Question for next year - Hunting migrations

[ScreamingPotato]

So might not be the best first post, but gotta start somewhere. I went on my first DIY Elk hunt this year, well first Elk hunt ever. Didn't expect success, more of a scouting trip. I hunted 4th rifle season (Cow) in Colorado and the unit I got a tag for showed quite a bit of winter range. Unfortunately for me winter came pretty late, there didn't seem to be any Elk in the area and all the locals said they're still up high. Man I had an absolute blast though, every day put at least 5 miles on the boots with some days clearing 10+. I found several locations that were loaded with year-old Elk poo, they're obviously in this unit thick at some points but just not there yet. Last day of the hunt it snowed overnight pretty good. That afternoon I picked up tracks from what looked like a herd of 8-10 Elk moving through after the snow, followed that trail about a mile and decided they had too far of a jump on me and I wouldn't be catching up to them and went back to where I picked that trail up and kept moving on.

Anyhow, question for next year... Should I try to draw tags in the same unit and hope winter comes earlier next year, or should I look for a better option that provides more options for pre and post migration or switch to an earlier season where I know they'll be up high? It sure would be nice to hunt the same unit now that I'm really familiar with it.

 

[elkguide]

Welcome to the forum. Keep on hunting!

 

[ScreamingPotato]

Thanks.

Oh I plan to, question is where.

 

[idahohikker]

Two years ago was a warm November that messed up many big time deer hunts. It's quite risky. I'd want elk in my area almost for sure.

That said, as a first year hunter and one that walked a lot--it's a red flag because you may not have been glassing for hours--you may not have found the elk in your area. If it's warm, people are going to say the elk are high, whether or not it's true. Cows will often migrate earlier than bulls and aren't as reliant on snow to push them down.

 

[cnelk]

"Didn't expect success, more of a scouting trip."

You need to set your expectations higher.
Everyday in the elk woods should be considered a day to kill one.

If you're going to hike a lot in elk country, do that in the summer.
You will see the same elk sign, old crap, rubs, trails...

Some places are better hunting early in the season, some better hunting later.
Weather and hunting pressure dictate that mostly.

You're gonna have to pay your dues and figure any unit out.

Elk are where you find em

 

[LostArra]

"Didn't expect success, more of a scouting trip."

You need to set your expectations higher.
Everyday in the elk woods should be considered a day to kill one.


Elk are where you find em

Amen
A dreadful season can change into a huge success in as little as 5 minutes.

 

[realunlucky]

Any time in a unit puts you money ahead. Why would you give up all those miles you hiked and ground you covered to start somewhere new with no first hand knowledge? Surely you thought about what you would do there different next time. Late seasons are always about the weather and that's one thing you can never control. You'll need a plan B,C, and D to cover the variables

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[Topo_trekker]

What's the highest this unit gets?


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[ScreamingPotato]

"Didn't expect success, more of a scouting trip."

You need to set your expectations higher.
Everyday in the elk woods should be considered a day to kill one.

If you're going to hike a lot in elk country, do that in the summer.
You will see the same elk sign, old crap, rubs, trails...

Some places are better hunting early in the season, some better hunting later.
Weather and hunting pressure dictate that mostly.

You're gonna have to pay your dues and figure any unit out.

Elk are where you find em

Oh don't get me wrong, I didn't expect success but I was very hopeful and prepared for it.
Mainly trying to figure out if I'm paying my dues correctly, or giving them away to the televangelist who's driving $100k cars and has heated dog houses. LOL

Any time in a unit puts you money ahead. Why would you give up all those miles you hiked and ground you covered to start somewhere new with no first hand knowledge? Surely you thought about what you would do there different next time. Late seasons are always about the weather and that's one thing you can never control. You'll need a plan B,C, and D to cover the variables

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Well in my mind whether correct or not the bug has been set in place that there simply were no Elk in this unit, yet, but there would be lots of them later on. *IF* this is true (not saying it is) then no amount of unit knowledge is going to help me if the future repeats itself with the late winter.
There are absolutely things I'd do differently next time, there are some areas I'd absolutely start my search in and cover better. Also would setup base camp up high as we ended up driving quite a distance to get to our hunt areas each day, even though they were different areas usually they were all quite a ways from base camp.

