Poser
WKR
I just did a little under 150 mile section of the Colorado Trail over 4.5 days, mostly in the high country on my bike. I don’t even know how many elk units I traversed: 7, 8, 9... maybe 10+. Since opening day of archery was on Saturday, I saw, encountered, and talked to quite a few hunters along the way over the course of Fri, Sat and Sun.
Observations:
1. In general, hunters are spending lots of cash on clothes, especially Kuiu, and comparatively far less on backpacks. $1000+ worth of new clothes on and a $200 backpack.
2. Not as many true Backcountry hunters as I would have expected. Granted, that’s an observation from a primary trail, but it is a main artery for access. I talked to one solo guy who was packing in camp and another duo who had pack goats. Most Everyone else was day hunting from a vehicle or basecamp.
3. Hunters with horses were, well, riding horses around. While I get that you can cover a lot of ground, at some point, if you’re not getting off your horse, I’m not sure if you’re doing it right, at least in the modern setting of high country hunting in Colorado. At the lower scrub oak elevations near the end, there were guys who seemed to be driving around in their trucks all day looking for elk. These seem to be similar tactics with similar pitfalls: maybe you intend to get out of the truck or off the horse to investigate certain areas, but it’s too tempting to just keep covering ground. Some of these guys asked me if I had seen any animals. If you cover enough ground, I suppose you’ll encounter an elk at some point, but in the high country, hunters on horseback are easily visible from miles away and you can’t see much of anything from a truck in scrub oak country short of a few scenic overlooks. I think that truck hunting in scrub oak elevation has to be the least interesting form of elk hunting that exists. On horseback in the high country, at least you’re in the high country.
4. Truck basecamps: a lot of guys seem to be choosing where to hunt based on obtaining a prime truck camping spot. Judging by how many guys I saw loafing at basecamp in the afternoon hours, they must have been hunting close to these camps. Basecamps seem to come in clusters and almost never in isolation. Maybe the campers don’t perceive it that way, but when you roll past 20+ camps in 2-3 miles of trail and most seem to be hunting morning and evenings, you can’t help but wonder how far they are getting from camp during 3 hour windows.
5. I’ve seen this scenario now twice: hunters with high end, tricked out gear seemingly go out of their way to camp in a highly wind/weather exposed area. Maybe they are testing out tents and gear for an upcoming sheep hunt, but they could move 250 yards laterally and be in a treeline and not need Hillberg tents to withstand the winds, yet they choose a camp spot right smack in the middle of an exposed pass, which also happens to be a few feet from the Colorado Trail and then they look at you with annoyance or even animosity when you come pushing your bike uphill or shredding downhill next to their camp. On one hand, I’m sure it looked like a “remote basin” miles from a TH on Google Earth, but you set up camp next to one of the most popular trails in the whole world that takes 5 weeks for the average Thru hiker and 2 weeks for the average Thru biker and there is only about a 8-10 week window to do the trail. And while you may not see that many day hikers that far from the TH, you’re certainly well within the range of day bikers, so on a Saturday in late august, there may be 50-75 people passing by your fancy tent posted up on the middle of an exposed pass where you presumably thought you’d glass from your tent like the guy sheep hunting in the Kuiu ad, but instead you got a constant view of really stinky, skinny white people and you don’t even get enough privacy to take a shit so you have to traverse to the trees where you could have camped in the first place.
Observations:
1. In general, hunters are spending lots of cash on clothes, especially Kuiu, and comparatively far less on backpacks. $1000+ worth of new clothes on and a $200 backpack.
2. Not as many true Backcountry hunters as I would have expected. Granted, that’s an observation from a primary trail, but it is a main artery for access. I talked to one solo guy who was packing in camp and another duo who had pack goats. Most Everyone else was day hunting from a vehicle or basecamp.
3. Hunters with horses were, well, riding horses around. While I get that you can cover a lot of ground, at some point, if you’re not getting off your horse, I’m not sure if you’re doing it right, at least in the modern setting of high country hunting in Colorado. At the lower scrub oak elevations near the end, there were guys who seemed to be driving around in their trucks all day looking for elk. These seem to be similar tactics with similar pitfalls: maybe you intend to get out of the truck or off the horse to investigate certain areas, but it’s too tempting to just keep covering ground. Some of these guys asked me if I had seen any animals. If you cover enough ground, I suppose you’ll encounter an elk at some point, but in the high country, hunters on horseback are easily visible from miles away and you can’t see much of anything from a truck in scrub oak country short of a few scenic overlooks. I think that truck hunting in scrub oak elevation has to be the least interesting form of elk hunting that exists. On horseback in the high country, at least you’re in the high country.
4. Truck basecamps: a lot of guys seem to be choosing where to hunt based on obtaining a prime truck camping spot. Judging by how many guys I saw loafing at basecamp in the afternoon hours, they must have been hunting close to these camps. Basecamps seem to come in clusters and almost never in isolation. Maybe the campers don’t perceive it that way, but when you roll past 20+ camps in 2-3 miles of trail and most seem to be hunting morning and evenings, you can’t help but wonder how far they are getting from camp during 3 hour windows.
5. I’ve seen this scenario now twice: hunters with high end, tricked out gear seemingly go out of their way to camp in a highly wind/weather exposed area. Maybe they are testing out tents and gear for an upcoming sheep hunt, but they could move 250 yards laterally and be in a treeline and not need Hillberg tents to withstand the winds, yet they choose a camp spot right smack in the middle of an exposed pass, which also happens to be a few feet from the Colorado Trail and then they look at you with annoyance or even animosity when you come pushing your bike uphill or shredding downhill next to their camp. On one hand, I’m sure it looked like a “remote basin” miles from a TH on Google Earth, but you set up camp next to one of the most popular trails in the whole world that takes 5 weeks for the average Thru hiker and 2 weeks for the average Thru biker and there is only about a 8-10 week window to do the trail. And while you may not see that many day hikers that far from the TH, you’re certainly well within the range of day bikers, so on a Saturday in late august, there may be 50-75 people passing by your fancy tent posted up on the middle of an exposed pass where you presumably thought you’d glass from your tent like the guy sheep hunting in the Kuiu ad, but instead you got a constant view of really stinky, skinny white people and you don’t even get enough privacy to take a shit so you have to traverse to the trees where you could have camped in the first place.
