I'm sure I will be able to find plenty of reading materials on this but I would really appreciate you guy's opinions on this. My buddy and I will be going out to CO the last week of the archery season. I have the opportunity to go out solo during the first week of the season. This year the CO season starts August 26, quite early. I have a couple areas in mind, as I won't hunt the same turf as our last week trip for other reasons. One area has a big wallow nearly at the top of one mountain. Another area I have not been to but a friend of a friend has killed bulls there by sitting on game trails and has given us the locations.
My question is, if the bulls are not vocal this early in the year, which I assume is going to be the case, how do you locate elk? Is it simply a matter of glass, hike, look and smell? The areas are SUPER thick and we actually don't even bring binos usually as you can't see very far anyway. There are only like 3 open "parks" in the whole area. In mid Sept. we have found that the elk tend to feed in the creek bottoms between the mountains in the evenings and early in the morning they go back up the nastiest vertical sections of the mountains which take us half of a day to get up if we try.
One option, as a Midwest WT hunter, is to sit on that wallow or another one ALL day. I could do it as I do the same here for WT in November. It's painfully boring at times but I know it can pay off big. If I get there a couple days early I could hike in and set a trail camera on that wallow to tell me a few days later if sitting on it is worth it. Another option would be to hunt the creek bottoms early in AM and late PM, and hope I get to see some elk to try to stalk in on. The downfall is that makes for some long boring midday times.
So, how would you hunt northern CO the last week of August? Thanks for any advice.
I should stay home and work and just go out later with my buddy, which I will do regardless if I fill my tag or not, but I feel like a $600 tag deserves as much time as possible, especially since I have eaten 3 of them so far
My question is, if the bulls are not vocal this early in the year, which I assume is going to be the case, how do you locate elk? Is it simply a matter of glass, hike, look and smell? The areas are SUPER thick and we actually don't even bring binos usually as you can't see very far anyway. There are only like 3 open "parks" in the whole area. In mid Sept. we have found that the elk tend to feed in the creek bottoms between the mountains in the evenings and early in the morning they go back up the nastiest vertical sections of the mountains which take us half of a day to get up if we try.
One option, as a Midwest WT hunter, is to sit on that wallow or another one ALL day. I could do it as I do the same here for WT in November. It's painfully boring at times but I know it can pay off big. If I get there a couple days early I could hike in and set a trail camera on that wallow to tell me a few days later if sitting on it is worth it. Another option would be to hunt the creek bottoms early in AM and late PM, and hope I get to see some elk to try to stalk in on. The downfall is that makes for some long boring midday times.
So, how would you hunt northern CO the last week of August? Thanks for any advice.
I should stay home and work and just go out later with my buddy, which I will do regardless if I fill my tag or not, but I feel like a $600 tag deserves as much time as possible, especially since I have eaten 3 of them so far
