this week with the holiday weekend. On another note, why would you take a crap 1 foot off the trail?
I have always left my camper the entire month of September and have only been there usually on weekends. I always have trail cameras (one I hide in a pretty obvious spot and some that are really hard to see). I have had a few people over the years check things out etc. I also pick camping spots not visible from the main road so they have to leave the road to see it and when they do I make sure one of my hidden cameras is set to lic. plate numbers etc.
IN 15 years doing this I have had a handful of people mess around, but never any real issue... One guy pulled in and had lunch and did not have a camp chair so he borrowed one i had stashed under the camper and then put it back. I saw him like 2 days later and said thanks for putting my chair back so it was dry...
I agree Colorado is not the same and it is getting exponentially worse... I am so happy I escaped before 2020 hit...
Seventeen years ago a friend from Louisiana and I were both parked at the same trailhead. While we were backpacked in and hunting, some sucker smashed my buddy's window and took all of the hunting/camping gear out of his truck. They left mine alone, even though it was parked right next to his and had much more inside. I had at least $2,000 worth of equipment in my truck and no tinted windows either! I guess you never know when it will happen to you. Sucks!
Tramper, out of state plates?
Might have been someone that knows you?
Exactly Tramper! Haha. Some people’s kids...
it's just really sad how bad some people suck.
what was it, just a couple years ago someone on here had stashed much of his gear up on the mountain only to find that someone had found it and stolen it all.
Thanks guys. I just needed to vent a bit, and warn others to be on guard. They would have had no idea whether we were hunting or just campers, and I have no idea who they were. But stuff like this is just symptomatic of way too many people vying for ever more limited space and resources, and the pervasive 'us vs them' mentality perpetrated by the fringes of both parties. We better learn to get along, or all this crap is just going to get worse. In a Democratic Republic, there is NO 'winner take all'.
Anyway, we are getting ready to head back up as soon as I can safely get my hard side travel trailer down our muddy dirt roads and off the mountain. Hopefully, we can find a place to camp near where I want to hunt. I'm not too concerned with finding a moose. I know the area really well, we've seen likely freezer fare on every trip up, and I have the only cow tag in the unit.
Good luck to everyone still at it.
Mike
We headed back up on Friday the 11th, and camped in a large dispersed camping area we had used in mid Aug. Since using it then, we now call it the porcupine camp, but that's another story. There were two more camps already there. A tent camp with a father/son ML elk and bear hunters who had no problem with us camping near them. And a travel trailer with no one around. They showed up just for the night the next day to collect their trailer and leave after completing their bow hunt.
Anyway, it took four days, and I killed a cow moose on 9/15. Eighteen yard shot, and about a 35 yard recovery, and most important, close to a road.
Congrats Ziek! And glad I'm not in CO adding to the hunter #s and competing anymore.
We did see broken into vehicles at popular hiking trailheads in the summer along I-70. A car next to us was broken into at Herman Gulch the last time we hiked it quite a few years ago.
Hope your dad gets well. And hope you find the sorry SOBs that damaged your tires. Don’t assume it’s other hunters. It might be anti hunters. Congrats on the moose.
Congrats Mister Mike! I took Della back to her home county in 07 . I hunt whitetails now with scouting and hunting I spend a lot of time in the country. I come to Colorado a couple times a year to visit 2 of my kids/families. I am glad I moved here where the pace of everything is a lot slower. Della finally life this world to wait for me and our dogs. After 18 years she deserved a rest from this world. I only miss hunting Elk but in the last six years before this year I came away discussed . Not seeing but a hand full each year. I am so glad that I got to hunt in the 70s and 80s . Was totally different then that after 2002. Good luck to you guys Mike& Cindy and all My CBA friends. Jim
Congrats on your success and well wishes to your dad. You are right that competition for camp spots is increasing esp since some NF supervisors have taken it upon themselves to decommission dispersed sites. Not all NF sups back hunters guys. That being said it is blatantly illegal to drop a camp or trailer in the NF and effectively "reserve" your spot then beat it back to the city and work. Your camp becomes abandoned and is subject to legal confiscation or salvage by a member of the public. You have to be actively occupying your camp under Federal Law. In the past we've dealt with such scenarios twice. Guys go into the mtns the weekend before and setup a crummy little kids tent and throw out a kids chair and think hell yeah I've got my spot. We come in 3 days prior to the opener, inspect it for the joke it is, fold it up and its on that nights fire or jammed under a log somewhere. They come rolling in Friday nite usually half drunk screaming were in their spot! Oh really? How do you figure that? They go away. Hilarious fun. Anyway don't dismiss the very real possibility it was the antis and not other hunters.
everyone I met this year in our campground were friendly first class people. hope your father does well. good luck
Geez, where I hunt in N. CO and S. WY it's common practice for people to set up campers and tents in dispersed sites up to two weeks before archery season and leave them there unattended. Then come and go throughout September and beyond. The "camping limit" is a myth and not enforced. I spoke to a NF supervisor this year and he confirmed there is a limit, but nobody bothers to enforce it.
Congrats on the moose, Mike!
Thanks guys.
I doubt it was a hunter(s). That area is also used by campers/partiers. A hunter, at least a serious one, would have just used another campsite. There were others in the area. The one I used, we call 'the room with a view', and it's a popular spot. We weren't even planning on using it when my moose hunt started, unless some cows moved into that area. It was a good place to glass some willow bottoms though.
Sounds more like western Maryland. Leave your truck or camper in the hills there for 2 hrs, and the truck will be on blocks.!!