What's the highest this unit gets?

The highest elevation according to all the map sources I used is about 9100 feet. I'm new to all this elevation stuff, but I had some friends hunting another unit and the only Elk they saw were about 10,500 and were coming down from higher. Those guys were camped near another camp who got a nice Bull, those guys said they got him up over 12k. I started at the 9100 high point in my unit and spent a lot of time up there, ran into countless other hunters moving all over the place also looking for sign. I spoke to quite a few, nobody had seen much of anything. During the 5 day season we heard one shot, shot did not sound like it connected.

Now having said all that, I don't really believe there's no Elk in this unit. There's got to be some resident Elk there I would think, and I simply failed to locate them. I'm sure they're tucked down deep in the thick stuff from being pressured by all the traffic in the area. I ventured into some of the thickest nastiest stuff I could find, never heard anything spook out but that doesn't mean they didn't sneak away as I was moving.

I would honestly be tickled pink to hunt the same unit again, got to draw tags again of course. I just want to be sure the problem this year was ME and not lack of Elk. If I'm the problem then I'll do better next year for sure, and better the year after... however if lack of Elk are the problem then I'm not going to fix it by personally mapping out this entire unit.

Oh anyway, mainly question was should I be targeting hunting a migration or is that too hit & miss for a newbie from out of state?

 

[ScreamingPotato]

Two years ago was a warm November that messed up many big time deer hunts. It's quite risky. I'd want elk in my area almost for sure.

That said, as a first year hunter and one that walked a lot--it's a red flag because you may not have been glassing for hours--you may not have found the elk in your area. If it's warm, people are going to say the elk are high, whether or not it's true. Cows will often migrate earlier than bulls and aren't as reliant on snow to push them down.

Quote button missed this one.
So you picked up on something for sure, I definitely felt like I didn't glass enough. Brought my HUUGE spotting scope (hindsight) and trigger stick which is nice because it doubles as a gun rest. We got up there two days early and spent the whole first day glassing and hiking and glassing more. I'd glass for maybe 20 minutes and get bored and move, felt like after 20 minutes I'd covered everything. By day 2 of the season (day 4 of the trip) I was leaving the spotting scope in the truck and simply using 12x bino's. I still felt like I was able to see quite well across ridges and canyons and investigate all the shadows correctly, however in the back of my mind it felt dirty lol... Perhaps a smaller spotting scope and more patience is in order on my part.

 

[tom338]

If those tracks you found were fresh you should have stayed on them. I would have. Maybe they were only a 1/2 mile away....who knows but that was a opportunity lost IMO. If nothing else you could have seen where they were heading and maybe the next day put a plan in effect. But thats just what I would have done. Hindsight is a wonderful things, should have, could have wish i would have done that. Been there many times. Still learning just like you

 

[Topo_trekker]

Sounds like your on the right track. Yes there can still be animals high but the migration should of already started. Finding the corridor the majority travel can take a couple years. Have you looked at CPW Atlas maps? They provide some good info on migration routes, sounds like you found one at least. Some of it is about luck. I have a buddy that hunts the same area of a unit every year, they usually get a couple cows from small groups 10-20 traveling through. This year the weather was perfect. 6" of snow hit and they had a herd of 1500 move through, everyone in the group tagged out with a bull, 5. They talked to some other hunters later that day about a mile away and they didn't see any elk. They mainly sit and glass all day waiting for elk, yes boring but that's the game for rifle season.


