Let's Talk About The Good Old Days

[Donjuan]

Is there anyone here who went on their own to an out of state elk hunt back in the "dark ages?"
Before cell phones and GPS and OnX and all the online info you can find. Was Eastmans the first to offer any kind of help like that?

Just head down the interstate with a rand McNally atlas and some forest service maps...seems kind of daunting my today's standard!

Or, say 30 years ago, was elk hunting more of a local past time?

Looking to hear some nostalgic stories

 

[5MilesBack]

Colorado still had it's fair share of NR's that did that every year, even 40 years ago.

 

[diamond10x]

My great grandpa and grandpa started hunting out of state when my grandpa returned home after ww2. Did it every year since and passed on their knowledge to my dad and uncles, then to me.

Used to love listening to his stories as a kid about traveling to NM, CO, UT, WY to go hunt mule deer and elk.

As far as good old days for elk, there’s a lot more elk today than there was back then. MD is different story.

 

[Billy Goat]

The guy who got me started did just that. He started close to 40 years ago. 3 of them driving cross country straight thru in a single cab truck. They wouldn't break the tent down they had, just stuck it in the back of the truck, move somewhere else and pull it back out. Just trying to figure this elk thing out.


They had only ever dragged deer out. Didn't understand packing. He shot a pretty big mule deer (180's) and they were trying to drag it out. After a while, they decided to cut it in half.....

Slow process for them to learn quartering and packing.

He talks about it starting centered around a poker game one night. They didn't care about hunting elk really, they just found out they could go somewhere and start hunting 6 weeks earlier than home.

I think this will be his 37th year, or close to it.

 

[Miflatlander91]

My grandfather and greatgrandfather used to head out to Colorado chasing mule deer. I loved hearing stories about their trips when i was young still have the rifle my great grandfather carried with him.

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[mxgsfmdpx]

Road atlas, wilderness maps, forest service road maps bring back so many awesome memories. I remember pulling over with my dad even to just figure out which highways/roads to take to get to the wilderness areas and national forests.

I’m still young at 36, but when I got my license it was still paper maps and atlas. When I was about 19 this incredible invention called Mapquest came out haha.

 

[Pacific_Fork]

Mule deer in the 70s and 80s. A good friend would drive out to CO and hunt public and free private access every year. They wouldn’t shoot a 30” buck, had to be mid 30s to consider chasing and he has the garage full of antlers to prove it. Really amazing times to be a mule deer hunter!

 

[Jstumbaugh]

Road atlas, wilderness maps, forest service road maps bring back so many awesome memories. I remember pulling over with my dad even to just figure out which highways/roads to take to get to the wilderness areas and national forests.

I’m still young at 36, but when I got my license it was still paper maps and atlas. When I was about 19 this incredible invention called Mapquest came out haha.

I'm 38, same deal here when I got my license. I had to memorize the NY state land maps and which roads bordered them. There's good and bad with the information at your finger tips now.

 

[Marble]

I started Elk in CO in 2001. Had radios but nothing else. We all had maps and a compass. There was no resource widely available for the public to investigate the forest from their home. The last 10 years has definitely changed a lot of how and where we hunt.

I think a couple of us had a range finder that could go 500 yards. We wouldn't see hardly anyone else for days.

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[Seamaster]

I used to buy my deer and elk licenses OTC at the local hardware store in unit 76.

 

[BBob]

We scoured the USFS and USGS maps, made a plan and hit the road to see what we'd find. Fun days driving figuring out what was accessible and what wasn't. Meeting and talking with the ranchers about access and many times getting the low down on bulls, bucks, bears. Early on before GPS it was all compass bearings. When GPS came along it made it a bit easier to walk into and out of places in the dark. Simpler times with far less people in the field and almost never encountered others while out scouting. If I could turn the clock back to those days I'd do it in a second, no hesitation! Good times

 

[BBob]

I think a couple of us had a range finder that could go 500 yards.

We had Ranging convert the Ranging 1000's to I think a 400 yd max unit. The archery specific that Ranging made at the time were really small and basically sucked. If no one knows what they were they were a mirror/prism type mechanical device where you merged two images into one and read the range on the dial. Chuck Adams carried something similar in the early days. We put Zeiss monocular's on them and had custom belt pouches made. Just a few months ago I finally threw mine in the trash.

 

[M-Wig]

I don't have any family that liked to hunt enough to go out of state and I'm only 39 myself. I can imagine how much harder it would be for someone who had no chance to scout or look at reliable maps.

The good old days seem to always be a few decades before the current time. I've always wished I could go hunt Africa in the late 1800's, even did a speech about it in College. Right now I'm reading an elephant hunting memoir from a guy who traveled through Africa in the 1890's accompanied by natives. He mentions his regret for not being able to do this trip in the good old days 40 or 50 years earlier.

 

[Btaylor]

First western hunt was in '87 for MD. Was 18 and had never hunted anything accept riverbottoms. It was a grand adventure.

 

[KHNC]

Way back in 2019 I hunted a great area of New Mexico, didnt see hardly any hunters at all during second archery. It had been that way the previous 2 times i hunted it as well. Then in 2020 the place was covered up in rv's and tent camps. Foot prints everywhere i hunted and guys bugling on every peak. Man i miss the good ol days.

 

[Ross]

Makes me sad thinking of good ole days lots and lots of memories, stories and big elk racks and more elk packing than most would do in many lifetimes…..great big radios that weighed a ton and had huge antenas that shot to the moon, talk of this new thing elk diaphragms and cassette tapes by Dwight Schuh and Larry Jone, wool and more wool, old heavy wood guns, no rangefinders, noisy and heavy rain gear, topomaps and compass, code names meet you at daves ridge goes on and on….how did we kill anythingThe 80s good times you laced the boots and did it for the joy of hunting

 

[bow_dozer]

While in college we would go into the library and scour over the oversized topo maps. Take pictures of said maps. Then take those pictures out into the field.
Studied way more maps than any other literature in college....

 

[Marble]

We had Ranging convert the Ranging 1000's to I think a 400 yd max unit. The archery specific that Ranging made at the time were really small and basically sucked. If no one knows what they were they were a mirror/prism type mechanical device where you merged two images into one and read the range on the dial. Chuck Adams carried something similar in the early days. We put Zeiss monocular's on them and had custom belt pouches made. Just a few months ago I finally threw mine in the trash.

I had one of those. I remember being frustrated by it.

I feel like we are spoiled now-a-days

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[Ucsdryder]

x5B back in the 80s. We could hunt it every year or 2. Didn’t realize at the time how unique a true 30” buck was in california! They grew on trees back then.


Oh, and I think CPS would take a kid away nowadays if a parent let a kid do what I was doing back then at 5 years old. “See that rock on the horizon? Ride to that and I’ll meet you there. Don’t leave that spot until I get there.”

 

[AaronMColeman]

It's kinda how we turkey hunt now days. It brings some of the magic back.

I was in construction for a lot of years all this hands free phone laws have nothing on how dangerously we drove back when we had the Rand McNally on our lap, trying to find our next turn for a new job!