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[ScreamingPotato]

If those tracks you found were fresh you should have stayed on them. I would have. Maybe they were only a 1/2 mile away....who knows but that was a opportunity lost IMO. If nothing else you could have seen where they were heading and maybe the next day put a plan in effect. But thats just what I would have done. Hindsight is a wonderful things, should have, could have wish i would have done that. Been there many times. Still learning just like you

Really? Crap... Well that's inexperience kicking in and chalk it up to a learning experience. In hindsight that being the only sign I'd seen yeah probably should have stuck with it. The tracks/trail looked to be from that morning and I found them in the afternoon, looked like they were moving with a purpose as the trail was tight and the tracks didn't meander about. In my mind's eye they were miles ahead of me and off of my unit so the plan was head back up the other way and hope to find another migration coming down the same lines.

Sounds like your on the right track. Yes there can still be animals high but the migration should of already started. Finding the corridor the majority travel can take a couple years. Have you looked at CPW Atlas maps? They provide some good info on migration routes, sounds like you found one at least. Some of it is about luck. I have a buddy that hunts the same area of a unit every year, they usually get a couple cows from small groups 10-20 traveling through. This year the weather was perfect. 6" of snow hit and they had a herd of 1500 move through, everyone in the group tagged out with a bull, 5. They talked to some other hunters later that day about a mile away and they didn't see any elk. They mainly sit and glass all day waiting for elk, yes boring but that's the game for rifle season.

Good Lord! I think I'd die if my peace and quiet got broken up by 1500 Elk moving through LOL...
I had a lot of different map sources, so many that I started to get them confused. I ended up falling back on the OnX maps and sticking with that which seemed pretty nice. I did look at the Atlas, used that heavily before my trip. Once I got out there on site a lot of things changed of course. My unit didn't really have the migration concentrations it seems, but there were a couple of the fine red lines for migration paths. Can't remember exactly what they were called but they were two different layers on one of the maps I used.

 

[ramont]

Most elk hunters have been brainwashed by the television experts, it's not all about trying to outrun an elk in the mountains and (especially for a new elk hunter) it's not all about sitting on a mountain top scoping for elk at 1000 yards and shooting them with your .338 macho mag. Elk hunting is somewhere in between and most often the place you hunt dictates the techniques you need to use. If you are in elk habitat then more often than not there are elk in your area - you just didn't see them. For as big as an elk is they can hide pretty easily, you can glass an area and see nothing for hours and then all of a sudden half a dozen elk will just materialize and be standing in the open. Most new hunters spend way too much time traveling instead of looking.

If you want to find a good spot then research Colorado's game information, try to find maps that show where the elk go during the months that you intend to hunt. Once you've found where the game biologists say the elk will be then you can start looking for the type of habitat that the elk like during that time of year and take in to account the hunting pressure for the area. Here in Montana, during the general rifle season, the elk are trying to put on weight after the rut so they are trying to eat as much graze and browse as they can but the hunting pressure is high because the elk have been pressured by archery hunters for the last few weeks so they'll try to stay on grass and water but to be safe they'll tend to stay in the trees and steeper draws next to the best feed that they can find. I've found that most elk like to stay around running water, if they can find it, so I start by looking for smalls water seeps in the trees next to grass. Don't forget that even a small grass park will hold elk, a patch of grass 25 yards across will hold half a dozen elk for a couple of days, especially if there is moving water near by. Because of their need for food you'll find that they spend more time on side of a mountain vs. another. Quite often I find them on the south and west sides of a slope when they aren't being pressured real hard but if they feel threatened they will tend to go to the areas with more cover and that usually means the north and east side of a mountain. Which side they predominately inhabit is completely dependent upon their needs and the pressure that they are feeling. An elk can move to a heavily forested area for protection and still find a small grass park with water.

Glassing is a good way to look at a lot of country quickly but at some point you need to walk and look for tracks. More often than not hunters tend to look too close for elk while they are walking around. Most elk will get up and start walking away from a hunter somewhere around 100 to 300 yards away so you need to watch the trees that are at least 100 yards from you. Yes, you can jump an elk at closer distances but more often than not you'll see them when they are 100 yards or so away. And counter to what a lot of the "experts" will tell you, it's quite common to watch an elk move through the trees (when he's walking) without making a sound. A running elk will make a lot of noise but when they are calm and casually walking they don't make much noise at all.

 

[ScreamingPotato]

Wow, very enlightening. Thanks for taking the time for all that. I'm remembering back to two spots I found that are exactly what you describe from my hunt this year, wishing I would have spent more time there now.

 

[njdoxie]

Most elk hunters have been brainwashed by the television experts, it's not all about trying to outrun an elk in the mountains and (especially for a new elk hunter) it's not all about sitting on a mountain top scoping for elk at 1000 yards and shooting them with your .338 macho mag. Elk hunting is somewhere in between and most often the place you hunt dictates the techniques you need to use. If you are in elk habitat then more often than not there are elk in your area - you just didn't see them. For as big as an elk is they can hide pretty easily, you can glass an area and see nothing for hours and then all of a sudden half a dozen elk will just materialize and be standing in the open. Most new hunters spend way too much time traveling instead of looking.

If you want to find a good spot then research Colorado's game information, try to find maps that show where the elk go during the months that you intend to hunt. Once you've found where the game biologists say the elk will be then you can start looking for the type of habitat that the elk like during that time of year and take in to account the hunting pressure for the area. Here in Montana, during the general rifle season, the elk are trying to put on weight after the rut so they are trying to eat as much graze and browse as they can but the hunting pressure is high because the elk have been pressured by archery hunters for the last few weeks so they'll try to stay on grass and water but to be safe they'll tend to stay in the trees and steeper draws next to the best feed that they can find. I've found that most elk like to stay around running water, if they can find it, so I start by looking for smalls water seeps in the trees next to grass. Don't forget that even a small grass park will hold elk, a patch of grass 25 yards across will hold half a dozen elk for a couple of days, especially if there is moving water near by. Because of their need for food you'll find that they spend more time on side of a mountain vs. another. Quite often I find them on the south and west sides of a slope when they aren't being pressured real hard but if they feel threatened they will tend to go to the areas with more cover and that usually means the north and east side of a mountain. Which side they predominately inhabit is completely dependent upon their needs and the pressure that they are feeling. An elk can move to a heavily forested area for protection and still find a small grass park with water.

Glassing is a good way to look at a lot of country quickly but at some point you need to walk and look for tracks. More often than not hunters tend to look too close for elk while they are walking around. Most elk will get up and start walking away from a hunter somewhere around 100 to 300 yards away so you need to watch the trees that are at least 100 yards from you. Yes, you can jump an elk at closer distances but more often than not you'll see them when they are 100 yards or so away. And counter to what a lot of the "experts" will tell you, it's quite common to watch an elk move through the trees (when he's walking) without making a sound. A running elk will make a lot of noise but when they are calm and casually walking they don't make much noise at all.

Some interesting info there....I don't watch hunting shows, but I can imagine how some portray it.

 

[ScreamingPotato]

Figured I'd post an update as this deadline just hit today. I see the harvest data has been published and my unit had a 27% success ratio for my season last year. The numbers don't lie, problem is not with the unit, the problem is with the newbie Elk hunter. I've put in my application to go back to the same unit and try again, with the knowledge I gained last year and sign found I will have a little different attack strategy this year... if I'm lucky enough to draw a tag.

 

[Jd259]

We’re you hunting a unit in north west part of the state? The area you describe sounds a lot like an area I’m pretty familiar with shoot me a pm if you want and I can try to help you out if it’s the area I’ve hunted in the past.

 

[ScreamingPotato]

We’re you hunting a unit in north west part of the state? The area you describe sounds a lot like an area I’m pretty familiar with shoot me a pm if you want and I can try to help you out if it’s the area I’ve hunted in the past.

Hey JD, thanks for the offer I can use any help for sure. This unit is pretty far South actually, I don't see any reason to be secretive not sure why I didnt mention it previously but I'm in unit 711. I guess I wasn't really approaching it as a request for help on my unit more of a strategic question at the time.

 

[davsco]

Good Lord! I think I'd die if my peace and quiet got broken up by 1500 Elk moving through LOL...

my thoughts exactly!!